Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

Cookie finished at last, with Hogan and the Saint competing in the uproariousness of their appreciation. The melancholy waiter brought some more drinks, bowed down into profounder misery by the knowledge that this was one table which he dared not discourage, and that at the same time it was one table where the tip would certainly be no compensation. Cookie ploughed through the room, stopping to give jovial greeting to various tables, and surged on to the bar, where there were other members of her following to be saluted and the bartender had been trained to have three ounces of Scotch waiting for her with a cube of ice in it.

It was twenty minutes before she breasted back to her own table, and then she had Dr. Ernst Zellermann in tow.

Cookie introduced him, and mopped her face and reached for the first drink that arrived. "Tom's sailing on Tuesday," she said. "Shanghai." The Saint had already begun to let it look as if his liquor consumption was catching up with him. He lurched in his chair, spilt some of his drink, and gave a wink that was getting heavy and bleary.

"Gonna find aht if it's true abaht China," he said.

"I may be able to tell you a few places to go," Zellermann said smoothly. "I spent quite a time there once — In the good days before the war."

He looked very noble and full of unfathomable memories; and Simon Templar, dimly returning his gaze, felt coldly and accurately like a specimen on a dissecting table.

Zellermann picked up his glass and turned to Cookie with the utmost charm.

"You know," he said, "I don't know why you don't invite more people like Mr. Hogan and Mr. Simons out to Long Island. After all, they deserve to be entertained much more than I do."

"That's an idea," Cookie said. "How about it, boys? I've got a little shack on the beach at Southampton. We close this joint on Sundays anyhow. Why don't you come along? I'll see that you're back in town on Monday. You can swim in the ocean and get some sun on the beach, and we'll make a party of it and it won't cost you a cent. Dr. Zellermann and I will drive you out as soon as we've closed this place. We'll have a grand weekend. I'll have company for you, too. The most attractive girl you've ever seen." Simon was much too drunk to catch the glance that flashed between them — or at least he had been able to convince everyone of that. "Dexter is coming along," Cookie said.

The Saint mumbled something about seeing a man about a dog, and was able to get out alone. There was a telephone booth near the entrance. He called the Algonquin and asked for Avalon.

Miss Dexter was not there at the moment, as he knew; but could they take a message?

"When is she likely to get it?" he asked.

"I couldn't say, sir, but she's been calling in about every half hour. She seems to be expecting a message. Is this Mr. Templar?"

The Saint held his breath for a moment, and took a lightning decision.

"Yes."

"I know she's asked whether you called. Can she call you back?"

The Saint said: "I'm afraid she can't reach me, but tell her I'll see her tomorrow."

Nothing could have been more true than that, even if she didn't understand it; and somehow it made him feel better with himself. It meant something to know that she had hoped he would find a way to get in touch with her — no matter why. She would not know that he had been back to the Algonquin since his "arrest," for that had been taken care of; and she must continue to believe that he was locked up somewhere downtown. But she had asked...

Both of them had become hooked to an unwinding chain that was going somewhere on its own. Only it happened to be the same chain for both of them. It seemed as if the hand of destiny was in that — Simon didn't want to think any more, just then, about what that destiny might be.

When he got back to the table, everything had been settled. Patrick Hogan proclaimed that when his great-grandfather sailed for America, all the luggage he had was in his coat pockets, and he could do anything that his great-grandfather could do. He was certain that, next to his great-grandfather and himself, his pal Tom Simons was just as expert at light travelling.

"I can take you in my car," Zellermann said convivially. "There's plenty of room."

Simon didn't doubt it was a car you could play badminton in.

"I'll have to stay till the bitter end," said Cookie, "and Dexter will probably want to pick up some things. I'll bring her."

It was worked out just as easily and rapidly as that. But Simon knew that aside from the hospitable cooperation, Avalon Dexter was not intended to know that Dr. Zellermann would be a member of the house party. Or he hoped he knew it.

He had some confirmation of that when they were leaving.

Avalon seemed to be on her way back from the powder room when they started out. There was a rather lost and apart expression on her face that no one else might have seen. Zellermann half stopped her.

"Good evening, Avalon," he said, half formally and half engagingly.

"How are you?" Avalon said, very brightly and very cheerfully and without a pause, so that before he could have said anything else she was neatly past him and gone.

Zellermann stood looking after her without a ripple of reaction, his face as smooth as a head of marble.

Simon recalled that he had also hit Dr. Zellermann in the eye, and realised that some momentary inaccuracy had made him fail to leave any souvenir contusion on the eyelid. All he could detect, in the brighter light of the foyer, was a small area of matt surface just above the cheekbone. Dr. Zellermann's peripalpebral ecchymosis, clearly, had received the most skilled medical and cosmetic treatment.

The encounter had made Hogan and the Saint drift further on towards the door, and Kay Natello had excused herself on a farewell visit to the powder room. It was a chance that might not recur very quickly.

Simon said: "Pat, 'oo is this Dexter jine?"

"She used to work here, Tom me boy, an' a swate singer she was too. That was her just went by. But you'll meet her when we get to Southampton. An' if Cookie says she's for you, ye're in luck."

"She's a corker, orl right," said the Saint. "If that's 'oo yer mean. Although she wouldn't 'ave much time fer an ole goat like me. Clarss, that's wot she is..." He staggered just a little, and put his arm around Hogan's broad shoulders, and decided to take a chance on Hogan's unpredictable pugnacity. "But if it comes ter that, mite, wot djer see in an ole sack o' bones like that there Natello?"

Hogan laughed loudly and clung to him for mutual support.

"She's okay, Tom," he said generously. "An' she's a friend of Cookie's, an' she's me swateheart. Is it her fault if she's an old sack o' bones? She reminds me of me old Aunt Eileen, an' she's been kindness itself to me iver since we met, so I'll fight any man that says she's not the toast o' the town."

That was how they piled into Dr. Zellermann's car, which was not only big enough to play badminton in but could probably have accommodated a social set of tennis as well.

Hogan and Natello sat in the back, and after a few lines of noisy repartee seemed to get close together and go to sleep. Dr. Zellermann steered them out over the Triborough Bridge with surgical care and precision, while he chatted urbanely about the sea and world commerce and logistics and the noble part that was being played by such unsung paladins of reconversion as Tom Simons. The Saint sat beside him, making the right answers as best he could improvise them, and remembering Avalon Dexter and many various things.

Apparently, as he had worked it out, Avalon's arrival at Southampton to find Zellermann there already was meant to be a surprise for her. Apparently, then, there was an idea extant that she wouldn't have accepted the invitation if she had known Zellermann would be there. Certainly she had brushed him off coolly enough that night, with merely conventional politeness. That was what any ordinary person would think.