Leslie Charteris: The Saint Sees it Through

The check-room girl was helping him into his coat when Ferdinand Pairfield, on his way to the gents' room, edged past him at a nervous distance that was not without a certain coy concupiscence. The Saint reached out and took his hand.

"Don't you think that nail polish is a bit on the garish side, Ferdy?" he asked gravely. "Something with a tinge of violet in it would look much cuter on you."

Mr. Pairfield giggled, and disengaged his fingers as shyly and reluctantly as a debutante.

"Oh, you!" he carolled.

Slightly shaken, Simon let himself out and went up the short flight of steps to the street.

Avalon Dexter was on the sidewalk, talking to the doorman as he held the door of a taxi for her. Even with her back to him, the Saint couldn't have mistaken the long bronze hair that hung over the shoulders of her light wolf coat. She got into the cab as he reached the street level; and before the doorman could close the door Simon took two steps across the pavement, ducked under the man's startled nose, and sat down beside her.

He held out a quarter, and the door closed.

She gazed at him in silence.

He gazed at her, smiling.

"Good morning," she said. "This is cosy."

"I thought I might buy you a drink somewhere," he said, "and wash the taste of that dump out of our mouths."

"Thanks," she said. "But I've had all I can stand of creep joints for one night."

"Then may I see you home?"

Her candid eyes considered him for a bare moment.

"Why not?"

She gave the driver an address on Sutton Place South.

"Do you make all that money?" Simon asked interestedly, as they moved off.

"The place I've got isn't so expensive. And I work pretty regularly. At least," she added, "I used to."

"I hope I didn't louse everything up for you."

"Oh, no. I'll get something else. I was due for a change anyway. I couldn't have taken much more of Cookie without going completely nuts. And I can't think of any happier finale than tonight."

Simon stretched out to rest his heels on the folding seat opposite him, and drew another eighth of an inch off his cigarette.

He said idly: "That was quite an exit line of yours."

"They got the idea, did they?"

"Very definitely. You could have heard a pin drop. I heard one."

"I'd give a lot to have seen Cookie's face."

"She looked rather like a frog that was being goosed by an electric eel."

The girl laughed quickly; and then she stopped laughing.

"I hope I didn't louse everything up for you.''

"Oh, no." He doubled her tone exactly as she had doubled his. "But it was just a little unexpected."

"For a great detective, you've certainly got an awful memory."

He arched an eyebrow at her.

"Have I?"

"Do you remember the first crossing of the Hindenburg — the year before it blew up?" She was looking straight ahead, and he saw her profile intermittently as the dimmed street lights touched it. "You were on board — I saw your picture in a newsreel when you arrived. Of course, I'd seen pictures of you before, but that reminded me. And then a couple of nights later you were in a place called the Bali, opposite El Morocco. Jim Moriarty had it — before he had the Barberry Room. I was bellowing with the band there, and you came in and sat at the bar." She shrugged, and laughed again. "I must have made a tremendous impression."

He didn't remember. He never did remember, and he never ceased to regret it. But it was one of those things.

He said lamely: "I'm sorry — that was a lot of years ago, and I was crashing all over town and seeing so many people, and I can't have been noticing much."

"Oh, well," she said, with a stage sigh. "Dexter the Forgotten Girl. What a life!... And I thought you came to my rescue tonight because you remembered. But all the time you were taken up with so many people that you never even saw me."

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I must have been taken up with too many people. And I'll never forgive any of them."

She looked at him, and her smile was teasing and gay, and her eyes were straight and friendly with it, so that it was all only chatter and she was not even trying to sell him anything; and he could only smile back and think how much better it could have been if he remembered.

"Maybe you don't know how lucky you were," she said.

"Maybe I don't," he said.

And it was a curious thing that he only half understood what he was saying, or only half meant what he said; it was only a throwaway line until after it was spoken, and then it was something that could never be thrown away.

This was something that had never been in his mind at all when he abandoned himself to the simple enjoyment of smacking Dr. Ernst Zellermann in the smooch.

He lighted another cigarette with no less care than he had devoted to the other operation, and said nothing more until the taxi drew up outside a black and white painted brick building on the river side of Sutton Place South. He got out and helped her out, and she said: "Come in for a minute and let me fix you a real drink."

"That's just what I needed," he said, and paid off the taxi, and strolled up beside her as casually as if they had known, each other for a hundred years, and it was just like that, and that was how it was.

The living-room was at the back. It was big and quiet and comfortable. There was a phonoradio and a record cabinet, and a big bookcase, and another tier of shelves stacked with sheet music, and a baby piano. The far end of it was solid with tall windows.

"There's a sort of garden outside," she said. "And the other end of it falls straight down on to East River Drive, and there's nothing beyond that but the river, so it's almost rustic. It only took me about three years to find it."

He nodded.

"It looks like three well-spent years."

He felt at home there, and easily relaxed. Even the endless undertones of traffic were almost lost there, so that the city they had just left might have been a hundred miles away.

He strolled by the bookcase, scanning the titles. They were a patchwork mixture, ranging from The African Queen to The Wind in the Willows, from Robert Nathan to Emil Ludwig, from Each to the Other to Innocent Merriment. But they made a pattern, and in a little while he found it.

He said: "You like some nice reading."

"I have to do something with my feeble brain every so often. I may be just another night-club singer, but I did go to Smith College and I did graduate from University of California, so I can't help it if I want to take my mind off creep joints sometimes. It's really a great handicap."

He smiled.

"I know what you mean."

He prowled on, came to the piano, set his drink on it, and sat down. His fingers rippled over the keys, idly and aimlessly, and then crept into the refrain of September Song.

She sat on the couch, looking at him, with her own glass in her hand.

He finished abruptly, picked up his drink again, and crossed the room to sit down beside her.

"What do you know about Zellermann?" he asked.

"Nothing much. He's one of these Park Avenue medicinemen. I think he's supposed to be a refugee from Vienna — he got out just before the Nazis moved in. But he didn't lose much. As a matter of fact, he made quite a big hit around here. I haven't been to his office, but I'm told it looks like something off a Hollywood set. His appointment book looks like a page out of the Social Register, and there's a beautifully carved blonde nurse-receptionist who'd probably give most of his male patients a complex if they didn't have any to start with. He's got a private sanitarium in Connecticut, too, which is supposed to be quite a place. The inmates get rid of their inhibitions by doing exactly what they please and then paying for any special damage."