Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

"You mean if they have a secret craving to tear the clothes off a nurse or throw a plate of soup at a waiter, they can be accommodated — at a fancy tariff."

"Something like that, I guess. Dr. Zellermann says that all mental troubles come from people being thwarted by some convention that doesn't agree with their particular personality. So the cure is to take the restriction away — like taking a tight shoe off a corn. He says that everyone ought to do just what their instincts and impulses tell them, and then everything would be lovely.

"I notice he wasn't repressing any of his impulses," Simon remarked.

The girl shrugged.

"You're always meeting that sort of creep in this sort of business. I ought to have been able to handle him. But what the hell. It just wasn't my night to be tactful."

"You'd met him before, of course."

"Oh, yes. He's always hanging around the joint. Cookie introduced him the other night. He's one of her pets."

"So I gathered. Is it Love, or is he treating her? I should think a little deep digging into her mind would really be something."

"You said it, brother. I wouldn't want to go in there without an armored diving suit."

He cocked a quiet eye at her.

"She's a bitch, isn't she?"

"She is."

"Everybody's backslapper and good egg, with a heart of garbage and scrap iron."

"That's about it. But people like her."

"They would." He sipped his drink. "She gave me rather a funny feeling. It sounds so melodramatic, but she's the first woman I ever saw who made me feel that she was completely and frighteningly evil. It's a sort of psychic feeling, and I got it all by myself."

"You're not kidding. She can be frightening."

"I can see her carrying a whip in a white-slave trading post, or running a baby farm and strangling the little bastards and burying them in the back yard."

Avalon laughed.

"You mightn't be so far wrong. She's been around town for years, but nobody seems to know much about her background before that. She may have done all those things before she found a safer way of making the same money."

Simon brooded for a little while.

"And yet," he said, "the waiter was telling me about all the public-spirited work she does for the sailors."

"You mean Cookie's Canteen?... Yes, she makes great character with that."

"Is it one of those Seamen's Missions?"

"No, it's all her own. She hands out coffee and coke and sandwiches, and there's a juke box and hostesses and entertainment."

"You've been there, I suppose."

"I've sung there two or three times. It's on Fiftieth Street near Ninth Avenue — not exactly a ritzy neighbourhood, but the boys go there."

He put a frown and a smile together, and said: "You mean she doesn't make anything out of it? Has she got a weakness for philanthropy between poisonings, or does it pay off in publicity, or does she just dote on those fine virile uninhibited sailor boys?"

"It could be all of those. Or perhaps she's got one last leathery little piece of conscience tucked away somewhere, and it takes care of that and makes her feel really fine. Or am I being a wee bit romantic? I don't know. And what's more, I don't have to care any more, thank God."

"You're quite happy about it?"

"I'm happy anyway. I met you. Build me another drink."

He took their glasses over to the side table where the supplies were, and poured and mixed. He felt more than ever that the evening had been illumined by a lucky star. He could put casual questions and be casually flippant about everything, but he had learned quite a lot in a few hours. And Cookie's Canteen loomed in his thoughts like a great big milestone. Before he was finished with it he would want more serious answers about that irreconcilable benevolence. He would know much more about it and it would have to make sense to him. And he had a soft and exciting feeling that he had already taken more than the first step on the unmarked trail that he was trying to find.

He brought the drinks back to the couch, and sat down again, taking his time over the finding and preparation of a cigarette.

"I'm still wondering," she said, "what anyone like you would be doing in a joint like that."

"I have to see how the other half lives. I'd been out with some dull people, and I'd just gotten rid of them, and I felt like having a drink, and I happened to be passing by, so I just stopped in."

None of it was true, but it was good enough.

"Then," he said, "I heard you sing."

"How did you like it?"

"Very much."

"I saw you before I went on," she said. "I was singing for you."

He struck a match, and went on looking at her between glances at the flame and his kindling cigarette.

He said lightly: "I never knew I was so fascinating."

"I'm afraid you are. And I expect you've been told all about it before."

"You wouldn't like me if you knew me."

"Why not?"

"My glamour would dwindle. I brush my teeth just like anyone else; and sometimes I burp."

"You haven't seen me without my make-up."

He inspected her again critically.

"I might survive it."

"And I'm lazy and untidy and I have expensive tastes."

"I," he said, "am not a respectable citizen. I shoot people and I open safes. I'm not popular. People send me bombs through the mail, and policemen are always looking for an excuse to arrest me. There isn't any peace and stability where I'm around."

"I'm not so peaceful and stable myself," she said seriously. "But I saw you once, and I've never forgotten you. I've read. everything about you — as much as there is to read. I simply knew I was going to meet you one day, even if it took years and years. That's all. Well, now I've met you, and you're stuck with it."

She could say things like that, in a way that nobody else could have said them and gotten away with it. The Saint had met most kinds of coquetry and invitation, and he had had to dodge the anthropophagous pursuit of a few hungry women; but this was none of those things. She looked him in the face when she said it, and she said it straight out as if it was the most natural thing to say because it was just the truth; but there was a little speck of laughter in each of her eyes at the same time, as if she wondered what he would think of it and didn't care very much what he thought.

He said: "You're very frank."

"You won't believe me," she said, "but I never told anyone anything like this before in my life. So if you think I'm completely crazy you're probably right."

He blew smoke slowly through his lips and gazed at her, smiling a little but not very much. It was rather nice to gaze at her like that, with the subdued lamplight on her bronze head, and feel that it was the most obvious and inescapable thing for them to be doing.

This was absurd, of course; but some absurdities were more sure than any commonplace probabilities.

He picked up his glass again. He had to say something, and he didn't know what it would be.

The door-bell beat him to it.

The shrill tinny sound ripped shockingly through his silence, but the lift of his brows was microscopic. And her answering grimace was just as slight.

"Excuse me," she said.

She got up and went down the long hall corridor. He heard the door open, and heard a tuneless contralto voice that twanged like a flat guitar string.

" Hul lo, darling! — oh, I'm so glad I didn't get you out of bed. Could I bring the body in for a second?"

There was the briefest flash of a pause, and Avalon said: "Oh, sure."

The door latched, and there was movement.

The raw clockspring voice said audibly: "I'm not butting in, am I?"

Avalon said flatly: "Of course not. Don't be silly."

Then they were in the room.

The Saint unfolded himself off the couch.