Leslie Charteris - The Saint Steps In

He shook hands with the Saint, and said "I'm very glad to meet you," and personally poured Martinis from the shaker he had been stirring.

He had a pleasant voice and manner, dignified but cordial, neither ingratiating nor domineering. He had the soothing confidence of a man who didn't need to ask favors, or to go out of his way to offer them. He was a guy you could like. Simon Templar liked him in his own way, and felt just as comfortable. He sat down on the sofa beside Andrea Quennel, and crossed his long legs, and said: "This is quite a place you have here."

"Like it?" She sounded as if she wanted it to be liked, as if it were a new dress. "But I think you'd like Pinehurst much more. I do. It's more sort of outdoorsy."

She looked as sort of outdoorsy as an orchid. She wore one of those house-coat-dinner-dress effects that would get by anywhere between a ballroom and a boudoir and still always have a faint air of belonging somewhere else. It had a high strapped Grecian bodice line that did sensational things for her sensational torso. She had opened the door when he arrived, and it had seemed to him that her classic face and melting receptive mouth were like candy in a confectioner's window, lovely and desirable but without volition. He knew now that this was a fault of his own perception, but he was still inching his way through the third dimension that had to bring the whole picture into sudden life and clarity.

It felt a little unearthly to be meeting her like that, in this atmosphere of ordinary and pleasant formality, after the way they had last seen each other. He wondered what she was thinking. But he had been able to read nothing in her face, not even embarrassment; and they hadn't been alone together for a moment. He didn't know whether to be glad of that or not. They watched each other inscrutably, like a pair of cats at opposite ends of a wall.

There was one other person who had to be there to complete the pattern, and a few minutes later he came in, looking very much freshly scrubbed and brushed, in a plain blue suit that was a little tight around the chest and biceps, so that he had some of the air of a stevedore dressed up in his Sunday best. Mr. Quennel patted him on the shoulder and said: "Hullo, Walter… You've met Mr. Templar, haven't you?"

"I certainly have." Walter Devan shook hands with a cordial grin. "I didn't know who I was picking a fight with at that time, though, or I'd have been a bit more careful about butting in."

"I'm glad you weren't," Simon said just as cordially, "or you might have done much too good a job."

"What do you think about the news from Russia?" Quennel asked.

So it was to be played like that. And the Saint was quite ready to go along with it that way. Perhaps he even preferred it. He had quite a little background to fill in, and in it he knew that there were things which were important to his philosophy, even if anyone else would have found them incidental. He could wait now for the explosive action which was ultimately the only way in which the difference of basic potential could be resolved, like the difference between two thunderclouds. But before that he was glad to explore and weigh the charge that was going to match itself against his own.

He lighted a cigarette, and relaxed, and for the first time since the beginning of the episode he knew that it had a significance beyond any simple violence that might come out of it.

They had another drink. And dinner. It was not a lavish-dinner, but just quietly excellent, served by a butler whose presence didn't keep reminding you of the dignity of having a butler. There was not a dazzling display of silver and crystal on the table. They drank, without discussion or fanfares, an excellent Fountaingrove Sonoma Cabernet. Everything had the cachet of a man to whom luxury was as natural and essential as a daily bath, without making a De Mille sequence out of it.

"I think you'll like Pinehurst, if Andrea takes you down there," Quennel said. "I just got a couple of new strings of polo ponies from Buenos Aires — I haven't even seen them yet. You might be able to try them out for me. Do you play polo?"

"A bit," said the Saint, who had once had a six-goal rating.

"I can't wait to get down there myself," said Quennel. "But Washington never stops conspiring against me."

"I imagine the war has something to do with it, too."

Quennel nodded.

"It has made us pretty important," he said deprecatingly. "We were doing quite all right before, but war-time requirements are making us expand very considerably. Of course, we're working about ninety-five per cent on Government orders now. But after the war we'll really have the advantage of a tremendous amount of building and plant expansion, as well as some great strides in technical experience."

"All of which the Government, meaning the people, will have given you and paid for," Simon observed sympathetically.

"Yes." Quennel accepted it quite directly and disarmingly. "We don't expect to do any profiteering at this time, and in any case the tax system wouldn't let us, but in the end we shall get our return — fundamentally in improved methods and increased capital values, which good management will turn back into income."

Simon made idle mosaics with a fork in the things on his plate; and presently he said: "How have you been making out with labor problems in your field?"

"We really don't have any labor trouble. All our plants are in the South, of course, where you get less of that sort of thing than anywhere else. Labor is always a bit of a problem in these days, but I honestly think it only boils down to knowing how to handle your employees? How about it, Walter? — that's your headache."

"Quenco pays as good wages as any other industry in our areas," Devan said ruggedly. "And I think we do as much to look after them as any other firm you can mention. You'd be surprised at what we do. We have our own health insurance, and our own group clinics — we organise all kinds of social and athletic clubs for them — we even build their homes and finance them."

"That," said the Saint, "is the sort of thing that makes some of the things one hears so puzzling."

"What things?"

"I mean some of the rumors — you must have heard them yourself — about your private Gestapo, and that kind of talk."

Devan smiled with his strong confident mouth.

"Of course we have our private plant investigators. You couldn't possibly handle thousands of employees like we have without them. But when they aren't looking for cases of petty larceny and organised laziness, which you have to contend with in any outfit as big as ours, they're mostly just keeping in touch with the morale of the staff. That's the only way we can really insure against trouble, by anticipating it before it comes."

"That's one of the crosses we have to bear," Quennel said. "I'd like to know any other company that hasn't been smeared with the same gossip."

"I suppose so," Simon agreed flexibly. "But it must be specially tough when there's an accident they can hang it on. Like those union organisers who got killed in the riot at Mobile last year, for instance."

Devan made a blunt admissive movement of his head.

"Things like that are bound to happen sometimes. It was too bad it had to be us. But some of our people have been with us a long time, and you'd be surprised what a strong feeling they've got about the company. When some cheap racketeering rabble-rousers come around trying to stir up trouble, they can't help getting sore, and then somebody may get hurt."

"After all," Quennel said, "we aren't fighting a war against Fascism to make the country safe for the Communists. We're fighting for liberty and democracy, and that automatically means that we're also fighting to preserve the kind of social stability that liberty and democracy have built up in this country."