Authors: Leslie Charteris
“Did
you ever see it made?” Simon asked slowly.
“No.”
“I have.”
“Can you describe the process?”
Simon
gave a rough description of what he had seen. He
knew that it was technically meaningless, and
admitted it.
“That
doesn’t matter,” said Quennel. “I’m sure you can see
now where the trick was worked.”
“You
mean in the enclosed electrical gadget, I suppose.”
“Naturally,” Quennel chuckled. “I’m surprised that a
fellow
like you wouldn’t have
caught on to it at once. It’s just a
dressed-up topical version of all those old swindles where
a
man has a machine that
prints dollar bills or a formula for
making
diamonds.”
“But why should a man like Calvin Gray go in for anything like
that?”
“Do you know Calvin Gray?”
“Not personally. But I’ve checked on him, and his reputa
tion is quite special.”
“But
as I understand it, you haven’t even seen him. All
you’ve met is a pretty girl with a story.”
“I’ve been to his house.”
“How
do you know it was his house? Because the girl took
you there and told you it was?”
“Who’s
Who
gives his residence as
Stamford, Connecticut.”
“I suppose that would be the onlv residence there.”
The Saint’s blue gaze was meditative and unimpassioned. He
drew at his cigarette and set his
wrist back on the table.
“Mind
you,” said Quennel, “I’m not necessarily suggesting
that that’s the answer. It could have
been Gray’s house. It
could have been his daughter. It isn’t impossible. It takes a big
man to put over a big fraud.”
“But why should Gray bother? I understood he was well
enough off already.”
“Who did you get that from? From the same source—from
his daughter, or from the girl who said
she was his daughter?”
“Yes,”
said the Saint thoughtfully.
Quennel trimmed his cigar again.
“Suppose
it’s what you were told from a good source. In
business, that isn’t always enough. A lot of men
have had big
reputations, and have been generally believed
to be pretty well
off, and have been well
off—and still they’ve ended up in jail.
I’m sure you can remember plenty of them yourself. Famous
stockbrokers, attorneys, promoters … Not that
I’m com
mitting myself about this
case. I don’t know enough about it.
Maybe
Calvin Gray would be the most surprised man in the
world if he knew about it. He might be away
somewhere—
lecturing, for instance—and his house might have been broken
into and used by some gang of crooks. Even that’s been done
before. I don’t have to tell you about these
things. The only thing I think you ought to know is that this synthetic rubber
story
is a fraud.”
Simon Templar
took one more measured breath at his ciga
rette,
and said: “I don’t know how much you claim to know,
but you may have heard that in Washington night
before last
there was an attempt to
kidnap Madeline Gray, or the girl who
calls
herself Madeline Gray. Mr. Devan was there.”
Devan nodded.
“That’s right. Only I didn’t know it was a kidnaping attempt,
until Andrea gave us the idea after she’d talked to you.”
“If
it ever was a kidnaping attempt,” said Quennel. “Or
couldn’t it have been part of the same
build-up, staged for
your benefit, to help make the case look important to you?”
The Saint had an odd ludicrous feeling of being a feed man, of offering
properly baited hooks to fish who had personally
chosen the bait. But he had to hear all the answers;
he had to
see the whole scene
played through.
“You wouldn’t have heard it,” he said, “but it seems as
if
Calvin Gray really was
kidnaped.”
“Really?”
“At
any rate, either he or the man who is being talked about
is missing.” Simon paused
casually. “I’ve already called in the
FBI about it.” .
There
was silence for a moment. It had a curious negative
quality, as if it were more than a mere incidental
absence of sound and movement, as if it would have absorbed and neutralised
any sound or movement there had been.
“What about the girl?” Devan asked; and
Simon met his
crinkly deep-set eyes.
“Since this afternoon,” he said expressionlessly, “she
seems
to be missing too.”
There was only a barely perceptible flicker of stillness this
time, as if a movie projector had stuck
on the same frame for
two or three extra spins of the shutter. And then Hobart Quennel
moved a little and drank some brandy,
and raised one
shoulder
to settle his forearm more comfortably on the arm of
his chair.
“Probably it was your calling in the FBI that did that,” he
said. “That would have been a
complication they weren’t ex
pecting.”
“Why?”
“You always
had a reputation—forgive me, I’m not being personal, but after all we all read
newspapers—for being a sort
of lone wolf. So
the last thing they’d have expected was that
you’d take your troubles to any of the authorities. In fact, I’m
a
little surprised about it myself.”
“These aren’t quite the same times,” said the Saint quietly.
“And perhaps a few things have changed
for me as they have
for
everyone else.”
Quennel
laughed a little, his sound sure confident laugh.
“Anyway,”
he said, “probably you scared them, and now
they’re organising a nice neat getaway. You can take it that the whole
deal was crooked from the beginning anyhow, whatever
the minor details were … Very possibly the real Calvin Gray
will turn up in a day or two, and be as puzzled as
anyone …
It doesn’t really make
a lot of difference, does it?”
“It makes a difference,” said the Saint; and his voice was as
even as a calm arctic bay,
and the same invisible chill nestled
over it.
He said: “I go after crooks.”
Hobart Quennel’s slight deep engaging chuckle came again,
like a breath from the South, and now it was warmer and
surer
than ever, and there was no
uncertainty at all left behind in it,
and
it could soothe you and blot the search and the question-i
ng and the fight out of you like the breeze
rustling through southern palms; and it was right, it had to be right, because
nothing could be wrong that was so friendly and
permanent
and sure.
“I
know,” he said. “But you just said it yourself. These aren’t
the same times, and everybody changes. This Gray
business will
take care of itself now. If you’ve already called in the
FBI, it’s s
ure to. It’s in good hands. It’s
none of my business, but I can’t
really see you wasting any more time on
it. It wouldn’t do you
justice.”
“What would?” Simon asked.
Quennel turned his cigar again.
“Well, frankly, I’ve read a lot about you and I’ve often
thought that you weren’t doing yourself
justice, even before
the
war. Not that I haven’t enjoyed your exploits. But it’s al
ways seemed to me that a man with your
mind and your abili
ties could have achieved so
much more … You know, sometimes I’ve wondered whether a man like you mayn’t
have been
suffering from some mistaken ideas
about business. I don’t mean selling things over the counter in a hardware
store. I
mean the kind of business
that I do.”
“Perhaps I don’t know enough about it.”
“I assure
you it can be just as great an adventure, in
its own
way, as anything you’ve ever done. A great
corporation is like a little empire. Its relations with other corporations and
indus
tries are like the relations
between empires. You have diplomacy, alliances, feuds, espionage, and wars.
Quite often you have to step right through ordinary laws and restrictions.
That’s one of the things I meant by the necessity for a strong execu
tive class. I think if you go into it you’ll find
that they are
really only paralleling
your own attitude. There have to be a
great
many petty general regulations for the conduct of the
majority of people, just as there have to be for
children. It’s
just as necessary for
there to be parents, and people who can
step above the ordinary
regulations. I think you’d find yourself
quite
at home in that class. I think that Business could employ all your brilliance,
all your charm, all your audacity, all your
generalship, all your—shall I say—ruthlessness.”
“You could be right,” said the Saint, with a smile that
barely
touched the edges of his
mouth. “But who would give me a
job?”
“I would,” said Quennel.
The Saint gazed
at him.
“You would?”
“Yes,”
Quennel said deliberately. “To be quite truthful,
when I told Andrea to ask you over, I was thinking about that
much more than about the Gray business. Let’s say
it was one
of my crazy ideas, or one
of my hunches. You don’t get very
far
in business without having those ideas. I believe right now
a man like you could be worth a hundred thousand
dollars
a year to me.”
Simon drew his glass closer to him and cupped it in his hand,
the stem between his second and third fingers, making
gentle
movements that swirled the golden
spirit softly around and
warmed it in the curve of the bowl.
This, then, was
all of it, and all the answers and explanations
were there. And he knew quite certainly now, as his intuition
had always told him, that there was no ordinary way
to fight
it. As Quennel had said, there were times when you had to step
right through ordinary laws and restrictions. There was a world
outside the orderly lawful world of average
people, and to
fight anyone there you
had to move completely into his world,
or
else he was as untouchable and invulnerable as if he were
in another dimension.
The Saint smiled a little, very sardonically and deep inside
himself, at the passing thought of
how far he would have been
likely to get if he had tried to fight Hobart Quennel from any
footing on the commonplace world. Even
without his own
peculiar reputation by
commonplace legal standards, he knew
how
ridiculous the accusations he would have had to make
would have seemed
when thrown against such a man as Quen
nel.
It wouldn’t be merely because of Quennel’s wealth. It
would be because
his standing, his respect, his utterly genuine
confidence and authority and rightness and integrity would
throw
off anything the Saint could say like armor would throw
off spitballs.
It was a good thing, Simon thought, that he also could move
in dimensions where such
considerations were only words.
He
finished his brandy, enjoying the full savor of the last
sip, and put the glass down, and said
pleasantly: “That’s very flattering. But I have another idea.”
“What is that?”
Unhurriedly,
almost idly, the Saint put his right hand under
his coat, under his left arm, and brought out the
automatic
that rode there. He leveled it diagonally
across the table, letting
the aim of its
dark blunt sleek muzzle touch Quennel and
Devan in turn.
“This is what I was talking about before,” he said.
“About
the war being close to
home. The war is here with you now,
Quennel. I came here for Calvin Gray and his daughter, and
unless I get them I promise you some of
us are going to die
most
unexpectedly.”
The only trouble was, as the Saint reckoned it afterwards,
that even then he still hadn’t realized
deeply enough how
closely
Quennel’s—or at least Devan’s—fourth-dimensional mentality might coincide with
his own.
He looked at their rigid immobility, at Quennel’s face still bland and
bony and Walter Devan’s face heavy and grim, both
of them staring at him soberly and calculatingly but
without
any abrupt panic; and then he saw Devan’s eyes
flick fractionally upwards to a point in space just above his head.