Saint Steps In (35 page)

“I’m glad you didn’t startle me,” he said. “That thing
is
full of nitroglycerin, and
I was just going to drop it”

7.
How Simon Templar went on his Way.

Jetterick,
the FBI man, tried to straighten a limp cigarette
and said: “One thing that puzzles me is how Gray
could put
a bowl of soup like that
together with Quennel watching him.
If Quennel was a chemist himself once———
”

“So far as I know,” said the Saint, “he only worked in a
drug
store. He got out of that
racket very soon to be a business
man. And there were a lot of unlabeled bottles in the
labora
tory—I’d noticed that
before. Gray, and his daughter knew
what they were, but nobody else did. And one solution looks
like a lot of others, at a glance. And Quennel was just inter
ested in what he was being told …
Anyhow, it doesn’t mat
ter
a lot now. It didn’t quite come to that.”

“What about Quennel’s daughter?” Jetterick asked.

Simon Templar looked out of the window into the dark.

“See what her story is, and I’ll confirm it where I can.” His
voice was scrupulously commonplace—perhaps too scrupu
lously. “You can say that she must have been in a tough spot,
trying to be loyal to her father and at the same
time trying to
follow … some other
influences. But she did try in her way
to
keep me out of that Imberline setup. I don’t think you can
make her an accessory to that. I don’t think she
ever knew
that Imberline was booked for the big voyage. Probably Quen
nel arid Devan didn’t even know it then. But she
overheard
just enough, and she’d
assimilated enough general back
ground, to be sure that the Savoy Plaza
could be an unhealthy
joint for me to go
home to
…
And she did let us out tonight —otherwise none of
us would be talking now … You’ll do
what the book tells you; but I’d like to see her come out as
well as she can.”

And
he remembered her lips and her eyes and her white
shoulders, and all of her asking impossible things.

Jetterick’s taciturn stare took its time over him.

“If your
evidence holds up, it’ll be quite a case.”

“It’ll
hold up. And it will be quite a case. Quennel got to be a damn brilliant lawyer
in his day, but he’ll have to be
more
than brilliant to laugh this one off
…
I’m glad it was
this way
instead of the other, for more reasons than one. A
little fresh air on the subject won’t do any harm at
all.” The
Saint
stood up. “I’ll go back to New Haven with you and help
you fill in the picture. And somewhere
along the line I’ve got to call a guy named Hamilton, who’s going to be sore as
a hangnail if he has to get this story out of his morning paper.”

“Come over any time tomorrow,” said Jetterick accommo
datingly. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot, and I
guess you could do with a rest.”

“Let’s do it tonight,” said the Saint quietly.

He emptied an ashtray into the fireplace, and settled his
coat; and it was as if everything
began again.

He
said: “There’s still a war going on, and I don’t know
enough about tomorrow.”

He
went out and found Calvin Gray, and said goodnight to
him; but Madeline followed him out to the car.

“You will be coming back, won’t you?” she said.

“Very soon, I hope.”

He had so many meanings in his mind that he couldn’t help
which one she chose from his voice. He
sat beside the FBI man
and gazed steadily ahead as the lane swam tortuously at them
and swallowed them again. He wanted to
believe that he
might be
going back there some day. There was no harm in
hoping.