The Saint to the Rescue (24 page)

“But it
couldn’t
have meant anything
personal to Aunt Flo!
I mean—”

“No, not that.” He grinned. “I
don’t think she was ever
a waitress at the Chesterfield Club. Even
that long ago, she’d’ve been a bit old for the job.”

“Then what do you make of it?”

“You wanted to get me interested,”
he said, “and you
have. How can I meet Brother Powls?”

This could not have been an insuperable
problem at the
worst; but since it was that kind of charity fair, and
Santa
Barbara is that kind of place, it proved even easier than
he would
have anticipated. They were continuing their idle
stroll through the
grounds, discussing the best pretext they
might use for dropping
in at Mr. Powls’ apartment, when
Kathleen suddenly clutched Simon’s arm.

“Talk of the devil,” she said,
“there he is—over there, in
the light gray jacket.”

Mr. Alton Powls did not look much like a
devil, except as
he might be depicted in the more sophisticated modern type
of fantasy. From his mildly jaunty Panama hat down to his polished black
and white shoes, he looked like a typical mem
ber of the county set
in which he was imperturbably work
ing for acceptance. His attendance at
this garden carnival,
properly viewed, was not even surprising at
all: on the con
trary, it was a social obligation which he could hardly
have
avoided.

Only the Saint’s peculiarly analytic eye
would have noted,
as they approached on a calculated collision course, a
cer
tain revealing shuffle in the way Mr. Powls walked, and the
no less
typical way his glances roved restlessly over a
wide
area with
little corresponding movement of his head.

“Why, good afternoon, Mr. Powls,”
Kathleen said as they
met.

He had seen them coming already, but he raised
his hat
with the most urbane spontaneity.

“Miss Holland. How nice to see you taking
a day off.”

He was probably not much over sixty, a thin
man with
a sedate little bulge below his belt. His somewhat lumpy
face was
clean shaven and pallid, his hair sparse and lank.
His lips were tight
and gristly, and scarcely moved when
he spoke. Simon could see the
superficial reasons for describing him as a Creep, but his manner was easy and
polite.

Kathleen said: “This is Mr. Tem——”

“Templar,” said the Saint. He
amplified it, very clearly:
“Simon Templar.”

“Simon Templar,” Mr. Powls repeated.
“Somehow, the
name sounds familiar.”

His fingers, which had gone out automatically
to meet the
Saint’s cordial hand, lay in the Saint’s grasp like cold
sausages.

“You could have heard it,” Simon
said affably.

“You couldn’t—by any chance—be any
relative of that man
they call the Saint?”

“I am the Saint,” Simon beamed.

Those who know the Saint at all well will
recognize at
once that this was totally unlike him. But he did it this
time,
and Mr. Powls retrieved his hand quickly, as if afraid that
it might
not be given back.

“Are you really?” said Mr. Powls. He
coughed, to clear
a trace of hoarseness from his voice. “But you aren’t
ex
pecting to find anything to merit your attention here, are
you?”

“I never know where I’ll find those
things,” said the Saint
cheerfully. “But I’m always on the
lookout for them. And there’s no place like a town full of respectable retired
peo
ple. They all buy each other’s stories, but who ever checks
on them? A
guy could come here straight from Leavenworth
and give out that he
was a retired Bible salesman, and no one would even ask him to prove it by
naming the four
Gospels.”

“That’s very interesting,” said Mr.
Powls faintly.

“Not that I think there’s anything
crooked about this shindig,” Simon went on exuberantly. “In fact, it
must be
on the level, because they just let me win a pot at Bingo.
Look.”

He pulled out of his pocket the card which he
had kept
as a souvenir, and thrust it upon Mr. Powls in such a way
that the other was virtually forced to take it from him.

“That’s wonderful,” said Mr. Powls,
returning the card as
quickly as he could. “Really, it gives me
an inspiration. I
must go there and try my luck. If you’ll excuse me.”
He
raised his hat to Kathleen again, and inclined his head to
the Saint.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again later.”

“I hope so,” Simon said heartily.
“Let me know if you
see any other old lags around.”

Mr. Powls moved away, not hurriedly, but
without look
ing back.

“I’m getting rather baffled,”
Kathleen said, “and now I
don’t think I’m enjoying it.”

“You got me started,” Simon reminded
her. “And I got
some results.”

“I didn’t see much, except that you upset
him.”

“Does that matter? You said he was a
Creep, anyway.”

“But you were almost
objectionable.”

“No. A bit corny and collegiate, maybe. A
shade heavy-
handed with the humor. But I had to be. I wanted to start
something.
A respectable citizen may be bored by the kind of kidding that suggests he’s an
old jailbird, but he isn’t
offended, because it’s too ridiculous to take
seriously. Only
an old lag would be jolted, because it’s too close to
home.”

“You think he
is
an
ex-convict?”

“I’ve no more doubt about it. But I saw
it first in the
way he walks and talks and looks around.”

“Then why did you go on—the way you
did?”

Simon shrugged. His sky-blue eyes were
altogether lazy
now, and seemed to be ranging perspectives far outside
the
eucalyptus trees and formal hedges of the manorial grounds
which had
been turned over to the benefit.

“I’m a catalyst,” he said.
“You know what that is, in
chemistry? You throw a certain catalyst into a
certain mix
ture, and nothing happens to it itself, but all hell
breaks
loose around it. All the other ingredients seethe up and do
back-flips
into new transformations. That’s me. Half the time
I don’t have to do
anything except be around. Somebody
hears I’m the Saint, and I shoot a few
arrows in the air,
and the fireworks start. Like this. It’s no crime to be
an
ex-convict, unless you got out through a tunnel. Or to be a
Creep,
even. And I don’t know what Aunt Flo is sweating
out. So there’s
nothing much I could do about ‘em. And yet
I’ve got an idea that
events are already on the march.”

She was almost exasperatedly incredulous.

“And now they’ll take care of
themselves. There must be
more to it than that!”

“Well, there may be a little more,”
he smiled. “Let’s go
and get a real drink somewhere, and on the way
you could
show me where Brother Powls lives.”

But when they parted later he had still
managed to evade
being pinned down to anything more positive than a prom
ise to
pick her up for lunch the next day.

He was obligated to dine with his friends at
their home;
but afterwards—having made conversation about everything
except the problem with which Kathleen Holland had presented him—he made
the excuse of having to take an im
portant letter to the post office to
make sure it would go
out by the earliest possible mail. He had no
such letter and
did not even go near the post office, but drove instead to
the small new building that Kathleen had shown him, which
was
pleasantly situated a block from Cabrillo Boulevard
within sight of the
ocean and the pier and yacht harbor.
There was a light in the upper corner
that she had pointed
out, and he went up the outside stairway and
knocked on
the door.

Mr. Powls opened it, and his jaw dropped.

“What… . Yes, Mr. Templar. I was
hardly expecting—”

“May I come in?” said the Saint,
and went in irresistibly.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“For a start,” said the Saint,
“you can give me any folding
money you’ve got on you.”

He kept one hand deep in his jacket pocket,
not being so
crude
as to stretch it out of shape by making anything point
through it, but the suggestion was just as effective to Mr. P
owls’ flickering eyes.

“What is this—a stick-up?”

“Call it what you like, Alton, but
sprout the lettuce.”

“I think it’d be better if I called the
police. You wouldn’t
shoot me for the few dollars I’ve got on
me.”

“Do you remember me making you admire my Bingo card this
afternoon, chum?” Simon said. “I did that to get your
fingerprints on it. You may not believe it, but I
have all sorts
of useful
connections—even here. Those prints are already
on their way to Washington,” he elaborated mendaciously,
“only I haven’t told anyone yet where they
came from. If
you feel like calling
the police, I won’t stop you. By the
time
we all get to the station there should be a make from
the FBI, and we can go on from there.”

Mr. Powls took a crumpled fold of currency
from his
trouser pocket and passed it over.

“Nobody ever told me the Saint went in
for this kind of
thing,” he sneered.

“These are rugged days, Alton. What with
inflated prices
and a confiscatory income tax, it isn’t so easy to live
like a
millionaire any more without a little side money.”

“But why pick on me?”

Simon had been scrutinizing each piece of
paper money
in the roll he had taken and separating it into two slim
packs
clipped between different fingers. Now he fanned out
one sheaf like a poker
hand.

“I marked all these bills with two little
tears close to
gether near one corner, just before I gave them to Aunt
Flo
this afternoon as a charity donation. How did you get them?”

“She gave them to me. I was lucky,
too.”

“You certainly were. But that goes back
to when you first
hit Santa Barbara and ran into a meal ticket when you were
just window-shopping. What were you in stir for, comrade?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. It was
about some uranium stock I sold. There shouldn’t of been any squawk at all, but
I wrote something in a letter and they used it to hang a
federal
rap on me.”

“And now you’re out, you’ve switched from
the bunco
racket to blackmail. That sums it up, doesn’t it?”

“You’re talking to yourself.”

“And even taking it out of charity
donations.”

“She gave it to me,” Powls repeated.
“I don’t know where
it came from. If she snitched it where she
shouldn’t, what
does that make her?”

“A scared old lady,” said the Saint.
“What have you got
on her?”

Mr. Powls’ cartilaginous lips curled. He was
regaining confidence quickly.

“I should tell you—so that you can take over. You dig that up
for yourself, if you’re so wise. You can’t beat it out of me here, without one
of the neighbors’ll call the cops, and you
don’t
want that any more than I do. Leave me alone to
handle it, and I might even give you a little cut.”

The Saint’s smile was terribly benevolent.

“I’m only humanly inquisitive about Aunt
Flo,” he said.
“But I’m just as humanly certain that whatever her guilty
secret is she’s done a great job of living it down for twenty
years. And
you should have heard that blackmail is one of
the crimes I rate
among the wickedest in the world and
among the least adequately punished by
the law.”

He held Mr. Alton Powls by the coat lapel and
shook
him back and forth quite gently, while the forefinger of his
other hand
tapped him on the chest for emphasis; and his
eyes were swordpoints
of sapphire in the angelic kindliness of his face.