“Why not drop in for breakfast and we’ll talk it over?”
“All right.” She seemed reluctant to finish, and yet unable to find an excuse to go on. “And thanks again.”
The Saint poured himself another drink, and surrendered the bottle.
“Who was dat, boss?” Hoppy asked.
“A lady,” Simon replied, “who is holding out on me.”
“You can’t trust ’em boss,” Hoppy affirmed, shaking his head. “None of ’em. I know a doll once.” He sighed, shaking his head like a wistful grizzly. “She has coives like a... a...”
“A scenic railway?” Simon suggested.
Hoppy beamed.
“Dat wuz Fanny, boss! All over! I can see her now.” He sighed with stentorian nostalgia. “She was de goil of my dreams!”
The Saint yawned and turned to the bedroom.
“Then let’s go see her there,” he said.
The doorbell rang a sudden prolonged pizzicato.
Simon halted in his tracks. Ghostly caterpillars crawled along his backbone. Instinct, sensitive and prescient, had whispered its warning of further explosions in the chain reaction he had started that night; the clamour of the bell came as if on a long-awaited cue. A faint smile flitted over his reckless mouth.
“Who da hell is dat dis time of night?” Hoppy wondered.
“Open the door and find out,” Simon told him.
Mr Uniatz slipped a meaty hand into his gun-pocket and strode out into the foyer to the doorway.
The Saint heard the door open fractionally; he grinned slowly as he recognised the impatient imperative voice that answered Hoppy’s gruff inquiry. The door opened all the way... The determined clomp of hard-heeled brogans entered the foyer, heading for the living-room door.
“Boss,” Hoppy trumpeted in warning, “it’s—”
“Don’t tell me,” the Saint broke in cheerfully. “Give me one guess — Inspector Fernack!”
Chapter four
Devoted students of our hagiography who have been following these chronicles for the past several years may be a little tired of reading the exposition of Inspector John Henry Fernack’s emotional state, which usually punctuates the narrative at moments like this. Your favourite author, to be perfectly candid, is a little tired of writing it. Perhaps this is one occasion when he might be excused. To compress into a few sentences the long epic of failures, disappointments, and frustrations which made up the history of Inspector Fernack’s endless pursuit of the Saint is a task before which the staunchest scribe might quail. And it is almost ludicrous to attempt to describe in mere words the quality of incandescent ire that seethed up in him like a roiled volcano as the Saint’s welcoming smile flashed in the chiselled bronze of that piratical face.
“Of course,” Simon murmured. “I knew it.”
The detective glowered at him.
“How did you know?”
“My dear John Henry!” the Saint grinned. “That concerto you played on my doorbell was unmistakably a Fernack arrangement.” He waved him to a chair. “Sit down, won’t you? Let me pour you a drink — if Hoppy can spare it.”
“Sure,” said Mr Uniatz hospitably. “Just don’t take all of it.”
Inspector Fernack did not sit down. In fact, he looked more as if he might easily rise into the air, from the sheer pressure of the steam that seemed to be distending his chest.
For the same routine was going to be played out again, and he knew it, without being able to do anything to check or vary its course. It was all implicit in the Saint’s gay and friendly smile, and the bitterness of the premonition put a crack in his voice even while he ploughed doggedly onwards to his futile destiny.
“Never mind that!” he squawked. “What were you and this big baboon raising Cain about in the Masked Angel’s dressing-room tonight?”
“You mean last night, don’t you? It happens to be tomorrow morning at the moment.”
“I’m asking you,” Fernack repeated deliberately, “what were you doing—”
“It’s funny,” the Saint interjected, “all the places where a flying rumour will land.”
“It’s no rumour!” Inspector Fernack said trenchantly. “I was at the fight myself.” He removed the stogie from his mouth and took a step forward, his gimlet eyes challenging. “Why did you steal those gloves?”
The Saint’s brows lifted in polite surprise.
“Gloves?”
“Yes, gloves! The gloves that killed Torpedo Smith! Doc Spangler told me what happened. Why’d you take ’em?”
“My hands were cold,” Simon said blandly.
An imaginative audience might have fancied that it could hear the perspiration sizzling on Inspector Fernack’s face as its rosy glow deepened to purple. He thrust the stogie back into his mouth with a violence that almost choked him and bit into it savagely.
“You be careful, Templar!” he bellowed. “If I felt like it, I could pull you in for assault, trespass, malicious mischief, and petty larceny!”
Simon shook his head sadly.
“You disappoint me, Inspector. A hunter of your calibre talking about sparrows when there are tigers in them thar hills.”
“You don’t say!” Fernack’s cigar angled upward like a naval rifle. “Meaning what?”
The Saint shrugged.
“Well, almost anything is more interesting than”—amusement flickered in the lazy-lidded, hawksharp blueness of his eyes as he enumerated on his angers — “assault, trespass, malicious mischief, and petty larceny.”
The cigar made another trip from Inspector Fernack’s face to his fist, and suffered further damage in transit.
“All right, Saint,” Fernack ground out, “what are you up to? And don’t give me that look of injured innocence. You didn’t crash that dressing-room just for the exercise.”
“We wanted de Angel’s autograph,” Hoppy contributed helpfully.
The Inspector whirled on him.
“I didn’t ask you!” he blared, with such ferocity that even Hoppy recoiled.
“John Henry,” the Saint mused wistfully, “our association through the years has been a beautiful thing — in a futile sort of way — but there are moments when you really embarrass me.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Why should you take Spangler’s word that I stole those gloves? You know what he is. Besides, what makes you think there’s anything wrong with them? What was the doctor’s opinion as to the cause of death?”
Inspector Fernack placed the cigar in his mouth, his eyes fixed on the Saint.
“Concussion,” he said. “We’ll get the medical examiner’s report in the morning.”
The Saint nodded.
“Concussion. Undoubtedly caused by the psychic dynamite that Doc Spangler has put in the Angel’s punch.”
“Or by a hunk of lead in one of those gloves!” the Inspector growled.
His eyes wandered searchingly about the room.
The Saint said, “You spoke to the Masked Angel, of course?”
“I spoke to him, of course. Why?”
“What was his theory, if any?”
“His theory!” Inspector Fernack snorted scornfully. “Why, that moron Bilinski doesn’t know he’s alive! But he’s staying in jail till we find those gloves, understand?” His eyes narrowed. “How long have you known Bilinski? How did you recognise him as the Masked Angel? Is he a friend of yours?”
The Saint smiled wryly.
“Please, Inspector,” he protested. “My social standing is not indestructible.” He turned to Hoppy. “Well,” he sighed, “if it’s a matter of getting your little playmate out of the cooler, you’d better bring the Inspector his souvenirs.”