The Saint shook his head sadly.
“Mike,” he protested, “anyone, a child — even Connie, your own daughter — might be sceptical of that. In fact, if she knew about your partnership with Spangler, she might even be afraid that you’re mixed up in something not quite—”
Grady stiffened, his face reddening.
“And what the hell has my daughter to do with this?”
The Saint’s disclaimer was as bland as cold cream.
“Why, nothing at all, Mike. I merely mentioned her as a possibility.”
“Well, you just leave her out of this!” Grady glared at him and then looked away restlessly. “Maybe it isn’t according to Hoyle for me to have a financial interest in Bilinski,” he grumbled, “but it doesn’t matter a damn to me if he wins or loses, just so I get my two grand back.”
“By the way,” said the Saint, “how does Spangler get away with Bilinski wearing that old sock over his head?”
“He has special permission from the Boxin’ Commission, Grady replied curtly. “It’s a legitimate publicity stunt.”
“If there is such a thing,” Simon admitted. “But it certainly improves his appearance.”
“He’ll have to take it off for the championship fight,” Grady informed him sourly, “when he gives Steve Nelson the beatin’ he deserves!”
The Saint’s probing eyes drooped with offensive restraint.
“You seem to lack a certain enthusiasm for your future son-in-law,” he observed.
“Not my son-in-law!” roared the promoter. “No common knuckle-head box fighter is going to marry the daughter of Mike Grady, I can tell you. I don’t know what tales you been hearing, but she’s not marrying that punk, you can depend on it!”
“What are you going to do — forbid the banns?”
“I’ll not see her tied to a lowser with no more future than a cake of ice,” Grady said belligerently. “I’ve seen what happens to the most of ’em after their fightin’ days are done, with their brains addled and the eyes knocked out of ’em, no money saved, and their wives drudges!”
The Saint built an “O” with a smoke-ring.
“So that’s why you quarrelled.”
“I wouldn’t call it a quarrel.” The promoter’s eyes glittered. “I told him just what I’ve told you, and I told him to let Connie alone.”
“But if Steve is retiring after his fight with the Angel, as he says—”
“Sure! That’s what he says,” Grady snorted. “How many times have I heard that one before! So, he’s retiring. On what?”
Simon shrugged.
“On the purse, I suppose. Unless, of course, he gets killed before he can collect it. The way Smith was.”
Mike Grady put his elbows on the desk and cupped his forehead in his hands, staring down at his desk.
“That was a terrible thing to happen,” he said sombrely. “But, it was an accident.” He looked up defiantly. “It wouldn’t happen once in a million fights.”
The Saint gazed at him thoughtfully. A pattern seemed to be unfolding. So Grady wanted no part of Connie’s fiancé. He was in semi-partnership with Doc Spangler. But did he disapprove of Nelson enough to arrange his death? Was he of the same stripe as Spangler?... Somehow the Saint couldn’t quite accept that. Grady was not wanting in the essential elements of humanity. A hot-headed, obstinate old blowhard, perhaps — but not a wicked man. Shrewd, conniving, scheming maybe — but not a crook. Somewhere the thorn of conscience pricked. Somewhere beneath the flinty carapace was the naively sentimental heart. An expert in such things, the Saint felt certain of his diagnosis. And yet...
“Perhaps,” said the Saint. “But I collect those one-in-a-million chances.” He slipped the snub-barrelled revolver out of his pocket and laid it almost casually on Grady’s desk. “No doubt it was also one chance in a million that I found this in my apartment last night.”
Grady stared at the gun in open-mouthed amazement.
“Where the hell did you get that?” he demanded stupidly.
“It’s yours, of course?”
“Sure it’s mine. My initials are on it! Where’d you get it?”
“I told you. In my apartment last night. After my little interview with Spangler last night, some character broke into our little ivory tower with the apparent idea of air-conditioning us with your heater. Unfortunately we had just booby trapped the door in preparation for a visit from the tax collector. This other character didn’t have a sense of humour so he went away in a sort of huff.”
Grady thrust himself from his chair and walked to the window. He stared out blindly, his hands folded across his chest, his face a thundercloud.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Unless he sold it, or—”
He turned to Simon abruptly. “That gun was stolen from me,” he said flatly, “by Steve Nelson!”
The Saint tapped the ash from his cigarette dispassionately.
“Stolen?” he murmured.
“Yes, stolen!” Grady returned to his chair. “Last week. Right in this office. He took the gun and I’ve never seen it since — that is, until this moment.”
“How do you know he took it?” the Saint asked.
“How do I know he took it!” Grady bawled. “The lowser nearly broke my arm!”
“Oh,” Simon deduced innocently. “This, I take it, was during the quarrel you didn’t have.”
Grady glowered at the gun on the desk.
“If it wasn’t a matter of business and money out of my pocket, I’d have had him thrown in jail for so long—”
“That Connie wouldn’t even know him when he did come out?”
“Skip it.”
“You pulled that gun on him, didn’t you? And he took it away from you. Was that it?”
Grady’s high blood pressure became painfully evident.
“I said skip it!” he shouted. “I was defending myself — not that I couldn’t handle the lowser with me bare hands if I had to!”
Simon rose to his feet and retrieved the gun.
“You won’t mind if I borrow this until I trace the character who tried to use it on me last night?”
“Help yourself,” Grady grunted darkly. “Did you have any idea who it was?”
“Do you think Steve Nelson could answer that question?”
Grady scowled and shook his head.
“It doesn’t sound like him — sneakin’ into a man’s house... No, it couldn’t have been! The lowser must have sold it or — lost it. Whoever got it from Nelson is the man. you’ll be wantin’.”
The Saint stood up.
“That’s who I’m going to find,” he said. “I’ll see you again, Mike.”
Before the promoter realised that the interview was over, he had opened the door and sauntered out.
There was a sudden dampening of volume in the conversation about him as he emerged from Grady’s office. Whereas he had attracted little attention on entering the reception-room, his effrontery in crashing Grady’s office ahead of everyone else now made him a marked man, the target of a concentrated battery of indignant eyes. But the Saint seemed wholly unaware of the hushed hostility as he paused by the girl at the switchboard and watched her plug in a connection.
“Yes, Mr Grady,” she said. And after a moment, “Dr Who?... Yes, sir, I’ll get him for you right away.”
She reached for the telephone directory on a shelf beside her.
“Crescent 3-1465,” the Saint prompted helpfully.
She looked up like a startled gopher, and Simon Templar gave her the same friendly smile with which he had short-circuited her before.
“It was Dr Kurt Spangler you wanted, wasn’t it?” he said, and strolled on out before she could find her voice.