“What’s your wife’s name?” the Saint asked irrelevantly.
“Lola May. Why—”
“Nothing at all.”
And so, “ruptured duck” conspicuous on his blouse, his six stripes heralding relative solvency, his candid gray eyes clean of suspicion, he was the ideal candidate for one of crook-dom’s oldest and dirtiest rackets — with a new and up-to-date come-on.
“So then,” said the Saint, “she came out of the bedroom in something that was next to nothing and in less time than it takes to tell it you were in a, shall we chastely say, compromising position.”
The sergeant glared.
“It wasn’t quite that way,” he amended. “She launched herself at me like a runaway steam roller.”
“I see. In any event, when the door opened—”
“They came in through the window. Off the fire escape.”
“Um. Authentic touch, that. When the window opened to admit her — ‘husband’ and the ‘detective’ with his little camera, the exploding flash bulb illumined a scene in which one and one added up to a very damning two.”
“You ain’t just whistling ‘Dixie.’ ”
“And now, the Outraged Husband has the floor. For a long time, and I quote, he has suspected that this Abandoned Woman is up to just this sort of thing. Here, at long last, is pictorial evidence to convince the most skeptical judge. The fact that it involves you, Bill, is unfortunate, but—”
“That’s just what he said.” The sergeant’s bitter voice took it up. “ ‘I hate to mix you up in something like this, soldier, but it’s already cost me more than I can afford to get the goods on her.’ ”
“Luella has withdrawn to the bedroom, weeping,” supplied the Saint.
“She did a runout, all right. Well, by that time I knew I’d been had. It’s been three years since I saw my wife and the little guy; I couldn’t start off with something like this, could I? So the next move was up to me. I asked him how much it would take to keep the detectives going till he got some other evidence.”
“Which amount,” Simon observed, “by a strange coincidence, was exactly the sum Luella had been prepared to accept as a down payment on a house.”
“It was a smooth act,” agreed the veteran miserably.
“So you paid him the money, the ‘detective’ handed you an exposed negative, and — exit one sergeant.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about these things,” observed the soldier, a thin edge of his earlier truculence creeping back into his voice. “Just who the hell are you?”
“My name,” said the Saint, “is Simon Templar.”
“Templar!” The sergeant took a long look. “But you’re not — you mean...”
Simon nodded.
“The Saint! The... the Robin Hood of Modern Crime!”
“As the headline writers say,” Simon confessed wryly.
“Well — uh, glad to meet you.” They shook hands, the sergeant rather bemused, it seemed. He gulped at his drink. “Where do you fit into this?” he blurted.
“That is what I’m wondering,” said Simon Templar, and the banter was gone from his voice, the blue eyes tempered to damascene hardness. “But I know I belong somewhere.” He emptied his glass thoughtfully and signaled for a refill. “I think you and I had better get serious about Operation Luella, Sergeant. Brief me on where she hangs out and how the pickup works.”
The prime tactical problem was hardly a problem at all to a pirate of Simon Templar’s experience. Nor was the role which he selected for the immediate performance. With one or two subtle changes to his appearance that could hardly be called make-up, and one or two props that were scarcely props at all, and a change of voice and bearing that was a matter of infinitesimal modulations, he could put on another personality as a man might put on a coat, and only an audience that knew he was acting would even appreciate the masterpieces that he created.
“This one shows the two boys in front of my summer place at Carmel,” the Saint was saying late the next afternoon. “Oldest one’s twelve. Little devil, but smart as a whip.” He beamed with fatherly pride.
“The young one looks like you, Mr Taggart,” said the lady known as Luella.
“Well, thanks, Miss, uh—”
“My friends call me Luella. And I’m sure you’re a friend.”
Without moving a muscle, the Saint conveyed the impression of bashfully digging a toe into the bar carpet.
“That’s mighty nice of you, ma’am — Luella. It’s a right pretty name. Sort of bell-like — or something.”
Luella touched the snapshot with a long red-tipped finger. “Your summer place looks wonderful.”
“Cost twenty thousand,” the Saint said modestly, “but worth every cent. Wife’s up there with the boys. And I’m here in Hollywood. Tendin’ to some business, o’ course, but—” His glance was a work of genius. It reminded you of a timid bather sticking a dainty toe in a pool of water before wading — not plunging — in. It reminded you of a nice boy playing hooky for the first time. It reminded you of a professor of Sanskrit about to consign a single quarter to a gaudy slot machine. “—but havin’ a little fun, too, if we tell the truth.”
Seated on a stool at the Beverly Wilshire bar, the Saint looked the part of a conservative businessman who could stick twenty grand into a summer place. His blue serge suit was of excellent cloth, but by a tailor who must have hated London. His high collar and tightly knotted dark tie placed him as a man who served on civic committees. And his hair, sleekly parted in the middle, added the final touch of authenticity to his characterization of Mr Samuel Taggart, Vice-President of the Stockmen’s National Bank of Visalia, California.
And that was what his business card, freshly printed earlier that same day, said. The name Taggart appeared on the back of the snapshot, bought earlier from a photographer’s shop.
“And are you having fun, Mr — uh—”
“Call me Sam, Luella,” the Saint simpered. “Wife calls me Samuel most of the time, but I like Sam. Sorta friendly, I think.”
“Are you having fun, Sam?”
“Well, I got a feelin’ I’m about to, Luella. Say, could I buy you somethin’ to drink? I been tellin’ you all about myself, seems the least I could do. Say, bartender! Uh, give the young lady what she wants. Me, I’ll have a lemonade.” He cupped one hand alongside his mouth, whispered to the bartender, who was eyeing him stonily, “Put some gin in it.” To Luella he said apologetically, “I like gin in ’em.”
“Aren’t you a one, though, Sam.”
“Shucks,” the Saint said, “man’s got a right to have a little fun. Kind of hard for me, though, not knowin’ these places people’re always talkin’ about in Hollywood. Don’t know my way around very well yet.”
He put a hundred-dollar bill on the bar, replaced the roll in his pants pocket, and looked moodily into his lemonade with gin.
Luella’s manner became more animated. She clinked glasses. “Here’s to an evening of fun, Sam. I’ll tell you what, Sam. I have an engagement for the evening, but I can break it. I’ll be your pilot.”
“Well, say, that’s mighty fine of you, Luella. But I don’t like to bust up anything. Course a nice-lookin’ lady like you must keep awful busy, and an old duffer like me couldn’t expect you to—”
“Poo!” Luella said lightly. She laid a hand on the Saint’s sleeve. “Excuse me while I make a phone call.”
She went away to a phone booth, and though her conversation was unheard by the Saint, he felt that he could have written the dialogue.
From that point forward, events moved smoothly and orderly along their predestined path, and the gentleman known as Sam found himself in due course in the apartment of the lady known as Luella — “for a nightcap, Sam, dear.”