The nightcap was forthcoming, and Luella was forthright. She sat beside the Saint on a divan, and there was no quibbling about maintaining a space between them in the interests of morality. They touched, shoulder and thigh, and she gave him a long slow glance from long dark eyes.
“It’s been such fun, Sam.” She put a hand on his and squeezed, ever so lightly.
Somehow the Saint managed a blush.
“It was sure swell of you, Luella. Gosh, do you know this town!”
Luella stood up, after squeezing his hand again.
“Why don’t you be comfortable, Sam? Take off that hot old coat.” She helped him out of his coat and vest, carried them toward her bedroom. “Excuse me while I get into something cool, Sam.”
The Saint leaned back, a little smile flickering on his mouth. He adjusted the black sleeve bands on his pin-striped shirt, loosened his tie, sipped at his drink, and awaited the inevitable.
It came at that moment. Luella’s muffled voice called, “Sam, dear, could you help me? My darned zipper is stuck.”
The Saint got to his feet, raised Saintly eyes to Heaven, and entered the bedroom.
Luella stood with her dress up over her shoulders, revealing a body of such classic lines that he caught his breath. The body was clad in the scantiest of diaphanous scraps, and the Saint loosened his tie a little more before stepping forward to assist her in getting her head out of the dress. It was in this position, with the dress breaking free from her dark hair, the Saint holding it, obviously having taken it off, that the cameraman caught them.
The blinding flash bulb popped, the shutter clicked from the bedroom doorway, and the Saint whirled, looking as guilty as a little boy caught with his hand in the cooky jar.
Patricia Holm stood there.
“That’ll do it, Smith,” she said to a young man who carried a Speed Graphic.
She surveyed Simon with magnificent scorn.
The Saint was the picture of a man trying to disclaim any connection with the dress. He held it at arm’s length, between thumb and forefinger, and regarded it with astonishment, as if to say, “Now where in the world did that come from?”
Luella was frozen to a tinted statue. She stared at Pat and the photographer with boiled and unbelieving eyes. This sort of thing, her expression said, couldn’t happen. It was fully ten seconds before she thought to use her hands in the traditional manner of women caught without clothes.
“Now, dear,” Simon began in conciliatory tones, “I can explain—”
“Explain!” Patricia spat the word. “You can explain to the judge, Samuel Taggart. I’ve been a long time catching you with the goods... you, you...” Patricia choked, and her voice was awash in a bucketful of tears. “Oh, how could you, Sam? The boys, and—” She turned, covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders began to shake.
The Saint surveyed the grouping of the dramatis personae, through Mr Samuel Taggart’s eyeglasses, with an impresario’s appreciation, noting that to anyone in the living room only he and the lightly clad Luella would be visible through the open door.
A second flash bulb’s blinding glare knifed through his reflections.
“At last!” thundered Matthew Joyson, with the glibness of many past performances. “My lawyer will know how to use—”
Then his voice trailed away, and he stared at the other members of the tableau with the expression of a gaffed fish. Tod Kermein, with the camera, gulped audibly and offered a rather similar impersonation, concentrating most of it on Patricia’s lens-bearing companion, and reminding the Saint of a goldfish which had just discovered itself in a mirror.
“And then there were six,” Simon murmured. “Busiest bedroom scene I ever saw.”
“What the hell—”
Mr Joyson tried again, and again stopped on a note almost of panic.
Luella did her best.
“Honest to God, Matt,” she began. “I swear there’s nothing—”
Matthew Joyson may have lacked many sterling qualities, but presence of mind was not one of them. As a matter of fact, he had a professional pride in his ability to ad-lib, which had stood him in good stead during his days on the road, when at certain matinees an overindulgence on the night before had dulled his recollection of the script. He realized now that something drastic had gone wrong, that by some incredible coincidence his big scene had been blown up by a rival team who were actually playing it straight, and that the one safe course was to drop the curtain as fast as possible and consider the other angles later.
He turned to Patricia.
“Madam,” he said in his most magisterial style, “am I to understand that we are here on the same errand?”
“The brute!” Patricia choked. “The bru-hu-hute! And after all I’ve done for him. The best years of my life—”
Mr Joyson took command of the situation, so regally that only a captious critic would have noted the undertones of desperation in his behavior.
“Stand back, Kermein,” he commanded. “We don’t need any more detective work here.” He snatched the dress from Simon’s unresisting fingers. “By your leave, sir!” He strode over to the still petrified Luella. “May I trouble you to cover yourself?” he grated. “To think that my wife, my own wife...“ His voice broke for a moment, but he recovered it bravely. He turned to Patricia again, adjusting his mien to something between an undertaker and a floorwalker, if anything can be imagined that would fit into such a narrow gap. “Madam, accept my heartfelt sympathy. I know too well what your feelings must be. I only wish you could have been spared the same betrayal. What a dingy ending to it all!”
“Cedar Rapids Repertory Theatre, 1911,” commented the Saint, but he said it to himself, and outwardly maintained a properly hangdog visage.
Patricia regarded Mr Joyson with brimming blue eyes.
“You’re so kind... But to think that we should have to meet like this!” She dabbed a handkerchief at her tear-stained face. “If only I could have spared you any connection with my tragedy—”
“What had to be, had to be,” said Mr Joyson sagely, and edged hastily towards the door. “Don’t you bother your pret — er, don’t bother about a thing. Just leave all the details to me. I’ll see my lawyer in the morning, and we’ll discuss what steps to take, and you can get in touch with me at my home at — er—” He dug in his pockets. “I seem to have lost my card-case. The address is 7522 South Hooper — East Los Angeles. No phone. Now you just contact me, say, tomorrow afternoon. I’ll do anything I can to help. Come, Kermein.”
He completed his exit with almost indecent haste, but was able to refrain from mopping his brow till he was outside. Tod Kermein fell in step with him on the street, and their steps turned automatically in the direction of the nearest bar.
Kermein, who knew his place, preserved a discreet but sympathetic silence until they had been served, when he permitted himself to say, “Jeez, what a lousy break.”
“What a goddam stinking break!” Joyson exploded. “This pigeon was the vice-president of a bank, no less, and carrying a roll you could paper a house with, according to Luella. Whoever’d think his wife’d beat us to it?”
“I guess after all it must happen that way sometimes,” Kermein said, awed with a great discovery. “You know, I never thought of that.”
Matt Joyson scarcely heard him. The bracing draughts of Kentucky Nectar which he had absorbed were quieting his jangled nerves without impairing his mental processes. And something, something on the instinctive levels of his mind, now that the first blackout curtain of panic began to lift, was irking his consciousness with jagged little edges. He began to wish he had made a less precipitate withdrawal.