“Burt Northwade hasn’t got a brother who’s a professor at Toronto,” she explained, “and I’m no relative of the family. Apart from that, most of what I told you was true. Northwade bought this invention from a young Rumanian inventor — I don’t know what sort of a price he gave for it, but he bought it. Actually there’s no patent on it, so the biggest value to a manufacturer is in keeping it secret till he can come out with it ahead of the others. He was going to sell it to Ford, as I told you.”
“What are you going to do with it?” inquired the Saint curiously.
“We’ve got an unwritten offer from Henry Kaiser.”
She went forward and swung back the plank with the red lights, so that the road was clear again. Then she came back. The gray eyes were as frank and friendly as before.
“We’ve been planning this job for a week, and we should have done the job ourselves tonight if I hadn’t seen your photograph in the paper and recognized you at the Windsor. The rest of it was an inspiration. There’s nothing like having the greatest expert in the profession to work for you.”
“What paper do you read?” asked the Saint.
“I saw you in La Presse. Why?”
“I bought an imported New York paper,” said the Saint, conversationally.
She laughed quietly, a friendly ripple tinged with a trace of regret.
“I’m sorry, stranger. I liked you so much.”
“I’m rather sorry too — Judith,” said the Saint.
She was still for an instant. Then she leaned over and kissed him quickly on the lips.
The gun jabbed again.
“Drive on,” ordered the man. “And keep driving.”
“Won’t you be wanting your car?” murmured the Saint.
A harsher chuckle came from the depths of the dark overcoat.
“We’ve got our own. I rented that one and left it at a garage for you when I had a phone call to say you were hooked. Get moving.”
Simon engaged the gears, and let in the clutch. The girl jumped down from the running board. “Good-bye, stranger!” she cried, and Simon raised one hand in salute, without looking back.
He drove fast. Whoever the girl was, whatever she was, he knew that he had enjoyed meeting her far more than he could ever have enjoyed meeting the real Judith Northwade, whose unfortunate motor accident had been featured, with portrait, on the front page of the New York Daily Gazette, alongside his own two columns. She could never have looked anything but a hag. Whereas he still thought that her impostor was very beautiful. He hated to think what she would say when she delved deeper into the duplicate envelope and dummy roll of plans which he had so rapidly prepared for her in Burt Northwade’s library. But he still drove fast, because those sad things were a part of the game and it was a longish way to Willow Run.
Iris
Of Simon Templar it could truly be said that to him all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players in an endless comedy drama designed for his especial entertainment and incidentally his cut at the box office.
To Mr Stratford Keane, all the world was also a stage, with the difference that he was the principal player and all the other men and women merely audience. This attitude persisted in spite of the fact that it was many years since the public had last shown any great desire to see him behind the footlights, and his thespian activities had been largely restricted to giving readings from Shakespeare to women’s clubs and conducting classes in The Drama in the more obscure summer-theater colonies. In spite of these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, however, he still maintained the fur-collared overcoats, the flowing ties, the long white locks, and the sweeping gestures of his departed day, and wherever he might be, the fruity resonance of his voice was still pitched to the second balcony in rounded periods from which every traditional caricature of a Shakespearean ham might have been taken.
Simon saw him advancing through the Pump Room, not in a perfectly straight line, for one of the causes of Mr Keane’s eclipse was a weakness for the stuff that maketh glad the heart of man, but nevertheless with an unmistakable destination, and the attractions of Chicago fell under a slight cloud.
“Don’t look now,” he said to Patricia Holm, “but we are on the brink of another recital.”
The main attraction of Chicago at the moment glanced up.
“Poor old Stratford,” she said. “He’s a good-hearted old bore. And not such a fool as you think, or why do you think he got the job of directing this new production of Macbeth?”
“Probably it was the only way they could get rid of him,” Simon suggested. “So long as he’s locked up in a theater in rehearsal he can’t be out boring people anywhere else.”
“You and your big heart,” Patricia said. “It’s a wonderful break for him, and he must have needed it badly.”
“I’m thrilled to death at Stratford Keane getting a break,” Simon assured her. “And I should be almost ecstatic if you’d never introduced him to me.”
It was a little late to dream along those lines, for Mr Keane was already upon them and fully determined to make the most of their acquaintance. He held a half-filled glass over his heart and bowed deeply.
“Ah, Miss Holm! And Mr Templar,” he boomed, causing people several tables away to look up and try to locate the loudspeaker. “Well met, well met!”
Patricia smiled.
“How are you this evening, Mr Keane? — Won’t you sit down?” she added hastily, as Mr Keane leaned rather heavily on the table and shook a few drops out of their cocktails.
“A pleasure,” Mr Keane sat down, and heaved a vast and doleful sigh. “Ah, this is indeed a haven in a world where every man must play a part — and mine a sad one...”
“Why, what’s the matter?”
“I have just returned from the theater,” stated Mr Keane tragically, as if he were announcing the end of the world. “We went through one of our final rehearsals.”
“Was that bad?” Simon asked.
Stratford Keane surveyed him pityingly.
“Young man,” he said, “to use the word ‘bad’ in that connection is to scorn all the resources of the English tongue. As a masterpiece of understatement, however, it might have some merit.”
“You mean you won’t be able to open on schedule?” Patricia asked sympathetically.
“On the contrary,” said Mr Keane. “I’m afraid we shall.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “Afraid?”
“My dear boy,” said Mr Keane heavily, “the success of Shakespeare in the emasculated theater of today is uncertain even with the most brilliant of performers, but when the lines of the Bard are assaulted by a gang of bellowing buffoons and dizzy doxies such as have been thrust upon me, the greatest play of all time would be doomed before the curtain rose.”
“But isn’t Iris Freeman a good actress?” Patricia asked.
“As a soubrette, yes. But as Lady Macbeth—” Mr Keane made an expressive gesture which swept an ash tray off the table. “Still, I could almost bear with her if only she would not insist on putting all her friends in the cast regardless of their incompetence — and most especially that tailor’s dummy, Mark Belden, whom she picked as her leading man.”
“I never heard of him,” Simon admitted.
“Would that I shared your happy ignorance. Unfortunately, I have been condemned to get to know Mr Belden so well that his voice will ring in my ears until they sink into the merciful silence of the grave. A vaudeville hoofer who murders Shakespeare with every breath he takes!”
“But aren’t you the director?” Patricia put in. “Don’t you have anything to say about the cast?”