Therefore Patroclos Two’s strenuous snoring the night before had been as phoney as anything else in this tangle of fakes: he must have been lying awake, fully dressed, waiting for the visit that he guessed the Saint would make. And when Simon left the house, Patroclos Two had followed, taken the car which he had waiting in the square, and settled down on an easy trail.
But why had he chosen, first, to allow the theft of his codebook, next to recover it secretly, and finally to behave as if the whole incident had simply never happened? Simon still had only one answer that would fit, fantastic though it was; and again he went over the reasoning that had led him to it.
If Patroclos Two were the real Patroclos and not the impostor, he would hardly have stood or lain idle while the Saint strolled out with his codebook. Or if he had — perhaps in the hope that the Saint would lead him to the other Patroclos, the impostor — he would certainly have had no need to continue the play-acting once the Saint had parted with the book at the airport. Ergo, this was not the real Patroclos. But on the other hand, if he were the fake, again why should he employ Simon Templar and turn a blind eye to his treachery?
Enjoying his eggs and bacon with an appetite undiminished by such perplexities, the Saint realised that there was a third branch to the maze; and that was the path along which he had travelled some way during the events of the night.
He sipped his coffee reflectively. As a background to his thoughts he had automatically taken in what Patroclos Two was saying on the telephone, and if he had considered it relevant he could easily have recalled every salient point. But now, at the tail-end of the conversation, he switched back to full attention.
“Well, check again! Call me back.” Patroclos Two slammed down the phone and made a gesture of despair. “They bleed me, those people. Advance Information Limited. Hah! Should read the limited in front.” He turned to Ariadne. “Today you will go over all the schedules with Templar. But first, take a note. Corinthian Tankers...”
At a quarter to one, the Saint and Ariadne Two were seated side by side on the sofa in the drawing-room, going over the last of the schedules and notes for Patroclos’ meetings. Abruptly Simon stood up and stretched.
“Well, I think that’s enough for this morning. It’s getting near lunch time. Can we have a drink?”
“Thanks,” said Ariadne Two, with perceptibly more warmth in her voice than previously. “That’s a cocktail cabinet, over in the corner. I’ll have a medium sherry. A large one.”
She watched as he poured her drink and mixed himself a dry martini on the rocks. She had begun by mistrusting him, but now she was less sure. About this man with the cavalier smile there was something wildly, untameably adventurous, reckless even, and yet at the same time something innocent and... saintly. The word came to her of its own accord, though she knew, from what her boss had told her, that this was the man whom people called the Saint — a man who had known many dangerous adventures across the globe, and who lived always by his own individual, perhaps peculiar, code of justice.
“It’s funny,” she mused aloud. “Now I know you better it makes even less sense.”
Simon handed her a brimming glass of Dry Sack and took an appreciative sip of the cocktail he had poured for himself.
“What does?”
“That you should bluff your way into this house... All that nonsense about knowing me before!”
He eyed her curiously.
“You mean you still don’t remember that langouste in Monte Carlo?”
Of course, there had never been any such meeting. But he would have expected an impostor, afraid of being tripped up, to pretend to recall it.
“No, I don’t. Look, Mr Templar —”
“Simon,” he put in quickly.
“Well — Simon.” She looked him straight in the eye, ingenuously. “But I’ve never even been to Monte Carlo.”
The blue eyes widened; they wore their most saintly expression, but in them was a hint of the clear mocking light that the girl had seen before.
“Strange,” he said speculatively. “I wonder — could there be two Ariadnes?”
The Saint watched her closely as he spoke the line which of all lines must put her acting or her innocence to the test. And the girl looked genuinely puzzled still, seeming not to have taken his remark as seriously meant. She sipped her drink defensively, and had still not answered when the telegram arrived.
They heard the doorbell ring, and the murmur of voices; and then a footman knocked and handed the telegram to Ariadne. She opened and read it, frowned, looked perplexed, read it again, and finally waved away the footman, who was waiting for instructions.
Simon crossed the room and shamelessly read the telegram over her shoulder. It was addressed to Patroclos, and said simply:
INFORMATION RECEIVED STOP PROJECT NOW COMPLETED STOP NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED
It was unsigned, but Simon had little doubt that it was intended for him to see. Which was interesting, given that it must be a fake, since he knew that the codebook had never reached Athens.
Ariadne Two shrugged.
“I don’t know what it’s about. Maybe a secret deal — I don’t always travel with him and he doesn’t tell me everything.”
She took the telegram into the library where Patroclos Two was busy with work of his own, and the Saint heard phrases of their conversation that drifted through the open door.
“No!” Patroclos Two’s voice was raised in anger. “...know what the hell it is about? Why couldn’t the idiot put his name?”
Then a pause, with Ariadne’s voice occasionally murmuring. And then the Saint heard the man say: “Did you show it to Templar? Well, he is my detective for the moment — let him detect.”
Ariadne returned looking more puzzled than ever.
“He says he doesn’t know whom it is from,” she told the Saint with careful grammar. “And he made a joke that you as a clever detective should be able to work it out.”
The Saint smiled faintly, knowing that he was beginning to get the measure of the impostor, and that he could see a vaguely forming outline of the last scene in the present act of the elaborate charade that was being played out with himself as one of the principals — and with Ariadne Two, in all probability, as another.
That is, unless he introduced some twist of his own into the script. And one of Simon Templar’s special forms of mischief was refusing to go too far along with the most studiously prepared scenario, and introducing disconcerting variations of his own.
In this case, it was an impulsive decision that somewhere along the line he had to pick someone who was not a fraud but a dupe, lay some cards on the table, and make an ally. On what could only have been a psychic hunch, based at best on somewhat longer acquaintance, he decided that the time had come to bet on Ariadne Two.
Perhaps it was a reckless gamble; but if the Saint had never taken a chance he would never have taken anything.
He took another fortifying pull at his martini, as some stalwart soul on the bank of a frozen lake might brace himself for the shock, and took the plunge.
“Ariadne,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that your boss could be a fake?”
She looked at him blankly.
“What?”