Mrs Ashville yawned again and sat up, in an unwontedly agreeable and optimistic mood which could not have been solely due to the single pink vitamin-complex pill that Simon Templar had persuaded her to take the night before.
“Germaine,” she called — quite dulcetly, at first.
There was no response, even after louder repetitions. Germaine Ashville, having done her part by giving her sister-in-law a facial with almost pure ethylhexanediol, and pouring two full quarts of it into her bubble bath, and even spiking all her colognes and perfumes with the same popular odorless insect repellent, was already boarding a plane to Denver with her brother, and the Saint was seeing them off.
The unescapable word
“In spite of everything I’ve tried to say,” Simon Templar complained once, in a reminiscent vein, “I keep falling over people who insist on thinking of me as a sort of freelance detective. They’ve read so many stories about private eyes that they simply can’t get the picture of a privateer. And when they do get me hooked into a mystery, they always expect me to solve it in about half an hour, with a couple of shiny clues and a neat speech tying them together, just like the wizards do it in those stories — and it’s no use trying to tell ’em that what cracks most cases in real life is ninety-five per cent dull and patient routine work... But there have been a few hallowed occasions when I was able to do it just like a magazine writer. And I can think of one that was practically a classic example of the formula. It even has the place where you could stop and say, ‘Now, dear stupid reader, you have been given all the facts which should enable you to spot the culprit, and if you can’t put your finger on him and give a reason which proves you aren’t only guessing, you should be hit on the head with the collected works of Conan Doyle.’ Incidentally, it’s also a completely uncensorable cop story — because no matter how much anyone disapproves of the word, it would have been a hell of a lot tougher to solve without it.”
This was not long after one of America’s most distinguished law enforcers had stirred up a mild furor in a lull between world crises by stating for publication that in his opinion the time-honored word “cop” was derogatory and should be excised from the vocabulary of all police-respecting citizens.
To Simon, when he stopped at sunset at the neat little adobe motel on Highway 80, on the outskirts of a village with the improbably romantic name of Primrose Pass, mainly because it seemed pointless to load an already long day with another hour’s twilight driving when he would have to sleep somewhere in the Arizona desert anyhow and was in no hurry to get anywhere anyway, Harry Tanner had not been instantly identifiable either as a Cop or as a Police officer, but only as a muscular man with a traitorous bulge in front, stripped to blue jeans and undershirt, who was pushing a mower over a small area of tenderly cherished grass in front of the half-dozen cottages arranged like a miniature hacienda. But in the morning, when Simon stopped by the “office” to beg some ice cubes for his thermos, the same individual was turning over the registration cards from the night before and looked at him with the peculiarly and unmistakably challenging stare of the traditional policeman.
“Anybody ever call you the Saint?” the man asked, with a voice blunt and uncompromising enough to match the stare.
“A few,” Simon murmured neutrally.
The other finished pulling on a khaki shirt, buttoned it, and pinned on a badge which he took from his pants pocket.
“My name’s Harry Tanner. I help my wife run this joint sometimes. The rest of the time I’m the town marshal. Would you be interested in a murder we just had here?”
“If I’m going to need an alibi,” said the Saint gloomily, “I can only hope that either you or your wife stays up all night to watch for any guest who might try to sneak out with the furniture. I don’t know how else I could prove that I didn’t leave my cottage all night.”
Tanner’s mouth barely cracked in the perfunctory sketch of a smile.
“I know you didn’t do this one. I just thought you might help me solve it.”
Simon was so astounded by the novelty of the first sentence that he did not even think of his habitual answer to the second until he was sitting in the marshal’s battered pickup and being driven at exactly the posted twenty-five-miles-per-hour limit through the business center of Primrose Pass, which extended for three whole blocks.
“No point in cutting loose with a siren and getting ever’body all stirred up, when we wouldn’t get there two minutes quicker,” Tanner said. “I had enough of that when I was a cop in Cleveland, Ohio. That’s where I used to read about you, and I hoped I’d meet you, but you never came our way.”
“Did I hear you call yourself a cop?” Simon inquired with discreet interest.
“Yup. Been a cop all my life, practically. They even made me an MP in the Army. Only I always wanted to get out West, ever since I saw my first cowboy picture. So when I happened to read about this town looking for a trained officer, right after I was discharged, it was just what I wanted... But don’t let that word give you any ideas.”
He spun the wheel and steered the truck around a gas station to a dirt road that intersected the highway, with a certain physical grimness which left the Saint confused and wary all over again.
To get the conversation back on more solid ground, Simon asked, “Who’s been murdered?”
“Fellow named Edward Oakridge, out at the Research Station, where we’re going.”
“People always expect me to know everything. It’s very flattering but hard to live up to. What is this Research Station?”
“It’s something run by the Government. They got three scientists working out there — or it was three, up till now — and they monkey around with a lot of electrical stuff. Had to put in special power lines to carry all the juice they use. But not even the guards out there know what they’re researching. I don’t know either — and my own daughter works there.”
Simon instinctively checked the reflex upward movement of an eyebrow, but Tanner did not look at him.
“Is she a scientist or a guard?”
“She types reports for the scientists. But she hardly understands a word of ’em herself. At least, that’s all she’s allowed to say.”
“But don’t tell me they hired her for a top-secret job like that just because they met her in the local drugstore.”
“No. Walter Rand — that’s Professor Rand, he’s the head man on this project — happened to tell me one day that they had too much paperwork and he was going to have to send for a secretary. Marjorie had a secretarial job in the FBI office in Cleveland when I pulled up stakes, and she’d stayed there. There wasn’t anything for her in a town like this when I came here. But her mother always hated her being so far away, so I asked Rand if he’d take her if she’d take the job. She liked the idea of being near us again, too, and of course her security clearance was ready made.”
“It sounds like a lucky break. With this leaning towards cop-dom that she seems to have inherited from you, she’d probably have ended up a full-fledged G-woman if you hadn’t rescued her.”
“Well, instead of that, she inherits something from her mother that makes her fall in love with a cop,” Tanner said dourly. “Hadn’t been here a month before she was going steady with one of the guards out at the Research Station. Young fellow by the name of Jock Ingram. You’ll meet him. He’s the one that found the body.”
His heavy face, with the eyes narrowed into the glare from the dusty road, invited neither sympathy nor humorous appreciation. He was a man who had spent so many years giving a professional imitation of a sphinx that the pose had taken root.