“This had better be good,” Fernack grumbled. “I read all your articles, because I gotta, but I’m gettin’ a hunch that you’re full of spit. If I was Grendel, you’d worry me a bit less every day.”
Inspector Fernack’s misjudgement could be excused, for he lacked the inside information which gave Grendel’s appreciation of the Saint’s literary output a peculiar piquancy, right up to and including the opening lines of the column which had appeared that morning:
I sincerely hope that none of the home truths I have been expounding here recently will be taken as an attack on those honest union leaders whose efforts have eliminated so many abuses and raised the living standards of every employee and through him of all Americans, without excessively feathering their own nests.
A type like Nat Grendel, my current nominee for the Ignobel Prize, is actually a thorn in the side of every intelligent member of the labor movement, from the national leaders down to the lowliest dues-payer, but some of the suckers who give him their allegiance should see how his nest is feathered.
I made it my duty to case this joint recently, and I will testify that in one glass case alone I saw an assortment of bric-a-brac which even in my amateur estimation would be worth about twenty years’ work at union scale with no taxes, while on his desk, freshly unwrapped, I saw what looked like his latest acquisition — a hunk of Oriental pottery which a consultant has identified from my description as a Yin dynasty lion-dog worth as much as Mr Grendel’s average constituent (if I may use the expression) would spend on a couple of years’ mortgage payments...
Nat Grendel was still chewing a thumbnail over that sentence when Uberlasch arrived late in the afternoon. The matching china figure to the one the Saint had referred to had arrived earlier, by express, with a letter of effusive thankfulness enclosed, and Grendel had been unable to resist unpacking it and setting it on his desk beside its mate, the better to admire their symmetry.
Now he might end up having to pay something like a reasonable market price for the pair, if he wanted to keep them, unless he could think of some foolproof way of double-talking around those gratuitous observations which his faithful fan might just have been cussed enough to read. The probability inflamed all over again a complex of wounds of which his facial inflammations were now only dwindling shadows.
“How many do you vant of dose china nightmares, Nat?” wondered Uberlasch, whose faded eyes missed very little. “Now for half der price I could make you a dog dot vags his tail und barks und eats only flashlight batteries. Dot iss, if it’s schtill true vot I read in der papers.”
“The only thing I want to read in the papers tomorrow,” Grendel said edgily, “is how this precious radio gadget of yours worked.”
The other put down the untidy brown-paper parcel he carried on the desk and opened it. When exposed, its contents were contrastingly compact and tidy.
“Here iss der transchmitter, Nat. It iss already tuned mit der bomb. Here iss der button. Ven it iss time for you, you pusch mit der finger. Dot iss all. You could’ve had it last night, und by now it vould be all over.”
“Templar went somewhere out of town yesterday, I found out from his hotel. That’s why I told you not to hurry. But he’s due back any time now. All I want is to be sure everything’s jake with the thing you planted.”
The Engineer sat down comfortably and lighted a rank cigar.
“If it ain’t, I should be blown up mit it myself,” he said. “I’m not der great psychologist like you, but dot bomb vos put in mit a psychology of genius.”
Simon Templar himself was ready to concede that, with the generosity of one true artist towards another. He admitted as much to Chief Inspector Fernack, in his living room at the Algonquin, while he poured Old Curio over the ice cubes in two glasses.
“I honestly don’t know how many times I might have been a sucker for a switch like that,” he said. “They knew, of course, that the odds were about twenty to one I’d hear about any trick they used to get into my room, so they deliberately used one of the corniest routines in the book to make the bet even safer. Perhaps they overdid it a bit in actually showing the bellhop the gizmo on the telephone wire. But I was supposed to feel so smug about finding it that I wouldn’t think I needed to search any farther. And I just possibly might have, if I hadn’t had electronic insurance.”
“But the bomb, man,” fumed the detective, too agitated about fundamentals to notice the last cryptic phrase. “Why didn’t you keep it, or bring it to me? That’d be the kind of evidence—”
“Of what?”
“Any part that’s used in a bomb can be traced, especially before it’s blown up.”
“Did you ever tie anything to the Engineer that way?”
Fernack gulped.
“Somebody was in your room, impersonating a telephone service man. The bellhop could identify him—”
“If he lived to do it. The guy did me a favor. But after what they did to Boyd, and what they had planned for me, can you see me asking him to stick his neck out like that?”
“If he identified the Engineer, I’d have that Dutchman locked up so tight that even Grendel couldn’t spring him.”
“You might, but I doubt it. But even if you did, do you think you’d ever make Uberlasch say who hired him? Just on a point of pig-headed Prussian pride, you couldn’t open his mouth with red-hot crowbars, and if you think you know better you’re only kidding yourself.”
“If we don’t keep trying,” Fernack said stubbornly, “what’s ever going to stop Grendel?”
“I had a suggestion once, but you didn’t like it.”
The detective looked up grimly.
“I still don’t.”
“Let’s put it this way,” said the Saint. “Grendel and the Engineer are guilty as helclass="underline" you know it, and I know it. But under the ordinary processes of law they don’t seem any nearer to getting their comeuppance. However, it’s an ancient legal doctrine that if anyone injures himself in an attempt to commit a crime, it’s strictly his own fault. For instance, if we were standing on the edge of a cliff, and you suddenly tried to shove me over, and I dodged, so that you lost your balance and fell over yourself, it couldn’t be blamed on me for not standing still and letting you push me.”
“So what?”
Simon sipped his drink placidly.
“In the same way, if Grendel was fooling around with some nasty little toy that was intended to blow me to blazes, and instead it went off and disintegrated him — it’d be practically suicide, wouldn’t it?”
“What are you driving at?” rasped Fernack distrustfully. “You didn’t get me up here just for an argument.”
“No,” Simon admitted. “I also thought you might ask me for an alibi, and I couldn’t think of a better one I could give you than yourself. For the rest, I’m betting everything on psychology. I know that Grendel fancies himself as the sharpshooter in that department, but I think I’ve got him out-psychologized — or maybe buffaloed would be a better word,” he said enigmatically.
And then, as if on cue, the telephone rang.
“That should be Grendel now,” said the Saint, putting down his glass. “Come and listen.”
He led the way into the bedroom, and Fernack followed him in glowering uncertainty. Simon lifted the handset and said, “Hullo.”
“Templar?”
“Speaking.” Simon turned the receiver away from his ear and beckoned Fernack closer so that the other could also hear.
“This is Nat Grendel.”
“Well. How are your bruises? They should be sporting some beautiful color effects by now.”
“Do you remember saying that if I had you sitting on a bomb you didn’t believe I’d have the guts to set it off myself?”