"The thing is, Sam," he explained, "if this monument is gonna last, we gotta make it solid. They got the outside all built up now; but they say if we're gonna do the job properly, we got to fill it up with cement."
"That'll take an awful lot of cement, Al," Sam objected dubiously, casting an eye over the plans; but Mr. Eisenfeld's generosity was not to be balked.
"Well, what if it does? If the job's worth doin' at all, it's worth doin' properly. If you won't think of yourself, think of the city. Why, if we let this thing stay hollow and after a year or two it began to fall down, think what people from out of town would say."
"What would they say?" asked Mr. Purdell obtusely.
His adviser shuddered.
"They'd say this was such a cheap place we couldn't even afford to put up a decent monument for our mayor. You wouldn't like people to say a thing like that about us, would you, Sam?"
The mayor thought it over.
"Okay, Al," he said at length. "Okay. But I don't deserve it, really I don't."
Simon Templar would have agreed that the mayor had done nothing to deserve any more elaborate monument than a neat tombstone in some quiet worm cafeteria. But at that moment his knowledge of Elmford's politics was not so complete as it was very shortly to become.
When he saw Molly Provost slip the little automatic out of her bag he thought that the bullet was destined for the mayor; and in theory he approved. He had an engaging callousness about the value of political lives which, if universally shared, would make democracy an enchantingly simple business. But there were two policemen on motorcycles waiting to escort the mayoral car into the city, and the life of a good-looking girl struck him as being a matter for more serious consideration. He felt that if she were really determined to solve all of Elmford's political problems by shooting the mayor in the duodenum, she should at least be persuaded to do it on some other occasion when she would have a better chance of getting away with it. Wherefore the Saint moved very quickly, so that his lean brown hand closed over hers just at the moment when she touched the trigger and turned the bullet down into the ground.
Neither Sam Purdell nor Al Eisenfeld, who were climbing into the car at that moment, even so much as looked around; and the motorcycle escort mercifully joined with them in instinctively attributing the detonation to the backfire of a passing truck.
It was such a small gun that the Saint's hand easily covered it; and he held the gun and her hand together in a viselike grip, smiling as if he were just greeting an-old acquaintance, until the wail of the sirens died away.
"Have you got a license to shoot mayors?" he inquired severely.
She had a small pale face which under" a skillfully applied layer of cosmetics might have taken on a bright doll-like prettiness; but it was not like that yet. But he had a sudden illuminating vision of her face as it might have been, painted and powdered, with shaved eyebrows and blackened eyelashes, subtly hardened. It was a type which he had seen often enough before, which he could recognize at once. Some of them he had seen happily married, bringing up adoring families; others… For some reason the Saint thought that this girl ought not to be one of those others.
Then he felt her arm go limp, and took the gun out of her unresisting hand. He put it away in his pocket.
"Come for a walk," he said.
She shrugged dully.
"All right."
He took her arm and led her down the block. Around the corner, out of sight of the mayor's house, he opened the door of the first of a line of parked cars. She got in resignedly. As he let in the clutch and the car slipped away under the pull of a smoothly whispering engine, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed silently.
The Saint let her have it out. He drove on thoughtfully, with a cigarette clipped between his lips, until the taller buildings of the business section rose up around them. In a quiet turning off one of the main streets of the town, he stopped the car outside a small restaurant and opened the door on her side to let her out.
She dabbed her eyes and straightened her hat mechanically. As she looked around and realized where they were, she stopped with one foot on the running board.
"What have you brought me here for?" she asked stupidly.
"For lunch," said the Saint calmly. "If you feel like eating. For a drink, if you don't. For a chat, anyhow."
She looked at him with fear and puzzlement still in her eyes.
"You needn't do that," she said steadily. "You can take me straight to the police station. We might as well get it over with."
He shook his head.
"Do you really want to go to a police station?" he drawled. "I'm not so fond of them myself, and usually they aren't very fond of me. Wouldn't you rather have a drink?"
Suddenly she realized that the smile with which he was looking down at her wasn't a bit like the grimiy triumphant smile which a detective should have worn. Nor, when she looked more closely, was there anything else about him that quite matched her idea of what a detective would be like. It grieves the chronicler to record that her first impression was that he was too good-looking. But that was how she saw him. His tanned face was cut in a mould of rather reckless humour which didn't seem to fit in at all with the stodgy and prosaic backgrounds of the law. He was tall, and he looked strong — her right hand still ached from the steel grip of his fingers — but it was a supple kind of strength that had no connection with mere bulk. Also he wore his clothes with a gay and careless kind of elegance which no sober police chief could have approved. The twinkle in his eyes was wholly friendly.
"Do you mean you didn't arrest me just now?" she asked uncertainly.
"I never arrested anybody in my life," said the Saint cheerfully. "In fact, when they shoot politicians I usually give them medals. Come on in and let's talk."
Over a couple of martinis he explained himself further.
"My dear, I think it was an excellent scheme, on general principles. But the execution wasn't so good. When you've had as much experience in bumping people off as I have, you'll realize that it's no time to do it when a couple of cops are parked at the curb a few yards away. I suppose you realize that they would have got you just about ten seconds after you created a vacancy for a new mayor?"
She was still staring at him rather blankly.
"I wasn't trying to do anything to the mayor," she said. "It was Al Eisenfeld I was going to shoot, and I wouldn't have cared if they did get me afterwards."
The Saint frowned.
"You mean the seedy gigolo sort of bird who was with the mayor?"
She nodded.
"He's the real boss of the town. The mayor is just a figurehead."
"Other people don't seem to think he's as dumb as he looks," Simon remarked.
"They don't know. There's nothing wrong with Purdell, but Eisenfeld—"
"Maybe you have inside information," said the Saint.
She looked at him over her clenched fists, dry-eyed and defiant.
"If there were any justice in the world Al Eisenfeld would be executed."
The Saint raised his eyebrows and she read the thought in his mind and met it with cynical denial.
"Oh no — not in that way. There's no murder charge that anyone could bring against him. You couldn't bring any legal evidence in any court of law that he'd ever done any physical harm to anyone that I ever heard of. But I know that he is a murderer. He murdered my father."
And the Saint waited without interruption. The story came tumbling out in a tangle of words that bit into his brain with a burden of meaning that was one of the most profound and illuminating surprises that he had known for some considerable time. It was so easy to talk to him that before long he knew nearly as much as she did herself. He was such an easy and understanding listener that somehow it never seemed strange to her until afterwards that she had been pouring out so much to a man she had known for less than an hour. Perhaps it was not such an extraordinary story as such stories go — perhaps many people would have shrugged it away as one of the commonplace tragedies of a hard-boiled world.