He had not batted an eyelid when he heard the name Templar, although instinct told him that there was only likely to be one Templar who might be making inquiries about him. He still could not imagine how that Templar could have become interested in him, but he had read enough to believe that the Saint’s nose for undetected crime verged on the supernatural. Nevertheless, he was not going to let himself be stampeded by the uncomfortable fact, which he believed was the main reason why less astute malfeasors had been the Saint’s easy prey.
“I can’t imagine what the man can be up to,” he told his wife boldly, for he was clever enough never to create complications for himself with lies or evasions that were not strictly necessary. “I’m quite sure that poor Frances never mentioned a friend called Mrs Brown. The very name is an obvious subterfuge.”
“I do hope he isn’t after my jewels,” Mrs Clarron said.
She touched the sapphire pendant that showed in the open neck of her bed jacket, with fingers glittering with diamond and ruby rings. Except for being propped up on pillows, she looked as if she had been decorated for a grand entrance at a first night at the opera.
Mr Clarron pursed his lips.
“I don’t want to alarm you, my love, but that’s quite a possibility. I still wish you’d let me put them in a safe deposit for you. To keep fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in the house, these days, is simply asking for trouble.”
“Please don’t start that all over again, dear,” she pleaded wanly. “They’re insured, aren’t they? And since I can never go out and show them off again, wearing them for you is the only pleasure I’ve got left. I know you can’t understand how a woman feels, but it does make me happy. And they are mine, after all.”
Mr Clarron stoically refrained from arguing. He had already devoted some of his best performances to that theme, without making any impression on her whimsical obduracy.
It had been somewhat of a shock to him when, shortly after their marriage, he had discovered that the millionaire’s baubles which she displayed so opulently were not complemented by any proportionate resources in the bank. Her late husband, who had catered to her obsession by showering precious stones on her like a sultan, had apparently mortgaged his business assets so improvidently to do it that after his death they had barely realized enough to pay the inheritance taxes. Not that her value in gems alone was anything to be sneezed at, but it was less than Mr Clarron had been counting on. And her fanatical refusal to let the jewels out of her own custody for a moment had made it plain that nothing but a third widowhood would show him an appreciable profit.
However, a recent brainstorm had shown him how her jewelry could be made to return a double dividend, and he was quite glad that the original accident he had planned for her had failed and left him the chance to improve on it.
“Very well, my dear,” he said. “But if he should call here and I happen to be out, you must refuse to talk to him on any pretext.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’d be completely terrified. And I think you should warn the police about him at once.”
“Of course, I should have done that already,” he said.
Looking up from the garden at Adrienne Halberd’s cottage, he was troubled by another consideration. He was forewarned that she had been in the bar at Skindle’s when the Saint was asking about him, but he had no way of knowing what might have developed between them later. With unlimited confidence, he decided to take that bull also by the horns.
It was a blow under the belt when the girl admitted him at the back door and he instantly saw the lean bronzed man lounging on the couch under the window as if he owned it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea you had company.”
“Don’t be silly, Reggie,” she insisted breezily. “Come on in. We were just talking about you, anyway. This is Mr Templar. I picked him up at Skindle’s. I heard him asking about you there, so we got talking.”
Mr Clarron’s acting ability and stage presence still somehow stood by him.
“Mrs Jafferty told me,” he said, with absolute naturalness. “But frankly, I just can’t place that Mrs Brown you spoke of.”
“I’m not surprised,” said the Saint. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you quite so bluntly, but Mrs Brown was her sister. Mr Brown is better known to the FBI as Bingo Brown, the racket boss of Baltimore.”
“The Saint knows all the gangsters, of course,” Adrienne contributed blithely. “He started telling me such fabulous stories about them, I just had to bring him home to hear more.”
“Indeed?” Mr Clarron’s voice was impeccably distant. “But in this case I’m sure he’s mistaken. My late wife had no sister.”
“I didn’t expect you’d have heard of her,” said the Saint. “When she took up with Bingo, her family disowned her and agreed never to mention her name. But she was still very fond of your late wife, and ever since that odd accident she’s been pestering Bingo to find out if you were a right guy. So when I happened to run into him just before I was leaving, he asked me to look you up. Of course it’s absurd, but—”
“I think you have put it in a nutshell, Mr Templar,” Clarron said icily. “But if you want me to discuss this preposterous fabrication, I must do it another time.” He turned to the girl. “I only dropped over, my dear, to ask if you would be home this evening. I have to run up to London on business, and won’t get back until late, and it’s Mrs Jafferty’s night off. I know everything is all right, but I’d just feel happier to know that my wife could call you in an emergency.”
“Of course,” Adrienne said awkwardly.
“Thank you, my dear.”
Mr Clarron bowed to the Saint with courtly frigidity, and walked out without faltering.
He was immune to panic — the career of a successful Bluebeard calls for cold-blooded qualities that would scarcely be comprehensible to more temperamental murderers. But in much the same way as he had heard of the Saint, and perhaps less critically, he was well-imbued with legends of the implacable code of America’s gangdom.
He still had not lost his head. He could conceive that the fantastic thing that the Saint had suggested might be true, without actually having to concede that it was. But that only meant that he must delay no longer about setting in motion a plan that he had already worked out to the ultimate detail — had, in fact, already prepared all the mechanical groundwork for.
If anything, the Saint’s inexplicable and unforeseeable intrusion might even be woven in to its advantage, by such an uncommon genius as his.
He had realized this with an almost divine supra-consciousness while Adrienne Halberd was still introducing the Saint, and had spoken the essential words without even thinking about them, impelled by nothing but his own infallible instinct.
Mr Reginald Clarron walked back up the lawn to his own house without the slightest misgiving, concerned solely with the rather tiresome minutiae of killing his third wife that night.
5
Although the longest run of any play which Mr Clarron had helped to produce had been four weeks, he could legitimately claim to be a West End producer, and as such he received a continual stream of plays for consideration. The cream of the crop, of course, went first to other producers with a more encouraging record of hits; but Mr Clarron read all that came to him, always on the lookout for anything good enough for a promotion from which he at least would benefit, and always dreaming that someday something would fall into his hands of which he would be the first to see the potentialities, which would rocket him to wealth and prestige overnight.