"Well, you meddled once too often this rime," she said. "I've read enough about you to know how you work. You're on your own, and you keep everything to yourself till you think it's all wrapped up. So you can just disappear, and it'll be months before anyone even wonders where you went."
"Such is fame," sighed the Saint.
Mrs. Yanstead was no more amused than Queen Victoria. She had come in from the hallway, as had the Saint, but now she indicated a door on the other side of Mr. Prend.
"We got to get rid of him now," she said sternly. "And you'll be no worse off than you are already."
She was now addressing Mr. Prend, who gulped and swallowed his tonsils, his larynx, and possibly other things.
"But—"
"Go along with it, Al," Simon advised him kindly. "Surely you can find room for me in there, in one of your king-sized caskets, alongside some scrawny stiff who's paid for a cremation. And no one will ever know. Except you might have to marry her, and give up that bleached blonde you've been dating in Miami Beach—"
"That's quite enough," Mrs. Yanstead said, and prodded the Saint with her gun.
This was one of the most foolish things she ever did. Not because Simon was unduly stuffy or ticklish about being prodded, but because the touch of the gun enabled him to locate its position exactly without telegraphing any hint of his intention by glancing at it. His hands moved together like striking snakes, his left hand catching her wrist, his right hand striking the gun and bending her hand backwards with it. The one shot she fired shook the room like a thunderclap, but the muzzle of the automatic was already deflected before she could react and pull the trigger.
Simon Templar sat down in Mr. Aloysius Prend's place at the desk, using the same gun to cover the two of them, and picked up the telephone.
"We can deny all of this," Mrs. Yanstead said to her accomplice, who was now visibly trembling with a subtle but definite vibration that might have started a new wave at the Peppermint Lounge if it could only have been demonstrated there. "It's only his word against ours, and there are two of us—"
"I wouldn't bet too much on that," said the Saint dishearteningly. "I didn't wear a jacket on a warm day like this just to look like the correct respectable costume for visiting Funeral Homes. I wanted a place to hang a microphone and carry a miniature tape recorder, because I know how skeptical some authorities are about my unsupported testimony." He opened his coat and showed them. "Wonderful things, these transistors. I wonder what Sherlock Holmes would have done with them — I must ask a friend of mine. Now would you like to give me the police number or have I got to ask the operator?"
6. LUCERNE: The Russian Prisoner
"Excuse me. You are the Saint. You must help me."
By that time Simon Templar thought he must have heard all the approaches, all the elegant variations. Some were amusing, some were insulting, some were unusual, most were routine, a few tried self-consciously to be original and attention-getting. He had, regrettably, become as accustomed to them as any Arthurian knight-errant must eventually have become. After all, how many breeds of dragons were there? And how many different shapes and colorations of damsels in distress?
This one would have about chalked up her first quarter-century, and would have weighed in at about five pounds per annum — not the high-fashion model's ratio, but more carnally interesting. She had prominent cheek-bones to build shadow frames around blindingly light blue eyes, and flax-white hair that really looked as if it had been born with her and not processed later. She was beautiful like some kind of mythological ice-maiden.
And she had the distinction of having condensed a sequence of inescapable cliches to a quintessence which could only have been surpassed by a chemical formula.
"Do sit down," Simon said calmly. "I'm sure your problem is desperate, or you wouldn't be bringing it to a perfect stranger — but have you heard of an old English duck called Drake? When they told him the Spanish Armada was coming, he insisted on finishing his game of bowls before he'd go out to cope with it. I've got a rather nice bowl here myself, and it would be a shame to leave it."
He carefully fixed a cube of coarse farmhouse bread on the small tines of his long-shafted fork, and dipped it in the luscious goo that barely bubbled in the chafing dish before him. When it was soaked and coated to its maximum burthen, he transferred it neatly to his mouth. Far from being an ostentatious vulgarity, this was a display of epicurean technique and respect, for he was eating fondue—perhaps the most truly national of Swiss delectables, that ambrosial blend of melted cheese perfumed with kirsch and other things, which is made nowhere better than at the Old Swiss House in Lucerne, where he was lunching.
"I like that," she said.
He pushed the bread plate towards her and offered a fork, hospitably.
"Have some."
"No, thank you. I meant that I like the story about Drake. And I like it that you are the same — a man who is so sure of himself that he does not have to get excited. I have already had lunch. I was inside, and I could see you through the window. Some people at the next table recognized you and were talking about you. I heard the name, and it was like winning a big prize which I had not even hoped for."
She spoke excellent English, quickly, but in a rather stilted way that seemed to have been learned from books or vocal drill rather than light conversation, with an accent which he could not place immediately.
"A glass of wine, then? Or a liqueur?"
"A Benedictine, if you like. And some coffee, may I?"
He beckoned a waitress who happened to come out, and gave the order.
"You seem to know something about me," he said, spearing another piece of bread. "Is one supposed to know something about you, or are you a Mystery Woman?"
"I am Irma Jorovitch."
"Good for you. It doesn't have to be your real name, but at least it gives me something to call you." He speared another chunk of bread. "Now, you tell me your trouble. It's tedious, but we have to go through this in most of my stories, because I'm only a second-rate mind reader."
"I am Russian, originally," she said. "My family are from the part of Finland where the two countries meet, but since nineteen-forty it has been all Soviet. My father is Karel Jorovitch, and he was named for the district we came from. He is a scientist."
"Any particular science, or just a genius?"
"I don't' know. He is a professor at the University of Leningrad. Of physics, I think. I do not remember seeing him except in pictures. During the war, my mother was separated from him, and she escaped with me to Sweden."
"You don't have a Swedish accent."
"Perhaps because I learnt English first from her, and I suppose she had a Finnish or a Russian accent. Then there were all sorts of teachers in Swedish schools. I speak everything like a mixture. But I learnt enough languages to get a job in a travel agency in Stockholm. My father could not get permission to leave Russia after the war, and my mother had learned to prefer the capitalist life and would not go back to join him. I don't think she was too much in love with him. At last there was a divorce, and she married a man with a small hotel in Göteborg, who adopted me so that I could have a passport and travel myself. But soon after, they were both killed in a car accident."
"I see. or do I? Your problem is that you don't know how to run a hotel?"
"No, that is for his own sons. But I thought that my father should be told that she was dead. I wrote to him, and somehow he received the letter — he was still at the University. He wrote back, wanting to know all about me. We began to write often. Now I didn't even have a mother, I had nobody, it was exciting to discover a real father and try to find out all about him. But then, one day, I got another letter from him which had been smuggled out, which was different from all the others."