"That is an extremely dangerous statement, Mr. Templar."
"It'll be easily proved or disproved when she gets an independent opinion from a first-class reputable clinic," said the Saint calmly. "And if I'm right, I shall then go on to theorize that it was you who snuck something into her food or her vitamin pills when she tried going on a diet, to produce the symptoms which gave you an excuse to lug her off to the first bogus specialist, whom you'd already suborned to prescribe still more carbohydrates and some pills which are probably tranquillizers or something to slow down her metabolism even more. That you deliberately plotted to make her as unattractive as possible, so as to keep her unmarried and leave her mother's fortune in your hands until you could siphon off all that you wanted."
He had confirmation enough to satisfy himself in the long silence that followed, before there was any verbal answer.
Saville Wakerose took one more light pull at his cigar, grimaced slightly, and carefully extinguished it in an ashtray.
"One should never try to smoke the last two-and-a-half inches. Very well," he said briskly, "how much do you want?"
"For conniving to destroy a human being even more cruelly than if you poisoned her?"
"Come now, my dear fellow, let us not overdo the knightly act. There is no admiring audience. And blackmail is not such a pretty crime, either — that is the technical name for your purpose, isn't it?"
"Then you admit to something you'd rather I kept quiet about?"
"I admit nothing. I am merely looking for a civilized alternative to a great deal of crude unpleasantness and publicity. Shall we say a quarter of a million Swiss francs?"
"Don't you think it's degrading to start the bidding as low as that?"
"Half a million, then. Paid into any account you care to name, and quite untraceable."
The Saint shook his head.
"For such a brilliant man, you can be very dense, Saville. All I want is to give Rowena a fair chance for a happy normal life, in spite of her money."
"Don't bid your hand too high," Wakerose said with brittle restraint. "You are assuming that Rowena will immediately believe these fantastic accusations, regardless of who is making them and what obvious motives can be imputed to him. If it should come to what they call on television a showdown between us, although I would go to great lengths to avoid anything so unsavory, I hope she would prefer to believe my version of this tête-a-tête."
Simon Templar smiled benignly.
He turned back to his suitcase, opened it again, pushed a soiled shirt aside, and extracted a plastic box no bigger than a book. A small metal object dangled from it at the end of a flexible wire, which now seemed to have been hanging outside the suitcase when the lid was closed.
"Have you seen these portable tape recorders?" he asked chattily. "Completely transistorized, battery operated, and frightfully efficient. Of course, their capacity is limited, so I had to use that cigarette routine for an excuse to switch it on when we came in. And the sound quality isn't hi-fi by musicians' standards, but voices are unmistakably recognizable. I wonder what version you can give Rowena that 'll cancel out this one?"
"How delightfully droll!" All of Wakerose's face seemed to have gradually turned as gray as his hair, but it can be stated that he did not flinch. "I should not have been so caustic at the expense of television, but I thought that was the only place where these things actually happened. So what is your price now?"
Simon was neatly coiling the flexible link to the microphone, preparatory to tucking it away in the interior of his gadget, but still leaving it operational for the last syllables that it could absorb.
"This will be hard for you to digest, Saville," he said, "but since anything you paid me would probably be money that you ought to be giving back to Rowena, my conscience would bother me, even if she has got plenty to spare. On the other hand, I'd like to get her out of your clutches without any messy headlines. So I'll give you a break. If you back me up tomorrow evening when I suggest that she ought to see another doctor — whom I'll suggest — and if you can think up a good excuse to resign voluntarily as her guardian and trustee, I won't have to play this tape to her."
Wakerose compressed his lips and stared grimly about the room. With his hands locked tensely behind his back, he paced across it to the open window and stood looking out into the night. The hunch of his shoulders gave the impression that if it had been on a higher floor he might have thrown himself out.
After a full minute, he turned.
"I shall think about it," he said, and walked towards the door.
"Think very hard," said the Saint. "Because I'm not quite sure that it mightn't be better for Rowena to know the whole horrible truth about you and your slimy scheme. And whatever brilliant inspirations you have about how to doublecross me and retrieve the situation, I'll always have this little recording."
Wakerose sneered silently at him, and went out without another word.
He came back soon after three o'clock in the morning, through the open window, and crossed in slow-motion tiptoe to the bed where the covers humped over a peacefully insensible occupant. There was enough starlight to define clearly the dark head-shape buried in the pillow but half uncovered by the sheet, and he swung mightily at it with the heavy candlestick which he carried in one gloved hand.
The massive base bit solidly and accurately into its target, but with no solid crunch of bone, only a soggy resistance — which was natural, since the "head" consisted of a crumpled towel balled up inside a dark pullover and artistically moulded and arranged to give the right appearance. At the same time, a blinding luminance dispelled the treacherous dimness for a fraction of a second before the Saint switched on a less painfully dazzling light.
He stood in the bathroom doorway, holding a Polaroid camera with flash attachment in one hand.
"I was beginning to be afraid you were never coming, Saville," he murmured genially. "But I kept telling myself that you were clever enough to realize that you ought to get rid of me and my tape record, no matter what, if you ever wanted to sleep well again. Or I hoped you would; because a picture like this would clinch any ambiguities in the sound track, which you might have been just slippery enough to think you could explain away."
Wakerose stood frozen in a kind of catalepsy, while Simon deftly changed the bulb in his flash and snapped one more after-the-crime souvenir, admittedly not an action shot, but just for luck.
"Of course, this washes out the previous deal," he said. "I don't want to spoil Rowena's day tomorrow, so I'm not going to play the tape to her till we come home. By that time I hope your air-conditioned juggernaut will have been repaired so that you can have taken off, leaving behind a signed confession which I think I can persuade her not to use as long as your accounts are in order and you never bother her again. Otherwise, chum, you may find yourself trying to sell Gourmet some novel articles on prison cuisine."
"Yes," said Rowena Flane. "Yes, now I understand — everything except why you've done so much and wouldn't take anything when you could have."
"Because," Simon said, "one day I'll get so much more out of it when I see you as slim and lovely as you should be, and I can think that I made it happen."
"Like in a fairy tale. So the prince kissed the toad, and broke the spell, and it turned into a beautiful princess. Oh, it's hard to believe it's coming true." But she was sad. "Only by then you won't be threatening to marry me any more."
"Why don't we wait a couple of years," said the Saint gently, "and see whether you're still single too?"