"That's fine," said the Saint approvingly. "So while we're all clumping around on our great flat feet, I thought I'd stick my little oar in and see what I could do to help."
"How do you think you're helping by trying to make a monkey out of everyone else?"
"Henry, I assure you I never presumed to improve on—"
The detective swallowed.
"In this interview," he blared, "you said that since the authorities apparently hadn't been able to do anything about it yet, you were going to take it in hand yourself."
Simon inclined his head.
"That," he admitted, "is the same thought in judicial language."
"Well, you can't do it!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's — it's—"
"Tell me," said the Saint innocently. "What is the particular law that forbids any public-spirited citizen to do his little bit towards purifying a sinful world?"
"In this interview," Fernack repeated like an overstrained litany, "you said you had a personal inside line that was going to get results very quickly."
"I did."
Fernack tied the newspaper up in his slow powerful fists.
"You realise," he said deliberately, "that if you have any special information, it's your duty to cooperate with the proper agencies?"
"Yes, Henry."
"Well?"
Fernack didn't really mean to blast the challenge at him like a bullet. It was just something that the Saint's impregnable sangfroid did to his blood pressure that lent a catapult quality to his vocal cords.
Simon Templar understood that, broadmindedly, and smiled with complete friendliness.
"If I had any special information," he said, "you might easily persuade me to do my duty."
The detective took a slight pause to answer.
It was as if he lost a little of his chest expansion, and had to find a new foothold for his voice.
When he found it, there was a trace of insecurity in his belligerence.
"Are you trying to tell me that that was just a bluff?"
"I'm trying to tell you."
"You really don't know anything yet?"
The Saint extinguished his cigarette, and shook another or out of the pack beside his hand.
"But," he said gently, "anyone who didn't know that might easily think it was time to get tough with me."
Fernack looked at him for a while from under intent but reluctant brows.
At last he said: "You're just using yourself for bait?"
"I love you, Henry. You're so clever."
"And if you get any nibbles?"
"That will be something else again," said the Saint dreamily; and Fernack began to come back to the boil.
"Why? It isn't any of your business—"
Simon stood up.
"It's my business. It's everybody's business. There are airplanes and tanks and jeeps and everything else being manufactured for this war. They need magnetos and distributors. Magnetos and distributors need iridium. There are millions of wretched people paying taxes and buying bonds and doing everything to pay for them. If they cost twice as much as they should on account of some lousy racket has a corner in the stuff, every penny of that is coming out of the sacrifice of some bloody little jerk who believes he's giving it to his country. If the war production plan is being screwed up because materials are being shunted off where they aren't most urgently needed — if the airplanes and the tanks aren't getting there because some of the parts aren't finished — then there are a lot of poor damn helpless bastards having their guts blown out and dying in the muck so that some crook can buy himself a bigger cigar and keep another bird in a gilded cage. I say that's my business and it's going to be my business."
He was suddenly very tall and strong and — not lazy at all, and there was something in his reckless face of a mocking conquistador that held Fernack silent for a moment, with nothing that seemed to have any point at all to say.
It was just for a moment; and then all the detective's suspicion and resentment welled up again in a defensive reaction that was doubly charged for having so nearly been beguiled. Now I'll tell you something! I've been getting along all right in this town without any Robin Hoods. You've done things for me before this, but everything you've done has been some kind of grief to me. I don't want any more of it. I'm not going to have any more!"
"And exactly how," Simon inquired interestedly, "are you going to stop me?"
"I'm going to have you watched for twenty-four hours a day. I'm going to have this place watched. And if anybody comes near this bait at all, I'm going to know all about them before they've even told you their name."
"What a busy life you are going to lead," said the Saint.
During the next twenty-four hours, exactly thirty-eight persons called at the Algonquin, asked for Mr Templar, were briefly interviewed, and went back to their diverse affairs, closely followed by a series of muscular and well-meaning gentlemen who
placed each other in the lobby of the hotel with the regularity of a row of balls trickling up to the plunger of a pin-table.
After that, the Police Commissioner personally called a halt.
"It may be a very promising lead, Fernack," he said in his bleached acidulated way, "but I Cannot place all the reserves of the Police Department at your disposal to follow everyone who happens to get in touch with Mr Templar."
The Saint, who had hired every one of his visitors for that express purpose, enjoyed his own entertainment in his own way.
It was still going on when he had a much more succinct call from Washington.
"Hamilton," said the dry voice on the telephone, for enough introduction. "I saw the papers. I suppose you know what you're doing."
"I can only try," said the Saint. "I think something will happen."
He had visualised many possibilities, but it is doubtful whether he had ever foreseen anything exactly like Titania Ourley.
2
Mrs Milton Ourley was a great deal of woman. She was constructed according to a plan which is discreetly called statuesque. She wore brilliantly hennaed hair, a phenomenal amount of bright blue eye-shadow, and fingernails that would have done credit to a freshly blooded cheetah. Her given name, naturally, was not her fault; but it might have been prophetically inspired. If she was not actually the queen of the fairies, she certainly; impressed one as being in the line of direct succession.
She plumped herself down on the smallest available chair, which she eclipsed so completely that she seemed to be miraculously suspended some eighteen inches from the floor, and speared the Saint on an eye like an ice-pick.
"If you want to know all about iridium," she said, "I came to tell you about my husband."
Simon Templar had taken more obscure sequiturs than that in his stride. He offered her a cigarette, which she declined with fearful cordiality, and sank one hip on the edge of a table.
"Tell me about him."
"He's,been buying iridium in the black market. I heard him talking about it to Mr Linnet."
Her voice became a little vague towards the end of the sentence, as if her mind had already begun to wander. Her eye had already been wandering, but only in a very limited way. Nevertheless, it had not taken long to lose a large part of its impaling vigor. It was, in fact, becoming almost wistful.
"Do you like dancing?" she asked.
"I can take it or leave it alone," said the Saint cautiously. "Who is Mr Linnet?"
"He's in the same kind of business as my husband. He makes electrical things. My husband, of course, is president of the Ourley Magneto Company." Her rapidly melting eye traveled speculatively over the Saint's tall symmetrical frame. "You look as if you could do a wonderful rumba," she said.