"That's interesting," Fernack said unyieldingly. "Go on."
"Unfortunately for the ungodly," said the Saint, "I was much cleverer than they expected me to be, and I ditched my waylayer and came back here in a hurry. I got here in what the most original writers call the nick of time. As a matter of fact, the bright boy who actually garroted Comrade Linnet was on his way out at the moment. Then he sort of collided with a door, and got tired and went to sleep, so I tied him up and kept him for you. You'll probably even find some fresh remains of chalk on his fingertips to clinch it for you."
Fernack's face underwent a series of gradual and well-rounded reconstructions that were fascinating to watch. Each phase was a complete and satisfying production in its own right, so rich and full-bodied that only the most niggling critic would have complained that their climax was something very like a simple incredulous gape.
"Then why the hell couldn't you say so before?" he squawked. "Where is he?"
"You were having such a lovely time sending me to the chair, it seemed a shame to break it up," said the Saint. "But he ought to be where I left him, in the basement. Would you like to say hullo?"
He turned and led the way back as he had come in; and Fer-nack followed him without a word.
They went down the stairs, past the series of pantries, and through the huge kitchen to the place where Simon had left his captive. And that was when the incipient anticlimax suddenly ceased to be incipient at all, and in fact turned a complete somersault and made the Saint's stomach turn one with it.
For the cadaverous gent with the cracked forehead wasn't there any more.
There was just nothing to argue about in it. He wasn't there. The entire area of stone flooring at the foot of the back steps was burdened with nothing more substantial than a probable film of New York grime.
Simon Templar stood and gazed down at it with the utmost restraint for several seconds; until Fernack said impatiently: "Well, where is this man?"
"This is going to make you very unhappy, Henry," said the Saint, raising his eyes, "but he doesn't seem to be here any more. I'm afraid he must have had a boy friend who came back for him. The way I had him tied, he couldn't possibly have gotten loose by himself. But he's certainly gone away."
The gastric ulcers of innumerable haggard authors bear witness to the awful responsibility of attempting an adequate description of such scenes as this. The present chronicler, however, having much more respect and affection for his mucosa, intends to court no such disaster. He proposes to leave most of the detailed etching to the imagination of the reader, for whose lambent perspicacity he has the very highest regard.
He will nevertheless go so far as to give a slight lead by mentioning that the calorific swelling of a moderately understandable indignation caused Inspector Fernack's face to give a startling imitation of an overripe plum which is receiving an unexpected hypodermic from a jet of high-pressure steam.
"All right," Fernack said, and his voice had the slow burn of molten lava. "I can't blame you for trying, but this is the last time you're going to treat me like a moron."
"But Henry, I give you my word—"
"You can give your word to a judge, and see what he thinks of it," snarled the detective. "I'm through. I'm going to take you down to Headquarters and lock you up right now, and you can save the rest of it for your lawyer!"
"And I thought you were a real professional, Henry. If you'd only stationed a man at the back door, as I was sure you would have, instead of getting so excited—"
"Are you coming along?" Fernack asked glowingly. "Or am I going to have to use this?"
Simon glanced down regretfully at the revolver which had appeared in the other's fist.
He might conceivably have been able to take it away. And apparently there was no one to stop him outside the back door. But he was reluctant to hurt Fernack seriously; and he knew that even if he succeeded the call would be out for him within a space of minutes, and that would be a handicap which might easily be crippling.
And just the same, nothing could have been much more manifest than that the last chance of talking the situation away had departed for the night. There is such a thing as an immutably petrified audience, and Simon Templar was realistic enough to recognise one when he saw it.
He shrugged.
"Okay," he said resignedly. "If you can't help being a moron, I'll pretend I don't notice. But if you'll take any advice from me at all, please don't be in too much of a hurry to call in the reporters and boast about your performance. I don't want you to make a public spectacle of yourself. Because I'll bet you fifty dollars to a nickel you won't even hold me until midnight."
He lost his bet by a comfortable margin, for Hamilton was away from Washington that night; and the far-reaching results of that delay were interesting to contemplate long afterwards.
A little after ten the next morning, a rather rotund and unobtrusive gentleman with the equally unobtrusive name of Harry Eldon presented Fernack with his credentials from the Department of Justice and said: "I'm sorry, but we've got to exercise our priority and take Templar out of your hands. "We want him rather badly ourselves."
Somewhat to his own mystification, the detective found that he didn't know whether to feel frustrated or relieved or worried.
He took refuge in an air of gruff unconcern.
"If you can keep him where he belongs, it'll be a load off my mind," he said.
"You haven't made any statement about his arrest yet?"
"Not yet."
Fernack could never have admitted that he had been sufficiently impressed by the Saint's warning, combined with the saddening recollection of previous tragic disappointments, to have forced himself to take a cautious breathing spell before issuing the defiant proclamation that was simmering in his insides.
"That's a good thing. You'd better just forget this as well," Eldon said enigmatically. "Those are my orders."
He took Simon Templar out with him, holding him firmly by the arm; and they rode uptown in a taxi.
The Saint filled his cigarette-case from a fresh pack, and lighted the last one left over, and said: "Thanks."
"I had a message to give you," Eldon said laconically. "It says that this had better be good. Or somebody else's neck will be under the axe."
"It will be good," said the Saint.
"Where do you want to be let off?"
"Any drug store will do. I want to look in a phone book."
It was just a chance that Barbara Sinclair's apartment would be listed under her name; but it was. It lay just off Fifth Avenue, across from the park.
When Simon arrived there, he found that it was one of those highly convenient buildings with a self-service elevator and no complications in the way of inquisitive doormen, which are such a helpful accessory to the vie boheme.
He rode up to the floor where he had found her name listed in the hall, and rang the bell. After a reasonable pause, he rang it again. There was still no answer; and he proceeded to inspect the lock with professional penetration. It was the usual Yale type, but the way it was set in the door promised very little opposition to a man whom the master cracksmen of two continents had been heard to mention with respect. He took a thin strip of flexible metal from a special compartment in the back of his wallet, and went to work with unhurried confidence.