She nodded and he tentatively freed her head, still holding her body close to his.
“Oh, dear,” she breathed. “Is that... blood?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You’ve murdered somebody? You’ve murdered Perry. Is that it? No... don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’d rather not know anything.”
She put her hands over her ears, and Simon waited patiently until she was ready to listen again.
“I haven’t murdered anybody,” he said. “I...”
“Are you going to murder me?” she asked breathlessly, but with reasonable calm. “You can tell me that. I might as well know. I mean, that’s something that can’t get me involved.”
“It can get you pretty uninvolved, in fact,” said the Saint.
Cassie Lane pointed up the ladder toward the dark attic, from which another drop of blood had just fallen on to one of the rungs of the ladder.
“Somebody murdered somebody,” she said feebly. “Is that right?”
“Yes. Perry Loudon was murdered — this afternoon. I hope you weren’t...”
She shook her head.
“No. I hardly knew him. I hardly know anybody. I’m not going to feel sorry. I’m just going to...”
“Going to what?”
“Faint.”
He had loosened his grip, but his arms were still around her, so that it was no effort at all to ease her into a wooden chair nearby. She showed no signs of waking up immediately, so Simon used the welcome silence to put his thoughts in order.
Several things seemed obvious or at least highly probable. He was the victim of an elaborate effort to stick him with a murder charge. Only the fact that he had awakened so soon from the blow on his head had kept him from being discovered with his hand all but gripping the chisel which had killed Perry Loudon. Teal’s caller had mentioned the Saint’s name specifically. Even Loudon had been prepared for Simon’s visit, the apparent photograph seemed to affirm their acquaintanceship, and the bikini babe in the photo was probably the apex of a triangle which was supposed to provide the motive for murder.
The plot was almost insanely refined. The next obvious question was, who would want to do such a thing, and who would be capable of such a baroque way of doing it? Not many of the criminals on whom the Saint had preyed and from whose spoils he had built his fortune remained alive or free after their encounters with him, but a few did, and there could be others who would like to see him eliminated as a matter of simple prudence, in the same way that people get typhoid shots before they find they have actually contracted the disease. And the chances of a major felon meeting his doom at the hands of the Saint were considerably greater than his chances of dying of old age.
But there was no clue as yet to who was behind the scheme, and for the moment there were more pressing problems.
The mere fact that the frame-up had not resulted in Simon’s immediate arrest on suspicion of murder was hardly enough cause for uninhibited jubilation. His temporary freedom was due only to Scotland Yard’s failure to demonstrate that there actually had been a murder. Now, in addition to the perpetrators of the crime, who would be most willing to confirm Perry Loudon’s demise to the police, there was Cassie Lane, a direct witness to the corpus delicti.
The combination of circumstances meant that physical escape from the scene would be no more than a delaying action. Simon would have to do a lot more than that. He would have to keep the police mystified as long as possible simultaneously tracking down the real murderers. It was a challenge that only a man with the ice-cold nerves and resilient resourcefulness of the Saint could hope to meet.
There was a telephone half buried under some rubble in one corner of the room. Simon located it because of the numbers scrawled in pen, pencil, and crayon all over the wall in its vicinity. He brushed away the debris and dialed a number he had carried in his head for years — the home of an acquaintance who, in the old days of the Saint’s more piratical exploits, had always been available for the clandestine transportation of bulky objects, and purportedly still was.
“Bert,” he said to the gravel-crusher voice which answered. “This is Simon Templar. I hope your rates haven’t gone up too much, because I have a job for you.”
Bert, after expressing his pleasure at renewing an old friendship, wanted to reminisce, but Simon had to cut him off. “It’s a rush job,” he said. “Large, heavy metal statue to be moved to your warehouse right away. Yes, I’m aware that it’s dinner time, but I can’t wait. Can you get a couple of men over here right away — 54 Pinter Street?”
Bert said that it would be possible, but only at great effort and fantastic expense.
“Yes,” said Simon. “All right. I figured on that. Overtime. Naturally. Don’t bother to explain it all to me, just get over here double quick. If anybody wants to know what you’re doing, tell them it’s an order put in by Perry Loudon some time ago.”
Simon repeated the address and hung up. Cassie Lane’s eyelids had started to flutter during the last part of his conversation, and now she sat up in her chair and looked at him with dazed turquoise eyes.
“Good morning,” said the Saint.
The girl stood up, supporting herself dizzily with one hand on the chair.
“I’ll see you again some time,” she said.
“Probably not,” Simon replied. “The police will question you, you’ll tell them you saw me with Perry Loudon’s body, and they’ll take me away and hang me while the real murderers go free.”
She looked at him miserably.
“I wouldn’t tell,” she said. “Couldn’t we just... forget the whole thing?”
“You can, I suppose. Meanwhile I’ll be tracked down like a mad dog. While you’re hiding away over there in your nest staying uninvolved the forces of evil will triumph, and it’ll all be your fault.”
The corners of her pretty mouth turned down and her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, no,” she wailed. “How can you say that? I haven’t done a thing!”
“You’ve seen,” said the Saint a little ominously. “You’re involved whether you like it or not. It’s just lucky for you that I’m not a killer, or I’d have to eliminate you and dispose of your poor crushed young body along with this one up here.”
He gestured toward the trapdoor.
“You really didn’t kill Perry, did you?” she asked.
She was wiping away her tears, apparently trying to resign herself to her fate.
“No,” Simon said, “I didn’t. But two men did kill him, while I was here. They hit me on the head and tried to make it seem I’d had a fight with Loudon that ended with my stabbing him in the back. The fact is, I’d never seen him before. That’s as much as I can tell you because I have to hurry.”
He was standing in front of her, and he took both her hands in his. She was like a small frightened animal, and he knew, without modesty, that there was a magnetism and restrained strength in his touch which would calm and reassure her more than any number of words.
“Now,” he said quietly. “Will you help me?”
She stared at him as if mesmerized.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Good.”
He steered her toward the door to the roof.
“You want me to leave?” she asked.
“Just long enough to get your paints ready to use. And if you have some plaster of Paris, would you please mix some?”
“What for?” she asked weakly.
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
The Saint went to the head-high piece of sculpture on which Loudon had been working just before he was killed. Cassie Lane watched as he put on the goggles, lit the welding torch, and turned the thin javelin-point of blue flame onto the metal, cutting slowly through it.