"I know. But I was watching. I saw Karl running away — I was afraid something had happened to you — and…"
That was when she saw the body of the mousey little man lying at his feet.
Her eyes widened, and then darkened with bewilderment.
"But — I was sure it was Karl — and it wasn't here—"
"It was Karl," said the Saint. "And he did run away. We were in the laboratory, and I was just getting around to a real heart-to-heart talk with him when he pulled a fast one. So I learnt a new trick." Simon twisted his lips wryly. "I was running after Karl when I fell over Sylvester."
Madeline Gray looked down at the motionless figure in rumpled clothes that didn't seem to belong to it any more.
"He looks sort of dead, doesn't he?" she said uncertainly.
"He is dead," said the Saint.
She swallowed something, and found her breath way down in her chest.
"You — killed him?"
"No. He was dead when I tumbled over him. He's been dead a little while, too. He must have been snooping around when Karl came here, and Karl thought he belonged to us and conked him — just a little too hard. So they weren't on the same side after all… This gets more interesting all the time."
"I'm glad you think so," she said, without any intention of being smart.
The Saint would scarcely have noticed if she had. His mind was busy with too many new adjustments, working resiliently ahead from the setback and trying to follow the sudden break in the pattern.
"Go on back to the house," he said, "and keep out of sight. I'll be with you in a minute."
He had already disturbed the body and its surroundings considerably by stumbling over it and then verifying its condition, so a little more disturbance would make no difference. Once again he turned out a set of pockets, and found nothing very extraordinary except the eavesdropping device which he had seen before. Mr. Angert apparently had been trustful enough to carry no weapons. There was a bulging wallet in one inside pocket, and a folded sheet of paper with a lot of cryptic scribbling on it in another. Simon replaced everything else, and took those two items with him.
He found Madeline Gray in the living-room, toying nervously with a cigarette.
"I don't seem to be much good at this, do I?" she said. "I'm frightened."
He smiled encouragement.
"You haven't screamed yet." He sat down beside the telephone. "Now I'm going to do something very dull. I'm going to have to call the FBI."
"I suppose that is the right thing to do."
"It's the only thing to do. I don't have a fingerprinting outfit with me, I don't have access to a lot of criminal records, I can't broadcast your father's description, and I haven't got an army of operatives to follow every lead. Aside from that, I'm wonderful."
He dialed the operator and asked for information, and after a few minutes he was through to New Haven.
"I want to talk to whoever's in charge there," he said. "The name is Simon Templar."
After a moment another voice said: "Yes, Mr. Templar?"
"Did you get a call from Washington about me?"
"Yes. Anything we can do?"
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to Tun down to Stamford. This is a kidnaping. And incidentally there's another guy murdered, if that makes it sound better."
There was a brief digestive pause.
"Okay," said the voice matter-of-factly. "I can be there in about an hour. Where are you?"
Simon got the address from Madeline, repeated it, and hung up.
He lighted a cigarette, took out his automatic, and replenished the clip with a couple of loose shells from his pocket.
"So," she said, "it was Karl."
"It was. And he was also one of our playmates of last night. And he may have been the man who put that note in my pocket. I did get a few answers out of him, for what they're worth, before he foxed me."
He gave her a complete story of what had happened.
"I haven't any doubt that Karl is a Nazi," he said. "But somehow I don't think he's a big one. I don't know how big the Nazi angle is. It still doesn't look big — or else it's too big to see. But I'd be inclined to say that Karl was just put in here originally as a routine assignment, a sort of leg man, to find out what your father was up to. Did he have any chance to learn this formula?"
"No. Daddy never told anyone the real secret except me."
"I didn't think so. If Karl had known it, they wouldn't have needed to kidnap your father — which he admitted, by the way, when he was getting under my guard by pretending to break down — and Karl wouldn't have needed to come back here. I imagine he was sent back to see if he couldn't find some notes or clues."
"What else did he say?"
"He said he wasn't working for Imberline — yet. But I don't know whether I believe that or not."
"Could Imberline be a Nazi?"
"Anything is possible, in this goddam war. And yet, if he is a very brilliant and cunning guy, he certainly does an amazing job of hiding it… I don't know… At any rate, I'm sure that Karl is working for somebody else besides Schicklgrüber, even if it's only to cover his real boss and help him get into the places where he wants to be."
"Then who is it?"
"If I could tell you that, darling, I wouldn't be getting much of a headache. The new fun that we have to cope with is that the Ungodly don't all seem to be in one camp. Hence the sad fact that Comrade Angert's head will never ache again."
She winced at that.
"And we don't know anything about him at all," she said.
"No. But we may find out something now."
The Saint had his trophies on the table beside him. He turned to them to see if they were going to be any help, and the girl came over to sit on the arm of his chair and look over his shoulder.
He took the paper first. It was a plain quarto sheet, folded four times in one direction, the way many reporters use for taking notes. The jottings, after a little study, became much more intelligible than they had looked at first. There were the initials MG, the name Simon Templar written in full once, and the initials ST afterwards; there were places, figures which could be resolved into times, and an occasional item like "Cab, 85c."
"As we guessed anyway," said the Saint, "Sylvester was on your tail. And mine, too, after we met. He seems to have picked you up yesterday morning — at least, there are no notes before that."
He picked up the wallet next. It contained fifty-five dollars in bills, a deposit book from the Bowery Savings Bank with a record of fairly regular deposits and a final balance of $3127.48, a driving license, a couple of Western Union blanks, four airmail stamps, a 4-H draft card, a New York firearms permit, a snapshot of a young man in Air Corps uniform, a life insurance receipt, a diary with nothing but a few names and addresses written in it, and a selection of visiting cards. The visiting cards were professionally interesting — Simon had a similar but even more extensive collection himself. They were designed to associate Mr. Angert with an assortment of enterprises that ranged from the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company to the advertising department of Standard Magazines.
There were three cards, however, that the Saint stopped at. They said:
Vanderbilt 6-3850
SCHINDLER BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
7 East 44th Street
New York, N. Y.
Mr. Sylvester Angert
"This," said the Saint, "I can find out about."
"What's different about it?"
"It happens to be a real agency. One of the best. You remember I told you in Washington that I could hire you some guards if you wanted them? If you'd taken me up on it, I'd have passed you on to Ray Schindler… By God, Ray has a summer place near here, and there's just a chance—"