He still had time before he had to meet Andrea.
He put on his tie, his holster, and his coat, and left his room. He went a few yards down the corridor and knocked on the door of 1013.
4
Imberline was in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned. He recognised the Saint in a surprised and startled way that was too slow in maturing to influence the course of events. Simon was inside the door and closing it for him before he had decided on his response.
"You'll begin to think this is a habit of mine, Frank," said the Saint apologetically. "But honestly, I do make appointments when I have time."
"This is going too far," Imberline spluttered belatedly. "I told you I'd see you and your — er — Miss Gray when I got back to Washington. I don't expect you to follow me all over the country. Even if it's a hotel, a man's house is his castle—"
"But needs must," said the Saint firmly, "when the devil drives."
He allowed Imberline to follow him into the room, and helped himself to the most inviting chair.
Imberline stood in front of him, bulging like a pouter pigeon.
"Young man, if you don't get out of here at once I'll pick up the telephone and have you thrown out."
"You can do that, of course. But I'll still have time to say what I want to say before the bouncers arrive. So why not just let me say it, and save a lot of commotion?"
The rubber rajah made the mistake of trying to find an answer to that one, and visibly wrestled himself to a standstill. He inflated himself another notch to try and distract attention from that.
"Well, what is it?" he barked.
"A few things have happened since last night," said the Saint. "I don't know what all of them add up to, but they do make it seem very probable that Calvin Gray's invention isn't a crackpot dream."
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating," Imberline pronounced sententiously. "We've already discussed that—"
"But that was before Calvin Gray was kidnaped."
Imberline had his mouth open for a retort before he fully realised what he was replying to.
He swallowed the unborn epigram, and groped for something else. It came out explosively enough, but the roar in his voice lacked its normal fullness.
"What's that?"
"Kidnaped."
"I didn't see anything about it in the papers."
"It's being kept as quiet as possible. So is the fact that a man was murdered during the return engagement this morning."
Imberline's jowls swelled.
"Mr. Templar, if this is some cock-and-bull story that you've concocted to try and stampede me, let me tell you—"
"You don't have to," said the Saint quietly. "If you want to confirm it, call the FBI in New Haven. They'll probably admit it to you if you identify yourself. Tell them you're interested on behalf of the WPB."
"Who was murdered?"
"A man named Angert, employed by Schindler, who was employed by some party unknown to trail Calvin Gray's daughter."
"I never heard of him."
"I'm afraid that doesn't make him any less dead."
Imberline glared at him with unreasonable indignation.
"This is a civilised country," he proclaimed. "We don't expect our system to be disrupted by violence and gangsterism. If there has been any official negligence—"
"Something ought to be done about it," Simon assented tiredly. "I know. Personally, I'm going to write to the President. What are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do?"
"Yes. You."
"What do you expect me to do? If your story is true, the proper authorities—"
"Of course, I'd forgotten the dear old Proper Authorities. But you were a Proper Authority who was supposed to find out what Calvin Gray had on the ball. And apparently some Improper Authority thinks a lot more of him than you did — so much that they're prepared to go to most violent and gangster lengths to put him on ice."
Imberline fumbled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and mopped his heavy face. He went over to another chair and made it groan with his weight.
"This is terrible," he said. "It's — it's shocking."
"It's all of that," said the Saint. "And it stinks for you."
"What do you mean?'
Simon slung one leg over the arm of his chair and settled deeper into it. He was no longer worried about being thrown out.
"Madeline Gray had an appointment with you last night," he said. "You'll remember I asked you about it. You said you didn't make it. But she thought she had it. And she was on her way to your house when there was an attempt to kidnap her — which I happened to louse up. But it was rather obvious that the appointment, phony or not, was planned to put her on the spot for kidnaping. If anyone wanted to jump to conclusions, they could make your position look slightly odd."
The other stiffened as if he had been goosed, and a tint of maroon crept into his complexion.
"Are you daring to insinuate—"
"I'm not insinuating anything, Frankie. I'm just telling you what any dumb cop would think of. Especially after you'd been so bull-headed about dodging Gray and his daughter. Almost as if you didn't want them to get a hearing."
"I told you, there is an established procedure — a well-planned system—"
"And there is Consolidated Rubber, which I hear was rather late in climbing on the synthetic bandwagon."
Imberline drew himself up.
"Young man," he said, with indomitable dignity, "I have never made any secret of my views on the subject of synthetic rubber. If Nature had intended us to have synthetic rubber, she would have created it in the first place. But only God can make a tree. However," he conceded magnanimously, "in the present Emergency I have not been influenced by my personal opinions. My life has always been an open book. I am prepared to match my principles with any man's. If anyone wishes to impugn my honesty, I cannot prevent him, but I can assure you that he will live to eat his words."
Simon put a match to a cigarette and regarded him with unconcealable awe.
"Incredible" was the adjective which he had spontaneously tacked on Imberline in the Shoreham, without knowing anything about him or having heard more than two sentences of his dialogue. He couldn't improve on it now.
"You ought to be in a glass case," he said.
The pattern snapped into place. And once there, it was immovable. His ruthless eyes had held Imberline under a microscope for every instant of the interview, and they wouldn't have missed even the cobwebby shred of a frayed edge. Even less than in their first conversation, when he had been completely baffled. But there had been no such thing. The précis he had studied hadn't lied — as he should have known it couldn't. He had jabbed Imberline calculatingly with facts, information, insinuations, names and knowledge, without rattling him for a split second on any score except his own sonorous self-esteem. No cornered conspirator could ever have been that brilliant. Not even the dean of all professional hypocrites could have been so unpuncturable. Histrionic masterpieces like that were performed daily in detective stories; never in real life. And this was very much a time for realism, no matter what pet postulates went down in the crash.
"Frankie," said the Saint carefully, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to shake your foundations a bit. I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't been too much an open book for your own good."
"Honesty is the best policy — the only policy," insisted Imberline, putting a fine ring into his new coinage. Then suddenly he was a rather helpless and flabby man staring wistfully at a bottle and a syphon on the bureau. "I was going to have a drink when you came in," he said, as if he had been cheated.