"Fix me one while you're up," said the Saint congenially.
He let Imberline muddle through the mechanics of bartending, without moving until a glass was put into his hand.
Then he said, trying to walk the tight wire between candor and offense, between toughness and tact: "Let's face it. You are an honest man. But everyone you meet in this evil world may not be such an idealist as you are. You may have been a sucker for some people who needed a front man whose life was an open book."
"My associates," stated Imberline, "are business men of the highest standing—"
"And Sing Sing," drawled the Saint, "has several alumni and post-graduate students who got used to hearing the same things said about them."
"You're letting your imagination run away with you. This dreadful coincidence — suppose I accept your statement that there has been foul play—"
"Let me ask you a couple of questions."
"What about?"
Simon absorbed from his drink and then from his cigarette.
"You said last night that Calvin Gray was a nut. Why?"
"That was on the basis of my information."
"You said that his invention had been investigated."
"It has been."
"Who by?"
"I told you — there is an established procedure. You probably haven't had much to do with modern business methods, but I can assure you that the best brains in the country have evolved a system of—"
"I just asked you: Who? What is the guy's name, where did you dig him up, and which side does he dress on?"
Imberline blinked, and then rubbed his rectangular wattled chin.
"If it's of any importance," he said, "I don't think Gray's case went through the regular channels. I'm trying to remember. No, perhaps it didn't. I think I was quite impressed with him at first, and the very same day I was in a position to mention Gray's claims to someone else who is one of the biggest men in that field. This expert told me that Professor Gray had already tried to sell him the same formula, and he had made exhaustive tests and established beyond any doubt that the whole thing was a fraud. So naturally, in order not to place any unnecessary burdens on our system of investigation—"
"You killed it then and there."
"In a manner of speaking."
"And then talked yourself into believing that it had been thoroughly investigated by your tame experts—"
"Mr. Templar," said Imberline crushingly, "my information in this case came from an expert whom my Department would be proud to employ if we could afford him. A self-made man, of course, but the most important figure in his field today."
"And what is his name?" inquired the Saint, with a little pulse beating behind his temples — "Joe Palooka?"
"Mr. Hobart Quennel, the President of Quenco."
Imberline said it somewhat as if he had been the toastmaster at a diplomatic banquet, and Quenco was a South American republic which recently decided to become a Good Neighbor.
The Saint's glass traveled very leisurely to his mouth again, and his cigarette visited there after it, while his amiably sardonic blue eyes surveyed the dollar-a-year deacon with unsubdued delight.
Another piece had clicked into its niche, and the threads were sorting out. Calvin Gray had been a shrewder diagnostician than Simon had given him credit for. In fact, Simon had to face the realisation that a great deal of the tangle had been woven out of his own refusal to accept the obvious. Too determinedly on the alert for tortuous scheming, he had only succeeded in snarling his own skein. Now he was finally cured, he hoped, and this — this lovely and luminous simplicity — could chart a straight course between way stations to the end.
"So Hobart Quennel was your authority," said the Saint dreamily. "And Quenco has two million dollars invested already in a plant that's laid out to use the old butadiene process."
Imberline snorted at him.
"Mr. Quennel is one of the most prominent industrialists in the country. I may not approve of his perpetual squabbles with some other Government departments, but in my own dealings with him he has always been most pleasant and co-operative. The mere suggestion that a man in his position would be prejudiced—"
"And yet," said the Saint, "I happened to meet his stooge, Walter Devan, in Washington; and Devan told me that Calvin Gray's formula looked very promising, but just didn't happen to be in their line. Not that it was fraud."
"Devan isn't a chemist."
"Neither is Quennel, except that he once worked in his father's drug store."
"He has the best advice that money can buy. Devan must have been misinformed."
"Why would Quennel misinform Devan?"
Imberline waved a large hand.
"I am not impertinent enough to pry into Mr. Quennel's private affairs. Doubtless he had his reasons. It could have been no concern of Devan's anyway. The cobbler should stick to his last."
"Devan said that in front of Madeline Gray. And it's much easier to believe that he was trying to cover up Quenco's interest in suppressing Gray's discovery."
"Nonsense. Of course he was trying to spare Miss Gray's feelings."
"Pollyanna," said the Saint bluntly, "why the hell won't you see that Quennel is playing you for a sucker?"
He had said the wrong thing, and he knew it immediately. Imberline bridled and bulged again, his heavy face darkening. He stood up and boomed.
"Young man, that is not only an impudent suggestion — it's scandalous. Mr. Quennel is the head of a great corporation. A man of his standing has a duty to the public almost like that of a trustee. A great deal of harm has been done by cheap and irresponsible attempts to discredit some of our outstanding industrial leaders. But there is still a thing as business ethics; and thank God, sir, while there are still men of the caliber that has made America what it is today—"
"Spare me the speech," said the Saint mildly. "I seem to have read it before somewhere."
"If you expect to impress me with these wild and scurrilous innuendoes—"
"All I'd like to know," Simon said patiently, "is what you propose to do about it."
"Do?" brayed Imberline.
He seemed to have a defensive repugnance to the suggestion that it was up to him to do something.
"Yes." Simon left one swallow in his glass, and stood up also. He kept the stout satrap spitted on a gaze of coldly challenging sapphire. "Don't forget that you could be made to look rather funny yourself on the basis I mentioned a little while ago."
Imberline's eyes narrowed down into beady stubbornness.
"I shall verify your statements, naturally. As a Public Servant, I am obliged to do that. If they have any truth in them — and I still haven't discarded the idea that the whole thing may be a fabrication of your own — there will of course be a thorough investigation. But I'm quite sure that there is some perfectly simple explanation."
"I'm quite sure there is," said the Saint. "Only you haven't seen it yet."
"Now will you get the hell out of here again? I have an engagement in a few minutes."
Simon nodded, and glanced at his watch. He emptied his glass and set it down.
"So have I, brother. So just remember what I'm going to do."
"Next time, you can make a proper appointment for it."
"I'm going to make an appointment," said the Saint. "With the FBI. Tomorrow. In the course of which I shall mention your name in connection with that Madeline Gray business, and your dropping of Calvin Gray on Hobart Quennel's say-so. So if you haven't taken some steps by that time, the Proper Authorities will want to know why." He dragged the last value out of his cigarette and crushed it out in the nearest ashtray. "I hope you will all have a bouncing reunion."
He closed the door very silently behind him; and as the elevator took him down he was cheered by the thought that he had been able to insert at least one lively bluebottle in the balm of the Ungodly. Frank Imberline might be the nearest thing to a well-schooled moron; he might fume and boom and cling dogmatically to all his platitudes; but a seed had been planted in his approximation of a mind, and if it ever got a root in there it would be as immovable as all his bigotries. The fatuous honesty, or honest fatuousness, which had made him such a perfect tool might boomerang in a most diverting way.