"You didn't even ask who he was."
"Why should I? I read the papers."
"You even knew that he'd been staying here."
"I didn't say so. But I wasn't going to fall over backwards if he was. It's a good place to stay. I even use it myself."
"And you knew that he smoked cigars."
"Several people do. I've heard that it's getting quite common."
The detective kept his hands down with a heroic effort.
"And on top of all that," he said, "you knew he was dead before I told you."
"You did tell me," said the Saint. "There's a special tone of voice you have that fairly screams homicide — particularly when you're hoping to send me to the chair for it. I've heard it so often that I can pick it out like a siren."
Fernack drew a deep labored breath.
"Now let me tell you what I think," he said crunchingly. "I think you know a hell of a lot too much about this. I think you're in plenty of trouble again—"
Simon blew an impudent smoke-ring straight at him.
"Henry," he said reasonably, "doesn't this dialogue remind you of something we've been through before?"
The detective swallowed.
"You're damn right it does! But this time—"
"This time it's going to be bigger and better. This time it's going to stick. This time you've got me. We've played that scene before too, but I don't like to bring that up. A guy has been rubbed out, and so I did it. Because everyone knows that I have an exclusive concession to do all the rubbing out that's done in New York."
"All you've got is a lot of smart answers—"
"To a lot of moronic questions. Imberline gets himself murdered here, and I'm handy, so why not convict me?"
"When it turned out to be a murder," Fernack said ponderously, "I had to check up on the other guests in the hotel. I came to your name, and there you were — practically next door. Now be smart about that!"
The Saint took a long draught of smoke and smiled at him with tolerant affection. He cast around for a chair and sat down with a ghost of a sigh.
"Henry," he said, "I'm just not smart any more. I wanted to murder Imberline, and I found out he was staying here and what room he was in, and I made quite a little fuss about getting a room as close to him as I could. I wasn't smart enough to just ride up in the elevator and give him the works and go away again. I had to move in on the job. I didn't want you to have a mystery on your hands—"
"Where were you last night?"
"Oh, I was out to dinner with a babe and then over at her apartment looking at her etchings, and whatever time the night clerk says I came in is probably about right. I didn't notice it exactly myself. I just wasn't smart enough to bother about an alibi. I bashed Imberline's head in; and even then I wasn't bright enough to get the hell out. I went to bed and went to sleep and waited for you to find me." Simon flipped over his hole card with a silent thanksgiving for the unconsidered decision that had dealt it into his hand. "I knew that wouldn't take you long, because I'd registered in my own name to make sure you wouldn't be put off by any aliases. I'm just not smart any more, Henry — that's all there is to it."
Fernack gloomed at him waveringly. It seemed that this also was part of a familiar scene. He was convinced that there was something wrong with it, as he always had been; but the trouble was that he could never put a finger on it. He only had an infuriating and dismal foreboding that he was going to find himself on the same lugubrious merry-go-round again.
"You're just too smart," he said suspiciously. "You're trying to sell me the same bill of goods—"
"I'm trying to show you what your evidence would sound like to a jury."'
The detective rubbed his suffering gray hairs.
"Then what the hell do you know about this?" he demanded almost pleadingly.
"Now you're being rational, dear old bloodhound. So I'll let you into a secret. I did know Imberline was here, and I did come here to see him — among other things."
Fernack jerked as if a hot needle had penetrated his gluteus maximus. The smouldering embers flared up in his eyes.
"Then you are trying to make a goat out of me!" he bawled. "You're giving me the same old baloney—"
The Saint groaned.
"You ought to take sedative pills," he said. "Your stomach must have ulcers like the craters on the moon. I'm trying to set you on the right track. I did come here to talk to Imberline; that's all. I didn't make much of a secret of it, either — long before you ever thought you'd be interested. So for anyone who wanted to ease him into his next transmigration, it could have been almost irresistible. I thought of everything else, and I was too dumb to think of that. Maybe I ought to go to the chair for it, but there's no law that says so." The Saint's face was like stone. "It would have been perfectly easy to do. Your murderer could even have come into the hotel with Imberline. They just didn't ride up in the same elevator. The guy suddenly leaves him in the lobby and says he wants to buy a paper or say hullo to a friend or something, and he'll be right up. He takes the next car, chats for a while, waits till Imberline goes to the can, follows him, and flattens his skull on the floor. Then he waits and watches for me to come in, and when he's sure that I'm parked for the night he picks up the phone and leaves the morning call, just to prove that Imberline was alive then and try to make sure he'd be found before I was up. He had a very sound idea of the way a policeman would think, with all due respect, Henry."
The Saint's voice was light and soothing, but the detachment of his gaze was not part of any clairvoyant trance. He was only hanging words on to something that had long ago become concrete in his subconscious. He was thinking about very different things — that this must have been the trap that Andrea Quennel had tried too hard to keep him away from, and that she had looked like a sculpture in alabaster even when she toppled so foolishly on the bed, and that one day he would really be as clever as he tried to be.
Fernack was still clamping his jaw and struggling morosely to stare him down.
"That's all very fine," he persisted obstinately. "But coming from you—"
"Some of it might even be in evidence," said the Saint. "If Imberline made that morning call, his fingerprints would be on the telephone. Unless the telephone was wiped. The murderer wouldn't wipe the telephone unless he'd used it. Unless there were any other calls from this room after that — or are you ahead of me?"
Simon knew from the detective's face that he had rung a bell.
"I had thought of that," Fernack prevaricated valiantly. "But in that case, who did kill Imberline?"
"Probably some disgruntled manufacturer of coil-spring corsets who objected to having rubber released for making girdles."
Inspector Fernack's sensitive scrutiny started to become congested again.
"If you're amusing yourself, I'd rather go and laugh at a good funeral. Imberline was one of these Government men. I'm going to have all of Washington riding me as well as the Mayor. If you don't know anything, get the hell out of here."
"I might be able to put you in touch with the right people if you were more polite. But I'll have to make a call to New Haven."
"Go ahead."
Simon reached for the telephone.
He had no doubt that Fernack followed all the steps of his threading through Information and the FBI to Jetterick; and he didn't try to rush the machinery.
After a few minutes he had Jetterick on the wire.
"This is the Templar Corpse-Finding and Marching Club," he said. "How are things with you?… Much the same. I haven't been up long enough to check with Stamford yet — you haven't had any bad news from there?… Good. Nothing on Morgen yet, I suppose?… Mmm. One of those uncooperative bastards. I didn't really think he'd have a record — he wouldn't have been so much use if he had… Well, what I called you for was to find out whether a bureau bigwig by the name of Frank Imberline tracked you down last night to find out if there was any truth in what I'd told him about some of the ramifications of our country picnic yesterday… Oh, he did, did he?… That must have been fun… No, I don't think I'd better tell you why. I'm going to turn you over to Inspector John Henry Fernack of the woodcraft constabulary down here — a maestro of mystery who wants to put me in a striped zoot suit. Tell him whatever you think would be safe for his little pink ears."