Unless your name happened to be Simon Templar, the Saint, and you never had given a damn.
Simon thought all that out, and hammered the shape of it into his mind.
The Ungodly had thought it out, too. Just as he'd hoped they would. But sooner.
And now he was an outlaw again, nothing else; and any riposte he made could only be in his own way.
It was five o'clock when he called Westport.
He wondered if she would be there. But she was. Her voice answered the ring, as if she had been expecting it. She might have been expecting it, too. He could take that in his stride, now, with everything else. He was on his own now, regardless of Hamilton or anyone. And all the hell-for-leather brigand lilt of the old days was rousing in his voice and edging into the piratical hardening of his blue eyes as he greeted her.
"Andrea," he said. "Thanks. For everything. And I decided to take you up on that invitation. I'll be over for dinner."
6. How Hobart Quennel discoursed about business,
and Calvin Gray did what the Saint told him
1
Mr. Hobart Quennel looked no more like a millionaire than any other millionaire; and probably he was just as secretly proud of the fact as any other up-to-date millionaire. He was one of hundreds of modern refutations of the old crude Communist caricatures of a captialist, so that Simon Templar wondered whether there might be some congenital instinct of camouflage in the cosmogony of millionaires which caused them as a race to keep one jump ahead of their unpopular prototypes. It was, as if in these days of ruthless social consciousness a millionaire required some kind of protective coloration to enable him to succeed in his déclassé profession.
Mr. Quennel was physically a fairly big and well-built man, with his daughter's fair hair sprinkled with gray and balding back from his forehead, and the same pale blue inexpressive eyes. But he gave no impression of being either frightening or furtive, for in these days of higher education it is no longer so easy as it may once have been to bludgeon the crisp cabbage out of the public purse, and a man who looks either frightening or furtive has too many strikes against him when he bids for the big bullion. His face was smooth and bony without being cadaverous, so that its fundamental hardness was calm and without strain. His clothes were good when you noticed them, but it was just as easy not to notice them at all. He had no softening around the middle, for that mode is also out of fashion among millionaires, who are conspicuous among sedentary workers for being able to afford all the trainers and masseurs and golf clubs and other exercising appliances that can be prescribed to restrain the middle-aged equator. He was that new and fascinating evolution of the primitive tycoon who simply worked at the job of being a millionaire, as un-excitedly as other men worked at the job of being bricklayers, and probably with no more grandiose ideas of his place in the engine of civilisation. It was just a job in which you weighed different factors and did different things in different ways, and you had a different wage scale and standard of living; but then bricklayers were different again from cowboys, but they didn't confuse their personal reactions by thinking about cowboys.
He shook hands with the Saint, and said "I'm very glad to meet you," and personally poured Martinis from the shaker he had been stirring.
He had a pleasant voice and manner, dignified but cordial, neither ingratiating nor domineering. He had the soothing confidence of a man who didn't need to ask favors, or to go out of his way to offer them. He was a guy you could like. Simon Templar liked him in his own way, and felt just as comfortable. He sat down on the sofa beside Andrea Quennel, and crossed his long legs, and said: "This is quite a place you have here."
"Like it?" She sounded as if she wanted it to be liked, as if it were a new dress. "But I think you'd like Pinehurst much more. I do. It's more sort of outdoorsy."
She looked as sort of outdoorsy as an orchid. She wore one of those house-coat-dinner-dress effects that would get by anywhere between a ballroom and a boudoir and still always have a faint air of belonging somewhere else. It had a high strapped Grecian bodice line that did sensational things for her sensational torso. She had opened the door when he arrived, and it had seemed to him that her classic face and melting receptive mouth were like candy in a confectioner's window, lovely and desirable but without volition. He knew now that this was a fault of his own perception, but he was still inching his way through the third dimension that had to bring the whole picture into sudden life and clarity.
It felt a little unearthly to be meeting her like that, in this atmosphere of ordinary and pleasant formality, after the way they had last seen each other. He wondered what she was thinking. But he had been able to read nothing in her face, not even embarrassment; and they hadn't been alone together for a moment. He didn't know whether to be glad of that or not. They watched each other inscrutably, like a pair of cats at opposite ends of a wall.
There was one other person who had to be there to complete the pattern, and a few minutes later he came in, looking very much freshly scrubbed and brushed, in a plain blue suit that was a little tight around the chest and biceps, so that he had some of the air of a stevedore dressed up in his Sunday best. Mr. Quennel patted him on the shoulder and said: "Hullo, Walter… You've met Mr. Templar, haven't you?"
"I certainly have." Walter Devan shook hands with a cordial grin. "I didn't know who I was picking a fight with at that time, though, or I'd have been a bit more careful about butting in."
"I'm glad you weren't," Simon said just as cordially, "or you might have done much too good a job."
"What do you think about the news from Russia?" Quennel asked.
So it was to be played like that. And the Saint was quite ready to go along with it that way. Perhaps he even preferred it. He had quite a little background to fill in, and in it he knew that there were things which were important to his philosophy, even if anyone else would have found them incidental. He could wait now for the explosive action which was ultimately the only way in which the difference of basic potential could be resolved, like the difference between two thunderclouds. But before that he was glad to explore and weigh the charge that was going to match itself against his own.
He lighted a cigarette, and relaxed, and for the first time since the beginning of the episode he knew that it had a significance beyond any simple violence that might come out of it.
They had another drink. And dinner. It was not a lavish-dinner, but just quietly excellent, served by a butler whose presence didn't keep reminding you of the dignity of having a butler. There was not a dazzling display of silver and crystal on the table. They drank, without discussion or fanfares, an excellent Fountaingrove Sonoma Cabernet. Everything had the cachet of a man to whom luxury was as natural and essential as a daily bath, without making a De Mille sequence out of it.
"I think you'll like Pinehurst, if Andrea takes you down there," Quennel said. "I just got a couple of new strings of polo ponies from Buenos Aires — I haven't even seen them yet. You might be able to try them out for me. Do you play polo?"
"A bit," said the Saint, who had once had a six-goal rating.
"I can't wait to get down there myself," said Quennel. "But Washington never stops conspiring against me."
"I imagine the war has something to do with it, too."
Quennel nodded.
"It has made us pretty important," he said deprecatingly. "We were doing quite all right before, but war-time requirements are making us expand very considerably. Of course, we're working about ninety-five per cent on Government orders now. But after the war we'll really have the advantage of a tremendous amount of building and plant expansion, as well as some great strides in technical experience."