“Oh, no. No. But she does have an old friend here, married to a very successful man in the chemical business.”
“Which sounds as if your wife may have lived in San Francisco herself once.”
“Yes, indeed. This is her home town.”
“And she used to be a model.”
“Yes.”
“So she could have known Vere Balton professionally.”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“I have another hunch about her. I don’t think your married life is exactly blissful. Not that you ever said it was. But I think she’d be happy to get rid of you — if she could only keep enough of the heavy sugar from those Crunchy Wunchies. And you know it, because you’re no fool. For the same reason, I think you’d give her her freedom if she’d take a fair settlement. But she’s too greedy, so you’ve been holding out. You could do that if you’d been a good husband and had never given her the usual grounds for divorce.”
Mr Fennick’s thin mouth was grim and tight around his cigar.
“You’re making a lot of personal assumptions, Mr Templar.”
“Let me make some more. You weren’t worried about her jealous nature, as you led me to believe, but about how much she could take you for if she had the goods on you. And when you recovered from that hit on the head, you figured she’d got ’em. Perhaps you put in a call to your home in New York and found that she’d flown out here yesterday, but without getting in touch with you. That would have cinched it. She could have identified herself as your wife so that even that supercilious young jerk on the desk last night would have given her a spare key to your room, which was all Balton and Norma needed. And you knew you couldn’t buy them off, because with that evidence she could match any bid you made. She was all set to take you for everything you’ve got.”
The candy company’s president had his fingertips pressed to his temples and his thumbs on his cheeks, his hands lightly covering his eyes, in an attitude of intense concentration, and he took no advantage of the moment of silence that Simon offered him.
The Saint got up and walked over to the carton that the other had brought in, giving him time, and lifted the lid inquisitively. What he saw first was a mechanic’s cap on top of a crumpled suit of coveralls, which made him suddenly and purposefully delve further. Underneath them he came to the source of the muffled clanking he had heard, a well-worn set of plumber’s tools in an open carrier, on top of which was a cheap pair of tinted glasses.
“Well, this fills in a few more blanks,” he murmured. “You could have bought the tools at any second-hand store, and the overalls and glasses anywhere, and they make a much better disguise than a false beard. Even if anyone noticed you, the description would never fit Otis Q Fennick, the genius behind Jumbo Juicies. Even your colleagues on the convention probably wouldn’t recognize you on a fast walk-through. And yet you’d only need a minute in a booth in any public john to change into it or out again. You’re just loaded with wasted talent, daddy-o. The only flaw is that you’re still stuck with Liane, who could still give the cops that missing motive. One thing leads to another, as the actress tried to warn the bishop when he helped her off with her galoshes.”
Mr Fennick sat perfectly still, so that for a second or two Simon seriously wondered whether the accumulated shocks and strains could have been too much for a weak heart.
Then the communicating door burst open, and the surly duenna of the outer office burst in.
For an instant the sheer outraged astonishment of seeing the Saint standing by the desk made her falter in her tracks and almost choked off the words that were piled up to burst from her mouth, but the pressure behind them was too strong.
“I’m sorry, Mr Fennick, but I knew you’d want me to disobey you about this. The hotel called. It’s about Mrs Fennick. They were trying to locate you through the convention, and finally they got Mr Smith at the lecture, and he told them you were here. I must warn you, it’s something awful—”
“What is it?” Fennick asked.
“She fell out of the window, Mr Fennick. Or she jumped. They seem to think it was suicide!”
“Good God,” Fennick said huskily.
Simon stepped forward, between him and his secretary.
“I’ll go with him.” he said. “You’d better get ready to cope with the reporters. They’ll be calling up and flocking around like vultures in no time. But I know you can handle them.”
Without actually touching her, he moved her firmly back to the outer office again by the force of proximity alone, and in default of any supporting intervention by her employer she was helpless. The Saint returned her last venomous glare with a winning smile and closed the door on her.
Then he turned back to Fennick and lighted another cigarette.
“I guess I underrated you,” he murmured. “You didn’t forget about Liane. I suppose she phoned you to gloat over what she thought she’d got and ask if you were ready to talk business again, and you said you’d be right over. The Mercurio is only about three blocks from here, I think, and you could count on that dragon you keep outside to prevent anyone upsetting your alibi. If you had to tap Liane on the head with a wrench to make her easy to push out, the mark wouldn’t be noticed after she’d hit the ground, any more than you’d be noticed scooting back down the stairs in your plumber’s outfit. You’d reduced all the risks to a minimum, which is the best anyone can do. It was just plain bad luck about me.”
The manufacturer moved stiffly around the desk, white-faced but with a certain dignity.
“I’ll give myself up,” he said. “You needn’t come to see that I don’t run away.”
Simon shook his head reproachfully.
“You’re wrong about me again, Otis, old jujube. I think capital punishment is a fine cure for blackmailers. Vere Balton and Norma Uplitz aren’t any loss to the community. And that makes your late wife even guiltier than they were. If you can get away with it, good luck to you. The cops won’t get any hints from me. I’m only coming along to check out of that crummy hotel and be on my way.”
The fruitful land
Even a champion leads with his chin sometimes, and this was one time when the Saint did it with a flourish and fanfares. He hadn’t even been feinted out of position.
“Is there anything I can do for you down in the playgrounds of the Gilded Schmoe?” he asked.
Coming from anyone else, it would have been only a conventional and harmless way of saying thanks for the long weekend of bass fishing that he had enjoyed on the St Johns River between Welaka and Lake George, on his way South to the more sophisticated and in many ways less charming resorts of Florida’s Gold Coast. And Jim Harris, the lean and leathery owner of the lodge where Simon Templar always stopped, would have taken it the same way.
“Just don’t try to send us everyone you meet,” he said good-humouredly. “We’ve had some good sportsmen and fishermen from down there, but there’s some kind that expect more than we’re set up to give ’em.”
“I know what you mean,” Simon said. “A strike on every cast, air-conditioned skiffs, and a gaudy night club to come home to.”
They were sitting out on the high bluff overlooking the river, under the magnificent oaks that shaded it in the daytime, after the last dinner of that visit, watching the lights of a tug with a train of barges plodding up the channel and swapping the lazy post-mortems and promises that friends and fishermen swap at such times. At that latitude and inland, the first cold front of fall had spoiled the appetites of the mosquitoes, although it was still only a temporary dispensation that made it enjoyable to stay out after dark.
“On a night like this,” Simon murmured idly, “here and now, it’s hard to remember what it must have been like for the pioneers who hacked their way through the swamps and jungles of this entomologist’s paradise, and made it fit for the non-insect pests to move in.”