In the area which clung hardest to the time-honored tenets of living-room decor, two men disengaged themselves somewhat laboriously from the plushiest armchairs. One of them was slim and wiry, with a seamed sunburnt face and crew-cut blond hair; the other was tall and moonfaced, with a hairline that receded to the crown of his head and very bright eyes behind large thick glasses.
“This is Ted Colbin, Ziggy’s agent,” Velston introduced the wiry one, who looked like a retired lightweight fighter. “And Ralph Damian, of UBC.” He indicated the moonfaced one, who looked like a junior professor of mathematics. “May I present Simon Templar?”
The name registered on them visibly, but not beyond the bounds of urbane interest.
“Not the Saint?” Damian said, looking more than ever like a recent and still eager college graduate, and not at all like the lecherous executive that Simon had visualized.
“Guilty.”
“I’ve had so many people tell me there ought to be a TV series about you that I’ve sometimes wondered whether you were fact or fiction.”
“Before you sign anything, Mr Templar, if you haven’t already,” Colbin said, “I wish you’d talk to me. I’d like to give you my impartial advice, and it needn’t cost you a cent.”
“Mr Templar insists that he has nothing to sell,” Lois said. “Not even to anything as painless as a Fame interview, with me doing it. He’s only here now to watch Monty and me in action. But if you work on him, you’ll probably wake up and find him starting his own network and charging agents ten per cent for selling them to sponsors.”
The Saint grinned.
“This is a wicked libel,” he said. “I only came here because Lois promised I could meet Ziggy in person and perhaps get his autograph.”
“He’s out there,” Damian said, “giving his all, putting a protractor on the angles.”
His thumb twisted towards the pool area, where all that the uninitiated eye could see was a group of half a dozen nondescript men clustered around a focal point which their own semicircle of backs concealed from view.
“How do you know that’s what he’s doing?” Simon asked curiously.
“That’s easy. Would you like to hear it?”
He opened a panel in the bank of record cabinets, flipped a switch, and turned some dials. In a few seconds the cracked plaintive voice familiar to everyone who had been within range of a radio or TV set, which to millions of fanatical adorers was capable of eliciting every nuance of response from guffaws to tears, came through the multiple speakers a little louder than life.
“I’m not going to speculate on Paul’s reasons for doing what he did. Let the people who don’t really care have a field day with their guesses and gossip.” This was the dignified, the earnest Ziggy, who sometimes came out for a curtain speech in which he begged people to give generously to the Red Cross, or to remember an orphanage at Christmas, his plea made all the more cogent by that hoarse and helpless delivery, reminding them that under the motley of a clown might beat the heart of a frustrated crusader. “Everyone knows that I’ve always maintained that an artist’s private life should be private — that after he delivers his manuscript, or walks off the stage, the world should let him alone. Paul never short-changed any of us who depended on the material he gave us. But his own life was his own show — to coin a phrase — and if he chose to finish the script where he did, we haven’t any right to ask why.” Here came the gravelly catch in the throat, burlesqued by a hundred night-club comedians in search of something foolproof to caricature. “The only sponsor he had to please is the One who’ll eventually check on all our ratings... How does that sound?” Another voice, less readily identifiable as Damian’s said, “Pretty lustrous, Ziggy. I only wonder if that last touch isn’t extra cream on the cereal—”
Damian flicked the switch again, silencing the record, and said himself, “We ran it through a couple of times before the newsboys got here, of course. With a property as big as Ziggy, you can’t shoot off the cuff.”
“May we quote you?” Velston asked.
“I’d be wasting my breath if I asked you not to, so I only hope you’ll do it correctly. I shall repeat my exact words to your charming collaborator, as a precaution.” Damian glanced around, but Ted Colbin had edged Lois away to the other side of the room, where they seemed to be talking very intensely but inaudibly. He turned back to the Saint, with a disarmingly juvenile kind of naughtiness sparkling in his eyes. “Are you shocked, Mr Templar? I’ve admitted that Ziggy Zaglan’s interview on his brother’s death was rehearsed like any other public appearance. Isn’t that a sensational revelation?”
“You must wait till I try out a few answers to that,” said the Saint amiably.
Outside, the group of men by the pool was breaking up. They began to straggle away towards some exit which bypassed the living room. One figure was left behind, the smallest of them all, a somber silhouette in dark-blue slacks and polo shirt gazing into the sunset.
Then, a moment after the last reporter disappeared, the lone little man turned and began walking towards the house, with increasing briskness, until he rolled aside one of the screen doors and almost bounced into the living room.
“It was all right,” he wheezed. “It played like an organ. I could feel it. But I need a drink.”
His skin was tanned to the healthy nut-brown which was everything that the Florida Chamber of Commerce could ask of a professional resident with a yacht and a pool, but his build was a trifle pudgy and he had a little pot which he did not try to disguise. In fact, it was an asset when he slumped his shoulders and assumed the dejected question-mark stance which was one of his most effective mannerisms. His face could best be compared to that of a dyspeptic dachshund. He had hair that looked like the first attempt of an untalented wigmaker. This is not to say that he had a comedian’s natural advantage of looking funny. He looked like a mess, a rather unpleasant mess with a bad disposition, whose hangdog air was a shield that only served to ward off the indignation of bigger and better men. This at least was the screen personality that the American public had taken to its bosom in one of those absolutely implausible weddings of mother instinct and perversity which have been the Waterloo of every would-be prognosticator of the entertainment market. This was Ziggy Zaglan, in whom almost nobody could find any requisite of success except that millions of people were crazy about him.
He was halfway to the portable bar when he noticed Simon and skidded to a stop. He elected to play this in dumb show, with pointing finger and interrogative eyebrows.
“Mr Simon Templar,” Damian said. “Your summer replacement.”
“I brought him,” Lois said, detaching herself from Colbin. “He wanted to meet you,” she said rather lamely.