“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“Apparently somebody who’s in the process of making an ass of himself,” Simon admitted. “Maybe I should go out and come in again.”
“Maybe you should just go out, period!” said the girl inhospitably.
“Who is this?” the man asked her.
“How should I know?” she snapped. “Do something — don’t just stand there.”
Simon held his ground at the threshold and raised both hands in an appeal for understanding.
“I was about to knock,” he explained, “when I heard what seemed to be very peculiar things happening in here.” He looked at the man. “Were you or were you not about to shoot this beautiful young lady?”
The beautiful young lady burst out laughing.
“You heard us rehearsing?” she cried. “Oh, that’s super, isn’t it, Jeff?”
Jeff showed considerably less good humor than the girl.
“Very funny,” he said without smiling. “And what were you doing listening at the door?”
Simon chose to ignore the provocative slant of the question and spoke directly to the girl.
“I was about to knock,” he said easily. “My assumptions don’t seem to be in very good working order this evening, but I assume you are Mary Bannerman.”
“I am,” she said. “And I assume you are Sir Galahad... or at least Don Quixote.”
The Saint sidestepped the implied question.
“And I assume you two are rehearsing a play.”
“Were” said the man pointedly. “You’d...”
Mary Bannerman interrupted, coming from the opposite wall to interpose herself between Simon and her original guest. She showed absolutely no self-consciousness over her distractingly revealing costume.
“Not a play,” she said. “A television commercial... for Sweetomints.”
“Sweetomints?” said the Saint, as if doubtfully repeating an improper word.
Mary Bannerman pouted her lips and looked with melting green eyes into a non-existent camera.
“Don’t try taking candy from this baby. Buy your own Sweetomints.”
“Never mind,” said the man called Jeff.
But Mary Bannerman ignored him.
“Right after he pulls the gun, I grab him and throw him over my head, and the whole bit ends with my sucking a Sweetomint. Of course I don’t really throw him over my head, but it looks that way, and of course it’s not Jeff, it’s some actor. Jeff’s the director.”
“I see.”
“Well, I don’t see,” Jeff said impatiently to the girl. “Why are you standing around jabbering to this character when he won’t even tell you who he is?”
“Because this is my apartment,” she came back huffily. “And—”
“And maybe her taste in men is improving,” said the Saint.
There was every sign of an imminent explosion, but Mary Bannerman stopped it.
“Wait a minute, Jeff.” She looked at Simon seriously. “If you did come to see me, you’d better tell me who you are and why you’re here.”
“My name is Simon Templar,” he said, “and my reason for coming to see you is confidential.”
He glanced meaningfully at the other man.
“Good heavens,” Mary Bannerman said with a sophisticated lack of vehemence. “Simon Templar... the Saint. Are you kidding?”
Simon shook his head.
“Don’t you see the halo?” he asked.
“No, but now that you mention it, the face is familiar.”
“Saint?” the director asked blankly.
“You colonials,” Mary Bannerman said to him. “You’re really out of it. Haven’t you ever heard of Simon Templar?”
“No.”
“Fair enough,” said the Saint. “I’ve never heard of you, either.”
“This is Jeff Peterson,” the girl said.
There was no handshake, and Simon decided to get down to business.
“May I speak to you alone, Miss Bannerman? It is important.”
Mary Bannerman looked hesitantly at Peterson.
“Well, Jeff is...” she began, but Peterson interrupted her.
“If you’re going to talk to him you might as well get it over with,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got to get an early start in the morning.”
“Fine,” said the Saint. “Good night.”
He had taken as instant a dislike to Peterson as Peterson had clearly taken to him, and he had very little desire to hide it. It was one of those moods that seemed best given free rein, especially since Mary Bannerman appeared to be completely enjoying the conflict.
“I’ll see you, darling,” she said to Peterson.
“Right,” snapped the other. “Good night.”
She closed the door behind him and turned to the Saint.
“Won’t you have a seat, Mr Templar?” she asked. “Drink?”
“Neither, thank you,” he answered. “I’ve come here a little late for a social call — as pleasant as that would be.”
He preferred to stay on his feet for more reasons than one. If Mary Bannerman was in on the blackmail plot against Liskard, Simon wanted to be as mobile as possible in case of a sudden outbreak of hostilities. Standing, he could also get a more completely panoramic view of the room and the adjoining kitchen and sleeping sections — the latter of which consisted of an alcove separated from the main room by half-drawn gold curtains. On a rumpled double bed sat a teddy bear large enough to have frightened off a moderately muscled lion. The rest of the furniture was new and expensive. Most of the walnut shelf space was devoted to pop records, and the only reading matter seemed to be magazines with pictures of Mary Bannerman on the covers.
“I must say my heart’s going pitapat,” she said, perching on the edge of a chair. “If this isn’t a social call, what is it?”
“I’ve just come from Thomas Liskard.”
Mary Bannerman’s face — which until then had worn a provocative smile that apparently was the big gun in her public relations arsenal — went blank for an instant, and then hardened into a scowl. She stood up abruptly.
“No friend of Tom Liskard’s is a friend of mine.”
“We’re not friends, exactly,” Simon said without the slightest ripple in his own calm.
“He sent you here?”
Simon was deliberately holding back to see if she would betray anything.
“In a way,” he said noncommittally.
His cat-and-mouse game was having part of its intended effect, even if it was not producing any information. Mary Bannerman’s eyes were bright with impatient anger.
“Why?” she demanded sharply.
“I think you know.”
“I do not know! I haven’t even seen that — that two-faced rat for years. So come to the point, won’t you? Just hearing his name makes me want to fumigate the place.”
Simon leaned casually back against one of the shelves of records.
“If you’re so anxious to forget him, why did you keep his letters?”
Her angry face showed nothing new but a trace of puzzlement.
“How did you know anything about it in the first place... and in the second place, what business is it of yours or his?”
Simon’s lips wore a faint and he was sure very irritating smile.
“I think the Prime Minister was bound to develop a certain interest in his old correspondence with you when he got a letter from somebody threatening to show the whole lot to his wife and the newspapers.”
“That’s a lie, or a bluff, or something...”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, because I still have the letters.”
Simon gave her a slightly apologetic look as he answered: “That doesn’t prove the threat was a lie or a bluff, I’m afraid.”
She glared.