One was answered as Simon drove cautiously to the corner of Mary Bannerman’s block. As he was about to turn, almost on the stroke of eight, she came out of the front door with Jeff Peterson, holding his arm, wearing a cocktail dress. Peterson wore a suit instead of the turtle-necked sweater in which Simon had seen him before.
“Going out to celebrate?” the Saint asked silently.
He pushed down the accelerator of his car and sped past the intersection. He circled the block and parked. Judging from their clothes, the happy couple were going to be amusing themselves rather than indulging in nefarious activities which would make them worth following. Simon thought he could learn much more by a visit to Mary Bannerman’s apartment while she was out. He walked around to the building’s front door and climbed the stairs to her flat.
As he made short work of her lock — whose type he had noted when he was there before — he thought over her role in the situation. The fact that she had been leaving with Peterson did not prove conclusively that she was in on the entire plot, but it seemed to rule out any presumption of her total innocence. If she had only decided to stand the Saint up, she would surely have left earlier, so as not to risk running into him as she was leaving and he was arriving. It seemed irrefutable that she had known for some time that Simon Templar was not going to be able to keep his date with her, and that she could safely and openly go out with Peterson without any chance of complications.
The lock submitted easily, and Simon stepped into the flat. A table lamp had been left on. The bed was still rumpled, the teddy bear still in place. The rooms smelled of the last sweet flurry of female departure: bubble bath, talcum powder, perfume.
The Saint put Venus out of his mind and tried to concentrate on Mars. The sooner he brought this little war in which he had become involved to a conclusion, the sooner he could be enjoying himself — if not with Mary Bannerman, with someone like her in all the ways that really counted.
He walked straight to the shelf on which the girl had claimed she had left Liskard’s correspondence. There, where she had left it, was the white envelope which had fallen to the floor when Simon had visited her the previous evening. In it were keys, just as she had said, but one was not designed for her wardrobes or for any other domestic stronghold. It was attached to a metal circle with “Victoria 571” stamped into it. Simon recognized it immediately as the key to a baggage locker at Victoria Station.
Before he left Mary Bannerman’s flat he made a systematic search of her property and found that her teddy bear seemed to be stuffed with nothing more interesting than cotton, that she had a talent for eliciting torrid letters from men other than Thomas Liskard, and that she did, indeed, seem to be a bit short in the fur and jewel department for such a successful girl with so many rich friends.
Unfortunately, there was no evidence of any interest in Thomas Liskard on her part, or on that of her pen pals. The Saint was going to have to make another trip through the cold foggy night.
8
The trip to Victoria Station and back to Mary Bannerman’s flat could have taken considerably less time if the Saint had not decided to have a peaceful dinner on the way. At Victoria he went directly to the baggage lockers — banks of large metal doors along one wall of a corridor — and found number 571. The key he had brought with him opened it, and there inside was one large brown leather suitcase. Without hesitation he took the bag, closed the locker, and walked like any busy and purposeful citizen out into the street.
He doubted that any of Mary’s associates were keeping watch over the locker, but it was quite possible that one of Chief Inspector Teal’s minions had been assigned to keep watch over the Saint. For that reason he took a devious course away from the station area, making quite certain that nobody was following him. Then he parked three blocks from the apartment house where Mary Bannerman lived, left his car, and walked the rest of the way carrying the suitcase. As he had anticipated, the door of her flat was still unlocked, as he had left it, and she had not come home. He went inside, latched the door behind him, and put the suitcase on the bed.
The bag was not locked. Simon flipped the catches and opened the lid. There in a thick wrapping of mink and silver fox was a modest Ali Baba’s treasure of jeweled trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Whatever Mary Bannerman had done to deserve all that, she apparently had done very well. The Saint’s experienced eye told him that the quality of the whole lot was quite high, and a closer inspection confirmed. that all of it appeared to be her own. Her name was sewn on to the linings of the coats and her initials were engraved on much of the jewelry.
But much more interesting to Simon was the fact that what he had most hoped to find was not there. The suitcase contained only jewels and furs: there were no letters from Thomas Liskard.
Still, things were looking up. He had a lever and he had a place to apply its pressure — or would have, as soon as Mary Bannerman came home. Simon poured himself a glass of Benedictine from the well-stocked liquor cabinet, left the lights and furniture as they had been before he came, and went into the sleeping alcove and drew the concealing curtains tightly together. Then, with the suitcase opened beside him, and a selection of glossy magazines to pass the time, he propped himself up on the bed next to the teddy bear and sipped his Benedictine and waited.
About an hour later Mary Bannerman came home. To Simon’s surprise, Jeff Peterson did not come in with her. There were no voices to be heard through the closed curtains, and only one set of footsteps. She moved about her living room humming dance music to herself, completely unsuspecting of the surprise that waited in her bed. She ran some water in the kitchen, then, unzipping the back of her black cocktail dress with one hand she threw open the curtains that hid her sleeping alcove with the other.
Her reaction to the tableau of Saint, suitcase and teddy bear was worthy of a Mack Sennett classic. She froze, stopped unzipping, opened her mouth, and she seemed to have difficulty keeping her eyes in their sockets.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said the Saint. “Won’t you sit on Father Christmas’s knee? He’s brought you some lovely toys.”
Mary Bannerman at first seemed more likely to collapse than to sit on anybody’s knee, but the first shock wore off. She closed her mouth and removed a trembling hand from the zipper on her dress.
“Speechless?” Simon asked.
She tried not to see the suitcase of jewels and furs.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to say.
“Keeping our dinner date.” He looked at his watch. “You’re a little late. Three and a half hours, to be exact.”
“I... couldn’t make it.”
Simon swung his legs off the bed and stood up. His tone became more brittle.
“You thought I couldn’t make it, more likely.”
She shook her head feebly. Then she seemed to pull her thoughts together a little and realized she had a right to take the offensive.
“What are you doing here?”
Simon waved a hand at the suitcase.
“I not only steal from the rich and give to the poor, I return stolen property to lovely young girls... in return for small favors, of course.”
She could no longer keep herself from looking at the contents of the suitcase. Her brief spell of bravado was past. Her face looked frightened and young, and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. She sat on the edge of the bed as if her legs would no longer hold her up.
“What are you going to do?” she asked tremulously.