"Then of course you'd get a wrong impression. The class of people you find in those places — in Miami Beach and Palm Beach and New York night clubs — they're a class that this war is going to wipe out completely. They're dead now, but they don't know it."
He settled back confidently, efficiently, and took a cigar from the box which the unobtrusive butler was passing. He lighted it and tasted it approvingly, and said: "I'm glad I remembered to keep some of these locked up."
"Mice, or pixies?" Simon inquired with a smile.
"Just Andrea's friends," Quennel said tolerantly, "She throws parties for them up here all the time, and they go through the place like locusts. She had one only a week ago, and they drank up thirty cases of champagne, and that wasn't enough. They got into the cellar and finished half a dozen bottles of Benedictine that I was saving."
It came upon the Saint like the deep tolling of a bell in the far distance, like the resonance of an alarum that he had known about and been waiting for, and yet which had to be actually heard before it could compress the diaphragm and be felt throbbing out along the veins. But he knew now that this was it, and that it was the last of everything that had been missing, and that now he had seen all of his dragon, and he knew all the ugliness and the evil of it, and it was a bigger and sleeker dragon than he had ever seen before.
He bent his head for a moment so that it should not show in his face before he was quite ready, while it went through him like light would have gone through his eyes, and while he tapped and lighted a cigarette because he didn't feel like a cigar; and Hobart Quennel must have felt that there was an implied submission in his withdrawal, because Simon could feel it in the way Quennel settled himself back in his chair and told the butler to bring in some brandy, the solid good humor of a man who has made a rightful point. But when Simon looked up he looked at Andrea, who had been silent for a long while, only following the argument with her eyes from face to face. She was the one person who until then had been physically in the picture more than either of the two men, and yet she had never been a fixed part of the composition. He wondered whether she ever would have any such place, or whether it was only an insatiable artistic sense of his own that made him imagine that she should have found one.
He said lightly: "You must know a lot of gay people."
"I like parties," she said. She added, almost defiantly: "I like El Morocco, too, when I'm in the mood. I don't see how it's going to help us win the war if everybody sits around being miserable."
But she went on looking at the Saint, and her eyes were still like windows opening on to an empty sky. You could look through them and out and out and there was still nothing but the clear pale blue and nothing.
Quennel smiled indulgently, and said: "It's pretty cool tonight. Why don't you go and get a fire started in the library, and we'll join you in a few minutes."
She got up.
"Don't forget you had something you wanted to tell Simon," she said.
"No — I was just thinking of that."
She had to look at the Saint again before she went out.
"Daddy always wants to have his own way," she said rather vaguely. "Don't let him keep you here for ever."
"I won't," said the Saint, with a last upward glance. Then the door closed behind her, and he was alone with one last sudden disturbing question in his mind, but quite alone, like a fighter when the gong sounds and the seconds disappear through the ropes. He knew that this was the gong, and the preliminary routines were over; and he knew just what he was fighting, and all his senses were keyed and calm and ice-cold. He turned to Quennel just as easily as he had played every waiting line of the scene, and murmured: "Andrea did say you had something to tell me."
Quennel trimmed his cigar on the ashtray in front of him.
"Yes," he said. "Andrea told me you were taking an interest in Calvin Gray's synthetic rubber, so I thought you'd like to know. Gray showed me a sample of it not long ago, as I think Walter told you. I had a report on it from my chief chemist today." He settled even more safely and positively in his chair. "I'm afraid Calvin Gray is a complete fraud."
2
Simon's right hand rested on the table in front of him like a bronze casting set on stone, and he watched the smoke rising from his cigarette like a pastel stroke against the dark wood.
"You had a specimen analysed?"
"Yes. I don't know whether you know it, but that kind of analysis is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. In fact, a lot of people would say it was almost impossible. But I've got some rather unusual men on my staff."
"Did you ever see it made?" Simon asked slowly.
"No."
"I have."
"Can you describe the process?"
Simon gave a rough description of what he had seen. He knew that it was technically meaningless, and admitted it.
"That doesn't matter," said Quennel. "I'm sure you can see now where the trick was worked."
"You mean in the enclosed electrical gadget, I suppose."
"Naturally," Quennel chuckled. "I'm surprised that a fellow like you wouldn't have caught on to it at once. It's just a dressed-up topical version of all those old swindles where a man has a machine that prints dollar bills or a formula for making diamonds."
"But why should a man like Calvin Gray go in for anything like that?"
"Do you know Calvin Gray?"
"Not personally. But I've checked on him, and his reputation is quite special."
"But as I understand it, you haven't even seen him. All you've met is a pretty girl with a story."
"I've been to his house."
"How do you know it was his house? Because the girl took you there and told you it was?"
"Who's Who gives his residence as Stamford, Connecticut."
"I suppose that would be the only residence there."
The Saint's blue gaze was meditative and unimpassioned. He drew at his cigarette and set his wrist back on the table.
"Mind you," said Quennel, "I'm not necessarily suggesting that that's the answer. It could have been Gray's house. It could have been his daughter. It isn't impossible. It takes a big man to put over a big fraud."
"But why should Gray bother? I understood he was well enough off already."
"Who did you get that from? From the same source — from his daughter, or from the girl who said she was his daughter?"
"Yes," said the Saint thoughtfully.
Quennel trimmed his cigar again.
"Suppose it's what you were told from a good source. In business, that isn't always enough. A lot of men have had big reputations, and have been generally believed to be pretty well off, and have been well off — and still they've ended up in jail. I'm sure you can remember plenty of them yourself. Famous stockbrokers, attorneys, promoters… Not that I'm committing myself about this case. I don't know enough about it. Maybe Calvin Gray would be the most surprised man in the world if he knew about it. He might be away somewhere — lecturing, for instance — and his house might have been broken into and used by some gang of crooks. Even that's been done before. I don't have to tell you about these things. The only thing I think you ought to know is that this synthetic rubber story is a fraud."
Simon Templar took one more measured breath at his cigarette, and said: "I don't know how much you claim to know, but you may have heard that in Washington night before last there was an attempt to kidnap Madeline Gray, or the girl who calls herself Madeline Gray. Mr. Devan was there."
Devan nodded.
"That's right. Only I didn't know it was a kidnaping attempt, until Andrea gave us the idea after she'd talked to you."
"If it ever was a kidnaping attempt," said Quennel. "Or couldn't it have been part of the same build-up, staged for your benefit, to help make the case look important to you?"