The Saint had an odd ludicrous feeling of being a feed man, of offering properly baited hooks to fish who had personally chosen the bait. But he had to hear all the answers; he had to see the whole scene played through.
"You wouldn't have heard it," he said, "but it seems as if Calvin Gray really was kidnaped."
"Really?"
"At any rate, either he or the man who is being talked about is missing." Simon paused casually. "I've already called in the FBI about it.".
There was silence for a moment. It had a curious negative quality, as if it were more than a mere incidental absence of sound and movement, as if it would have absorbed and neutralised any sound or movement there had been. "What about the girl?" Devan asked; and Simon met his crinkly deep-set eyes.
"Since this afternoon," he said expressionlessly, "she seems to be missing too."
There was only a barely perceptible flicker of stillness this time, as if a movie projector had stuck on the same frame for two or three extra spins of the shutter. And then Hobart Quennel moved a little and drank some brandy, and raised one shoulder to settle his forearm more comfortably on the arm of his chair.
"Probably it was your calling in the FBI that did that," he said. "That would have been a complication they weren't expecting."
"Why?"
"You always had a reputation — forgive me, I'm not being personal, but after all we all read newspapers — for being a sort of lone wolf. So the last thing they'd have expected was that you'd take your troubles to any of the authorities. In fact, I'm a little surprised about it myself."
"These aren't quite the same times," said the Saint quietly. "And perhaps a few things have changed for me as they have for everyone else."
Quennel laughed a little, his sound sure confident laugh.
"Anyway," he said, "probably you scared them, and now they're organising a nice neat getaway. You can take it that the whole deal was crooked from the beginning anyhow, whatever the minor details were… Very possibly the real Calvin Gray will turn up in a day or two, and be as puzzled as anyone… It doesn't really make a lot of difference, does it?"
"It makes a difference," said the Saint; and his voice was as even as a calm arctic bay, and the same invisible chill nestled over it. He said: "I go after crooks."
Hobart Quennel's slight deep engaging chuckle came again, like a breath from the South, and now it was warmer and surer than ever, and there was no uncertainty at all left behind in it, and it could soothe you and blot the search and the questioning and the fight out of you like the breeze rustling through southern palms; and it was right, it had to be right, because nothing could be wrong that was so friendly and permanent and sure.
"I know," he said. "But you just said it yourself. These aren't the same times, and everybody changes. This Gray business will take care of itself now. If you've already called in the FBI, it's sure to. It's in good hands. It's none of my business, but I can't really see you wasting any more time on it. It wouldn't do you justice."
"What would?" Simon asked. Quennel turned his cigar again.
"Well, frankly, I've read a lot about you and I've often thought that you weren't doing yourself justice, even before the war. Not that I haven't enjoyed your exploits. But it's always seemed to me that a man with your mind and your abilities could have achieved so much more… You know, sometimes I've wondered whether a man like you mayn't have been suffering from some mistaken ideas about business. I don't mean selling things over the counter in a hardware store. I mean the kind of business that I do."
"Perhaps I don't know enough about it."
"I assure you it can be just as great an adventure, in its own way, as anything you've ever done. A great corporation is like a little empire. Its relations with other corporations and industries are like the relations between empires. You have diplomacy, alliances, feuds, espionage, and wars. Quite often you have to step right through ordinary laws and restrictions. That's one of the things I meant by the necessity for a strong executive class. I think if you go into it you'll find that they are really only paralleling your own attitude. There have to be a great many petty general regulations for the conduct of the majority of people, just as there have to be for children. It's just as necessary for there to be parents, and people who can step above the ordinary regulations. I think you'd find yourself quite at home in that class. I think that Business could employ all your brilliance, all your charm, all your audacity, all your generalship, all your — shall I say — ruthlessness."
"You could be right," said the Saint, with a smile that barely touched the edges of his mouth. "But who would give me a job?"
"I would," said Quennel.
The Saint gazed at him.
"You would?"
"Yes," Quennel said deliberately. "To be quite truthful, when I told Andrea to ask you over, I was thinking about that much more than about the Gray business. Let's say it was one of my crazy ideas, or one of my hunches. You don't get very far in business without having those ideas. I believe right now a man like you could be worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to me."
Simon drew his glass closer to him and cupped it in his hand, the stem between his second and third fingers, making gentle movements that swirled the golden spirit softly around and warmed it in the curve of the bowl.
This, then, was all of it, and all the answers and explanations were there. And he knew quite certainly now, as his intuition had always told him, that there was no ordinary way to fight it. As Quennel had said, there were times when you had to step right through ordinary laws and restrictions. There was a world outside the orderly lawful world of average people, and to fight anyone there you had to move completely into his world, or else he was as untouchable and invulnerable as if he were in another dimension.
The Saint smiled a little, very sardonically and deep inside himself, at the passing thought of how far he would have been likely to get if he had tried to fight Hobart Quennel from any footing on the commonplace world. Even without his own peculiar reputation by commonplace legal standards, he knew how ridiculous the accusations he would have had to make would have seemed when thrown against such a man as Quennel. It wouldn't be merely because of Quennel's wealth. It would be because his standing, his respect, his utterly genuine confidence and authority and rightness and integrity would throw off anything the Saint could say like armor would throw off spitballs.
It was a good thing, Simon thought, that he also could move in dimensions where such considerations were only words.
He finished his brandy, enjoying the full savor of the last sip, and put the glass down, and said pleasantly: "That's very flattering. But I have another idea."
"What is that?"
Unhurriedly, almost idly, the Saint put his right hand under his coat, under his left arm, and brought out the automatic that rode there. He leveled it diagonally across the table, letting the aim of its dark blunt sleek muzzle touch Quennel and Devan in turn.
"This is what I was talking about before," he said. "About the war being close to home. The war is here with you now, Quennel. I came here for Calvin Gray and his daughter, and unless I get them I promise you some of us are going to die most unexpectedly."
The only trouble was, as the Saint reckoned it afterwards, that even then he still hadn't realized deeply enough how closely Quennel's — or at least Devan's — fourth-dimensional mentality might coincide with his own.
He looked at their rigid immobility, at Quennel's face still bland and bony and Walter Devan's face heavy and grim, both of them staring at him soberly and calculatingly but without any abrupt panic; and then he saw Devan's eyes flick fractionally upwards to a point in space just above his head.