She broke off abruptly and gnawed her lip.
"Go on," said Simon pleasantly. "I'm interested in the saga of The Imberline."
She moved her hands again.
"Oh, it's just rubber trade talk," she said. "Something you couldn't possibly be interested in."
"Suppose I hear it and decide for myself."
"Well — Father doesn't like Imberline, and he may be prejudiced — probably as. But he maintains Imberline is nothing more than a straw man for a syndicate of unscrupulous men who wangled his WPB appointment in order to further their own ends. I told you that Father's an individualist. I suppose that's a nice way of hinting that he's a near-eccentric. Some inventors are. He's frightfully bitter against the people in Washington who gave him the runaround, and he insists that certain interests are trying to smother his process in order to build up their own business during the war and, more selfishly, after the war."
"And your father, I take it, has only the good of the people at heart."
She looked down at her drink and he spoke swiftly.
"I'm sorry," he said. "A few days of Washington and I find myself afflicted with cynicism."
"It's all right," she said in a low voice. "It was a logical question, after all."
She raised her eyes to his and met them squarely.
"Yes," she said stoutly. "He does have the good of the people at heart. He offered his invention to the Government, free and clear, but his offer never got to the men he wanted to give it to. Instead, he was interviewed by strangers whom he didn't like or trust. When he refused to give them his formula, when he insisted on being taken to the top man, the mysterious accidents began to happen."
"Does Imberline know of all this?"
She shrugged.
"Who knows? I've told you that he's not exactly the heavy intellectual. It might be that he's of the popular conviction that all inventors are pathological specimens who just want to waste his time. Heaven knows he must meet plenty of that type, too. Or it might be that somebody in his office does work for some other interests, as Father insists, and never lets him see anything or anybody they don't want him to see."
She leaned forward eagerly.
"But I'm sure that if I could get to him. I could make him listen, get him interested." She colored slightly. "Frank Imberline, you see, is one of those I'm-old-enough-to-be-your-father persons. I–I think he'll at least give me a hearing."
Simon eyed the girl soberly. Her face blazed suddenly.
"I know what you're thinking," she said. "But I can put up with that if it would help Father and — yes — help the war effort. It sounds corny, I know, but I really mean it."
Her eyes were beseeching.
"Couldn't you help me to see Imberline?" she pleaded.
He gazed at her soberly. She was not stupid in the way he had thought, but it appeared that there were certain of the facts of life that had not yet completely entered her awareness.
"Of course I will," he said kindly. "But it might take some time to get an audience with the pontiff. I'm not so well up In the routines for getting into the inner sanctum of a Washington panjandrum…"
The Saint had a faculty of hearing things without listening for them, and of correlating them with the instantaneous efficiency of a sorting machine, so that they were sharply classified in his mind almost before the mechanical part of his sense of hearing had finished processing them.
This particular sound was no more than the shyest ghost of a tap. But it told him, quite simply and clearly, that something had touched the door behind him.
He moved towards It on soundless feet, while his voice went on without the slightest change of pace or inflection.
"… I believe if you take a folding cot and a camp stove and park in his outer office for a few days you can sometimes get in a word with his secretary's secretary's secretary…"
Simon's hand touched the doorknob and whipped the door open in one movement of lightning suddenness. And with another movement that followed the first with the precision of a reciprocating engine, he shot out another hand to grasp the collar of the man who crouched outside with an article like a small old-fashioned ear-trumpet at his ear.
"Come in, chum," he said cordially. "Come in and introduce yourself. Are you the house detective, or were you just feeling lonely?"
The eavesdropper found himself whirled into the room, clutching wildly at the air in a vain effort to regain his balance.
Before he could recover himself, one of his arms was hauled up painfully behind his back, and he found himself helpless.
"Don't scream, darling," Simon said to the girl. "It's just a surprise visit from somebody who wanted to make certain he wasn't intruding before he knocked."
His free hand moved swiftly over his captive's clothes, but discovered no gun. Simon twisted the eavesdropper around and stared into his face. Then he relaxed his hold on the stranger's arm. The man cautiously stretched the twisted member and began rubbing it, half whimpering as he did.
"Know him?" asked the Saint of the girl.
Wordlessly, Madeline Gray shook her head.
"Not exactly the type," Simon remarked, cocking his head on one side. "He looks more like the typical bookkeeper who's due to get pensioned off with a nice gold watch for fifty years of uninterrupted service, and never a vacation or a day off for sickness."
The little man continued rubbing his arm, squeaking. He looked something like a careworn mouse in ill-fitting clothes, with shoe-button eyes and two rodent teeth that protruded over his lower lip. As the pain in his arm subsided, he worked hard to present a picture of outraged innocence.
"Sir!" he began.
"Even talks like a mouse," observed the Saint coolly.
"I'll have satisfaction for this," said the eavesdropper. "This is — this is scandalous! When a man is attacked in the hallway of a prominent hotel by a hoodlum who practically breaks his arm, it's time—"
"All right, Junior," the Saint said pleasantly. "We can do without all that. Just who are you and who do you work for?"
The little man drew himself up to his full height of about five feet three.
"I might ask you the same question," he retorted. "Who are you that you think you can attack—"
"Look," said the Saint. "I haven't much time, and although I'm usually an exceedingly patient sort of bloke, I'm slightly allergic to people who listen at my door with patent listening gadgets. Who sent you here and what did you expect to find out?"
"My name," squeaked the little man, "is Sylvester Angert. And I was not listening at your door. I was trying to find my own room. I thought this was it. I was about to try my key in the lock when you assaulted me."
"I see," said the Saint thoughtfully. "Of course, you didn't check the number of my room with the number on your key before you — er — prepared to try the lock. And you always have a good reason to listen to what might be going on inside your room before you enter. Is that it?"
The little man's eyes held Simon's firmly for a second and then slid away.
"If you must know," he said, with a spark of defiance, "that's exactly what I do. Listen, I mean. I've done that ever since I had an unpleasant experience in Milwaukee. I walked into my room, and I was held up by two thugs who were waiting for me there. I procured this little instrument to safeguard myself against just that sort of thing."
"Oh, Lord," said the Saint faintly. "Now I've heard everything."
"Believe it or not," said Sylvester Angert, "that's the truth."
"Suppose you show me your key," Simon suggested.
Mr. Angert probed his pockets and came up with the tabbed key and offered it to the Saint. Simon checked the number and frowned thoughtfully. Its last two digits corresponded with the number of Simon's room. Mr. Angert, it appeared, occupied the suite immediately above the Saint's.