Saint and the Fiction Makers Read Free Page B

was asking, ‘what do you like best about playing Charles Lake?’
    ‘The money.’
    The interviewer was taken aback by Savage’s brash honesty, which had been observed to increase after his payment for each successive film, and turned his attention to Carol Henley.
    ‘Carol, it’s said that you’re being stereotyped in the Lake pictures. What comment do you have on that?’
    Carol’s smile never faltered as she hesitated in order to puzzle over the question’s meaning.
    ‘Well, goodness,’ she finally wriggled with breathless rapture, ‘thank you very much!’
    Simon smiled and went to see how his new acquaintance was doing. He gleaned from the rather bellicose tones of the interviewing reporters, even before he could hear their questions, that they were finding the publisher unco-operative.
    ‘Well, Mr. Hugoson,’ he found one saying, ‘will you at least tell us whether or not Mr. Klein has another Lake book on the drawing board.’
    ‘On the writing table, more probably,’ Hugoson replied, in what apparently was an effort to lighten the mood of the inquisition.
    The effort failed, as the pettish tone of another reporter attested.
    ‘Are we to take that as an answer, Mr. Hugoson, or just as a quip?’
    Hugoson’s thinning smile withdrew beneath his rectangular moustache.
    ‘Mr. Klein is working on a new Lake book,’ he said precisely.
    ‘Will it be made into a film?’
    Hugoson’s smile poked its nose tentatively out of the brush.
    ‘I fervently hope so.’
    A new reporter leaned forward to make himself heard.
    ‘How is it Amos Klein never attends these premieres?’
    ‘I can’t comment on that.’
    ‘But he does live in England, doesn’t he?’
    ‘I can’t comment on Mr. Klein’s private life. I’m very sorry.’
    There was a brief crescendo of protest from the men of the press, to whom the publisher’s reticence on the subject of his prize author was nothing new.
    ‘Surely there’s no harm in telling us something about him, Mr. Hugoson!’
    ‘You must have met Klein personally,’ another said. ‘What’s he like?’
    Is he married?’
    ‘Could you just give us some idea of his age?’
    ‘And why all this mystery about him …’
    Hugoson, looking badgered as well as badgerish, shook his head stubbornly.
    ‘No comment.’
    ‘Is the secrecy just a gimmick to arouse public interest?’
    ‘No comment.’
    As the reporters shouted more questions, all of which received the publisher’s ‘no comment’, the Saint noticed that Carol Henley was darting a helpless look at him over her beautiful bare shoulder as she was whisked away by a whole tribe of retainers towards a waiting limousine. She said something to Starnmeck, the producer, who gestured over the heads of the crowd for Simon to join them. It was at that point that Saintly dedication to the discovery and exploration of mysterious byways had to stand and do battle with the more purely human desire to see more of Carol Henley’s bare shoulders. But bare female shoulders of acceptable age are not terribly different one from another, particularly when one has enjoyed as many varied views of them as Simon Templar had; anyhow, Carol Henley’s were not likely to change radically in the next hour or two, whereas Finlay Hugoson’s apparently desperate need to communicate might.
    Even so, Simon felt with some regret that he had very possibly chosen the drabber of the two alternatives as he waved good-bye to Carol and Starnmeck and saw the great gleaming black bubble of their car top lose itself in a swirl of other metallic bubbles. He had no logical reason to believe that his contact with Hugoson would expose him to anything more intriguing than some unoriginal recital of a businessman’s woes. But the Saint would never have survived and prospered so spectacularly if he had not possessed some of the qualities of gambler and clairvoyant, and tonight he was willing to chance the exceptional physique of Carol Henley against the