Saint Steps In Read Free Page A

him the
address of Frank Imberline. It was one of the low numbers on Scott Circle.
    Simon Templar frowned thoughtfully.
    From the address, it was evident that Mr. Imberline might indeed be agentleman of some
importance, for Scott Circle is the center of one of the best residential sections of Washing ton, and the list of householders there
reads like a snob hostess’s
dream.
    Madeline
Gray had told him that she had an appointment with Imberline at eight. He checked his strap watch
and saw that it was close to
eight now. Still, Imberline—or at least an Imberline
had just entered the hotel dining room, ob viously bent on food. For a fairly prominent
bureaucrat to ig nore an
appointment was not unheard of in Washington, and that might be the answer. Or Frank Imberline might
have a brother or a cousin or a
namesake who possessed some Gov ernment job and
its accompanying entourage.
    Still
… Simon wished that he had questioned Madeline about the appointment, and how she had arranged it.
For a Government official to
arrange an appointment at his home, in the
evening, sounded a little strange.
    He
left the hotel again and acquired a taxi by the subtle expedient of paying an extortionate bribe to a driver
who maintained that he was waiting for a customer who had just stepped into the hotel for a moment.
With the taxi in mo tion,
Simon sat forward and watched the road all the time with an accelerating impatience that turned into an
odd feel-i ng of emptiness as he
began to realize that the time was ap proaching and passing when they should have overtaken the girl. Unless she had taken a different route, or picked up
a taxi on the way, or …
    Or.
    Then they were entering Scott Circle, and stopping at the number he had given the driver. He
didn’t see another taxi at the door, or anywhere in the vicinity.
    He got out and paid his fare. The front of the house seemed very dark, except for a light shining
through the transom above
the door. That was explainable, he told himself, if this really was a romantic tryst, if there was another Imberline
be sides the one in the hotel dining room,
but it seemed to the Saint to be an odd set of circumstances under which
a bureau crat would carry on a conference
concerning synthetic rubber.
    To the Saint, direct action was always better than dim speculation. He rang the bell.
    The butler said: “No, suh. Mr. Imberline ain’t to home.”
    “He is to me,” said the Saint cheerfully. “I’ve got an
appointment with him. The name is Gray.”
    “Ah’m
sorry, suh, but Mr. Imberline ain’t here. He ain’t been back since he left this mawnin’, an’ he told the
cook he was eatin’ out.”
    Simon pursed his lips wryly.
    “I guess he
forgot his appointment,” he said. “I guess, being such a busy man, he forgets a lot of them.”
    “No suh!” said the butler loyally. “Not Mr. Imberline, suh! He makes a date to be somewheres
an’ he gits there. Mebbe
you got the wrong evenin’, suh. Mebbe it’s tomorrer you’s supposed to have your ‘pointment.”
    “Perhaps,” the Saint said easily. “I may have mixed up
my times. Tell me, did a young lady named Gray call here this evening? I rather expected to meet her here.”
    The woolly white head moved negatively.
    “Ain’t
nobody called here, suh,” the butler said.
    “Then
I must have the dates mixed up.”
    He turned away from the door, saying things silently to himself. He
addressed himself with a searing minuteness of detail which would almost
certainly have been a cue for mayhem if it had been done by anybody else.
    There was still
no other cab in sight.
    He turned south on 23rd Street, and he had reached the in tersection of Q Street before he began
to wonder where he was going
or what good it was likely to do. He paused uncer tainly on the corner, looking towards the bridge over
Rock Creek Park. A dozen alternatives
chased through his mind, and so many of them must be wrong and so few of them offered anything to pin much