The Saint Sees It Through Read Free Page B

a
psychiatrist from being tall and spare and erect, with a full
head of prematurely white and silky hair that contrasted with his smooth
taut-skinned face. There was no intellectual impossibility about his wide
thin-lipped mouth, his long thin aristocratic nose, or the piercing gray eyes
so fascinatingly deep-set between high cheekbones and heavy black brows. It was no
reflection on his professional qualifications if he hap pened to
look exactly like any Hollywood casting director’s or hypochondriac
society matron’s conception of a great psychi atrist. But to the Saint’s unfortunate
skepticism it was just too good to be true, and he had thought so ever since he
had ob served the doctor sitting in austere
solitude like himself.
    Now he had other reasons for disliking Dr.
Zellermann, and they were not at all conjectural.
    For it rapidly
became obvious that Dr. Ernst Zellermann’s personal behavior
pattern was not confined to the high planes of ascetic detachment which one
would have expected of such a perfectly groomed mahatma. On the contrary, he was quite brazenly a man who liked to see thigh to thigh
with his companions. He was the inveterate layer of hands on knees, the persistent mauler of arms, shoulders, or any other
flesh that could be conveniently touched. He liked to put heads together and mutter into ears. He leaned and clawed,
in fact, in spite of his crisply
patriarchal appearance, exactly like any tired businessman who hoped that his wife would believe that he really
had been kept late at the office.                     
    Simon Templar sat and watched every scintilla
of the per formance, completely ignoring Cookie’s progressively
less sub tle encores, with a concentrated and increasing
resentment which made him fidget in his chair.
    He tried, idealistically, to remind himself
that he was only there to look around, and certainly not to make himself
con spicuous. The
argument seemed a little watery and uninspired. He tried, realistically, to remember that he could easily have made similar gestures himself, given the
opportunity; and why was it romantic
if he did it and revolting if somebody else did? This was manifestly a cerebral cul-de-sac. He almost persuaded himself that his ideas about Avalon Dexter were
merely pyra mided on the impact of
her professional personality, and what gave him any right to imagine that the
advances of Dr. Zellermann might be unwelcome?—especially if there might be a
diamond ring or a nice piece of fur at the inevitable conclusion of them. And this very clearly made no sense at
all.
    He watched the girl deftly shrug off one paw
after another, without ever being able to feel that she was merely
showing a mechanical adroitness designed to build up ultimate
desire. He saw her shake her head vigorously in response to
whatever sug gestions
the vulturine wizard was mouthing into her ear, with out being able to wonder if her negative was merely a technical postponement. He estimated, as coldbloodedly as
it was possible for him to do it, in that twilight where no one else
might have been able to see anything, the
growing strain that crept into her face, and the mixture of shame and anger
that clouded her eyes as she fought off Zellermann as unobtrusively as
any woman could have done… .
    And he still asked nothing more of the night
than a passable excuse to demonstrate his distaste for Dr. Ernst
Zellermann and all his works.
    And this just happened to be the
heaven-saved night which would provide it.
    As Cookie reached the climax of her last and
most lurid ditty, and with a sense of supremely fine predestination,
the Saint saw
Avalon Dexter’s hand swing hard and flatly at the learned doctor’s smoothly shaven cheek. The actual sound of the slap was drowned in the ecstatic shrieks of
the cognoscenti who were anticipating
the tag couplet which their indetermi nate
ancestors had howled over in the First World War; but to Simon Templar, with his eyes on nothing