The Saint to the Rescue Read Free

ineffectually.
    “Don’t go away, Otis,” he said from
the door. “Just in case your pals haven’t run out of cute
tricks, or in case we might have to pull some quaint switch of our own, it
might be clever not to give anyone a chance to prove you’ve been in your
room lately. Who knows—we might even dare them to prove that that
picture wasn’t taken years before you got married, or even that it’s your
picture at all. Anyhow, wait till I bring you the first
bulletin.”
    He was gone before he could be delayed by any
further argument.
    The elevator was piloted by the same jockey
who had taken him up only a little while ago, an elderly individual with
drooping shoulders and an air of comatose resignation to the infinite
monotony of endlessly identical vertical voyages. He revealed no
curiosity or interest whatsoever in why the Saint should want to
ride down again at such an hour: one felt that he had long since been
anesthetized against any thing that could happen in a hotel during a
convention, and perhaps at any other time.
    “Tell me,” said the Saint, with
elaborately casual candor. “If I wanted to play a joke on one of
the fellows—a friend of mine—could you let me into his room?”
    The man did not even turn his head. In fact,
for a number of seconds he appeared to have been afflicted with deaf ness, until
at the ultimate limit of plausible cogitation he wrung from himself a
single word of decision:
    “Depends.”
    “On what?”
    The instant the words were out of his mouth,
Simon knew he had been too fast. The man pointedly made him wait
even longer for the next reply, as a form of corrective discipline.
    “Plenty.”
    The lift shuddered to a stop at the ground
floor, and the gate rumbled open. The pilot held it, waiting for the
Saint to disembark, with such a total lack of eagerness to pursue the
conversation that except for his minimal movements it would have been easy
to believe that he was stuffed.
    Simon got out, and followed the direction of
a neon arrow which proclaimed that it pointed to The Rowdy Room. This proved to
be a depressingly under-lighted cavern decorated in blood red and
funeral black, with a dance floor large enough for a minuet by four midgets and an
orchestra alcove furnished with an upright
piano and stands for two other instrumentalists,
all of whom had obviously racked up all the overtime they wanted and called it
a day. The only rowdiness left was
being provided by a quartet of die-hards in one corner, two of whom were foggily listening to some obscure
argument being loudly elaborated by the third, while the fourth was frankly falling asleep. The bartender, list lessly polishing glasses, accepted the Saint’s
arrival with a disinterested stare
which barely suggested that if Simon wanted
anything he could ask for it.
    Simon ordered a Peter Dawson on the rocks,
and after he had tasted it, he said: “Where’s the gal who takes
the pictures?”
    “Norma? She ain’t here.”
    “That settles one thing,” said the
Saint mildly. “I was wondering if she’d become invisible.”
    The barman squinted at him suspiciously, and
said: “She went home early. Had a headache or sump’n.”
    “Would you know where I can get in touch
with her?”
    “She’ll be here tomorrow.”
    “That’s the trouble—I may be leaving in
the afternoon, much earlier than she’d come to work. I wanted to see her about some pictures that were taken the other night.”
    “Well, whyncha say so?” demanded the
bartender ag- grievedly.
    He fumbled through some litter beside the
cash register, and turned back with a card. The ornate printing on it could be
reduced to V ERE B ALTON , Photography, and an ad dress, 685 Scoden Street.
    “ Ithought you
called her Norma,” Simon said.
    “I did. Balton is the guy who has the
concession. She works for him.”
    “Where is Scoden Street?”
    “About five-six blocks from here, on the left off of
Geary.”
    “And what’s her name?”
    “I tolja, Norma,”