The Saint to the Rescue Read Free Page A

said the other, with obviously
increasing impatience with so much
stupidity.
    “Nothing else?”
    “You tell ‘em Norma took the pitchers
here,” said the bartender. “They’ll take care of ya.”
    “Thank you,” said the Saint.
    He finished his drink, put down the exact
price and a minimum tip, and sauntered back to the lobby.
    If the shapely Norma was not averse to providing certain extracurricular services of the type indicated by
Mr. Fen nick’s story, it was highly
implausible that the bartender would know
nothing about it. Indeed, it was most probable that he would sometimes help to procure them. Therefore the Saint couldn’t insist on getting in touch with
her too urgently, or pressing the questioning too hard, without the risk of telegraphing a warning to the quarry he had
yet to identify.
    Behind the reception desk, the night clerk, a weedy young man with long hair and acne, was totting up stacks
of vouchers on an adding machine. He
kept Simon waiting while he clicked
his way stubbornly through to the end of a pile, and then looked up with an unctuous affectation of attentiveness .
    “Yes, sir?”
    “I’m afraid I left my key
upstairs,” said the Saint. “Can you let me have a spare?
Room four-o-nine.”
    “What is the name, sir?”
    “Templar.”
    The clerk ducked aside behind a screen that
blocked one end of the counter, but he could be heard flipping the pages of an
index.   After some further groping
in   a drawer he bobbed back, holding a
key.
    “Could you show me anything with your
name on it, sir?” Simon impassively produced a driver’s
license,   and the clerk
handed over the key.
    “Do you put everyone through this when
they lock them selves out?” Simon inquired mildly.
    “Yes sir, if I don’t know them. You can’t
be too careful, at this hour of the night, I always say. Especially during a convention.”
    “Why especially during a
convention?”
    “When they get too full of the spirit of
the thing, sir, dele gates often think of practical jokes to play
on each other- all in good fun, of course, but not always appreciated by
the victim. You yourself, sir, mightn’t be amused if you found a live seal
in your bathtub, and found out that my negligence had enabled your
friends to plant it there.”
    “I guess you have a point.”
    The pimply one bared his yellow teeth
ingratiatingly. “I knew you’d see it, sir. Thank you. Goodnight,
sir,” he said, and picked up another sheaf of checks and resumed
the busy tapping of his calculator keys without another upward glance.
    Simon stepped into the elevator, and the
lugubrious lift man let go a carpet sweeper which he was pushing lethar gically
about the foyer and started the ascent in stoic silence.
    Finally the Saint asked: “Plenty of
what?”
    After another floor had gone by, it transpired
that the driver had not lost the thread of his lucubrations.
    “Things,” he opined darkly.
    They were at the fourth floor again. He held
the gate open, without looking at the Saint, but with a rugged air of
self- satisfaction with his achievements in both navigation and diplomacy.
Simon got out, and headed back to his room.
    His excursion had yielded nothing
sensational, but at least he had half a name, an address which might be
the start of a trail, and some observations which might interest Mr. Fennick.
    The trouble was that Otis Q. Fennick was not
there to hear about them.
    The room was not big enough to hide even such
a slight man as Mr. Fennick anywhere except in the closet or under the bed.
But if he had been even more jittery than he had shamelessly confessed,
it was remotely possible that he could be terrified of
anyone who might enter.
    “Otis, old marshmallow,” said the
Saint reassuringly. “It’s only me—Templar.”
    There was no answer.
    The bathroom door was ajar. Simon looked
inside. Mr. Fennick was not there. Nor was he in the closet, or under the bed—Simon ultimately forced himself to verify both places,
foolish