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job of blackmail that we met over referred to something which only you or someone very close to you should have known. Maybe the same can be said about this new job. I’ve got an idea it can. And if that’s true, we may be getting somewhere. We don’t want to miss something that might be right under our nose.”
    Lansing’s eyes were flat and hard like jet.
    “I can only think of one guy who might be liable to know as much as I know myself, including about what happened to Jake,” he said. “But don’t ask me how he’d know. I just say I could believe it because I know the kind of guy he is. This guy al ways seems to know too much about everything that goes on.”
    “And who’s that?”
    “Some people call him the Saint.”
    Simon smiled.
    “You give me too much credit, Rick. As a matter of fact, I never suspected anything about Jake Hardy until you practically told me yourself. I’d never even given it a thought. From what I hear, he was no great loss to the community, so why should I worry about how he was moved on? I couldn’t have cared less if it had been the other way around; and when somebody does get you one of these days, as they probably will, it still won’t bother me.”
    “Then what are you wasting your time here for?”
    “Because I hate people taking my name in vain, and because I’m beginning to think it’s someone quite close to you. Some one who knows much more about your affairs than I do,” said the Saint thoughtfully. He went to the door. “Think it over, chum.”
    There was a drugstore on the corner of the block, and he stopped there to phone Patricia.
    “No doubt you’ve seen Kearney,” he said.
    “And heard him.” She was trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice but he still felt it. “What on earth did you do it for?”
    “It was the only thing I could do, baby. I couldn’t run down this character who’s impersonating me if Alvin had me in the hoosegow, and if I don’t run him down I can’t clear myself. It’s a stock situation straight out of any pulp detective story, but it can happen.”
    “But what’s this now about Vincent Maxted?”
    “Well, apparently my alter ego is expanding his business.”
    “Can’t I meet you somewhere?” she said.
    “Darling, it’s a sure bet that Kearney’ll have you followed, hoping for just that.”
    “Then you don’t really think any of the tricks you’ve taught me for losing a shadow are any good.”
    The Saint sighed.
    “All right,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the Delphian theater.”
    There was a perceptible pause before she said: “Have you gone out of your mind?”
    “No,” said the Saint. “But I was invited to a rehearsal, and I happened to remember that Iris Freeman was once Mrs Vincent Maxted.”
    He took a taxi to the theater and turned on the radio. He found a local news broadcast, and had the ambiguous satisfaction of hearing his own name on a last-minute flash just before the commercial.
    “Must be quite a guy, that Saint,” said the driver chattily.
    “He’d better be,” Simon agreed.
    There was no janitor at the stage door, and he found his way unchallenged to the stage. Voices grew louder as he approached it, and presently he stopped in the shadow of some stacked scenery and listened.
    The rehearsal seemed to be justifying some of Stratford Keane’s gloomy prognostications. The voice of Macbeth, de claiming, did not even have the lush rotundity of Keane’s:
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight-“
    There was a soft footfall behind him, and he turned and saw Patricia at his shoulder.
    “Hullo,” she whispered. “What’s going on?”
    “Hush,” he said. “This is what Stratford was weeping about.”
    “… Now o’er the one-half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; now witchcraft