Read The Saint to the Rescue for Free Online

Company was on the second floor. He went up.
    From the sequence of doors on the corridor,
the West Coast office appeared to take up only two rooms, but they were doubtless sufficient for their purpose. The outer room which he
entered contained, besides the standard furniture, a large glass-case
display of samples, and a middle-aged woman with an efficient but forbidding
air who was typing rapidly at the dictation of some tinny disembodied voice that came
through an earphone clamped to her head. Elec trically recorded
sounds entered her ears and emerged through her fingertips as
transformed impulses to be electrically re corded in legible form:
she was the only human link in this miracle of technology, and she seemed to
bear a deep- rooted grudge against this incurable frailty of hers and
to have dedicated herself to suppressing every trace of it that she could.
    “Mr. Fennick is busy,” she said,
with a kind of malevolent satisfaction. “Can I help you?”
    “I’m afraid not.” Simon glanced at
the communicating door. “Is he with somebody?”
    “Mr. Fennick is working on a speech he
has to make to the convention tomorrow. He gave the strictest orders
that he was not to be disturbed for any reason whatever.”
    “This is very very important.”
    “For any reason whatever,” the woman
repeated smugly. She was a type that Mrs. Fennick would have approved of
thoroughly, according to Mr. Fennick’s thumbnail sketch of his
ever-loving spouse. It was as certain as anything humanly could be that
she had not sat on anybody’s lap since she was knee-high. The paradox that
didn’t fit at all was that the Liane Fennick whom Simon had met was so
utterly unlike his mental picture of a tyrannically jealous wife. But
in any puzzle, when all the paradoxes were straight ened out, the
solution was often absurdly easy.
    He inquired patiently:   “How long will Mr. Fennick be incommunicado?”
    “Until five minutes to twelve, when he
has to leave for a luncheon.”
    “Is he always so hard to see?”
    “Mr. Fennick isn’t here very often. And
this is a very busy time.”
    “Is Mr. Smith just as busy?”
    “Not as a rule. But at present he’s
covering a meeting for Mr. Fennick, since Mr. Fennick has to work on his speech. If
you’ll leave your name and tell me your busi ness, I’ll try to arrange an appointment
for you.”
    “Thanks, gorgeous,” said the Saint, with beatified
earnest ness. “I may take you up on
that. But later.”
    He sauntered out.
    The next door along the corridor, which
displayed only the word private under its number, could only be the pri vate
entrance to the inner office so zealously guarded by the misanthropic
matron with the headset. Even so has many a citadel with
intimidating moat and drawbridge had an unguarded postern
gate.
    Simon leaned an ear against the upper panel.
He heard no resonance of rounded phrases in rehearsal, or even the mutter of tentative phrases being fed into a dictating device. Of course,
the door might have been exceptionally sound proof, or Mr. Fennick
might have been a purely cerebral worker. But Simon did not intend to be
put off from seeing him, if he was there. It would be easy for the Saint to apologize
for having come to the wrong door, which must have been
inadvertently left unlocked.
    He took from his wallet a wafer-slim implement
which he kept there as routinely as another man might have kept a nail
file. At this period he seldom needed it as often as twice a year, but he
would not have been surprised to have used it twice already that day. And yet
on this third pos sible occasion it finally proved that the Boy Scouts were right and preparedness would always pay off sometime. It slid back the
spring lock with less fuss than its own key, and Simon walked in with
all the disarming insouciance of the excuse that he had prepared.
    He could have saved himself the histrionic
warm-up, for there was no audience to be disarmed by it.
    The office, except for the