He retrieved what was left and poured it into a glass, for a private relaxer of his own.
He tried to tot up what scores there were on hand, to determine exactly where he stood at the moment. He had to confess to himself that so far he’d been working with mists, trying to assemble a concrete pattern, a design out of the stuff that emanated almost entirely from his intuitive processes. The promise of hovering danger had dissolved in two unsatisfactory climaxes: the dressing-room brawl and Fernack’s visit. Unsatisfactory because they resolved nothing, answered no questions, gave no reason for the ghostly centipedes he still felt parading up his spine... The mystery of Connie Grady’s disproportionate agitation, the Masked Angel’s incredible victory, still stood as prime question-marks.
But perhaps, he told himself, they weren’t real question-marks. Perhaps he’d been over-dramatising his perceptions. Connie was young and in love. Her fear for Steve’s safety could well have inspired her strangely distraught plea. And the Masked Angel might have initially stunned Smith with such a short, swift jab that his eye had missed it entirely.
He told himself this and knew he was kidding himself. He knew he had missed nothing in the fight. Therefore there must have been something else — something that he still had to search for.
He stood up and stretched himself.
And once again the telephone rang.
“This is getting monotonous,” said the Saint.
He lifted the instrument from its cradle.
“Templar’s Telephone Chums, Incorporated,” he said.
Silence.