“Do you think Steve Nelson could answer that question?”
Grady scowled and shook his head.
“It doesn’t sound like him — sneakin’ into a man’s house... No, it couldn’t have been! The lowser must have sold it or — lost it. Whoever got it from Nelson is the man. you’ll be wantin’.”
The Saint stood up.
“That’s who I’m going to find,” he said. “I’ll see you again, Mike.”
Before the promoter realised that the interview was over, he had opened the door and sauntered out.
There was a sudden dampening of volume in the conversation about him as he emerged from Grady’s office. Whereas he had attracted little attention on entering the reception-room, his effrontery in crashing Grady’s office ahead of everyone else now made him a marked man, the target of a concentrated battery of indignant eyes. But the Saint seemed wholly unaware of the hushed hostility as he paused by the girl at the switchboard and watched her plug in a connection.
“Yes, Mr Grady,” she said. And after a moment, “Dr Who?... Yes, sir, I’ll get him for you right away.”
She reached for the telephone directory on a shelf beside her.
“Crescent 3-1465,” the Saint prompted helpfully.