“Miss Varing ain’t on this afternoon,” said the doorman. “She’s sick.”
With lead settling in his heart, Simon sought out the stage manager.
“That’s right,” said the man, who remembered him. “She called me this morning and said she wouldn’t be able to go on. She said if I hadn’t heard from her by this time she wouldn’t be doing the evening performance either.”
“She isn’t sick,” said the Saint. “She hasn’t been in her hotel all day.”
The stage manager looked only slightly perturbed. He said nothing about artistic temperament, but his discretion itself implied that he could think of plausibly mundane explanations.
Simon took a taxi to the Ambassador and finally corralled an assistant manager whom he could charm into co-operation. A check through various departments established that room service had delivered breakfast to Monica Varing’s apartment at nine, that she had been gone when the maid came in at eleven. But her key had not been left at the desk, and no one had seen her go out.
“No one knows they saw her,” Simon corrected, and asked his last questions of the doorman.
Already he knew what the answer would be, and wondered what forlorn hope kept him trying to prove himself wrong.
“An old ragged woman, looked like she might be a beggar?... Yes, sir, I did see her come out. Matter of fact, I wondered how she got in. Must have been while I was calling someone a cab.”
“On the contrary,” said the Saint, with surprising gentleness, “you opened the door for her yourself.”