He got out and paid off the driver and the other two followed him into the hotel. Corrio's face seemed to have gone paler under its olive tan.
Simon paused in the lobby and glanced at him.
"Will you ask for the key, or shall I? It might be better if you asked for it," he said softly, "because the clerk will recognize you. Even if he doesn't know you by your right name."
"I don't quite know what you're talking about," Corrio said coldly, "but if you think you can wriggle out of this with any of your wild stories, you're wasting your time." He turned to Fernack. "I have got an apartment here, sir — I just use it sometimes when I'm kept in town late and I can't get home. It isn't in my own name, because — well, sir, you understand — I don't always want everybody to know who I am. This man has got to know about it somehow, and he's just using it to try and put up some crazy story to save his own skin."
"All the same," said Fernack with surprising gentleness, "I'd like to go up. I want to hear some more of this crazy story."
Corrio turned on his heel and went to the desk. The apartment was on the third floor — an ordinary two-room suite with the usual revolting furniture to be found in such places. Fernack glanced briefly over the living room into which they entered and looked at the Saint again.
"Go on," he said. "I'm listening."
The Saint sat down on the edge of the table and blew smoke rings.
"It would probably have gone on a lot longer," he said, "if this smart detective hadn't thought one day what a supremely brilliant idea it would be to combine business with profit, and have the honour of convicting a most notorious and elusive bandit known as the Saint — not forgetting, of course, to collect the usual cash reward in the process. So he used a very good-looking young damsel — you ought to meet her sometime, Fernack, she really is a peach — having some idea that the Saint would never run away very fast from a pretty face. In which he was damn right… She had a very well-planned hard-luck story, too, and the whole act was most professionally staged. It had all the ingredients that a good psychologist would bet on to make the Saint feel that stealing Oppenheim's emeralds was the one thing he had left glaringly undone in an otherwise complete life. Even the spadework of the job had already been put in, so that she could practically tell the Saint how to pinch the jewels. So that our smart detective must have thought he was sitting pretty, with a sucker all primed to do the dirty work for him and take the rap if anything went wrong — besides being still there to take the rap when the smart detective made his arrest and earned the reward if everything went right."
Simon smiled dreamily at a particularly repulsive print on the wall for a moment.