“I never get into trouble,” said the Saint virtuously. “But I seem to live an awfully precarious life. Have I got a job now, or do I go back on relief?”
Her eyes strayed to some papers on her desk.
“I don’t really know,” she confessed. “Mr Braunberg brought your contract back yesterday evening, and Mr Ufferlitz signed it before he left the office, but you didn’t sign anything yourself so I don’t know what the position is.”
“Braunberg — he was the attorney, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. I’ve already spoken to him on the phone, of course, and he said he’d be in this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you how you stand legally.”
Simon picked up the contract. It was a standard printed form, about the size of a centenarian’s autobiography, covering every possible contingency from telepathy and revolutions to bankruptcy and habitual drunkenness, with a couple of pages of special clauses which invalidated most of it. Simon only glanced through it casually, and turned to the signature.
He had a microphotographic eye for certain kinds of detail, and he had no need to compare it with the note that was in his pocket to know that the note was a forgery — a passable amateur job, but a long way from being expert.
Unfortunately it would be a great deal harder if not impossible to discover who had done it. He was practically resigned to discarding The Hollywood Reporter as a clue. Almost everybody in the movie business was a subscriber, and in addition it could be bought at any newsstand within a radius of twenty miles. It was far too much to hope that the sender of the note would be considerate enough to have kept in his possession the mutilated copy into which the Saint’s torn fragment could be fitted.
The decease of Mr Ufferlitz was a mystery that looked less encouraging every time Simon Templar turned to it.
He said, “Don’t forget, Peggy, you’ve got a date with me for lunch.”