“Thank you,” said Condor.
Then they were outside again.
“After that,” said the Saint, “I went back to the studio to see if you were still there, but you’d left. We can walk over and you can check that. If the same gatekeeper isn’t on now, he’ll know where we can find the guy I spoke to.”
Condor gazed moodily across the street, like a dyspeptic crocodile on a river bank watching succulent game cavorting on the other side.
“I’ll believe you,” he said. “You wouldn’t want me to check it if I wouldn’t get the right answers. But why didn’t you call me at Headquarters?”
“I meant to,” said the Saint. “But I... well, I had a date. You know how it is. And I got drinking, and sort of put it off. Then I heard the news on the radio. Then I was just scared to stick my neck out. I figured the case was washed up anyhow. I’d as good as told Flane he was sunk, and he’d bumped himself off. So — justice was done, even if nobody got any medals.”
Condor massaged his long melancholy nose.
“You want me to believe a helluva lot,” he said. “And a guy in my job eats medals.”
“Don’t believe any more than you want to,” Simon said nonchalantly. “Just convince yourself. Flane had it in for Ufferlitz. He’d threatened him before—”
“He had?”