"When I was a copy boy here, we used to know one. I haven't noticed the building being altered since." The city editor turned his shrewd sphinxlike face towards Simon with only the glitter of his eyes for a clue to his expression. "Are we still expecting something to happen?"
"I hope, yes and no," said the Saint tersely. "I left Olga in my car outside, for a front and a cover. I'm hoping she's either fooled herself or she'll fool somebody else,"
He knew that he had seldom been so vulnerable, but he never guessed how that flaw in his guard was to mature. He just felt sure that a prisoner in the City Jail couldn't be the trigger of any of the potential traps that he was waiting to recognise. Provided he took the obvious precautions, like leaving Olga Ivanovitch in his car outside the newspaper building while he slipped out through a back alley…
The Times-Tribune man's dry bulbous presence was a key that by-passed tired clerks and opened clanging iron doors, and exacted obedience from soured disinterested jailers, and led them eventually into a small barren and discouraging office room with barred windows where they waited through a short echoing silence until the door opened again to admit Mr Vaschetti with a turnkey behind him.
The door closed again, leaving the turnkey outside; and Mr Vaschetti's darting black eyes switched over the city editor's somnolent self-effacement and made one of their touch landings on the Saint.
"You're Templar," he stated. "But I said this had to be private."
"This is Mr Beetlespats of the Times-Tribune," said the Saint inventively. "He published the article you read, and he organised this meeting. But we can pretend he isn't here. Just tell me what you've got on your mind."
Vaschetti's eyes whirled around the room like small dark bugs exploring the intricacies of a candelabra.
"I can tell you," he said, "you were dead right about Matson. "I've been a courier for the Bund for a long time. I took a letter to Matson in St Louis, and I brought a letter to your Mr Blatt and other people in Galveston too."