"Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?" Kinglake wanted to know, rather petulantly. "Because I didn't know anything about you, or your political problems. Which were somewhat involved, as it turns out." The Saint was very calmly candid. "After that, I knew even less about your team. I mean guys like Yard and Callahan. This is a small town, as big towns go, and it wouldn't take long for one man's secret to become everybody's rumor. You know how it is. I might not have gotten very far that way."
Kinglake dragged another of his foul stogies out of his vest pocket, glared at it pessimistically, and finally bit off the end as if he had nerved himself to take a bite of a rotten apple. His concluding expression conveyed the notion that he had.
"And I always knew you for a crook," he said disconsolately.
The Saint's smile was almost nostalgically dreamy.
"I always was, in a technical sort of way," he said softly. "And I may be again. But there's a war on; and some odd people can find a use for some even odder people… For that matter, there was a time when I thought you might be a crooked cop, which can be worse."
"I guess you know how that is, too," Kinglake said, sourly but sufficiently. "You sounded as if you did."
"I think that's all been said," Simon replied temperately. "We're just playing a new set of rules. For that matter, if I'd been playing some of my old rules, I think I could have found a way to pull a fast one on you, with or without the audience, and taken that heater away from you, and made time out of here no matter what you were threatening. I've done it before. I just thought this was the best way tonight."
The Lieutenant glanced guiltily at his half forgotten gun, and stuffed it back into his hip holster.
"Well?" He repeated the word without any of the aggressive implications that he had thrown into it the last time. "Can you feed me any of this story that I'm supposed to have known all along, or should I just go on clamming up because I don't know?"
Simon deliberately reduced his cigarette by the length of two measured inhalations. In between them, he measured the crestfallen Lieutenant once more for luck. After that he had no more hesitation.