Saint in New York (3 page)

He laughed again, a gentle lilt of a laugh
that floated
through the room like sunshine with a flicker of steel.

“Hence the bravado,” said the Saint. “Of course
that note made it more difficult—but that just gave us a chance to
demonstrate our surpassing brilliance. And it was
so easy. I
had the gun under that
outfit, and I caught him as he came
out.
Just once… . Then I let out a thrilling scream and
rushed towards him. I was urging him to repent and
confess his sins while they were looking for me. There was quite a
crowd
around, and I think nearly all of them were arrested.”

He slipped an automatic from his pocket and removed the
magazine. His long arm reached out for the
cleaning materials
on a side table
which he had been using before he went out.
He slipped a rectangle of flannelette through the loop of a
weighted cord and pulled it through the barrel,
humming
musically to himself.

The white-haired man paced over to the
window and stood
there with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Kestry and Bonacci were here
today,” he said.

The Saint’s humming continued for a couple of
bars. He moistened his cleaning rag with three measured drops of oil.

“Too bad I missed them,” he
murmured.
 
“I’ve always
wanted to
observe a brace of your hard-boiled New York cops
being tactful with an
innocent suspect.”

“You may get your chance soon
enough,” said the other
grimly, and Simon chuckled.

As a matter of fact, it was not surprising
that Inspector
John Fernack’s team had failed to locate the Saint.

Kestry and Bonacci had had an interesting
time. Passing
dutifully from one hostelry to another, they had trampled
under their large and useful feet a collection of expensive
carpets
that would have realized enough for the pair of them
to retire on in great
comfort. They had scanned registers until their eyes ached, discovering some
highly informative traces
of a remarkable family of John Smiths who
appeared to spend
their time leaping from one hotel to another with the
agility
of influenza germs, but finding no record of the transit of a
certain
Simon Templar. Before their official eyes, aggravating the aforesaid ache, had
passed a procession of smooth and
immaculate young gentlemen technically
described as clerks
but obviously ambassadors in disguise, who had condescendingly
surveyed the photograph of their quarry and pityingly
disclaimed
recognition of any character of such low habits
amongst their
distinguished clientele. Bellboys in caravanserai
after caravanserai had
gazed knowingly at the large, useful
feet on which the tour was conducted,
and had whispered
wisely to one another behind their hands. There had been
an atmosphere of commiserating sapience about the au
diences of all their
interviews which to a couple of seasoned
sleuths professedly
disguised as ordinary citizens was pecu
liarly distressing.

And it was scarcely to be expected that the
chauffeur of a
certain William K. Valcross, resident of the Waldorf
Astoria,
would have swum into their questioning ken. They were look
ing for a
tall, dark man of about thirty, described as an
addict of the most
luxurious hotels; and they had looked for
him with commendable
doggedness, refusing to be lured into any byways of fantasy. Mr. Valcross being
indubitably sixty
years old and by no stretch of imagination resembling the
photograph
with which they had been provided, they passed
him over without loss
of time—and, with him, his maidservant,
his manservant, his
ox, his ass, and the stranger within his
gates.

“If they do find me,” remarked the
Saint reflectively, “there
will probably be harsh words.”

He squinted approvingly down the shining
barrel of his
gun, secured the safety catch, and patted it
affectionately into
his pocket. Then he rose and stretched himself and went
over
to the window
where Valcross was standing.

Before them was spread out the ragged panorama
of south
Manhattan, the wonder island of the West. A narrow hump
of rock
sheltered from the Atlantic by the broad shoulder of
Brooklyn, a mere
ripple of stone in the ocean’s inroads, on
which the indomitable
cussedness of Man had elected to build a city—and, not contented with the
prodigious feat of over
coming such a dimensional difficulty at all,
had made monu
ments of its defiance. Because the city could not expand
laterally,
it had expanded upwards; but the upward move
ment was a leap
sculptured in stone, a flight born of necessity that had soared far beyond the
standards of necessity, in a
magnificent impulse of levitation that
obliterated its own
source. Molehills had become mountains in an art begotten
of pure artifice. In the shadow of those grey and white pin
nacles had
grown up a modern Baghdad where the ends of
the earth came
together. A greater Italian city than Rome, a
greater Irish city
than Dublin, a greater German city than Cologne; a city of dazzling wealth
whose towers had once looked like peaks of solid gold to hungry eyes reaching
beyond the horizons of the Old World; a place that had sprung
up from a
lonely frontier to a metropolis, a central city, bow
ing to no other. A
place where civilization and savagery had
climbed alternately
on each other’s shoulders and reached
their crest together… .

“This has always been my home,” said Valcross, with a
queer
softness.

He turned his eyes from east to west in a
glance that swept
in the whole skyline.

“I know there are other cities; and they
say that New
York doesn’t represent anything but itself. But this is
where
my life has been lived.”

Simon said nothing. He was three thousand
miles from his
own home; but as he stood there at the window he saw what
the older
man was seeing, and he could feel what the other felt. He had been there long
enough to sense the spell that
New York could lay on a man who looked at it
with a mind
not too tired for wonder—the pride and amazement at which
cynical sophisticates laughed, which could still move the
heart of a
man who was not ashamed to sink below the surface and touch the common
humanity that is the builder of cities. And because Simon could understand, he
knew what
was in
the other’s mind before it was spoken.

“I have to send for you,” Valcross
said, “because there are
other people, more powerful than I am, who
don’t feel
like that. The people to whom it isn’t a home, but a
battle-field to be looted. That is why you have to come here, from the other
side of the world, to help an old man with a job
that’s too big for
him.”

He turned suddenly and looked at the Saint
again, taking
him in from the sweep of his smoothly brushed hair to the
stance of his tailored shoes—the rakish lines of the dark, reck
less face,
the level mockery of the clear blue eyes, the
rounded poise of
muscular shoulders and the curve of the
chest under the thin,
jaunty shirt, the steady strength of one
brown half-raised
hand with the cigarette clipped lightly be
tween the first two
fingers, the lean fighter’s hips and the
reach of long,
immaculate legs. No man whom he had ever
known could have been
so elegantly at ease and at the same time so alert and dangerous—and he had
known many men.
No other man he had known could ever have measured up
in his
judgment to the stature of devil-may-care confidence
that he had demanded
in his own mind and set out to find—.
and Valcross called himself a judge of
men.

His hands fell on the Saint’s shoulders; and
they had to
reach up to do it. He felt the slight, supple stir of the
firm
sinews and smiled.

“You might do it, son,” he said.
“You might clean up this
rotten mess of crooks and grafters that’s
organizing itself to
become the biggest thing this city of mine
has ever had to
fight. If you can’t do it, I’ll let myself be told for
the first time that it’s impossible. Just be a little bit careful. Don’t
swagger
yourself into a jail or a shower of bullets before you’ve had a
chance to
do any good. I’ve seen those things happen before.
Other fellows have
tried—bigger men than you, son—stronger
men than you, braver
men than you, cleverer men than
you——
”

The Saint smiled back.

“Admitting for the moment that they ever
lived,” he re
marked amiably, “you never saw anyone luckier than
me.”

But his mind went back to the afternoon in
Madrid when
Valcross had sat next to him in the Plaza de Toros and had
struck up a conversation which had resulted in them spending
the evening
together. It went back to a moment much later
that night, after they
had dined together off the indescribable
suckling pig at
Botin’s, when they sat over whiskies and sodas
in Valcross’s room at
the Ritz; when Valcross had admitted
that he had spent three weeks chasing
him around Europe
solely to bring about that casual encounter, and had told
him why. He could hear the old man’s quiet voice as it had
spoken to
him that night

“They found him a couple of weeks later—I
don’t want
to go into details. They aren’t nice to think about, even
now.
… Two or three dozen men were pulled in and questioned.
But maybe
you don’t know how things are done over there.
These men kept their
mouths shut. Some of them were let out.
Some of them went up
for trial. Maybe you think that means
something.

“It doesn’t. This business is giving work
to all the gang
sters and gunmen it needs—all the rats and killers who
found
themselves falling out of the big money when there was
nothing
more to be made out of liquor. It’s tied up by the
same leaders,
protected by the same crooked politicians—and
it pays more. It’s
beating the same police system, for the
same reason the old
order beat it—because it’s hooked up
with the same political system that
appoints police commis
sioners to do as they’re told.

“There wasn’t any doubt that these men
they had were
guilty. Fernack admitted it himself. He told me their
records
—everything that was known about them. But he couldn’t
do
anything. They were bailed out, adjourned, extradited,
postponed—all the
legal tricks. In the end they were ac
quitted. I saw them walk out of the
court grinning. If I’d had
a gun with me I’d have tried to kill them
then.

“But I’m an old man, and I wasn’t trained
for that sort
of thing. I take it that you were. That’s why I looked
for you.
I know some of the things you’ve done, and now I’ve met
you
in the flesh. I think it’s the kind of job you might like. It may
be the
last job you’ll ever attempt. But it’s a job that only an
outlaw can do.

“I’ve got plenty of money, and I’m
expecting to spend it
You can have anything you need to help you
that money will buy. The one thing it won’t buy is safety. You may find your
self in
prison. You’re even more likely to find yourself dead.
I needn’t try to fool
you about that

“But if you can do your justice on these
men who kid
napped and killed my son, I’ll pay you one million
dollars. I want to know whether you think it’s worth your while—tonight.”

And the Saint could feel the twitch of his own
smile again,
and hear himself saying: “I’d do it for nothing. When
do we
go?”

These things came back to him while
Valcross’s hands still
rested on his shoulders; and it was the first
time since that
night in Madrid that he had given any thought to the mag
nitude of
the task he had undertaken.