Saint in New York (7 page)

“Very interesting,” said the Saint
softly.

Nather’s mouth closed jerkily. He replaced
the receiver
slowly on its hook and looked up.

“A client of mine,” he said
casually; but he was not casual
enough.

“That’s interesting, too,” said the
Saint. “I didn’t know
judges were supposed to have clients. I
thought they were un
attached and impartial… . And she must be
very beautiful,
with a voice like that. Can it be, Algernon, that you are
hiding
something
from me?”

Nather glowered up at him.

“How much longer are you going on with
this preposterous
performance?”

“Until it bores me. I’m easily
amused,” said the Saint, “and
up to now I haven’t
yawned once. So far as I can see, the interview is progressing from good to
better. All kinds of things are bobbing up every minute. This Big Fellow of
yours, now: let’s hear some more about him. I’m inquisitive.”

Nather’s eyes flinched wildly.

“I’m damned if I’ll talk to you any
more!”

“You’re damned if you won’t.”

“You can go to hell.”

“And the same applies,” said the
Saint equably.

He stood up and came round the desk, poising
himself on
straddled feet a pace in front of the judge, lean and
dynam
ically balanced as a panther.

“You’re very dense, Algernon,” he
remarked calmly. “You don’t seem to get the idea at all. Maybe our little
interlude of
song and badinage has led you up the wrong tree. You can
make a
good guess why I’m here. You know that I didn’t drop in just for the pleasure
of admiring your classic profile. You
know who I am. I don’t care what you
pick on, but you can
tell me something. Any of your maidenly
secrets ought to be
worth listening to. Come through, Nather—or else…”

“Or else what?”

The Saint’s gun moved forward until it pressed
deep into
the
judge’s flabby navel.

“Or else find out what Ionetzki and Jack
Irboll know!”

Nather’s heavy, sullen lips twisted back from yellowed teeth.
And Simon jabbed the gun a notch further into the
judge’s
stomach.

“And don’t lie,” said the Saint
caressingly; “because I’m
friendly to undertakers and that funeral
parlour looked as if
it could do with some business.”

Nather passed a fevered tongue over hot dry
lips. He had
not lived through thirty years of intermittent contacts
with
the underworld without learning to recognize that queer bitter
fibre in a
man that makes him capable of murder. And the
terrific inward
struggle of that last moment before the telephone bell rang had blunted his
vitality. The strength was not
in him to screw himself to that desperate
pitch again. He
knew, beyond all question, that if he refused to talk, if
he at
tempted to lie, that bantering tiger of a man who was squeez
ing the
gun ever deeper into his vitals would destroy him as ruthlessly as he would
have crushed an ant. Nather’s larynx
heaved twice, convulsively; and then,
before he could speak, a
muffled tread sounded beyond the locked door.

The Saint tautened, listening. From the
ponderous, flat-footed measure of the stride he guessed it to belong to the
butler.
Nather looked up with a sudden gleam of hope; but
the steady pressure of
the gun muzzle in his yielding flesh did
not vary by a
milligram. The Saint’s light whisper floated to
his ears in an airy
breath.

“Heroes die young,” it murmured
pithily.

A knock sounded on the door—a discreet knock
that could only have been made by a servant. Nather, with his vengeful
eyes
frozen on the Saint, lip-read the order rather than heard
it.
“Ask him what he wants.”

“Well?” Nather growled out.

“Inspector Fernack is downstairs, sir.
He says it’s important.”

Nather stared at the Saint And the Saint
smiled. Once again
his reckless fighting lips shaped an almost inaudible
command.

“Tell him to come up,” Nather
repeated after him, and
could not believe that he was obeying an
order.

He sat silent and rigid as the butler’s
footsteps receded and
died away; and at last Simon withdrew the gun
barrel which
had for so long been boring insidiously into the judge’s
ab
domen.

“Better and better,” said the Saint
amazingly, flipping a
cigarette into his lips. “I was wanting
to meet Fernack.”

Nather gaped at him incredulously. The
situation was grotesque, unbelievable; and yet it had occurred. The automatic
had been
eased out of his belly—it was even then circling
around the Saint’s forefinger
in one of those carelessly con
fident gyrations—which it certainly would not
have been if any
of the Saint’s instructions had been disobeyed. The thing
was
beyond Nather’s understanding. The glacial recklessness of it was subtly
disquieting, in a colder and more deadly way than
the menace of the gun
had ever been: it argued a self-assurance
that was frightening, and with that fear
went the crawling question of whether the Saint’s mind had leapt to some strat
egy of lightning cunning that Nather could not
see.

“You’ll get your chance,” said the
judge gruffly, searching
for comprehension through a kind of fog.

Simon rasped the head of a match with his
left thumbnail,
applied
the spluttering flame to the tip of his cigarette, and
inhaled luxuriously. With a drift of smoke trailing back
through his lips, he lounged towards a large
tapestried Morris
chair that stood
between the French windows by which he had
entered, and swung the chair around with his foot so that its
heavily padded side was presented to the door
through which
the detective would
enter.

He came back, overturned the wastebasket with an adroit
twist of his toe, and picked up the crumpled scrap
of paper
and dropped it into his pocket in one smooth swoop that frus
trated the judge’s flash of fight even before the
idea was con
ceived. He pulled open
the drawer to which Nather’s hand
had
jumped at the first sound of his voice, and transferred the revolver from it to
his hip. And then, with the scene set to his satisfaction, he walked back to
his chosen chair and settled himself comfortably in it with his right leg
draped gracefully
over the arm.

He flicked a quarter inch of ash from his
cigarette onto the
expensive carpet.

“When your man announces Fernack,”
he directed, “open
the door and let him in. And come back
yourself. Under
stand?”

Nather did not understand. His brain was
still fumbling
dazedly
for the catch that he could not find. On the face of it,
it seemed like the answer to a prayer. With
Fernack on the
scene, there must be the chance of a way out for him—a
way to retrieve that scrap of paper buried in Templar’s pocket and
to dispose of the Saint himself. But something
told him that
the calm smiling man in
the chair was not legislating foe any
such
d
é
nouement.

Simon read his thoughts.

“The gun won’t be in evidence for a while, Nather. But it’ll
be handy. And at this range I’m a real sniper. I
shouldn’t want
you to get excited
over any notions of ganging up on me with
Fernack. Somebody might get hurt.”

Nather’s gaze rested on him venomously.

“Some day,” said the judge slowly,
“I hope we shall meet
again.”

“In Sing Sing,” suggested the Saint
breezily. “Let’s call it a
date.”

He drew on his cigarette again and listened
to the returning
footsteps of the butler, accompanied by a heavier, more determined
tread. As
a matter of fact, he was innocent of all sub
terfuge.
There was nothing more behind his decision than ap
peared on the face of
it. Fernack was there, and the Saint saw
no reason why they
should not meet. His whole evening had
started off in the
same spirit of open-minded expectation, and
it had turned out
very profitably. He waited the addition to
his growing circle of
acquaintances with no less kindly in
terest.

The butler’s knuckles touched the door again.

“Inspector Fernack, sir.”

Simon waved the judge on, and Nather crossed
the room
slowly.
Every foot of the distance he was conscious of the con
cealed automatic that was aiming into his back. He snapped
the key over in the lock and opened the door; and
Inspector
Fernack shouldered his
brawny bulk across the threshold.

*
  
*
  
*

“Why the locked door, Judge?”
Fernack inquired sourly.
“Getting nervous?”

Nather closed the door without answering, and
Simon de
cided to
oblige.

“I did it,” he explained. Fernack,
who had not noticed him,
whirled round in surprise; and Simon went on:
“Would you
mind locking it again, Judge—just as I told you?”

Nather hesitated for a second and then obeyed.
Fernack
stared blankly at the figure lounging in the armchair and then turned
with puzzled eyes to the judge. He pushed back his
battered fedora and
pulled reflectively at the lobe of his left
ear.

“What the hell is this?” he
demanded; and Nather shrugged.

“A nut,” he said tersely.

Simon ignored the insult, studying the man who
had come
in. On the whole, Fernack conformed closely enough to the
pattern in his mind of what a New York police inspector was
likely to
be; but the reality went a little beyond that. Simon
liked the belligerent
honesty of the frosted grey eyes, the
strength and courage of the iron jaw.
He realized that, what
ever else Fernack might be, a good or bad
detective, he fell
straight and clean-cut into the narrow outline of that
rarest
thing in a country of corrupted law—a square dick. There were
qualities
in that mountain of toughened flesh that Simon Tem
plar could have appreciated at any time;
and he smiled at the man with an unaffected friendliness which he never
expected
to see returned.

“What ho, Inspector,” he murmured
affably. “You disap
point me. I was hoping to be
recognized.”

Fernack’s eyes hardened in perplexity as he
studied the
Saint’s tanned features. He shook his head.

“I seem to know your face, but I’m
damned if I can place
you.”

“Maybe it was a bad photograph,” conceded the Saint reg
retfully. “Those photographs usually are. All
the same, seeing
it was only this
afternoon that you were handing out copies
of it to the reporters ——
”

Illumination hit Fernack like a blow.

His eyes flamed wide, and his jaw closed with
a snap as he
took three long strides across the room.

“By God—it’s the Saint!”

“Himself. I didn’t know you were a pal of Algernon’s, but
since you arrived I thought I might as well
stay.”

Fernack’s shoulders were hunched, his
pugnacious chin. jutting dangerously. In that instant shock of surprise, he
had not
paused to wonder why the Saint should be offering himself
like an
eager victim.

“I want you, young fellow,” he
grated.

He lunged forward, with his hand diving for
his hip.

And then he pulled up short, a yard from the
chair. His
hand was poised in the air, barely two inches from the
butt of
his gun, but it made no attempt to travel further. The Saint
did not
seem to have moved, and his free foot was still swing
ing gently back and forth; but somehow the
blue-black shape of an automatic had come into his right hand, and the round
black snout of it was aimed accurately into the
detective’s
breastbone.