Call for the Saint s-27

  Call for the Saint

  ( Saint - 27 )

  Leslie Charteris

  CALL FOR THE SAINT by Leslie Charteris

  CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE: THE KING OF THE BEGGARS

  BOOK TWO: THE MASKED ANGEL

  BOOK ONE: THE KING OF THE BEGGARS

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Sins of commission," said Simon Templar darkly, "are very bad for the victim. But sins of omission are usually worse for the criminal."

  The only perceptible response was a faint ping as a BB shot ricocheted from an imitation Sčvres vase which had been thoughtfully placed in a corner. Hoppy Uniatz shrugged shoul­ders that would not have disgraced a gorilla, popped another BB in his mouth, and expelled it in the wake of its predecessor, with better aim. This time the ping was followed by a faint rattle.

  "Bull's-eye," he announced proudly. "I'm gettin' better."

  "That," said the Saint, "depends on what field of endeavor you're talking about."

  Mr. Uniatz felt no offense. His speed and accuracy on the draw might be highly regarded in some circles, but he had never claimed to compete in tournaments of subtlety. Anything the Saint said was okay with him.

  He had not yet even wondered why they had stayed in Chicago for three days without any disclosed objective. In the dim abyss of what must perfunctorily be called Hoppy's mind was some vague idea that they were hiding out, though he could not quite understand why. Murder, arson, and burglary had not figured in the Saint's recent activities, which in itself was an unusual circumstance.

  However, Mr. Uniatz had spent some time in Chicago be­fore, and he still found it difficult to walk along State Street without instinctively ducking whenever he saw brass buttons.

  If Simon Templar chose to remain in this hotel suite, there were probably reasons. Hoppy's only objection was that he would have liked to kill time at the burlesque show three blocks south; but since this didn't seem to be in the cards, he had bought himself a bagful of BB shot and was taking a simple childlike pleasure in practicing oral marksmanship.

  Meanwhile the Saint sat by the window with a pair of high-powered binoculars in his hand, staring from time to time through the lenses at the street below. Mr. Uniatz did not understand this either, but he had no wish to seem unco­operative on that account.

  "Boss," he said, "maybe I should take a toin wit' de peepers."

  Simon lowered the glasses again.

  "And just what would you look for?" he inquired interestedly.

  "I dunno, boss," confessed Mr. Uniatz. "But I could look."

  "You're such a help to me," said the Saint.

  Strange emotions chased themselves across Hoppy's unprepossessing face, not unlike those of a man who has been butted in the midriff by an invisible goat. His mouth hung open, and his small eyes had a stricken expression.

  The Saint had a momentary qualm of conscience. Perhaps his sarcasm had been unduly harsh. He hastened to soften the affront to an unprecedented sensitivity.

  "No kidding," he said. "I'm going to have plenty for you to do, soon enough."

  "Boss," Mr. Uniatz said anxiously, "I t'ink I swallered a BB."

  Simon sighed.

  "I don't think it'll hurt you. Anyone who's eaten as much canned heat as you have shouldn't worry about the ingestion of a tiny globule of lead."

  "Yeah," Hoppy said blankly. "Well, watch me make an­other bull's-eye."

  Reassured, he popped another BB in his mouth and expelled it at the vase.

  Simon picked up the binoculars again. Outside, the traffic hummed dimly past, ten stories below. From the distance came the muted roar of the Elevated. For several seconds he focused the street intently.

  Then he said: "You might as well keep up with the play. We were talking about sins of omission, and have you noticed that woman across the street, near the alley?"

  "De witch? Chees, what a bag," Mr. Uniatz said. "Sure I seen her. I drop a coin in her cup every time I go by." He grimaced. "When I get dat old, I hope I drop dead foist."

  "So she's a professional beggar. But she's only been there two days. There was a blind man on that corner before. What do you think happened to him?"

  "Maybe he ain't so blind, at dat. He gets a load of her and beats it."

  The Saint shook his head.

  "She's been committing sins, Hoppy."

  "At her age?"

  "Sins of omission. She's never on her corner at night. And she wasn't there Saturday afternoon."

  "Okay. Maybe she gets tired."

  "Beggars don't get tired at the most profitable hours," Simon said. "It's the theater crowds that pay off. I'm wonder­ing why she's never around when she'd have a chance to get some real moola."

  Hoppy had a flash of perspicacity.

  "Is dat why we been hanging around here?"

  "I've been waiting for something. I don't know what, but . . . I think this is it!"

  The Saint was suddenly standing up, dropping the binocu­lars into the chair which seemed to have ejected him with a spontaneous convulsion of its springs. He was out of the apart­ment before Hoppy could decide what to do with the BB in his mouth.

  This problem proved far too difficult for snap judgment. Hoppy was still rolling the shot on his tongue when he joined the Saint at the elevator.

  "This is the first time I've regretted being ten stories up," Simon said, leaning heavily on the button. His eyes were no longer lazy; they were blue flames. "Hoppy, I'm going to walk down. You take the elevator. If you win the race, find out why that beggar woman just went up the alley with a man who looked exactly as if he had a gun in her back."

  "But--" Mr. Uniatz began, and closed his mouth as the Saint whipped out of sight through a door marked STAIRWAY. He made sure that his Betsy was with him, in Betsy's comfortable leather nest under his coat. But he still kept the last BB on his tongue. A guy never knew when he might need ammunition.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Simon Templar turned into the alley and was instantly alone in improbable isolation. Two blocks away, on Michigan Boulevard, sleek cars were tooling along their traffic lanes, and people were strolling on the sidewalks, safe and secure, because dozens of casual eyes were flicking past them. But as he turned the corner that world dropped into another dimension, forcing remembrance of itself only by the roar of traffic coming in from behind him and before him, yet at the same time made even more remote by the knowledge that the sound of a shot would probably go unheard in Chicago's noisy morning song. And in the backwater where he had landed there was nothing but the old woman, the gunman, and himself.

  The man was back up against a wall, rubbing his eyes furi­ously with his left hand, while his right waved a heavy auto­matic jerkily before him. The beggar woman was holding a gun, too; but her finger was not on the trigger. She seemed to be trying to get close enough to grab the automatic from the man's grip. Her rags flapped grotesquely as she jigged about with surprising agility for a woman who had previously seemed to be crippled by a combination of rheumatism, arthritis, and senility.

  A whiff of something sharp and acrid stung the Saint's nostrils. He recognized ammonia, and instantly realized why the gunman was scrubbing so frantically at his eyes. But the advantage of an ammonia gun is to disarm the enemy through surprise. The cursing gentleman with the automatic was not yet disarmed, and at any moment he was just as likely to start shooting at random.

  The Saint stopped running, side-stepped silently, and came on again on his toes. He took two quick steps forward and brought the edge of his hand down sharply on the gunman's wrist, and the automatic clattered to the ground. The Saint's swooping movement was almost continuous, and when he straightened he had the butt of the automatic cuddled into his palm. He listene
d for a moment.

  "What language!" he remarked reprovingly. "You're liable to bite your tongue, Junior."

  He batted the gunman lightly on the chin with his auto­matic, and the resultant inarticulate mouthings seemed to prove that the Saint's warning had been justified.

  The beggar woman looked like a puppet whose strings had stopped moving. Her dirt-rimmed eyes glared at the Saint in indecision, and her puffy features twisted unpleasantly. And yet as the Saint gazed at her he felt the stirring of a preposter­ous intuition.

  "What's eatin' de old witch?" Mr. Uniatz demanded from somewhere in the background. "No ya don't!" He deftly inter­cepted the woman as she made a dart for safety. "Not wit'out ya broomstick ya don't make no getaway. Gimme dat rod."

  The Saint finished frisking the gunman. Then he stepped back a pace and regarded the beggar woman again, with a small crinkle forming between his brows.

  Hoppy said: "Hey, what kind of a heater is dis?"

  "It squirts ammonia," Simon said. "Junior here got a whiff of it in his eyes. I wonder--" He glanced along the alley.

  "Perhaps at this point we should adjourn. This alley would be perfect for a quiet murder, but it isn't private enough for a confessional, and I want Junior to open his heart to me."

  Junior profanely denied any intention of making Simon Templar his confidant. The Saint rapped him across the head again and said: "Quiet. We'll be bosom pals before you know it." He turned his clear blue gaze on the beggar woman, who had subsided into sullen quiet. "My hotel's across the street," he said. "Shall we have an audition there?"

  For an instant her eyes flashed across his, startlingly bright and alert. The thing Simon had already sensed-the incon­gruous vitality under those shapeless rags and puffy features- was unmistakable for that fleeting moment before the mask dropped again.

  "I dunno what this is all about, mister. I don't know nothing. I got my own troubles--"

  Simon said: "You'll be back in time for the performance."

  Her eyes searched his face. When she spoke, her voice had changed. It was deeper, more resonant.

  "All right," she said. "I'll take a chance."

  "The service elevator is indicated, I think. Hoppy, if you'll escort the lady, I'll follow with Junior."

  "Okay, boss."

  Simon Templar captured the gunman's arm and bent it deftly upward.

  "You're going to be a good boy and come quietly, aren't you?"

  "Like hell," Junior said.

  Simon applied a little more torque.

  "I'm not an unreasonable man," he remarked. "I'll give you a choice. Either stop wriggling and keep your mouth shut, or let me break your arm and give you something to yell about. I should warn you that I have a weakness for compound fractures. But don't feel that I'm trying to influence you, You're perfectly free to take your pick."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Junior, by request, sat cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, his unclean hands in his lap.

  "Should we tie him up'" Hoppy asked.

  The Saint had a better idea. He wound a piece of wire several times around Junior's thumbs and twisted the ends tight.

  "There," he said, stepping back and beaming down at Junior. "He's safe as houses. Besides, we may need the rope later to hang him."

  The captive remained silent, his thin pinched face sulkily intent on the carpet. Aside from the fact that he rather strik­ingly resembled a rat, he had few distinguishing characteristics.

  "All right," the Saint said. "Keep an eye on him, Hoppy. Kick his protruding teeth in if he tries to get up."

  He moved to a side table and did things lovingly with ice and bourbon. But his eyes kept returning to the beggar woman.

  She had come alive. There was no other word for it. Even under the patched and threadbare dress, her body had shed thirty years. And her eyes were no longer dull.

  She said: "You're the Saint, aren't you?"

  Simon said: "You're one up on me. I don't know your name . . . yet."

  "I recognized you. That's why I came along."

  "What will you have?"

  She nodded at the glass he was holding and Simon moved across the room and gave her the drink. Then he knew that he had been right. His fingers touched hers, and what he felt was proof enough. Her hand was firm and yet soft, the skin like satin.

  She had done a beautiful job of make-up. The Saint could appreciate it. Quite frankly, he stared. And through the muddy blotched surface and cunningly drawn wrinkles her real face began to come into view, the clear clean sculpture that even disfiguring rolls of padding in mouth and nostrils could not entirely hide.

  She looked away.

  The Saint did not. Presently he murmured: "Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retired; Bid her come forth"

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Simon Templar's low voice went on: "Suffer herself to be desired, And not blush so to be admired:"

  Hoppy said: "Huh?"

  It was a young woman's laughter that sounded then. And it was not the cracked voice of the beggar woman that said: "Mr. Templar, I'm beginning to understand the reasons for your reputation. How did you know I was an actress? You didn't recognize me?"

  The Saint replaced his drink, gave Hoppy a bottle to him­self, and sat down, stretching his long legs.

  "I just realized why you were never at your corner during theater hours. A real beggar would have been. That's when the money flows fastest. Saturday afternoon you weren't there either-a matinee, I suppose? But I didn't recognize you, no."

  She said: "I'm Monica Varing."

  The Saint raised his brows. Varing was one of the great names, as well known in theatrical circles as he was himself in his own peculiar field. Drew, Barrymore, Terry, Varing-they were all names that had blazed across the marquees of the world's capitals. For ten years Monica Varing had been that rare thing, an actress-not merely a star, but a follower of the tradition that has come down through the London Globe from the Greek amphitheaters. More than that, if he remembered other pictures of her, she was the most unchallenged beauty of the modern stage. She nodded towards the man squatting on the rug and said: "I don't know whether I should say any more in front of him."

  "In case he gets away-or talks, you mean?" Simon sug­gested, his blue eyes faintly amused. "You needn't worry about that. Junior's not going to talk indiscriminately from now on. We can manage that, can't we, Hoppy?"

  Hoppy said broodingly: "I never hoid nobody talk after dey was dropped in de lake wit' deir feet in a sack of cement."

  "Listen!" Junior yelped. "You can't do this to me!"

  "Why not?" the Saint asked, and in the face of that logical query Junior was silent.

  Monica Varing said: "I never thought this would happen. I'd set a trap, with myself as the bait--"

  "Start at the beginning," Simon interrupted. "With your predecessor, say. What happened to him?"

  Monica said: "John Irvine. He was blind. He was a stage manager in vaudeville-where a lot of us started. He was blinded ten years ago, and got a begging permit. Whenever I played Chicago, I'd look him up and put something in his cup. It was a-well, a libation, in the classic sense. But it wasn't only that. No matter how long it would be between runs, John would always recognize my footsteps. He'd say hello and wish me luck. On opening night I always gave him a hundred dollars. I wasn't the only one, either. Plenty of other troupers were big enough to remember."

  "Last Wednesday," Simon went on for her, "a bum named John Irvine was found shot to death in that alley where we met. He'd been beaten up first. ... . He left a widow and chil­dren, didn't he?"

  "Three children," Monica said.

  The Saint looked at Junior, and his face was not friendly.

  "Quite a few beggars have been beaten up in Chicago in the last few weeks. The one's who were able to talk said the same thing. Something about a mysterious character called the King of the Beggars."

  "The beggars have to pay off a percentage of their earnings to His Majesty," Monica sai
d bitterly. "Or else they're beaten up. The gang made an example of Irvine. To frighten the others. It just happened to be him; it might have been any beggar. The police-well, why should they make a big thing of it?"

  "Why should you?" Simon asked.

  She met his impersonal gaze no less directly.

  "You may think I'm crazy, but it meant something to me. I knew the cops should have taken care of it, but I knew just as well they wouldn't. There weren't any headlines in it, and no civic committees were going to raise hell if they let it drop. . . . I'm a damned good actress, and I know make-up- the kind that'll even get by in daylight. I thought I might get a lead on something. I'd rather catch that King of the Beggars than star in another hit on Broadway."

  "Me too," said the Saint. "Not that anyone ever offered me Broadway."

  But there it was-the Robin Hood touch that would undoubtedly be the death of him someday . . . but literally. The whisper of a new racket which couldn't help reaching his hypersensitive ears, tuned as they were to every fresh stirring in the endless ferment of ungodliness. Something big and ugly, but preying on small and helpless people ... A penny-ante racket, until there were enough pennies . . . So you wanna be a beggar, pal? Okay, but you gotta pay off, pal. You gotta have protection, pal. We can make sure you don't have no competition on your beat, see? But you gotta join the Protective Association, pal. You gotta kick in your dues. Otherwise you dunno what might happen. You might get run off the streets; you might even get hurt bad, pal. We're all for you, but you gotta play ball. . , . And somewhere at the top, as always some smooth and bloated spider grew fat on the leachings from the little unco-ordinated jerks who paid their tax to Fear.

  The Saint said: "That's why I've been sitting in this joint for days. That's why I watched you, until Junior hustled you into the alley. I'm just trying to move a step up the ladder."

  Monica Varing said: "I'm going to find out --"

  "You've got courage," Simon told her. "We know that. But this job needs more than that. Let's say-a certain skill in unusual fields. For example, the trick of getting people to confide in you." He turned to his silent guest. "Who's the King, Junior?"