The Saint and the Happy Highwayman s-21 Read online

  The Saint and the Happy Highwayman

  ( Saint - 21 )

  Leslie Charteris

  It was such a small gun that the Saint's hand easily covered it, and he held the gun and her hand together in a viselike grip, smiling as if he were just greeting an old acquaintance, until the wail of the sirens died away.

  "Do you really want to go to a police station?" he drawled. "I'm not so fond of them myself, and usually they aren't very fond of me. Wouldn't you rather have a drink?"

  Thus the Saint once again charms his way through these exciting adventures:

  The Man Who Was Lucky

  The Smart Detective

  The Well-Meaning Mayor

  The Wicked Cousin

  The Benevolent Burglary

  The Star Producers

  The Man Who Liked Ants

  I THE MAN WHO WAS LUCKY

  "The rebel of yesterday is the hero of tomorrow. Simon Templar, known as The Saint, whose arrest was the ambition of every policeman in the city two years ago on account of his extralegal activities against the gangs of the bootleg era, comes back to New York on a pleasure trip with the tacit consent of the Police Department.

  "The converse is also true.

  "Lucky Joe Luckner, last surviving great name of the racketeers of the same period, once the friend of judges and the privileged pet of politicians, stands his trial for income-tax evasions with a life term on Alcatraz Island in prospect.

  "We see no need for Simon Templar to go back to his old games. The crooks are being taken care of as they should be, by the men who are employed to do so, with the whole force of an aroused public opinion behind them."

  Thus somewhat optimistically spoke the editorial writer of the New York Daily Mail, on a certain morning in the beginning of the spring.

  Simon Templar kept the cutting. He had a weakness for collecting the miscellaneous items of publicity with which the press punctuated his career from time to time. He had been publicly called a great many names in his life and they all interested him. To those who found themselves sadder or poorer or even deader by reason of his interference in their nefarious activities, he was an unprintable illegitimate; to those whose melancholy duty it was to discourage his blithe propensity for taking the law into his own hands, he was a perpetually disturbing problem; to a few people he was a hero; to himself he was only an adventurer, finding the best romance he could in a dull mechanical age, fighting crime because he had to fight something, and not caring too much whether he himself transgressed the law in doing so. Sometimes his adventures left him poorer, more often they left him richer; but always they were exciting. Which was all that the Saint asked of life.

  He showed the cutting to Inspector John Fernack down on Centre Street a few days after his arrival, and the detective rubbed his square pugnacious chin.

  "There's somethin' in it," he said.

  Simon detected the faintly hesitant inflection in the other's voice and raised his eyebrows gently.

  "Why only something?"

  "You've seen the papers?"

  The Saint shrugged.

  "Well, he hasn't been acquitted."

  "No, he hasn't been acquitted." The detective's tone was blunt and sardonic. "Lucky Joe's luck didn't hold that far. But what the hell? The next jury that takes the case can't help rememberin' that the first jury disagreed, and that means it '11 be twice as hard to make 'em find him guilty. And nobody cares so much about a second trial. I don't say we won't get him eventually-- the Feds might have got him this time if one of the witnesses hadn't been taken for a ride and a couple of others hadn't disappeared. But look what they're tryin' to get him for. Income tax!"

  "It's been used before."

  "Income tax!" Fernack took the words in his teeth and worried it like a dog. The smouldering heat of his indignation came up into his eyes. "What d'ya think that means? All it means is that everybody else who ought to of put Luckner away has fallen down. All it means is that so many crooked politicians and crook lawyers an' crook police chiefs have been playing ball with him so long that now there ain't any other charge left to bring against him. All it means is that for fifteen years this guy Luckner has been a racketeer and a murderer, and now the only rap they can stick on him is that he never paid any income tax!"

  The Saint nodded thoughtfully. "You know all these things about him are true?" "Listen," said Fernack with fierce and caustic restraint. "When a guy who tried to muscle in on Luckner's territory was found dead in a ditch in the Bronx, you bet Luckner didn't have nothin' to do with it. When a cop tried to stop one of Luckner's beer trucks back in prohibition days and got shot in the belly, you bet Luckner was sorry for him. Yeah, Luckner would always be sorry for a fool cop who butted in when the guys higher up said to lay off. When half-a-dozen poolroom keepers got beaten up because they don't join Luckner's poolroom union, you bet Luckner cried when he heard about it. And when one of the witnesses against him in this trial gets bumped off and two others fade away into thin air, you take your shirt off and bet everything you've got it just makes Lucky Joe's heart bleed to think about it." Fernack took the cigar out of his mouth and spat explosively. "You know your way around as well as I do, Saint, or you used to. And you ask me that!"

  Simon swung a long leg over the arm of his chair and gazed at the detective through the drifting smoke of his cigarette with a glimpse of idle mockery twinkling; deep down in his blue eyes.

  "One gathers that Lucky Joe wouldn't be so lucky if you got him alone in a back alley on a dark night," he remarked.

  "Say, listen." Fernack's huge hands rested on the top of his desk, solid as battering rams, looking as if they could have crashed clean through the fragile timber if he had thumped it to emphasize his point. "If they put Luckner in the chair six days runnin' and fried him six times he wouldn't get more than the law's been owin' him for the last ten years. That guy's a rat an' a killer--a natural born louse from the day he was weaned----"

  He stopped rather abruptly, as though he had only just realised the trend of his argument. Perhaps the quietly speculative smile on the Saint's lips, and the rakish lines of the dark fighting face, brought back too many memories to let him continue with an easy conscience. For there had been days, before that tacit amnesty to which the editorial writer of the New York Daily Mail had referred, when that lean debonair outlaw lounging in his armchair had led the New York police a dance that would be remembered in their annals for many years--when the elusive figure of the Saint had first loomed up on the dark horizons of the city's underworld and taken the law into his own hands to such effect that fully half-a-dozen once famous names could be found carved on tombstones in certain cemeteries to mark the tempestuousness of his passing.

  "I don't mean what you're thinkin'," Fernack said heavily. "Luckner is goin' to be taken care of. Even if he only gets a life term on Alcatraz it'll be somethin'. I know you did a few things for us a coupla years back that we couldn't do ourselves on account of the way all the politicians were holding onto us. But that's all changed now. We got a different setup. Luckner isn't goin' to the chair now because the politicians of a coupla years back let him loose; but anybody who tries to pull any of that stuff now isn't goin' to find it so easy to get away with. That goes for you too. Just stick around and have a good time, and you won t be interfered with. Go back to your old line, and you and me will be fightin' again. With this difference--that you won't have the excuse that you had the last time."

  The Saint grinned lazily.

  "Okay," he murmured, "I'll remember it."

  His tone was so innocent and docile that Fernack glared at him for a moment suspiciously; but the Saint laughed at him and t
ook him out to lunch and talked to him so engagingly about the most harmless topics that that momentary flash of uneasiness had faded from the detective's mind by the time they parted. Which was exactly what the Saint meant it to do. The Saint never asked for superfluous trouble--quite enough of it came his way in the normal course of events without encouraging him to invite extra donations without good reason.

  As a matter of fact, the luck of Lucky Joe Luckner might well have slipped away into the background of his memory and remained there permanently. He had really come back to America for a holiday, with no thoughts of crime in his head. For a few days, at least, the bright lights of Broadway would provide all the excitement he needed; and after that he would move on somewhere else.

  He had thought no more about it a couple of days later when he saw a face that he remembered coming out of a travel agency on Fifth Avenue. The girl was so intent on hurrying through the crowd that she might not have noticed him, but he caught her arm as she went by and turned her round.

  "Hello, Cora," he drawled.

  She looked at him with a queer mixture of fear and defiance that surprised him. The look had vanished a moment after she recognised him, but it remained in his memory with the beginning of a question mark after it. He kept his hand on her arm.

  "Why--hello, Saint!"

  He smiled.

  "Hush," he said. "Not so loud. I may be an honest citizen to all intents and purposes, but I haven't got used to it. Come and have a drink and tell me the story of your life."

  "I'm sorry." Did he imagine that she still seemed a trifle breathless, just as he might have imagined that swift glimmer of fright in her eyes when he caught hold of her? "Not just now. Can't we have lunch or something tomorrow? I---I've got an appointment."

  "With Marty?"

  He was sure now. There was a perceptible hesitation before she answered, exactly as if she had paused to consider whether she should tell him the truth or invent a story.

  "Yes. Please--I'm iri a hurry . . ."

  "So am I." The Saint's voice was innocently persuasive. "Can I give you a lift? I'd like to see Marty again."

  "I'm afraid he's ill."

  This was a lie. The Saint knew it, but the genial persuasion of his smile didn't alter. Those who knew him best had learned that that peculiarly lazy and aimless smile was the index of a crystallising determination which was harder to resist than most other men's square-jawed aggression.

  A taxi stood conveniently empty by the curb. He opened the door; and he still held her arm.

  "Where to?" he asked as they settled down.

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. After a moment she gave him an address. He relayed it to the driver and took out a packet of cigarettes. They rode on for a while in silence, and he studied her thoughtfully without seeming to stare. She had always been pretty in a fair-haired and rather fluffy way, but now for the first time he was aware of a background of character which he hadn't noticed particularly when he had known her before. Perhaps it had always been there, but he hadn't observed her closely enough to see it.

  He cast his mind back over the time when they had first met. She was going around with Marty O'Connor then, and apparently they were still going around. That indicated some kind of character at least--he wasn't quite sure what kind. After they had driven a few blocks he reached forward and closed the glass partition to shut them off from the driver.

  "Well, dear heart, do you tell me about it or do I drag it out of you? Is Marty in trouble again?"

  She nodded hesitantly.

  The Saint drew at his cigarette without any visible indications of surprise. When one is a minor racketeer, strong-arm man and reputed gunman like Marty O'Connor, one is liable to be in trouble pretty frequently. Simon concentrated for a moment on trying to blow a couple of smoke rings. The draft from the open window broke them up, and he said: "Who started it?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Marty did something for me once. If he's in trouble I'd like to do something for him. I suppose it's immoral, but I always had a soft spot for that old thug. On the level, Cora."

  "You're not tied up with the cops any more ?"

  "I never was. I just did some of their work for them once, but they never thanked me. And if I'd ever had anything to take out on Marty I'd have done it years ago."

  She looked at him for some seconds before she answered, and then her answer was only made indirectly. She leaned forward and opened the partition again just long enough to change the address he had given the driver to another two blocks north of it.

  "You know the game," said the Saint appreciatively, and for the first time she looked him full in the eyes.

  "I have to," she said. "The G-men have been combing the town for Marty for the last three months."

  Simon raised his eyebrows without emotion.

  "What did he do? Did he take up kidnapping, or is he another of these income-tax defaulters?"

  She looked at him queerly for a moment, and when she laughed there was a sharp note of strain in the sound.

  "The trouble is he knows too much about income tax. He'd be the star witness against Luckner if they could get his evidence."

  "And he doesn't want to give it?"

  "He doesn't want to die," said the girl brutally.

  Simon put his feet up on the spare scat opposite him and smoked placidly. Coincidence was a queer thing, but he had ceased to marvel at its complexities. Once again, through that chance encounter, lie found the subject of Lucky Joe Luckner thrust into his mind, and the repetition gave it enough weight to make it stay there. But he was wise enough not to press the girl for any more details during the drive. In due course of time he would know all that he wanted to know; and he was prepared to wait. He would see Marty himself.

  The cab stopped outside a dingy brick house between Ninth and Tenth avenues. A half-dozen grimy guttersnipes were playing raucous baseball in the street. The windows in the front of the house were clouded with the accumulated dirt of ages. Inside the front door, the dark hall was paved with a strip of threadbare linoleum, and Simon felt the slithery gloss of thick dust under his finger tips when he put his hand on the banister as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. His nose wrinkled in response to a faint pervasive odour of ancient cooking. And a slight frown creased itself into his forehead. He was still a long way from having all his questions answered. To find Marty O'Connor in a place like this, even as a hideout, was a mystery in itself --Marty who had always been such a swell dresser with a highly developed taste for spring mattresses and Turkey carpets and flashy decoration.

  The girl opened the door and they went into the living room. The furniture there was in keeping with what anyone would have expected from a preliminary glance of the building--cheap, shoddy and shabby--but Simon noticed that unlike the rest of the place it appeared to be clean. Cora pulled off her hat.

  "Hello, Marty," she called. "I brought a friend to see you."

  Marty O'Connor appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. He was in his shirt sleeves, a shirt open at the neck, and he kept one hand in his pocket. He stared at the Saint blankly, and then his homely face broke into a slow gold-and-ivory grin.

  "Well for . . . Where the hell did you come from?"

  The Saint chuckled. Marty took his right hand out of his pocket for the first time and Simon grasped it.

  "I wouldn't have believed you could get any uglier, Marty, but you made it."

  The gunman hauled him towards a chair and sat him down. He looked a little less plump than he had been when the Saint saw him last, and there seemed to be a trace of hollowness in his unshaven cheeks; but the feckless twinkle in his faded eyes was the same as that by which Simon had first been beguiled from his antipathy for the ordinary run of hoodlums.

  "I sure am glad to see you here again, Saint. It's a long time since we had a drink together." O'Connor dusted the table with his handkerchief and sat on it. He turned round. "Cora ! See if you got any of that gin left we h
ad the other night . . . Say!" He looked at the Saint again, beaming with a simple pleasure that had temporarily wiped away the furtive defensiveness with which he had emerged from the bedroom. "Where you been all this time?"

  "Here and there," said the Saint vaguely. "I've covered a good deal of ground. Have you been looking after yourself ?"

  "Not so badly."

  The girl came back into the room, bearing a garishly labelled bottle and three cheap glasses.

  "It's okay, Marty," she said. "I told him."

  The gunman scratched his head. For a moment his heavy face sank back into its mask of dour suspicion. And then he grinned rather ruefully, like an unrepentant urchin.

  "Well, ya know how it is, Saint," he said apologetically.

  Simon shook his head.

  "That's just what I don't quite know."

  Marty tipped liquor into the three glasses and passed one of them over. He sat down again.

  "Well . . ." He picked a half-smoked cigarette out of the ash tray and relighted it. "All the good business folded after repeal. Sure, you could always give somebody a bit of protection, but you couldn't get the same dough. Besides, Luckner couldn't keep the connections he used to have since the city got a new administration. Some of the mob took up kidnapping but that ain't my idea of a man's job. It got too dangerous at that. I just about decided the best thing was to go on the legit if I could find a job anywhere--and then this Luckner case blew up. Didya read about it in the papers?"

  "I've heard of it."

  "I useta work with Luckner once--you know when. I never liked him, but it was just business. You know we nearly had a fight lotsa times when he was tryin' to make Cora go out with him."

  "He never did any harm," said the girl lightly.

  "And that wasn't for want of tryin'," growled O'Connor. "Why, I never see a guy make such a play for a girl like he done for Cora. Why, he once told her he'd have me taken for a ride and marry her himself if she'd say the word." Marty laughed in his throat, but the sound was without humour. "You only can trust that guy as far as you can trust a rattlesnake. Still, I wouldn't stop him findin' his own way outta this income-tax rap if he can do it. I hear the G-men wanted me for a witness--I useta keep his accounts once--so I pulled out and went underground. I know things that wouldn't 've let him get away with a hung jury last time. But what's that worth?"