The Saint Sees It Through s-26 Read online

  A girl in an apron stopped in front of him.

  "Hello," she said. "You got everything you want?" '

  "Yus, thank yer, miss."

  "Gee, you must be English."

  "That's right, miss." The Saint's voice was hoarse and inno­cent. "Strite from Aldgate. 'Ow did yer guess?"

  "Oh, I'm getting so I can spot all the accents."

  "Well now!" said the Saint admiringly.

  "This your first time here?"

  "Yus, miss."

  "When did you get to New York?"

  "Just got in larst night."

  "Well, you didn't take long to find us. Do you have any friends here?"

  "No, miss. . . ."

  The Saint was just saying it when a face caught his eye through the blue haze. The man was alone now in a booth which a couple of other seamen had just left, and as he shifted his seat and looked vacantly around the room the Saint saw him clearly and recognised him.

  He said suddenly: "Gorblimy, yes I do! I know that chap dahn there. Excuse me, miss——"

  He jostled away through the mob and squeezed uncere­moniously into the booth, plonking his bottle down on the stained tabletop in front of him.

  "Ullo, mite," he said cheerfully. "I know I've seen you before. Your nime's Patrick 'Ogan, ain't it?"

  "Shure, Hogan's the name," said the other genially, giving him a square view of the unmistakable pug-nosed physiognomy which Simon had last seen impaled on the spotlight of Cookie's Cellar. "An' what's yours?"

  "Tom Simons."

  "I don't remember, but think of nothing of it. Where was it we met?"

  "Murmansk, I think—durin' the war?"

  "It's just as likely. Two weeks I've spent there on two trips, an' divil a night sober."

  It appeared that Hogan found this a happy and satisfactory condition, for he had obviously taken some steps already towards inoculating himself against the evils of sobriety. His voice was a little slurred, and his breath was warmed with spicier fluids than passed over the counter of Cookie's Canteen.

  "This 'ere's a bit of orl right, ain't it?" Simon said, indi­cating the general surroundings with a wave of his bottle.

  "There's nothing better in New York, Tom. An' that Cookie —she's a queen, for all she sings songs that'd make your own father blush."

  "She is, is she?"

  "Shure she is, an' I'll fight any man that says she isn't. Haven't ye heard her before?"

  "Naow. Will she be 'ere ternight?"

  "Indeed she will. Any minute now. That's what I come in for. If it wasn't for her, I'd rather have a drink that'll stay with me 'an a girl I can have to meself to roll in the hay. But Cookie can take care of that too, if she's a friend of yours."

  He winked broadly, a happy pagan with a girl and a hang­over in every port.

  "Coo," said the Saint, properly impressed. "And are yer a friend of 'ers?"

  "You bet I am. Why, last Saturday she takes me an' a friend o' mine out to that fine club she has, an' gives us all the drinks we can hold; an' there we are livin' like lords until daybreak, an' she says any time we want to go back we can do the same. An' if you're a friend o' mine, Tom, why, she'll do the same for you."

  "Lumme," said the Saint hungrily. "Jer fink she would?"

  "Indeed she will. Though I'm surprised at an old man like you havin' these ideas."

  "I ain't so old," said the Saint aggrievedly. "And if it comes ter 'aving fun wif a jine—"

  A figure loomed over the table and mopped officiously over it with a checkered rag. The hand on the rag was pale and long-fingered, and Simon noticed that the fingernails were painted with a violet-tinted lacquer.

  Hardly daring to believe that anything so good could be true, the Saint let his eyes travel up to the classical features and pleated golden hair of the owner of that exotic manicure.

  It was true. It was Ferdinand Pairfield.

  Mr. Pairfield looked at the Saint, speculatively, but without a trace of recognition; discarded him, and smirked at the more youthful and rugged-looking Hogan.

  "Any complaints, boys?" he asked whimsically.

  "Yes," Hogan said flatly. "I don't like the help around here."

  Mr. Pairfield pouted.

  "Well, you don't have to be rude" he said huffily, and went away.

  "The only thing wrong with this place," Hogan observed sourly, "is all those pretty boys. I dunno why they'd be lettin' them in, but they're always here."

  Then the truculent expression vanished from his face as sud­denly as it had come there, and he let out a shrill joyful war-cry.

  "Here she is, Tom," he whooped. "Here's Cookie!"

  The lights dimmed as he was speaking, giving focus to the single spotlight that picked up the bulbous figure of Cookie as she advanced to the front of the dais.

  Her face was wide open in the big hearty jolly beam that she wore to work. Throwing inaudible answers back to the barrage of cheers and whistling that greeted her, she ma­neuvered her hips around the piano and settled them on the piano stool. Her plowman's hands pounded over the keyboard; and the Saint leaned back and prepared himself for another parade of her merchandise.

  "Good evening, everybody," she blared when she could be heard: "Here we are again, with a load of those songs your mothers never taught you. Tonight we'll try and top them all— as usual. Hold on to your pants, boys, and let's go!"

  She went.

  It was a performance much like the one that Simon had heard the night before; only much more so. She took sex into the sewer and brought it out again, dripping. She introduced verses and adlibs of the kind that are normally featured only at stag smokers of the rowdiest kind. But through it all she glowed with that great gargoyle joviality that made her every­body's broadminded big sister; and to the audience she had, much as the USO would have disapproved and the YMCA would have turned pale with horror, it was colossal. They hooted and roared and clapped and beat upon the tables, de­manding more and more until her coarse homely face was glistening with the energy she was pouring out. And in key with his adopted character, and to make sure of retaining the esteem of Patrick Hogan, the Saint's enthusiasm was as vocifer­ous as any.

  It went on for a full threequarters of an hour before Cookie gave up, and then Simon suspected that her principal reason was plain exhaustion. He realised that she was a leech for applause: she soaked it up like a sponge, it fed and warmed her, and she gave it back like a kind of transformed incandescence. But even her extravagant stamina had its limit.

  "That's all for now," she gasped. "You've worn me down to a shadow." There was a howl of laughter. "Come back to­morrow night, and I'll try to do better."

  She stepped down off the platform, to be hand-shaken and slapped on the back by a surge of admirers as the lights went up again.

  Patrick Hogan climbed to his feet, pushing the table out and almost upsetting it in his eagerness. He cupped his hands to his mouth and split the general hubbub with a stentorian shout.

  "Hey, Cookie."

  His coat was rucked up to his hips from the way he had been sitting, and as he lurched there his right hip pocket was only a few inches from Simon's face. Quite calmly and almost mechanically the Saint's eyes traced the outlines of the object that bulged in the pocket under the rough cloth—even before he moved to catch a blue-black gleam of metal down in the slight gape of the opening.

  Then he lighted a cigarette with extreme thoughtfulness, digesting the new and uncontrovertible fact that Patrick Hogan, that simple spontaneous child of nature, was painting the town with a roscoe in his pants.

  3

  Cookie sat down with them, and Hogan said: "This is me friend Tom Simons, a foine sailor an' an old goat with the gals. We were drunk together in Murmansk-—or I was drunk any­way."

  "How do you do, Tom," Cookie said.

  "Mustn't grumble," said the Saint. " 'Ow's yerself ?"

  "Tired. And I've still got two shows to do at my own place."

  "I certainly did enjoy 'earing ye
r sing, ma'm."

  "This your first visit?"

  "Yus, ma'm."

  "Call me Cookie. Everyone does."

  "Yus, ma'm."

  "I bet it wont' be his last," Hogan said. "Eh, Tom?"

  "Not arf it won't," said the Saint. "If you'll 'ave me. But I dunno as I'll 'ave a lot more charnces on this trip."

  Cookie took out a pack of cigarettes, offered them, and lit one for herself. She looked at the Saint again.

  "Aren't you staying long?" she asked conversationally.

  "Naow. Back on board by supper-time on Tuesday, them's the orders—an' we only drops the 'ook yesterdye. Be a s'ilor an' see the world—I don't think."

  "That's too bad."

  "Aow, it's orl in the dye's work, ma'm. But I ses ter meself, I'm goin' ter see New York while I got the charnce, by crikey."

  "Where are you heading for next?"

  "Through the canal an' strite to Shanghai. Then back from there to Frisco. Then­——"

  "Say, Cookie," interrupted Hogan brazenly, "how's about a drop of real liquor for a couple o' good friends who've dried their throats to a cinder with cheerin' for ye?"

  She took a deep man-sized drag at her cigarette, flicked ash from it on to the table, and glanced at the Saint again with expressionless and impersonal calculation.

  "I might find you a drop," she said.

  She stood up and started away; and Patrick Hogan nudged the Saint with one of his broad disarming winks as they fol­lowed her.

  "What did I tell ye, Tom?"

  "Cor," said the Saint appreciatively, "you ain't arf a one." They went through a door at the side of the service bar, which took them into a kitchen that might once have been bustling and redolent with the concoction of rare dishes for the delectation of gourmets. Now it looked bare and drab and forlorn. There was no one there. A centre table was piled with loaves of bread and stacks of sliced ham and cheese, and littered with crumbs and scraps. Cases of coke and pop were pyra­mided in one corner. The only thing on the stove was an enormous steaming coffee pot; and a mass of dirty cups and plates raised sections of their anatomy, like vestiges of a sunken armada, out of the lake of greasy water in the sink.

  Cookie led the way into another room that opened off the kitchen. It was so tiny that it must once have seen duty as a store room. Now it barely had space for a couple of plain chairs, a wastebasket, a battered filing cabinet, and a scarred desk scattered with bills and papers. Kay Natello sat at the desk, in front of an antique typewriter, pecking out an address on an envelope with two clawlike fingers.

  "Hullo, Kay," Hogan said familiarly. "An' how's me swate­heart tonight?"

  "We're just going to have a quick one," Cookie said. "Be a darling and find us some glasses, Kay, will you?"

  Kay Natello got up and went out into the kitchen, and Cookie opened a drawer of the desk and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch. Natello came back with four wet glasses and put them on the desk.

  "This is Tom Simons—Kay Natello," Cookie said, "Tom's only just got in, and he's sailing again on Tuesday."

  "Too bad," said Natello.

  "We all 'ave ter work, Miss," Simon said modestly. "At least we got plenty o' grub an' a nice clean bed ter sleep in, as long as it don't sink under us."

  Cookie finished pouring four powerful slugs, and picked up one of them.

  "Well, boys," she said. "Down the hatch."

  The drinks duly went down the hatch.

  "You were sailing soon, too, weren't you, Pat?" asked Natello.

  "Next week. Off to South Africa, India, Singapore, and back the same way."

  "We'll miss you," said Cookie. "What about you, Tom— are you going to England?"

  "Shanghai," said the Saint, wiping his droopy moustache. "Through the canal. An' back to Frisco."

  Cookie poured herself another drink, and downed it at one gulp like a dose of medicine. Perhaps that was what it was for her.

  "I've got to leave you," she announced. "Got my next show to do."

  She helped herself to another small jolt, as an afterthought, just in case she had made a mistake and cheated herself on the last one. The effect on her was not even noticeable. Her small piggy eyes summarised the Saint with the quick covert shrewd­ness of an adept Fiftysecond-Street head waiter taking the measure of a new customer. She said with perfectly timed spontaneity: "Look, why don't you boys come over to the Cellar when you get through here? On the house."

  Hogan thumped her heartily on the back without even jar­ring her.

  "Darlin', what did ye think we were waitin' for? Sure, we'll be there shoutin' for ye. Won't we, Tom?"

  "Crikey," said the Saint, with a wistful break in his voice. "You ain't arf giving us a time, ma'm. I mean, Cookie."

  "That's fine," Cookie said. "Then I'll be expecting you. Kay, you take care of them and bring them along. See you all later."

  She gathered her foundation around her, gave a last hesitant glance at the Scotch bottle, and made a resolute exit like a hip­popotamus taking off to answer the call of Spring.

  Kay Natello took care of them.

  Simon didn't keep very close track of the caretaking, but the general trend of it was quite simple. After the Scotch was fin­ished and they left the canteen, it involved stopping at a great many bars on the way and having a drink or two in each of them. Hogan acquired more blarney and boisterousness as it went on: he said that Kay was his girl, and an Irishman's girl was his castle, or something that sounded like that. He beam­ingly offered to pulverize various persons whom he suspected of dissenting from his opinions about Oliver Cromwell, Michael Collins, De Valera, and Kay Natello. Simon Templar did his best to keep in time with the mood, and surreptitiously drib­bled as many drinks as he could into the nearest cuspidor. Through it all, Kay Natello only became more stringy and more removed. She responded to Pat Hogan's elephantine flirta­tions when she remembered to; in between, she was more like a YWCA chaperone trying to keep up with the girls. Simon was quite relieved that she didn't at any point offer to break into significant vers libres. . . . But it still seemed to take a long time to reach Cookie's Cellar.

  Once they were there, however, it was a repetition of the night before from another viewpoint. This time, the Saint was one of the reluctant heroes under the spotlight. Cookie sang the same kind of songs, giving and receiving the same enthusi­asm.

  After one of the more turbid numbers, Kay Natello nudged the Saint and said proudly: "I wrote that for her."

  "Cor!" said the Saint respectfully.

  That was only a mild expression of what he thought. The idea of a poetess of Kay Natello's school composing those kinds of lyrics in her lighter moments had an austere magnificence which he hoped to dwell on some quiet evening when he had nothing else at all to do.

  It was like the night before again, with a difference, because Avalon Dexter was there.

  She wasn't there to work. She was just another customer, wearing a simple afternoon dress, sitting at a table at the back of the room; but he saw her long tawny hair dance as she talked and looked around. It gave him a queer sensation to watch her like that and have her glance pass over him in complete unawareness. It was like being invisible.

  And it also gave him a sort of guilty feeling, as though he was hiding and spying on her. Which at that moment he was. The man with her was slightly rotund and slightly bald. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and he had a round and pleasant pink face that looked very clean and freshly barbered. He was not, you could tell very quickly, another Dr. Zellermann in his manual recreations. He behaved like a nice wholesome middle-aged man who was enjoying the company he was in. Any im­partial observer would have conceded that he was entitled to that, and quite undeserving the unreasonable malignance with which Simon regarded him. Simon knew it was unreasonable, but that didn't blunt the stab of resentment that went through him when he saw her chattering so gaily with this complacent jerk. He was surprised at his own symptoms, and not too pleased about them either.

  Co
okie finished at last, with Hogan and the Saint competing in the uproariousness of their appreciation. The melancholy waiter brought some more drinks, bowed down into profounder misery by the knowledge that this was one table which he dared not discourage, and that at the same time it was one table where the tip would certainly be no compensation. Cookie ploughed through the room, stopping to give jovial greeting to various tables, and surged on to the bar, where there were other members of her following to be saluted and the bartender had been trained to have three ounces of Scotch waiting for her with a cube of ice in it.

  It was twenty minutes before she breasted back to her own table, and then she had Dr. Ernst Zellermann in tow.

  Cookie introduced him, and mopped her face and reached for the first drink that arrived. "Tom's sailing on Tuesday," she said. "Shanghai." The Saint had already begun to let it look as if his liquor consumption was catching up with him. He lurched in his chair, spilt some of his drink, and gave a wink that was getting heavy and bleary.

  "Gonna find aht if it's true abaht China," he said.

  "I may be able to tell you a few places to go," Zellermann said smoothly. "I spent quite a time there once—In the good days before the war."

  He looked very noble and full of unfathomable memories; and Simon Templar, dimly returning his gaze, felt coldly and accurately like a specimen on a dissecting table.

  Zellermann picked up his glass and turned to Cookie with the utmost charm.

  "You know," he said, "I don't know why you don't invite more people like Mr. Hogan and Mr. Simons out to Long Is­land. After all, they deserve to be entertained much more than I do."

  "That's an idea," Cookie said. "How about it, boys? I've got a little shack on the beach at Southampton. We close this joint on Sundays anyhow. Why don't you come along? I'll see that you're back in town on Monday. You can swim in the ocean and get some sun on the beach, and we'll make a party of it and it won't cost you a cent. Dr. Zellermann and I will drive you out as soon as we've closed this place. We'll have a grand weekend. I'll have company for you, too. The most attractive girl you've ever seen." Simon was much too drunk to catch the glance that flashed between them—or at least he had been able to convince everyone of that. "Dexter is coming along," Cookie said.