15 The Saint in New York Page 16

  With a face of iron the Saint lowered himself to the ground and straightened up, but his eyes met Maxie's calmly enough.

  "Is this as far as we go?" he inquired.

  "You said it," Maxie assented curtly.

  Behind him, Simon could hear the crunch of Joe's brogans on the soil as the other gunman followed him out, and the brusque click of the door closing again. The weight of the gun muzzle touched his back again. He was gripped between two potential fires as securely as if he had been held in a pair of tangible forceps; and for the second time that icy qualm of doubt squirmed clammily in the pit of his stomach. In every movement that was made there was a practised confidence, an unblinking vigilance, such as he had never encountered be­fore. No other two men he had ever met could have held him in the car so long, talking to him and lighting his cigarettes, without giving him a moment's chance to take them off their guard. No other two men that he could think of could have manoeuvred him in and out of it without offering at least one even toss-up on a break for freedom. He had always known, at the back of his mind, that one day he must meet his match— that sometime, somewhere, the luck which had followed him so faithfully throughout his career must turn against him, as it does in the life of every gambler and adventurer who refuses to acknowledge any limits. But he had not thought that it would happen there—just as no man ever believes that he will die tomorrow, although he knows that there must come a to­morrow when he will die. ... A thin shadow of the old Saintly smile touched his lips and did not reach his eyes.

  "I hope you're going to do this with all the regular formali­ties," he said gently. "You know, I've often wondered just how the thing was done. I'd be awfully disappointed if you didn't bump me off in the most approved style."

  At the back of him, Joe choked on an oath; but Maxie was unimpressed.

  "Sure," he agreed affably. "We'll give you a show. But there ain't much to it. Just in the line of business, see?"

  "I see," said the Saint quietly.

  The complete unconcern, the blandly brutal callousness of Maxie's reply, seemed to have frozen something deep in his heart. He had faced death before—death that flamed out at him in violent, seething hate, death that dispassionately pro­posed his annihilation as a matter of cold expedience. He had dealt out death himself, in various ways. But never had he known a man to attempt to snuff out another's Life so casually, with such an indescribable absence of all personal feeling, as this ruthless killer who was preparing to send a bullet through his vitals—"just in the line of business. . . ."

  The Saint had had his own rules of the game; but at that moment they were forgotten. If he ever broke loose from the trap in which he was held, if Destiny offered him that one lone ghost of a break to get away and join in the game again, for the rest of that adventure he would play it as his opponents played it—giving no quarter. He would be the same as they were—utterly without mercy or compunction. He would have only one remedy for all mistakes—the same as theirs.

  In the dim light his eyes had lost all expression. Their gaze was narrowed down to a mere frosty gleam of jagged ice.

  "Over by that tree," directed Maxie conversationally. "That's the best spot."

  His phrasing of the words held a sinister implication that many other spots in that locality had been tried, and that his choice was based on the findings of long experience; but the suggestion was absolutely unconscious. He seemed even more indifferent than if he had been posing the Saint for a photo­graph.

  Simon looked at him for a moment and then turned away. There was nothing else he could do. Sometimes he had won­dered why even on the way to certain death a man should still submit to the dictation of a gun; now, with a terrible clarity of reason, he knew the answer. Until death had actually struck him, until the ultimate unanswerable instant of annihilation, he would cling to the hope that some miracle must bring re­prieve; obedient to some illogical blind instinct of self-pres­ervation, he would do nothing to precipitate the end.

  Under the turning muzzle of Maxie's gun, the Saint took up his position against the trunk of a towering elm and turned round again. Joe nodded approvingly and at a sign from Maxie stepped closer to prepare the victim for execution ac­cording to the gangland code.

  Methodically he unbuttoned the Saint's coat and opened it; then began a similar task upon his shirt.

  "Some guys started wearin' bullet-proof vests," Maxie ex­plained cheerfully.

  Simon's nerves were tensed to the last unbearable ounce; his body was rigid like a steel bar. Now there was only Maxie cov­ering him: Joe was fully taken up with his gruesome ritual, and the voiceless driver had raised the hood of the car and was seemingly engrossed in some minor ailment that he had de­tected in its mechanism. If he was to have a chance at all, it could only be now.

  He moved slightly, as if to help Joe with his unbuttoning. Then, with a lightning movement, his left hand shot up. Lean fingers closed on Joe's left wrist as he fumbled with the Saint's shirt, and a sudden whipping contraction of steel sinews jerked the man aside, throwing him off balance and turning him half round on the leverage of his extended arm. The gun in his right hand was flung out of aim: Simon heard the crack of the explosion and saw the vicious splash of flame from the barrel, but the shot went off at right angles to the line it should have taken.

  Simon's fist snapped over and thudded into the back of the gunman's neck, accurately at the base of his skull, smacking into the hard flesh and bone in a savage punch that must have almost jarred the bones loose from their sockets. The man grunted stupidly and lurched forward; but the Saint's left arm lashed round his upper body and held him up as a human shield, while his right hand grabbed at the man's gun wrist and held it to prevent Joe twisting it up behind his back and firing at point-blank range. He had had no time to wonder what Maxie might be doing during that flurry of hectic action; when the Saint had last observed him he had been three yards away and a trifle to his left; but the first jerk which had hurled Joe across the line of fire had made that position useless. Simon looked for him over Joe's shoulder and did not see him. He hauled his living shield round in a frantic spin; and then he heard the deafening peal of an automatic exploding some­where close behind him on his right, and something hit him in the right side of his back below the shoulder with terrific force.

  The Saint stumbled and caught his breath as a redhot an­guish stabbed through him from the point of impact of that fearful blow; and at the same moment Joe's body kicked con­vulsively in his. grasp and became a dead weight. Simon's right arm was numb to his fingertips from the shock. He turned fur­ther, dragging Joe with him, and heard a dull bump as the dead man's automatic slipped from his nerveless fingers and fell to the ground, but he could not reach it. To have tried to do so, with one arm useless, would have meant letting go his only protection; and he knew he would never have had time to cover the distance and locate the fallen weapon in the dark. He looked up and saw Maxie's pitiless face, a white blotch in the faint light.

  "You got two minutes to say your prayers, Saint," Maxie grated, with the first trace of vindictiveness that he had shown. He tilted his head and spoke louder.

  "Hi, Hunk, you damn fool! Where are ya?"

  Then Simon remembered the driver of the car and knew that the chance which he thought he had seen was only a chi­mera, a last sadistic jest on the part of the fortune which had deserted him. Between them, the two men would get him easily. He couldn't watch both at once, or protect himself from the two of them together. One of them would outflank him, as simply as walking round a table, without risk and with­out effort; and that would be the finish.

  The Saint did not pray. He had no deities to call on, except the primitive pagan gods of battle and sudden death who had carried him on a flood tide of favour into that blind alley and left him there to pay the last account alone. But he looked up at the dark sky and saw that the clouds had broken, and a star twinkled millions of miles aloft in the blue rift. A light breeze passed across the common, stirri
ng the fresh scents of the night; and he knew that, whatever the reckoning might be, he would have asked for no other life.

  "Hunk!" Maxie called again, raspingly.

  He dared not turn his head for fear of taking his eyes off the Saint; but the Saint looked beyond him and saw a strange thing.

  The driver was not probing into the vitals of the car, as he had been. He was not even approaching at a lumbering trot to throw his taciturn weight into the unequal scale. It took the Saint a second or two to discover where he was—a second or two longer to realize that the blurred form extended at full length beside the car was the driver, lying as if in sleep.

  And then he saw something else—a slender, graceful figure that was coming up behind Maxie on soundless feet. And as he saw it, she spoke.

  "The Big Fellow says wait a minute, Maxie."

  Maxie's eyes went wide in hurt surprise, and his jaw sagged foolishly. Only the aim of his automatic did not waver. It clung to its mark as if his brain stubbornly refused to accept the evidence of his ears; and his astounded gaze did not shift away from the Saint.

  "Wha—whass that?" he got out.

  "This is Fay," said the girl.

  Simon Templar opened his nostrils to a vast lung-easing breath. The cool sweet air of the unwalled fields went down into his lungs like ethereal nectar and sent the blood racing again along his stagnant veins. He lifted his head and looked up at the lone twinkling star in that slim gap in the black canopy of cloud, and over the abyss of a thousand million light-years the star seemed to wink at him. He was alive.

  There are no words to describe what he felt at that moment. When a man has been down into the uttermost depths, when the shadow of the dark angel's wings has blotted out the last light and their cold breath has touched his brow, not in sud­den accident or the anaesthetic heat of passion, but with a re-morseless deliberation that wrings the last dram of self-control from every second of hopeless knowledge, his return to life is beyond the reach of words. To say that the weight of all mor­tality is swept from his shoulders, that the snapping of the strain leaves every heroically disciplined nerve loose and inert like a broken thread, that the precious response of every living sense takes away his breath with its intolerably brilliant beauty, is to say nothing. He is like a man who has been blind from birth, to whom the gift of sight has been given in the middle of his life; but he is far more than that. He has been dumb and deaf, without taste or smell or hearing, without mind or movement; and all those things have been given to him at the same time.

  As in a dream, the Saint heard Maxie's blank bewildered voice again.

  "How did you get here?"

  "I walked," said the girl coldly. "Did you hear what I told you? The Big Fellow says to lay off him."

  "But—but——" Maxie was floundering in a bottomless morass of incredulity that had taken the feet from under him."But he killed Joe," he managed, in a sudden gasp.

  The girl had advanced coolly until she was at his side. She gazed across at the limp form gripped in the Saint's left arm.

  "Well?"

  The monosyllable dropped from her lips with a pellucid serenity that was void of the faintest tinge of interest She did not care what had happened to Joe. She was at a loss to find any connection whatsoever between his death and the object of her arrival. Maxie struggled for speech.

  And the Saint realized that Joe's automatic was still on the ground close by, where it had fallen.

  His arm was beginning to ache with the dead weight on it, and he heaved the body up and got a fresh grip while his keen eyes probed the darkness. There was a throbbing pain growing up in his wound that turned to a sharp twinge in his chest every time he breathed, but he scarcely noticed the discomfort Presently he found a dull gleam of metal in the grass some­where to his left front.

  He edged himself towards it, inch by inch, with infinite pa­tience. Every instinct urged him to drop his encumbering load and make a swift, desperate dive for it, but he knew that the gamble would have been hopelessly against him. With every muscle held relentlessly in check, he worked himself across the intervening space with movements so smooth and minute that they could never have been noticed. There was only about a yard and a half to go, but it might have been seven miles. And at last Maxie recovered his voice.

  "What does the Big Fellow want us to do?" he demanded harshly. "Kiss him?"

  "The Big Fellow says to let him go."

  The dull gleam of metal was only six inches away then. Si­mon extended a cautious toe, touched it here and there, drew it gently towards him. It was the gun he was looking for. His right arm was still useless; but if he could drop Joe and dive for it with his left—the instant Maxie's attention was dis­tracted, as it must be soon. . . .

  "Let him go?" Maxie's eyes were wild, his mouth twisted. "Like hell I'll let him go! You must be nuts. He killed Joe." Maxie's forearm stiffened, and the gun in his hand moved slightly. "You're too late, Fay—we'd done the job before you got here. This is how we let him go, the dirty double-cross­ing ——"

  "Don't be a fool!"

  In a flash the girl's hands were on his wrist, dragging his arm down; and in that moment the Saint had his chance. With a swift jerk of his sound shoulder he flung the body of his shield away, well away to one side, and his hand plunged downwards to the automatic that he was still marking with his toe. His fingers closed on the butt, and he straightened up again with it in his hand.

  "I think that's pretty good advice, Maxie," he said gently.

  There was a trace of the old Saintly lilt in his voice, a lilt of triumphant mockery that was born in the surge of new power and confidence which went through him at the feel of gun metal in his hands again. Maxie stared at him frozenly, with his right arm still stretched downwards in the girl's grasp, and the muzzle of his automatic pointed uselessly into the ground. Simon's finger itched on the trigger. He had sworn to be with­out mercy. The indifference of his executioners had hardened the last dregs of pity out of his heart.

  "Wasn't it two minutes that we had to say our prayers, Maxie?" he whispered.

  The gunman glared at him with dilated eyes. All at once, in a physical quiver of comprehension, he seemed to take in the situation—that the Saint was alive and free and the tables were turned. With a foul oath, heedless of the menace of the Saint's automatic, he broke loose from the girl with a savage fling of his arm and brought up his gun.

  Simon's forefinger tightened on the trigger—once. Maxie's gun was never fired. His arms flew wide, and his head snapped back. For one swaying moment he stared at the Saint with all the furies of hell concentrated in his flaming eyes; and then a dull glaze crept over his eyeballs and the fires died out. His head sagged forward as if he were tired; his knees buckled, and he pitched headlong to the ground.

  Simon gazed down at the two sprawled figures for a second or two in silence, while the jagged ice melted out of his eyes without softening their expression. A faint gesture of repug­nance crinkled a thin line into one corner of his mouth; but whether the repugnance was for the two departed killers, or for the manner in which they had been exterminated, he did not know himself. He dismissed the proposition with a shrug, and the careless movement sent a sharp twinge of pain through his injured shoulder to bring him finally back to reality. With an inaudible sigh, he put the gun away in his pocket and turned his eyes back to the girl.

  She had not moved from where he had last seen her. The dead body of Maxie lay at her feet; but she was not looking at it, and she had made no attempt to possess herself of the automatic that was still clutched in his hand. The light was too dim for the Saint to be able to see the expression on her face; but the poise of her body reminded him irresistibly of the night when she had watched him kill Morrie Ualino, and more recently of the tune, only an hour or two ago, when he himself had been sent out from the back room of Charley's Place on the ride which had only just ended. There was the same impregnable aloofness, the same inscrutable carelessness of death, as though in some impossib
le way she had detached herself from every human emotion and dominated even the last mystery of dissolution. He walked up closer to her, slowly, because it hurt him a little when he breathed, until he could see the brightness of her tawny eyes; but they told him nothing.

  She did not speak, and he hardly knew what to do. The situ­ation was rather beyond him. He saluted her vaguely, with the ghost of a bow, and let his arm fall to his side.

  "Thank you," he said.

  Her eyes were pools of amber, still and unreadable.

  "Is that all?" she asked in a low voice.

  Again he felt that queer leap of expectation at the husky music which she made of words. He moved his hands in a slight helpless gesture.

  "I suppose so. It's the second time you've helped me—-I don't know why. I haven't asked. What else is there?"

  "What about this?"

  Suddenly, before he knew what she was doing, her arms were around his neck, her soft slenderness pressed close to him, the satin of her cheek against his. For a moment he was too amazed to move. Hazily, he wondered if the terrible strain he had been through had unhinged some weak link in his imag­ination. The tenuous perfume of her skin and hair stole in upon his senses, sending a creeping trickle of fire along his veins; her lips found his mouth, and for one mad second he was shaken by the awareness of her passion. He winced im­perceptibly, and she drew back.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "You see, you didn't get here quite soon enough. I stopped one."

  Instantly she forgot everything else. She drew him over to the car, switched on the headlights, and made him take off his coat. With quick, gentle hands she slipped his shirt down over his shoulder; he could feel the warm stickiness of blood on his back. On the ground close by, the chauffeur still lay as if asleep.