15 The Saint in New York Page 17

  "Better make sure he doesn't wake up while you're doing the first aid," said the Saint, with a rather weary gesture towards the unconscious man.

  "He won't wake up," she answered calmly. "I killed him."

  Then Simon saw that the shadow between the driver's shoul­der blades was the hilt of a small knife, and a phantom chill went through him. He understood now why Maxie's call had gone unanswered. The girl's hands were perfectly steady on his back; he couldn't see her face because she was behind him, but he knew what he would have found there. It would have been masked with the same cold beauty, the same unearthly contempt of life and death and all their associations, which he had only once seen broken—so strangely, only a few moments before.

  She fastened his handkerchief and her own over the wound, replaced his shirt, and drew his coat loosely over the shoulder. Her hand rested there lightly.

  "You'll have to see a doctor," she said. "I know a man in Passaic that we can go to."

  He nodded and moved round to the side of the car. Com­petently, she lowered the hood over the engine and forestalled him at the wheel. He didn't protest.

  It was impossible to turn the car about in the confined space, and she had to back up the lane until they reached the highway. She did it as confidently as he would have expected her to, although he had never met a woman before who had really achieved a complete mastery of the art of backing. In­animate stones seemed to have become alive, judging by the way they thrust malicious obstacles into the path of the tires and threatened to pitch the car into the shrubbery, but her small right hand on the wheel performed impossible feats. In a remarkably short time they had broken through the trees and swung around in the main road; and the powerful sedan, responding instantly to the pressure of her foot on the accelera­tor, whirled away like the wind towards Passaic. The Saint saw no other car near the side road and was compelled to repeat Maxie's question.

  "How did you get here?"

  "I was in the trunk behind," she explained. "Hunk was hanging around so long that I thought I'd never be able to get out. That's why I was late."

  The strident horn blared a continuous warning to slower cars as the speedometer needle flickered along the dial. She drove fast, flat out, defiantly, yet with a cold machine-tooled precision of hand and eye that took the recklessness out of her contempt for every other driver's rights to the road. Perhaps, as they scrambled blasphemously out of her path, they caught a glimpse of her fair hair and pale careless face as she flashed by, like a valkyrie riding past on the gales of death.

  Simon lay back in his corner and lighted a cigarette. His shoulder was throbbing more painfully, and he was glad to rest. But the puzzle in his mind went on. It was the second time she had intervened, this time to save his life; and he was still without a reason. Except—the obvious one. There seemed to be no doubt about that; although until that moment she had never spoken a word to him. The Saint had lived his life. He had philandered and roistered with the best, and done it as he did most other things, better than any of them; but in that mad moment when she had kissed him he had felt some­thing which was unlike anything else in his experience, some­thing of which he could almost be afraid. . . .

  He was too tired to go deeper into it then. Consciously, he tried to postpone the accounting which would be forced on him soon enough; and he was relieved when the lights of Pas­saic sprang up around them, even though he realized that that only lessened the time in which he must make up his mind."

  The girl stopped the car before a small house on the out­skirts of the town and climbed out. Simon hesitated.

  "Hadn't you better wait here?" he suggested. "If this bird is connected with your mob——"

  "He isn't. Come on."

  She was ringing the bell when he reached the door. After a lengthy interval the doctor opened it, sleepy-eyed and dishev­elled, in his shirt and trousers. He was a swarthy, stocky man with a loose lower lip and rather prominent eyes which shifted salaciously behind thick pebble glasses—Simon would not have cared to take his wife there, but nevertheless the doc­tor's handling of the present circumstances was commendable in every way. After one glance at the Saint's stained shirt and empty sleeve he led the way to his surgery and lighted the gas under a sterilizing tray.

  He gave the Saint a long shot of brandy and proceeded to wash his hands methodically in a cracked basin.

  "How've you been keeping, Fay?" he asked.

  "Pretty well," she replied casually. "How about you?"

  He grunted, drying his hands.

  "I've been fairly busy. I haven't taken a vacation since I went to the Chicago exhibition."

  The bullet had entered the Saint's back at an angle, pierced cleanly through the latissimus dorsi, ricochetted off a rib, and lodged a few inches lower down in the chest wall. Simon knew that the lung had not been touched—otherwise he would prob­ably have been dead before that—but he was grateful for knowing the exact extent of the injury. The doctor worked with impersonal efficiency; and the girl took a cigarette and watched, passing him things when he asked for them. Simon looked at her face—it was impassive, untouched by her thoughts.

  "Have another drink?" asked the doctor, when he had dressed the wound.

  Simon nodded. His face was a trifle pale under his tan.

  Fay Edwards poured it out, and the doctor went back to his cracked basin and washed his hands again.

  "It was worth going to, that exhibition," he said. "I was too hot to enjoy it, but it was worth seeing. I don't know how they managed to put on some of those shows in the Streets of Paris."

  He came back and peered at the Saint through his thick lenses, which made his eyes seem smaller than they were.

  "That will cost you a thousand dollars," he said blandly.

  The Saint felt in his pockets and remembered that he hadn't a nickel. Fortunately, he had deposited his ten-thousand-dollar bonus in a safe place before he went to interview Inselheim, but all his small change had been taken when he was searched after his capture. That was a broad departure from the un­derworld tradition which demands that a man who is taken for a ride shall be left with whatever money he has on him, but it was a tribute to the fear he had inspired which could transform even a couple of five-dollar bills and some silver into potential lethal weapons in his hands. He smiled crook­edly.

  "Is my credit good?"

  "Certainly," said the surgeon without hesitation. "Send it to me tomorrow. In small bills, please. Leave the dressing on for a couple of days, and try to take things easy. You may have a touch of fever tomorrow. Take an aspirin."

  He ushered them briskly down the hall, fondling the girl's hand unnecessarily.

  "Come and see me any time you want anything, Fay. Good­night."

  Throughout their visit he bad not raised an eyebrow or asked a pertinent question: one gathered that a wounded man waking him up for attention in the small hours of the morning was nothing epoch-making in his practice, and that he had long since found it wise and profitable to mind his own busi­ness.

  They sat in the car, and Simon lighted a cigarette. The doc­tor's brandy had taken off some of the deathly lassitude which had drained his vitality before; but he knew that the stimula­tion was only temporary, and he had work to do. Also there was still the enigma of Fay Edwards, which he would have to face before long. If only she would be merciful and leave the time to him, he would be easier in his mind: he had his normal share of the instinct to put off unpleasant problems. He didn't know what answer he could give her; he wanted time to think about it, although he knew that time and thought would bring him no nearer to an answer. But he knew she would not be merciful. The quality of mercy was rare enough in women, and in anyone like her it would be rarest of all. She would face his answer in the same way that she faced the fact of death, with the same aloof, impregnable detachment; he could only sense, in an indefinable intuitive way, what would lie behind that cold detachment; and the sensation was vaguely frightening.

  "Where would you
like to go?" she asked.

  He smoked steadily, avoiding her eyes.

  "Back to New York, I suppose. I haven't finished my job tonight. But you can drop me off anywhere it suits you."

  "You're not fit to do any more today."

  "I haven't finished," he said grimly.

  She regarded him inscrutably; her mind was a thousand miles beyond his horizon, but the fresh sweetness of her body was too close for comfort.

  "What did you come here to do?"

  "I had a commission," he said.

  He put his hand in his breast pocket, took out bis wallet, and opened it on his knee. She leaned towards him, looking over his shoulder at the scrap of paper that was exposed. His forefinger slid down the list of names written on it

  "I came here to kill six men. I've killed three—Jack Irboll, Morrie Ualino, and Eddie Voelsang. Leaving three."

  "Hunk is dead," she said, touching the list. "That was Jenson—the man who drove this car tonight."

  "Leaving two," he amended quietly.

  She nodded.

  "I wouldn't know where to find Curly Ippolino. The last I heard of him, he was in Pittsburgh." Her golden-yellow eyes turned towards him impassively. ''But Dutch Kuhlmann is next."

  The Saint forced himself to look at her. There was nothing else to be done. It had to be faced; and he was spellbound by a tremendous curiosity.

  "What will you do? He's one of your friends, isn't he?"

  "I have no ... friends," she said; and again he was dis­turbed by that queer haunting music in her voice. "I'll take you there. He'll just about be tired of waiting for Joe and Maxie by the time we arrive. You'll see him as he comes out."

  Simon looked at the lighted panel of instruments on the dash. He didn't see them, but they were something to which he could turn his eyes. If they went back to find Dutch Kuhl­mann, her challenge to himself would be in abeyance for a while longer. He might still escape. And his work remained: he had made a promise, and he had never yet failed to keep his word. He was certain that she was not leading him into a trap—it would have been fantastic to imagine any such com­plicated plan, when nothing could have been simpler than to allow Maxie to complete the job he had begun so well. On the other hand, she had offered the Saint no explanation of why she should help him, had asked him to give no reasons for his own grim mission. He felt that she would have had no interest in reasons. Hate, jealousy, revenge, a wager, even justice—any reasons that logic or ingenuity might devise would be only words to her. She was waiting, with her hand on the starting switch, for anything he cared to say.

  The Saint bowed bis head slowly.

  "I meant to go back to Charley's Place," he said.

  A little more than one hour later Dutch Kuhlmann gulped down the dregs of his last drink, up-ended his glass, pulled out his large old-fashioned gold watch, yawned with Teutonic thoroughness, and shoved his high stool back from the bar.

  "I'm goin' home," he said. "Hey, Toni—when Joe an' Maxie get here, you tell them to come und see me at my apartment"

  The barman nodded, mechanically wiping invisible stains from the spotless mahogany.

  "Very good, Mr. Kuhlmann."

  Kuhlmann stood up and glanced towards the two sleek sphinx-faced young men who sat patiently at a strategic table. They finished their drinks hurriedly and rose to follow him like well-trained dogs as he waddled towards the door, exchang­ing gruff good-nights with friends and acquaintances as he went. In the foyer he waited for them to catch up with him. They passed him and stood between him and the door while it was opened. Also they went out first and inspected the street carefully before they nodded to him to follow. Kuhlmann came out and stood between them on the sidewalk—he was as thorough and methodical in his personal precautions as he was in everything else, which was one reason why his czardom had survived so long. He relighted his cigar and flicked the match sportively at one of his equerries.

  "Go und start der car, Fritzie," he said.

  One of the sphinz-faced young men detached himself from the little group and went and climbed into the driving seat of Kuhlmann's Packard, which was parked a little distance up the road. He was paid handsomely for his special duty, but the post was no sinecure. His predecessor in office, as a matter of fact, had lasted only three weeks—until a bomb planted un­der the scuttle by some malicious citizen had exploded when the turning of the ignition key had completed the necessary electrical circuit.

  Kuhlmann's benign but restless eyes roved over the scene while the engine was being warmed up for him, and so he was the first to recognize the black sedan which swept down the street from the west. He nudged the escort who had remained with him.

  "Chust in time, here is Joe and Maxie comin' back."

  He went forward towards the approaching car as it drew closer to the curb. He was less than two yards from it when he saw the ghost—too late for him to turn back or even cry out. He saw the face of the man whom he had sent away to execu­tion, a pale ghost with stony lips and blue eyes cold and hard like burnished sapphires, and knew in that instant that the sands had run out at last. The sharp crack of a single shot crashed down the echoing channel of the street, and the black sedan was roaring away to the east before his body touched the pavement.

  * * *

  The police sirens were still moaning around like forlorn banshees in the distances of the surrounding night when Fay Edwards stopped the car again in Central Park. Simon had a sudden vivid memory of the night when he had sat in exactly the same spot, in another car, with Inspector Fernack; it was considerably less than thirty-six hours ago, and yet so much had happened that it might as well have been thirty-six years. He wondered what had happened to Fernack, and what that grim-visaged, massive-boned detective was thinking about the vol­cano of panic and killing which had flamed out in the under­world since they had had that strange, irregular conversation. Probably Fernack was scouring the city for him at that moment, harried to superhuman efforts by the savage anxiety of commissioners and politicians and their satellites; their next conversation, if they ever had one, would probably be much less friendly and tolerant. But that also seemed as far away as if it belonged in another century. Fay Edwards was waiting.

  She had switched off the engine, and she was lighting a cig­arette. He saw the calm, almost waxen beauty of her face in the flicker of the match she was holding, the untroubled quiet of her eyes, and had to make an effort to remember that she had killed one man that night and helped him to kill another.

  "Was that all right?" she asked.

  "It was all right," he said.

  "I saw your list," she said reflectively. "You had my name on it. What have I done? I suppose you want something with me. I'm here—now."

  He shook his head.

  "There should have been a question mark after it. I put you down for a mystery. I was listening in when you spoke to Nather—that was the first time I heard your voice. I was watch­ing you with Morrie Ualino. You gave me the gun that got me out of there. I wanted to know who you were—what you had been—why you were in the racket. Just curiosity."

  She shrugged.

  "Now you know the answer."

  "Do I?" The response was automatic, and at once he wished he had checked it. He felt her eyes turning to look at him, and added quickly: "When you came and told Maxie tonight that the Big Fellow said he was to let me go—that wasn't the truth."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "I'm guessing. But I'll bet on it."

  She drew on her cigarette placidly. The smoke drifted out and floated down the beam of the lights.

  "Of course it wasn't true. The Big Fellow was on your list as well, wasn't he?" she said inconsequently. "Do you want him, too?"

  "Most of all."

  "I see. You're very determined—very single-minded, aren't you?"

  "I have to be," said the Saint. "And I want to finish this job. I want to write 'The End' to it and start something else. I'm a bit tired."

  She was smoking th
oughtfully, a very faint frown of concen­tration cutting one tiny etched line between her brows—the only wrinkle in the soft perfection of her skin. She might have been alone in her room preparing to go out, choosing between one dress and another. It meant nothing to her,emotions that the only thing they shared in their acquaintance were kill­ings, that the Saint's mission was set down in an unalterable groove of battle and sudden death, that all the paths they had taken together were laid to the same grim goal. He had an eerie feeling that death and killings were the things she under­stood best—that perhaps there was nothing else she really un­derstood.

  "I think I could find the Big Fellow," she said; and he tried to appear as casual and unconcerned as she was.

  "You know him, don't you?"

  "I'm the only one who knows him."

  It was indescribably weird to be sitting there with her, wounded and tired, and to be discussing with her the greatest mystery that the annals of New York crime had ever known, waiting on the threshold of unthinkable revelations, where otherwise he would have been faced with the same illimitable blank wall as had confronted him from the beginning. In his wildest day-dreams he had never imagined that the climax of his quest would be reached like that, and the thought made him feel unwontedly humble.

  "He's a great mystery, isn't he?" said the Saint meditatively. "How long have you known him?"

  "I met him nearly three years ago, before he was the Big Fellow at all—before anyone had ever heard of him. He picked me up when I was down and out." She was as casual about it as if she had been discussing an ephemeral scandal of nine days' importance, as if nothing of great interest to anyone hung on what she said. "He told me about his idea. It was a good one. I was able to help him because I knew how to con­tact the sort of people he had to get hold of. I've been his mouthpiece ever since—until tonight."

  "D'you mean you—parted company?"

  "Oh, no. I just changed my mind."

  "He must be a remarkable fellow," said the Saint.