The Saint to the Rescue (The Saint Series) Page 17

  Mr Rood was not unduly perturbed by this minor larceny and vandalism, but nevertheless it aggravated an irksome hangnail of dubiety which had been scuffed up by the affable “Tom Simons.” And he was enough of a believer in symbols to take it as a direct providential nudge to procrastinate no longer over the simple practical suggestion that had been made to him. He canceled a dinner engagement the next night, and spent the evening at work on a highly inflammable document intended only for posthumous publication.

  Long before that, Simon Templar had telephoned Santa Barbara again.

  “She seems to be doing all right,” said his friend. “But it will still be three or four days before we know if we have any luck. Don’t count on it too much. I told you that the chance was very small.”

  “But not hopeless.”

  “No, not hopeless, or I would not have operated. You must try to be patient.”

  “You know that isn’t my long suit, Mickey. However—did everything else go according to plan?”

  “Yes, just as we talked about it. I was able to move her from the hospital yesterday, in Georgia’s car, so they don’t know where she went, and in the private nursing home she has another name, under which I opened a separate file in my office records, so there is no trace of the connection.”

  “Thanks, pal,” said the Saint. “Take care to keep it that way. For the time being, her life may depend on it.”

  By the time Mr Rood embarked on his secret literary endeavor, the Saint had flown back to New Orleans, reclaimed his car at the airport, and taken the road to Atlanta, where the beneficiary of Mr Rood’s latest legal triumph made his home. Simon was not only temperamentally short on patience, but he had even less inclination to let an act of justice that he had decided upon teeter on the outcome of a medical long shot of which the surgeon himself was less than optimistic about the result.

  Joseph Sholto, enjoying the expansive euphoria induced by a narrow escape of which even he had been far from confident, would at this moment have guffawed hysterically at any suggestion that he would ever doubt the maxim which had been one of the guiding principles of his adult career, that a bad boy’s best friend is his lawyer.

  Joe Sholto (to the initiated he was more generally known as “Dibs”) had come a long way since he was doing his own strong-arm and squirt-gun work to try to put over a protection racket on Mobile’s laundries and dry cleaners. When he had achieved enough limited success to be noticed, he received the standard accolade from the Syndicate: come in or get out. Prudently, Dibs decided to sell, but kept his own independence, when he came in, he wanted it to be as an equal, not as one of a host of minor hangers-on. He had his ups and downs, but thanks to a ruthless devotion to his own welfare and his faith in the best legal chicanery he managed to avoid any disastrous collisions with constitutional justice, so that he became one of those semi-mythological names which are vaguely known to the public and baldly referred to by the press as “gangsters” without ever having suffered a major conviction.

  He hit the jackpot when he saw the possibilities of the trading stamp business. At this time the craze for these miniature coupons was booming from coast to coast, and probably half the families in America were daily pasting up “stamps” of various colors and designs, given to them by local merchants at the rate of ten for every dollar they spent, in booklets which when filled and accumulated in sufficient numbers could be exchanged for almost anything from a razor to a refrigerator. These stamps were offered to the stores as a merchandising gimmick by a number of reputable firms which also undertook to redeem them, and the competition between them was simply to offer the most attractive premiums at the best price.

  One day it dawned upon Dibs Sholto that he too could have a part of this business. The investment in printing the stamps and the booklets to stick them in was relatively trivial, and the goods they would eventually be exchanged for could be bought out of the money the storekeepers would pay for the stamps. It seemed like such a magnificently automatic way of multiplying mazuma that he was slightly disgusted with himself for not having thought of it ten years before. The only trouble now was that the best potential customers, if they were interested at all, had already been signed up by the old-established stamp firms, or in the case of some chains had even set up their own stamp systems.

  Again he was too wise to begin by tussling with giants, but there were plenty of pygmies who could be taken for an impressive total poundage. The beauty of the stamp scheme was that it was not limited to any type of sale or service: theoretically, every single shop in every town and village could use them to attract new customers or keep old ones. Yet it was still true that in spite of the wide spread of the craze a majority of smaller enterprises had not succumbed to it, feeling that their modest business did not need or could not afford such promotion. It was in these small tradesmen that Sholto saw his market, and the smaller they were the more likely they were to succumb to the kind of salesmanship in which he specialized, which offered the cogent inducements of freedom from broken windows, slashed tires, stink bombs, and even personal injury.

  Thus with the encouragement of some property damage and a few salutary beatings, Dibs Sholto’s gaudily colored Double Dividend Stamps throve and spread over the southeast corner of the country until they were as familiar as any other brand to the housewives of five states, most of whom had no notion whatever of how some of the merchants they dealt with had been persuaded to feature them. Being, unlike a barefaced protection racket, an ostensibly legitimate enterprise, the Double Dividend organization managed to escape the monopolistic attention of the criminal hierarchy, and was able to handle local complaints at the county level: there were surprisingly few of these, for Sholto’s small sales force of goons were trained to select the prospects most likely to be terrorized. It was Double Dividend’s own successful expansion which had brought the first serious trouble on itself. A Congressional Committee nosing into the trading stamp business in general had heard some evidence, an Attorney General had been prodded to take action, and Sholto had found himself on trial in Washington on the federal charges from which it had taken all Carlton Rood’s genius to extricate him.

  But now that that briefly disconcerting obstacle had been disposed of, Dibs Sholto could see nothing to stop him enlarging his stamp system into a nation-wide network from which the dividends to himself would be not double but tenfold.

  “Next time, the big boys won’t tell me—they’ll ask me,” he said to himself. “And they’ll make the deal I want. I’m on top of something that’s all mine, and nobody in the world has a thing on me.”

  In this mood of resurgent arrogance after a fright which had shaken him more than he would ever admit now to anyone, he was discussing plans for the future with two of his chief lieutenants in the stately Colonial mansion north of the city of Atlanta which he had made his residence, when the white-haired Negro butler who was part of the expensive scenery announced an uninvited visitor.

  “Who the hell is Sam Temple?” Sholto wanted to know.

  Since no one could tell him, he sent one of his aides to find out. In a few minutes the man came back with an answer.

  “He’s a two-bit private eye, but he says he ain’t here to ask questions—he’s got something to sell.”

  Simon Templar never needed such crude accessories as a false beard to create a character, when he thought there was little danger of being recognized by his features. Merely by plastering his hair down with odorous oil, leaving his shoes unshined, and putting on the same soiled shirt that he had worn all the previous day, with the addition of a garish tie, a pair of loud and clashing socks, and a large diamond ring, all bought at the same dime store, and a little grime under his fingernails, he struck exactly the right note of seedy flashiness, and his manner as he entered Sholto’s presence was a convincing blend of obsequiousness and bluster.

  “You won’t be sorry you saw me, Dibs. What I’ve got to sell is worth plenty, but I’m not going to make this a stick-up. I’d
rather have you feeling you still owed me something than drive a hard bargain. Some other time I might want to ask you for a favor, if you know what I mean.”

  “What’re you selling?” Sholto growled. He was a rather short rotund man with a snub-nosed face which he consciously tried to make less porcine by carrying his chin stuck out at an angle of permanent challenge, and the same crude aggressiveness was duplicated by his habitual voice. But his small shoe-button eyes were coldly calculating and as unemotional as marbles.

  “It’s like this,” said the Saint. “A couple of nights ago I broke into a lawyer’s office in New York. I can tell you that because I know it won’t go any farther, after we get through talking. A client had hired me to find out if a certain thing was in his files, and you can’t be too fussy how you go about a job like that, if you know what I mean.”

  “Who was this lawyer?”

  “Mr Carlton Rood, Dibs—your own mouthpiece, according to what I read in the papers. That’s why I’m here now. But what I was looking for didn’t have anything to do with you. Only while I was looking, I found a recording machine in his desk which he can turn on if he wants to record a conversation. So I sat down and played the tape that was in it, in case it had anything on it about my client, or anything else that might be useful, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sholto snarled. “So what did you hear?”

  “There was this piece about you, Dibs. And I knew you’d be interested. So I found a spare spool of tape and made a copy of it—that was easy, machines like that being part of my business, if you know what I mean, and it didn’t tip him off like it would if I’d taken the original tape. But you know his voice, and I thought you’d like to hear it.”

  Simon opened the small attaché case he had brought in with him, whose purpose now became apparent: with the lid off, it proved to be a portable tape recorder and playback. At a nod from Sholto, one of the lieutenants helped him to plug in the cord. There was no longer any problem of piquing the interest of the audience.

  The Saint twiddled a couple of knobs, and suddenly the opulent accents of Carlton Rood boomed with startling realism from the instrument:

  “You say that Mrs Yarrow has already been operated on?”

  Then another voice, commonplace but incisive: “Almost a week ago. The operation was completely successful. In a few weeks she’ll have normal vision, and could be called to identify the man who squirted acid at her in Mobile.”

  Rood’s florid tones again: “But that case was thrown out twelve years ago.”

  “Sholto was never tried for shooting the husband. And there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “But what extraordinary lengths to go to—to revive an ancient case like that—”

  “The Senator’s determined to get Sholto. And several other big scalps. He figures he needs them for his next election campaign. He’s paying for all this out of his own pocket, and he can afford to.”

  “Indeed. But why are you telling me this, Mr Simons?”

  “The Senator is a practical man. In politics, if you can’t lick ’em, you join ’em—within limits, of course. The Senator would rather have you on his side than have to fight you. You know how ambitious he is, and he wants this very badly. Here’s what I’m authorized to offer. Three hundred thousand dollars cash for all the information and lead you can supply, which of course will never be attributed to you—and it can be handled so as to make it tax free. And a Federal judgeship, which will give you a distinguished peak to retire from in a few years and a perfect out from having to turn down defending your old clients.”

  The Saint gave a quick twist of one finger and thumb, and the sound stopped abruptly.

  Sholto glared at him.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “I think that’s plenty for a sample,” Simon answered, “I know you want to know what Mr Rood said, but I’ve got to leave myself something to sell, if you know what I mean.”

  One of the lieutenants moved menacingly closer, and Simon looked him in the eye and ostentatiously took his hand off the machine.

  “Don’t be hasty,” he said. “You’ve heard all I brought with me. The rest is on another tape, in a safe place.”

  Sholto’s teeth clamped down on his cigar.

  “How much?”

  “It should be worth ten grand, easily.”

  “To hear Rood tell this jerk to tell the Senator to go take a running jump at himself?” Sholto scoffed. “What kind of sucker d’you take me for?”

  “I’m not telling you what he says. That’s the part you have to pay for.”

  “And if all you’re selling is a false alarm, you know how sorry you’d be?”

  “You won’t get it out of me that way, Dibs,” said the Saint with a thin smile. “But I’m taking the risk that you won’t think you were gypped when you’ve heard it.” He paused. “Besides, if we do business, I’m hoping to sell you something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I expect you’ll want to know where this Mrs Yarrow is. Confidential investigations are my business. I could help you find her—for a little extra, that is. But you won’t be disappointed. I guarantee I could locate her in less than four days, because of something you haven’t heard yet, if you know what I mean.”

  The racketeer’s eyes stayed on him unblinking, expressionless beads of jet, for a long count of seconds, while his stubby fingers beat a mechanical tattoo on his knee. But behind that impenetrable stare Simon knew that an exceptionally shrewd brain was working, for even in the brutal jungles of Dibs Sholto’s world a man does not rise to eminence who is slow to grasp and react.

  There was obviously no doubt in Sholto’s mind about the genuineness of the tape record. And Simon had not for a moment anticipated that there would be, for the friend in New York who had made it for him—after half an hour’s first-hand study of Mr Rood’s vocal mannerisms during an abortive discussion on a problem in willing a million-dollar estate—had in the heyday of radio been one of the most sought-after multi-voiced actors, and was now a professional mimic who made a fairly steady living in the secondary night-club circuit with an act in which he impersonated sundry celebrities. It was a poetic touch that the Saint could never have resisted, to hook Joe Sholto with a similar trick to one of those that Carlton Rood had used twelve years ago to get him off. And from that point Simon felt he could almost hear the turning of cog-wheels behind Sholto’s inscrutable scowl.

  “I’ll have to think it over,” Sholto said at last. As Simon shrugged and stood up, he went on: “No, you can stick around. It’ll take a while, but not that long.” He jerked his cigar at his second lieutenant. “Take him in the dining room, Earl. Buy him a drink.”

  Earl opened the door, and Simon followed him docilely across the hall into a room on the other side. There was an assortment of bottles on the sideboard, among which Simon noticed the label of Peter Dawson.

  “Help yourself,” Earl said hospitably.

  He raked together a pack of cards that were scattered over one end of the table, and riffled them thoughtfully.

  “You play gin rummy?”

  “Not very well,” said the Saint modestly.

  Joe Sholto was already dialing Long Distance to give the number of one of his special representatives who worked out of Biloxi, and had the good luck to catch him at his office, which was a local pool room.

  “Look for a Mrs Agnes Yarrow, who’s been living down there,” Sholto said. “Find out if she’s in town or where she’s gone—anything else you can pick up. Call me back right away.”

  The next number he asked for was in New York, and presently it brought the sonorous tones of Carlton Rood over the wire.

  “Good afternoon, Joseph.”

  “Hiya, Carl.” Sholto’s voice had all the bluff bonhomie his abrasive disposition could put into it. “I hear you had burglars…Yeah, one of my boys saw it in the paper. Hope you didn’t lose anything important…Well, that’s too bad
, but it could’ve been worse. Two hundred bucks you can put on the next sucker’s bill—but it better not be mine!”

  So Rood’s office had indeed been broken, into—that much of the story checked. They talked for a while about diverse loose ends and lesser upshots of the recent trial, and the conversation had about run its natural course when Sholto casually tossed in his booby trap.

  “By the way, Carl, you ever meet a guy named Simons?”

  Mr Rood was startled enough not to answer instantly. He recalled his recent interviewer’s emphasis on anonymity, and the advantage it offered to his own vanity which he had not overlooked in thinking about the proposition since, and decided that some professional reserve was justified.

  “Why on earth do you ask that, Joseph?” he inquired cautiously.

  “He’s an attorney who’s been bothering a friend of mine about some broad he may have knocked up,” Sholto said. “I just thought you might know him.”

  “Oh, no,” said Mr Rood, relieved that he was not to be faced with a problem. “I don’t believe I know anyone of that name.”

  They signed off with the conventional cordialities, and Sholto slammed down the receiver and hurled his cigar stump savagely into the fireplace.

  “The dirty, stinking, lying, double-crossing son of a bitch!”

  His first lieutenant was already looking at him in full comprehension, but Sholto’s indignation had to have the first outlet of words.

  “If he hadn’t told me before, that was his chance to say something. That’s when he had to say it, if he was ever going to be on the level. But no. ‘I don’t believe I know anyone of that name,’ he says. The bastard! I need to hear the rest of that tape like a hole in the head. I know what he must’ve said to Simons.”

  He pulled the spool of tape off the recorder and glowered at it for a moment as if he were wondering what insensate violence to inflict on it. Then he took out another cigar, bit off the end, lighted it, and went back to his armchair. He sat in hard-mouthed grim-jawed silence which his lieutenant was too wise to interrupt, turning the spool over and over monotonously in one hand, and there was something even more terrifying in his impassive concentration than in his rage.