Call for the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 18

  Blam!

  The stunning crash of a heavy-calibre pistol smashed against their eardrums and sent them diving to either side of the hallway.

  The Saint lay there, gun at the ready, waiting. The shot had come from the room ahead, where they’d heard the voices, but he noticed that the door was still shut…Seconds passed…A weak moan, muffled by the closed door, punctuated the silence.

  Simon signalled Hoppy with a lift of his chin, and they stood up again and advanced noiselessly. He motioned Hoppy back into the shadows as they reached the door. Then he turned the knob, kicked the door open, and stayed to one side, out of reach of possible fire.

  There was silence for a moment. All he could see in the sunlit portion of the room visible to him was a huge fireplace and a corner of a desk…Then from within came a challenge in an accent that was unmistakable.

  “Well?” Dr Spangler barked impatiently. “Come in!”

  The Saint stood there a moment, looking into the triangle of the interior visible to him, estimating his chances of meeting a blast of gunfire if he showed himself. In the two seconds that he stood there, weighing the odds, he also realised that an unexpected diversion had taken place. What it was he didn’t know. But it did lend some excuse for hoping his presence might yet be miraculously undiscovered…It was a flimsy enough hope, but he decided to gamble on it. He signalled Hoppy to stay back and cover him as best he could, and stepped into the room.

  Doc Spangler was seated at the desk, leaning forward, his arms on the desk, staring at him. Beyond him in a corner of the big room was Karl, down on one knee beside the prostrate body of a man whose head was concealed by the squat body of Spangler’s ursine lieutenant. There was a gun in his hand, pointed at the Saint from his hip, as if he had been interrupted in his examination of the man he had apparently just shot.

  For one second it was quite a skin-prickling tableau, and then Simon took a quick step to one side which placed Spangler’s body between him and Karl’s gun muzzle.

  “Better tell your baboon to lay his gun on the floor, Doc,” he suggested, and his smile was wired for sudden destruction. “You might get hurt.”

  Spangler half turned in his swivel chair toward Karl.

  “You imbecile!” he spat, his usual fat complacency temporarily disconnected. “I told you to put up that gun! It’s gotten me into enough trouble for one day. Put it on the floor as he says.”

  Karl laid the gun down slowly, grudgingly, glooming balefully past Spangler at the Saint.

  “Thank you,” said the Saint. “Now get up and stand away.” Karl rose to his feet slowly and shuffled aside as the Saint stepped around the desk and came to a startled halt. He was looking down incredulously at the face of the man lying on the floor. One side of it was caked with blood and the hair was red with it, but that presented no obstacle to recognising the owner. It was Whitey Mullins.

  11

  Mr Uniatz’s heavy breathing reverberated in Simon’s ear.

  “Dey got Whitey!” His head jerked up suddenly at Karl and Spangler, his gun lifting. “Whitey was me pal!” he snarled. “Why you—”

  Simon stopped him.

  “Don’t shoot the Doc—yet. Whitey may need him.” The Saint’s eyes were cold blue chips. “Let’s have the score, Spangler, and make it fast.”

  “He isn’t dead,” wheezed the fat man damply. “It’s only a graze. He brought it on himself, coming here to my home to assault me. Karl had to stop him, but he didn’t hurt him much. You can see that for yourself. The bullet just grazed his scalp and went into the wall there—see?”

  He pointed a plump finger to a hole in the wall above Mr Mullins’s prostrate form.

  Whitey moaned and opened his eyes.

  “Saint!” he mumbled feverishly.

  Simon pocketed his automatic and bent over him.

  “Take it easy, Whitey. It’s okay.” He went on without turning his head, “Doc, I’ll bet you a case of Old Forester that Karl doesn’t live to draw that gun he’s trying to sneak out of his pocket.”

  “Eh?” Spangler grunted blankly.

  Hoppy’s attention flashed back to the danger on hand, swivelling his gun to the thug’s belly. One of Karl’s hairy paws had already dipped halfway into a coat pocket.

  “Reach!” Mr Uniatz rasped.

  “Hands empty, please,” Simon smiled pleasantly over his shoulder.

  The squat gunman slowly dragged his hand out of his pocket and raised both arms over his head.

  Simon stepped over to him and extracted a Colt automatic from his pocket. Then he proceeded to run his hands with expert deftness down Karl’s sides, under his arms, inside his thighs, and along his back. He patted his sleeves, paused, and plucked another gun from inside one of the gunman’s cuffs. It looked like a toy, no larger than a magnified watch charm, but it held a .22-caliber shell in its chamber.

  “Forgive me for underestimating you, comrade,” he said. “You’re a walking arsenal, aren’t you?”

  He pulled what seemed to be a fountain-pen from Karl’s breast pocket and examined it briefly. He chuckled, pushing Karl so that he stumbled backwards. Simultaneously, Simon exploded a capsule of tear gas from one end of the “fountain-pen” squarely into the gangster’s nose. Karl clutched his face with both hands and reeled halfway across the room, tripping over a chair and crashing to the floor.

  “That stuff spreads!” Spangler gasped. “We’ll all get it—”

  “Take it easy,” said the Saint. “The windows are open, and there isn’t enough in one of those pills to do much harm unless it’s shot straight at you.”

  “What do you want?” Spangler demanded, a glisten of panic in his eyes. “Why did you come here?” He looked down at Whitey as the trainer gripped the edge of the desk for support and pulled himself to his feet with Hoppy’s quick aid. Spangler pointed at him, his eyes narrowing. “I understand. You’re working for him now!”

  Simon lighted a cigarette.

  “Don’t confuse yourself, Doc. Hoppy and I represent our own business only—the Happy Dreams Shroud and Casket Company. I’m sorry we weren’t able to accommodate your boy Karl last night. We’d have liked to give him a fitting, but he was in such a hurry…”

  He glanced at Karl who, on all fours, was crawling blindly toward the door.

  A leer of gargoyle delight transfigured Hoppy’s features as he observed the proffered target. He took three steps across the room and, with somewhat better form than the previous night, launched a thunderous drop kick that caught the unfortunate thug squarely, lifting his entire body off the floor in a soaring ballotade, and dropped him sprawling in a corner.

  Spangler stared fascinated at his limp cohort, and then again at Hoppy. His gaze swung uncertainly back to the Saint. He cleared his throat.

  “I fail to comprehend,” he began, with an attempt to regain his habitual pomposity, “why you should—”

  “I’m quite sure you do comprehend,” the Saint broke in suavely, “why I should resent your sending that goon over to my apartment last night to kill me.”

  Spangler opened and shut his mouth like a frog.

  “I sent him to your apartment?” he said in shocked tones.

  “You hoid him! “ Hoppy growled.

  “But my dear boy, I did no such thing!” Doc Spangler plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his shining pink brow. He frowned at Karl, who was beginning to stir again in the corner. “If he took it upon himself to…uh…visit you last night, it must have been a matter of personal inspiration. I had nothing to do with it, believe me.”

  “Strangely enough,” said the Saint surprisingly, “I do.”

  “He’s lying,” Whitey grated fiercely. “He was gonna knock me off if you hadn’t come when ya did.”

  “That’s entirely untrue,” Spangler said. “Mullins forced his way in here; he was abusive and threatening, and when he tried to attack me physically Karl had to fire a shot in my defence.”

  “However,” the Saint conti
nued, “a repeat performance was staged less than an hour ago near Sixth Avenue, with three characters and a black sedan taking the chief roles in another attempt to reunite Hoppy and me with our illustrious ancestors.”

  “I assure you, sir, that I—”

  “Excuse me,” the Saint interrupted. “I’m willing to believe that Karl might attempt a solo mission on account of the kicking around we gave him in the dressing-room, but there were three men in the second try. I’m rather certain the driver was Karl. He might have done that to grind a private axe, but the other two must have had other inducements, Doc, old boy. Inducements supplied by you, perhaps.”

  Spangler shook his head bewilderedly.

  “But…you’re entirely off the track, dear boy. Karl has been here in the house for the past three hours.”

  “Then he must have a twin running around loose gunning for me…As for the other two—I’d lay some odds that one of them was your new butler, Jeeves Mancini, the demon major-domo, who seemed to be sort of lying down on the job when I saw him. The third man,” said the Saint dispassionately, “may very well have been you.”

  Spangler’s expression of outraged innocence would have done credit to a cardinal accused of committing bigamy.

  “But that’s simply preposterous. I haven’t left the house yet today. As a matter of fact, Karl and Slim and I were about to leave for the gym to meet the Angel when you arrived.” He spread his hands. “Surely you’re not serious when you say you actually expected to find three anonymous snipers—men who tried to shoot you from a car like movie gangsters—here in my house?”

  “I don’t say I had that idea all along,” Simon admitted. “It just kind of grew on me when I found their car parked in front of this house. Your Stanley Steamer, I presume, Dr Livingston?”

  “What!” Spangler’s eyes were round with appalled amazement, “My dear boy, are you sure you’re not feeling the heat? My car has been parked there all day.”

  “I did feel the heat,” said the Saint gently, “of your car’s engine. For a jalopy that hadn’t been moved all day, it was awful feverish.”

  “Standing out there in the sun—”

  “It might get the chill off. But I hardly think the sun was quite hot enough to burn those holes through the rear window and the windshield.”

  Spangler sank back into his chair, shaking his head helplessly.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” he protested earnestly. “But if you mean those bullet holes, they’ve been there for nearly a month now. One of the boys became a little exuberant one night and—”

  “Skip it,” said the Saint amiably. “I didn’t come here to torment you by putting the stretch on your imaginative powers. Any time a good story is needed, I’m sure you can come up with one. I just wanted to make one point for the record. The next time any uncomfortable passes are made at me or any of my friends—among whom I am going to include Steve Nelson—I am just automatically going to drop by and beat the guts out of you and any of your team mates who happen to be around. It may seem rather arbitrary of me, Doc, but an expert like you should be able to allow for my psychopathic fixations…Let’s go, Whitey.”

  Whitey let go the desk unsteadily.

  “Okay, I can make it,” he said, and waved away Hoppy’s helpfully offered hand. He followed Simon, spitting contemptuously on the floor as he passed Karl’s cowed figure huddled in the corner.

  As they sped northward up Fifth Avenue, Mullins explained the predicament in which the Saint had found him.

  “I guess I was nuts,” he said, “goin’ into that den of thieves alone, but I went off my chump just thinkin’ of that lousy fink sendin’ his stooge to proposition my boy.”

  “You shoulda gone heeled, pal,” Hoppy said.

  “I did.” Whitey slapped his right hip. “But I just figured on bawling Spangler out, not killin’ him, and then I get blasted from behind.”

  “How long were you there?” Simon asked.

  “’Bout half an hour. Say!” Whitey’s voice lifted as though remembering. “It couldn’a been Karl who was with those mugs that you said tried to gun you. He was in that room with Spangler most of the time I was cussin’ the Doc.” His pale eyes brightened with thought. “Y’know, there’s a coupla hot guys with the Scarponi mob who Spangler hires sometimes for jobs. They look a lot like Karl.”

  The Saint shrugged.

  “He still might have made it. I figure that Karl got some of his pals together in a hurry after he left Steven’s place, and followed Hoppy and me when we left. I wouldn’t give him an alibi unless he punched a time clock. You certainly weren’t in shape to time everything to the minute.” He glanced at Whitey. “We’d better drop you off at a doctor’s so you can get that fixed up. How do you feel?”

  “Oh, I’m okay, Saint,” Whitey minimised. He felt his blood-dotted head gingerly. “The slug took a li’l hair off, that’s all. Just drop me off at Kayo Jackson’s gym. I’ll wash up there.”

  “It’s your noodle.” Simon swung the wheel to his left and cut westward towards Sixth Avenue.

  “Did you mean it,” Whitey asked after a moment, “when you said you’d work with the Champ?”

  The Saint fished a cigarette from his breast pocket and punched the dashboard lighter.

  “You’re the trainer, Whitey.”

  Whitey found a match in his pocket and struck it with his thumb, cupping the flame as he held it to the Saint’s cigarette.

  “Kayo’ll go nuts when I tell him,” he grinned. “Wit’ you and the Champ workin’ out here together, we’ll pack ’em in.”

  “At two bits a head,” Mr Uniatz mentioned, rather quickly for him. “So whaddas de boss get out of it?”

  “I’ll see that Kayo shells out with the Saint’s cut of the gymnasium gate, don’t worry.”

  “Hoppy is my agent,” said the Saint.

  He was thinking more about the slug he carried in his pocket—the slug he had dug out of the pawnshop doorframe. He had to ponder the fact that neither Karl’s guns nor Slim Mancini’s were of the same calibre—and in spite of what he had said, he couldn’t really visualise Doc Spangler doing his own torpedo work. There was at least negative support for Whitey’s evidence that Karl had been in the house during the time the Saint thought he’d seen him at the wheel of the gunmen’s car. Yet Simon found it impossible to reconcile his indelibly photographic impression of the man who had driven that car with the possibility that it had been someone other than Karl…If it hadn’t been Karl, then it had certainly been his identical twin.

  12

  The dawning sun arched a causeway of golden light through the Saint’s bedroom window, glinting on his crisp dark hair as he laced on the heavy rubber-soled shoes in which he did his road-work with Steve every morning. Hoppy, bleary-eyed, leaned against the doorframe, watching him, unhappily.

  “Chees,” he complained hoarsely, “will I be glad when de fight is over tomorrow night! I’m goddam sick of gettin’ up wit’ de boids every mornin’ to do road-work wit’ Nelson.” He yawned cavernously. “Dis at’letic life is moider.”

  “What athletic life?” the Saint inquired with mild irony. “The only road-work you do is follow behind in the car with Whitey.”

  Hoppy sighed lugubriously.

  “Dat ain’t de pernt, boss. It’s just I don’t get de sleep a guy needs at my age.”

  “Well, I must say you wear the burden of your years with lavender and old dignity,” Simon complimented him. He stood up and headed for the door. “Come on, Steve and Whitey will be waiting for us.”

  Hoppy groaned and followed like an exhausted elephant.

  They found Nelson near the Fifty-Ninth Street entrance of Central Park, alone.

  “Whitey’s got another of those headaches,” he explained. “I think maybe that bullet Karl grazed him with last month must have shaken his brains up worse than he admitted.”

  The Saint nodded, breaking into an easy, jogging trot beside Nelson as they struck out north
ward along the side of a winding park road.

  “Could be,” he agreed.

  Mr Uniatz climbed into the car again and waited disconsolately for several minutes in order to give them a good head start. Then he started the car up and followed slowly behind.

  Some thirty minutes later the Saint and Steve Nelson were jogging eastward along the inner northern boundary of Central Park, following the edge of the park road. The Saint’s long legs pumped in smooth, tireless rhythm as he breathed the dew-washed fragrance of blooming shrubs that covered the green slopes. At that early hour there was practically no traffic through Central Park, and he filled his lungs with air untainted by the fumes of carbon monoxide and tetraethyl lead…During the past weeks the regimen of training in which he had joined Steve Nelson had tempered his lithe strength to the whiplash resilience of Toledo steel and surcharged his reflexes with jungle lightning, and as he ran his blood seemed to tingle with the sheer exultation of just living. He drank deeply of the perfume of the morning, smiling at a sky of the same clear blue as his eyes, his every nerve singing, feeling his youth renewed indestructibly.

  He glanced back once at the brooding shadow of Hoppy’s face behind the wheel of the car far behind, and chuckled softly. Nelson, trotting beside him, asked, “What’s funny?”

  The Saint nodded over his shoulder.

  “Hoppy. He’s miserable. Nobody to talk to. Nothing to drink.”

  Nelson looked back and grinned.

  Ahead to his left over the park wall some distance away Simon could see the broad terminus of Lenox Avenue coming into view. Directly in front of them, through the trees, he caught the gleam of the lake that lies at the northern end of the park. The park road swoops sharply to the right at this point, paralleling the lake for a distance as it winds southward again.

  The easy purr of an approaching car blended against and quickly drowned out the sound of the Saint’s car hugging the edge of the road. The overtaking car accelerated as it came up to them and whooshed past, disappearing round the curve some distance ahead.