The Saint and the Happy Highwayman s-21 Page 2

  "It might have been worth a fresh start to you, Marty," said the Saint speculatively.

  The other grinned slowly.

  "Yeah, a fresh start under a slab of marble. I wouldn't lift a finger for Lucky if he was gonna burn tomorrer. But hell, I ain't a squealer. Besides, you know what happened to Snaky Romaro and those other two guys what were going to give evidence?" Marty's big mouth turned down at the corners with cynical significance. "I ain't no Little Lord Fauntleroy, but I know Lucky, and I know his gang has orders what to do about any guy that turns up as a witness against him. So, Cora and me we come here where we figger nobody will ever look for us, and we stay here ever since. It ain't been easy, with no dough comin' in --but we're still alive."

  The Saint's blue eyes travelled slowly over the apartment again; took in the dingy carpet worn down almost to its backing, the wobble of the rickety table on which Marty had perched, the hideous upholstery of the gimcrack chairs.

  "I suppose it would be difficult," he said.

  Marty nodded.

  "We had our bit of luck," he said. "I got a job the other day. Just wonderin' what we we're gonna do next. I remembered a pal of mine who went to Canada two-three years back and got himself a garage. He ain't got so much money either, but he wrote back he could give me a job startin' at twenny bucks a week if I could find my way up there. Cora went around and borrowed some dough--she had to be pretty careful 'cause they're lookin' for her too, knowin' she'd probably lead 'em back to me. She went out an' bought our tickets today--I guess that's when you must of met her. So if I can get clear without bein' stopped we oughta get along all right."

  Simon didn't laugh, although for a moment the idea of Marty O'Connor, who had seen the big money and flashed it around as liberally as anyone else in his class, washing cars for twenty dollars a week was humorous enough. But he looked round the apartment again and his gaze came to rest on the face of the girl Cora with a certain understanding. He knew now what subconscious intuition had made him revise his casual opinion of her, even in those brief minutes in the taxi. Stranger things have happened in that unpredictable substratum of civilisation with which he had spent half his life.

  "It's a pity you can't take some dough with you and buy a share in this garage business," he said; and knew before he started to elaborate the suggestion into an offer that it would be refused.

  Later on in the evening he had an even better idea, and he talked for half an hour before he was able to induce Marty to accept it. What argument it was that finally turned the scale he would have found it hard to remember. But once the Saint was on the trail of an inspiration he had a gift of persuasiveness that would have sold a line of rubber boots to a colony of boa constrictors.

  Lucky Joe Luckner, recuperating from the ordeal of his trial in his hotel suite at Briarcliff, was still satisfied with his consistent good luck in spite of the two quiet and inconspicuous men who sat around in the hotel lobby all day and followed him at a discreet distance whenever he went out. He had no intention of jumping his bail. The drastic entry of the Department of Justice into the war with crime had made the role of a fugitive from justice even less attractive than it had been before. Luckner had never been a fugitive --he couldn't imagine himself in the part. Quite confidently, he was waiting for an acquittal in his next trial which would leave him a free man without a single legal stain on his character; and if his attorney did not quite share this sublime confidence, he had to admit that the result of the first trial lent some support to it.

  "Betcha they can't box me in twenty years," he declared boastfully, to his personal bodyguard.

  The saturnine Mr Toscelli agreed encouragingly, which was one of his lighter duties, and Lucky Joe rewarded him with a slap on the back and a cigar. Few men are offended by hearing their boasts enthusiastically echoed, and Luckner was known to be rather more than ordinarily vulnerable.

  He was a short, thickset man who looked rather more like a truck driver than a beer baron, with small close-set eyes and a big coarse laugh. His extravagances were of a type that ran to loud check suits, yellow spats, strangely hued hats and large diamonds; and he imagined that these outward evidences of good taste and prosperity were part of the secret of his hypnotic power over women. This hypnotic power was one of his more whimsical fantasies, but his associates had found it healthier to accept it with tactful solemnity. He boasted that he had never failed to conquer any woman whom he had desired to possess, and he had a convenient faculty for forgetting the many exceptions which tended to disprove the rule. But apart from this one playful weakness he was as sentimental as a scorpion; and the Saint estimated the probabilities with some care before he approached Lucky Joe in person.

  If he had been cautious he would never have gone at all, but Simon Templar was a confirmed believer in direct action, and he knew exactly the strength of his hand.

  He drove out to Briarcliff on a pleasant sunny day and sauntered up the steps under the critical eyes of a dozen disapproving residents who were sunning themselves on the terrace. The Saint could see no good reason why they should be disapproving, for he felt very contented with himself that morning and considered that he was more than ordinarily beautiful and definitely an ornament to the scenery; but he realised that the knowledge that Lucky Joe Luckner was a fellow guest must have cast a certain amount of cloud over the tranquillity of the other inmates of that highly respectable hostelry, and made his own excuses for their lack of visible appreciation. Perhaps they had some good reason to fear that a man with that loose and rather buccaneering stride and that rather reckless cut of face was only another manifestation of the underworld invasion which had disturbed the peace of their rural retreat, and in a way they were right; but the Saint didn't care. With his hands in his pockets and his spotless white Panama tilted jauntily over one eye, he wandered on into the lounge and identified two blue-chinned individuals, who lifted flat fishlike eyes from their newspapers at his advent, as being more deserving of the reception committee's disapproving stares than himself. There were also two large men with heavy shoulders nnd big feet sitting in another corner of the lounge, who inspected him with a similar air of inquiry; but neither party knew him, and he went up the stairs unquestioned.

  The door of Luckner's suite opened at his knock to exhibit another blue chin and flat fishlike stare similar to those which had greeted him downstairs. It stayed open just far enough for that, and the stare absorbed him with the expressionlessness of a dead cod.

  "Hullo, body," murmured the Saint easily. "When did they dig you up?"

  The stare darkened, without taking on any more expression.

  "Whaddaya want?" it asked flatly.

  "I want to see Lucky Joe."

  "He ain't here."

  "Tell him it's about Marty O'Connor," said the Saint gently. "And tell him he doesn't know how lucky he is."

  The man looked at him for a moment longer and then closed the door suddenly. Simon lighted a cigarette and waited patiently. The door opened again.

  "Come in."

  Simon went in. The man who had let him in stayed behind him, with his back to the door. Another man of similarly taciturn habits and lack of facial expression sat on the arm of a chair by the window, with one hand in his coat pocket, thoughtfully picking his teeth with the other. Luckner sat on the settee, in his shirt sleeves, with his feet on a low table. He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at the Saint reflectively.

  Simon came to a halt in front of him and touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a lazy and ironical salute. He smiled, with a faint twinkle in his blue eyes, and Luckner glowered at him uncertainly.

  "Well--what is it?"

  The Saint put his cigarette to his lips.

  "I just dropped in," he said. "I wondered if you looked quite as nasty in the flesh as the stories I've read about you made you out to be. Also because I heard you'd be interested in any news about Marty O'Connor."

  "Where is he?"

  Simon's smile widened by a va
gue seraphic fraction.

  "That's my secret."

  Luckner took his feet off the table and got up slowly until he faced the Saint. He was six inches shorter than Simon but he thrust his lumpy red face up as close as he could under the Saint's nose.

  "Where is he?"

  "It's just possible," said the Saint in his slow soft voice, without a shift of his eyes, "that you've got some mistaken ideas about what I am and what I've come here for. If you had an idea, for instance, that your ugly mug was so terrifying that I'd fold up as soon as I saw it, or that I'd tell you anything until I was ready to tell it--well, we'd better go back to the beginning and start again."

  Luckner glared at him silently for a second, and then he said in a very level tone: "Who the hell are you?"

  "I am the Saint."

  The man on the arm of the chair took the toothpick out of his mouth and forgot to close his mouth behind it. The man by the door sucked in his breath with a sharp hiss like a squirt of escaping steam. Only Luckner made no active expression of emotion, but his face went a shade lighter in color and froze into wooden restraint.

  Simon allowed the announcement to sink into the brains of his audience at its own good leisure, while he let the smoke of his cigarette trickle through his lips to curl in a faintly mocking feather before Luck-ner's stony eyes. There was something so serene, something so strong and quietly dangerous about him which coupled with his almost apologetic self-introduction was like the revelation of an unsheathed sword, that none of the men made any move towards him. He looked at Luckner unruffledly with those very clear and faintly bantering blue eyes.

  "I am the Saint," he said. "You should know the name. I know where to find Marty O'Connor. The only question you have to answer is--how much is he worth to you?"

  Luckner's knees bent until he reached the level of the settee. He put the cigar back in his mouth.

  "Sit down," he said. "Let's talk this over."

  The Saint shook his head.

  "Why spend the time, Joe? You ought to know how much Marty's worth. I hear he used to keep your accounts once, and he could make a great squeal if they got him on the stand. It 'd put three new lives into the prosecution. Not that I'd lose any sleep if they were going to send you to the chair; but I suppose we can't put everything right at once. You'll get what's coming to you. Sooner or later. But just for the moment, this is more important." Simon studied his fingernails. "I owe Marty something, but I can't give it to him myself-- that's one of the disadvantages of the wave of virtue which seems to have come over this great country. But I don't see why you shouldn't give him what he deserves." The Saint's eyes lifted again suddenly to Luckner's face with a cold and laconic directness. "I don't care what you do about Marty so long as I get what I think he's worth."

  "And what's that?"

  "That is just one hundred grand."

  Luckner stiffened as if a spear had been rammed up his backbone from his sacrum to his scalp.

  "How much?"

  "One hundred thousand dollars," said the Saint calmly. "And cheap at the price. After all, that's less than a third of what you offered the Revenue to get this income-tax case dropped altogether. . . . You will pay it in twenty-dollar bills, and I shall want it by ten o'clock tonight."

  The dilated incredulity of Luckner's eyes remained set for a moment, and then they narrowed back to their normal size and remained fixed on the Saint's face like glittering beads. It was symptomatic of Luckner's psychology that he made no further attempt to argue. The Saint didn't have the air of a man who was prepared to devote any time to bargaining, and Luckner knew it. It didn't even occur to him to question the fundamental fact of whether Simon Templar was really in a position to carry out his share of the transaction. The Saint's name, and the reputation which Luckner still remembered, was a sufficient guarantee of that. There was only one flimsy quibble that Luckner could see at all, and he had a premonition that even this was hopeless before he tried it.

  "Suppose we kept you here without any hundred grand and just saw what we could do about persuading you to tell us where Marty is?"

  The Saint smiled rather wearily.

  "Of course I'd never have thought of that. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have somebody waiting outside here who'd start back for New York if I didn't come out of this room safe and sound in"--he looked at his watch--"just under another three minutes. And I wouldn't have thought of telling this guy that if he had to beat it back to the city without me he was to get Marty and take him straight along to the D.A.'s office. . . . You're taking an awful lot for granted, Joe, but if you think you can make me talk in two and a half minutes go ahead and try."

  Luckner chewed his cigar deliberately across from one side of his mouth to the other. He was in a corner, and he was capable of facing the fact.

  "Where do we make the trade ?"

  "You can send a couple of guys with the money down the Bronx River Parkway tonight. I'll be waiting in a car one mile south of a sign on the right which says City of Yonkers. If the dough is okay I'll tell them where to find Marty, and they can have him in five minutes. What they do when they see him is none of my business." The Saint's blue eyes rested on Luckner again with the same quiet and deadly implication. "Is that all quite clear?"

  Luckner's head remained poised for a moment before it jerked briefly downwards.

  "The dough will be okay," he said, and the Saint smiled again.

  "They didn't know how lucky you were going to be when they gave you your nickname, Joe," he said.

  For some time after he had gone, Luckner sat in the same position, with his hands on his spread knees, chewing his cigar and staring impassively in front of him. The man with the toothpick continued his endless foraging. The man who had guarded the door lighted a cigarette and gazed vacantly out of the window.

  The situation was perfectly clear, and Luckner had enough cold-blooded detachment to review it with his eyes open. After a while he spoke.

  "You better go, Luigi," he said. "You and Karlatta. Take a coupla typewriters, and don't waste any time."

  Toscelli nodded phlegmatically and garaged his toothpick in his vest pocket.

  "Do we take the dough?"

  "You're damn right you take the dough. You heard what he said? You give him the dough an' he tells you where to find Marty. I'll write some checks and you can go to New York this afternoon and collect it. An' don't kid yourselves. If there are any tricks, that son of a bitch has thought of them all. You know how he took off Morrie Ualino an' Dutch Kuhlmann?"

  "It's a lot of dough, Lucky," said Mr Toscelli gloomily.

  Joe Luckner's jaw hardened.

  "A life on Alcatraz is a lot of years," he said stolidly. "Never mind the dough. Just see that Marty keeps his mouth shut. Maybe we can do something about the dough afterwards."

  Even then he kept his belief in his lucky star, although the benefit it had conferred on him was somewhat ambiguous. A more captious man might have quibbled that a price ticket of one hundred thousand dollars was an expensive present, but to Luckner it represented fair value. Nor did he feel any compunction about the use to which he proposed to put the gift.

  In this respect, at least, Toscelli was able to agree with him without placing any strain on his principles. The chief load on his mind was the responsibility of the cargo of twenty-dollar bills which he had collected from various places during the afternoon; and he felt a certain amount of relief when ke arrived at the rendezvous and found a closed car parked by the roadside and waiting for him exactly as the Saint had promised that it would be. Even so, he kept one hand on his gun while the Saint received the heavy packages of currency through the window.

  Simon examined each packet carefully under the dashboard light and satisfied himself that there was no deception.

  "A very nice little haul," he murmured. "You must be sorry to see it go, Luigi. ... By the way, you can let go your gun--I've got you covered from here, and you're a much better target than I am."

  T
oscelli wavered, peering at him sombrely out of the gloom. It was true that it grieved him to see so much hard cash taken out of his hands; but he remembered Luckner's warning, and he had heard of the Saint's reputation himself.

  "Where do we go?" he growled.

  The shiny barrel of the Saint's automatic, resting on the edge of the window, moved in a briefly indicative arc towards the north.

  "Straight on up the Parkway for exactly three miles. Park your wagon there and wait for results. He'll be travelling south, looking for a car parked exactly where you're going to be--but he won't expect you to be in it. You won't make any mistake, because I've marked his car: the near-side headlight has a cross of adhesive tape on the lens, and I hope it will give you pious ideas. On your way, brother. . . ."

  Simon drove slowly south. In about half a mile he pulled in to the side of the road again and stopped there. He flicked his headlights two or three times before he finally switched them out, and he was completing the task of distributing a measured half of Toscelli's hundred-thousand-dollar payment over his various pockets when a subdued voice hailed him cautiously from the shadows at the roadside.

  The Saint grinned and opened the door.

  "Hullo there, Marty." He settled his pockets, buttoned his coat and slipped out. "Are you ready to travel?"

  "If there's nothing to stop us."

  "There isn't." Simon punched him gently in the stomach and their hands met. "The car is yours, and you'll find about fifty thousand bucks lying about in it. The earth is yours between here and the Canadian border; but if I were you I'd strike east from here and go up through White Plains. And any time I'm in Canada I'll drop by your garage for some gas. Maybe it '11 go towards evening up what you did for me one time." He gripped Marty's shoulder for a moment and then turned to the other slighter figure which stood beside them. "Take care of him, Cora--and yourself too."