Call for the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 2

  The Saint finished frisking the gunman. Then he stepped back a pace and regarded the beggar woman again, with a small crinkle forming between his brows.

  Hoppy said, “Hey, what kind of a heater is dis?”

  “It squirts ammonia,” Simon said. “Junior here got a whiff of it in his eyes. I wonder—” He glanced along the alley. “Perhaps at this point we should adjourn. This alley would be perfect for a quiet murder, but it isn’t private enough for a confessional, and I want Junior to open his heart to me.”

  Junior profanely denied any intention of making Simon Templar his confidant. The Saint rapped him across the head again and said, “Quiet. We’ll be bosom pals before you know it.” He turned his clear blue gaze on the beggar woman, who had subsided into sullen quiet. “My hotel’s across the street,” he said. “Shall we have an audition there?”

  For an instant her eyes flashed across his, startlingly bright and alert. The thing Simon had already sensed—the incongruous vitality under those shapeless rags and puffy features—was unmistakable for that fleeting moment before the mask dropped again.

  “I dunno what this is all about, mister. I don’t know nothing. I got my own troubles…”

  Simon said, “You’ll be back in time for the performance.”

  Her eyes searched his face. When she spoke, her voice had changed. It was deeper, more resonant.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll take a chance.”

  “The service elevator is indicated, I think. Hoppy, if you’ll escort the lady, I’ll follow with Junior.”

  “Okay, boss.”

  Simon Templar captured the gunman’s arm and bent it deftly upward.

  “You’re going to be a good boy and come quietly, aren’t you?”

  “Like hell,” Junior said.

  Simon applied a little more torque.

  “I’m not an unreasonable man,” he remarked. “I’ll give you a choice. Either stop wriggling and keep your mouth shut, or let me break your arm and give you something to yell about. I should warn you that I have a weakness for compound fractures. But don’t feel that I’m trying to influence you. You’re perfectly free to take your pick.”

  3

  Junior, by request, sat cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, his unclean hands in his lap.

  “Should we tie him up?” Hoppy asked.

  The Saint had a better idea. He wound a piece of wire several times around Junior’s thumbs and twisted the ends tight.

  “There,” he said, stepping back and beaming down at Junior. “He’s safe as houses. Besides, we may need the rope later to hang him.”

  The captive remained silent, his thin, pinched face sulkily intent on the carpet. Aside from the fact that he rather strikingly resembled a rat, he had few distinguishing characteristics.

  “All right,” the Saint said. “Keep an eye on him, Hoppy. Kick his protruding teeth in if he tries to get up.”

  He moved to a side table and did things lovingly with ice and bourbon. But his eyes kept returning to the beggar woman.

  She had come alive. There was no other word for it. Even under the patched and threadbare dress her body had shed thirty years. And her eyes were no longer dull.

  She said, “You’re the Saint, aren’t you?”

  Simon said, “You’re one up on me. I don’t know your name…yet.”

  “I recognised you. That’s why I came along.”

  “What will you have?”

  She nodded at the glass he was holding and Simon moved across the room and gave her the drink. Then he knew that he had been right. His fingers touched hers, and what he felt was proof enough. Her hand was firm and yet soft, the skin like satin.

  She had done a beautiful job of make-up. The Saint could appreciate it. Quite frankly, he stared. And through the muddy blotched surface and cunningly drawn wrinkles her real face began to come into view, the clear, clean sculpture that even disfiguring rolls of wax padding in mouth and nostrils could not entirely hide.

  She looked away.

  The Saint did not. Presently he murmured,

  “Small is the worth

  Of beauty from the light retired;

  Bid her come forth—”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Simon Templar’s low voice went on,

  “Suffer herself to be desired.

  And not blush so to be admired.”

  Hoppy said, “Huh?”

  It was a young woman’s laughter that sounded then. And it was not the cracked voice of the beggar woman that said, “Mr Templar, I’m beginning to understand the reasons for your reputation. How did you know I was an actress? You didn’t recognise me?”

  The Saint replaced his drink, gave Hoppy a bottle to himself, and sat down, stretching his long legs.

  “I just realised why you were never at your corner during theatre hours. A real beggar would have been. That’s when the money flows fastest. Saturday afternoon you weren’t there either—a matinée, I suppose? But I didn’t recognise you, no.”

  She said, “I’m Monica Varing.”

  The Saint raised his brows. Varing was one of the great names, as well-known in theatrical circles as he was himself in his own peculiar field. Drew, Barrymore, Terry, Varing—they were all names that had blazed across the marquees of the world’s capitals. For ten years Monica Varing had been that rare thing, an actress—not merely a star, but a follower of the tradition that has come down through the London Globe from the Greek amphitheatres. More than that, if he remembered other pictures of her, she was the most unchanged beauty of the modern stage. She nodded towards the man squatting on the rug and said, “I don’t know whether I should say any more in front of him.”

  “In case he gets away—or talks, you mean?” Simon suggested, his blue eyes faintly amused. “You needn’t worry about that. Junior’s not going to talk indiscriminately from now on. We can manage that, can’t we, Hoppy?”

  Hoppy said broodingly, “I never hoid nobody talk after dey was dropped in de lake wit’ deir feet in a sack of cement.”

  “Listen!” Junior yelped. “You can’t do this to me!”

  “Why not?” the Saint asked, and in the face of that logical query Junior was silent.

  Monica Varing said, “I never thought this would happen. I set a trap, with myself as the bait—”

  “Start at the beginning,” Simon interrupted. “With your predecessor, say. What happened to him?”

  Monica said, “John Irvine. He was blind. He was a stage manager in vaudeville—where a lot of us started. He was blinded ten years ago, and got a begging permit. Whenever I played Chicago, I’d look him up and put something in his cup. It was a—well, a libation, in the classic sense. But it wasn’t only that. No matter how long it would be between runs, John would always recognise my footsteps. He’d say hello and wish me luck. On opening night I always gave him a hundred dollars. I wasn’t the only one, either. Plenty of other troupers were big enough to remember.”

  “Last Wednesday,” Simon went on for her, “a bum named John Irvine was found shot to death in that alley where we met. He’d been beaten up first…He left a widow and children, didn’t he?”

  “Three children,” Monica said.

  The Saint looked at Junior, and his face was not friendly.

  “Quite a few beggars have been beaten up in Chicago in the last few weeks. The ones who were able to talk said the same thing. Something about a mysterious character called the King of the Beggars.”

  “The beggars have to pay off a percentage of their earnings to His Majesty,” Monica said bitterly. “Or else they’re beaten up.

  The gang made an example of Irvine. To frighten the others. It just happened to be him; it might have been any beggar. The police—well, why should they make a big thing of it?”

  “Why should you?” Simon asked.

  She met his impersonal gaze no less directly.

  “You may think I’m crazy, but it meant something to me. I knew the cops should have taken care of
it, but I knew just as well they wouldn’t. There weren’t any headlines in it, and no civic committees were going to raise hell if they let it drop…I’m a damned good actress and I know make-up—the kind that’ll even get by in daylight. I thought I might get a lead on something. I’d rather catch that King of the Beggars than star in another hit on Broadway.”

  “Me too,” said the Saint. “Not that anyone ever offered me Broadway.”

  But there it was—the Robin Hood touch that would undoubtedly be the death of him some day…but literally. The whisper of a new racket which couldn’t help reaching his hypersensitive ears, tuned as they were to every fresh stirring in the endless ferment of ungodliness. Something big and ugly, but preying on small and helpless people…A penny-ante racket, until there were enough pennies…So you wanna be a beggar, pal? Okay, but you gotta pay off, pal. You gotta have protection, pal. We can make sure you don’t have no competition on your beat, see? But you gotta join the Protective Association, pal. You gotta kick in your dues. Otherwise you dunno what might happen. You might get run off the streets; you might even get hurt bad, pal. We’re all for you, but you gotta play ball

  …And somewhere at the top, as always, some smooth and bloated spider grew fat on the leechings from the little uncoordinated jerks who paid their tax to Fear.

  The Saint said, “That’s why I’ve been sitting in this joint for days. That’s why I watched you, until Junior hustled you into the alley. I’m just trying to move a step up the ladder.”

  Monica Varing said, “I’m going to find out—”

  “You’ve got courage,” Simon told her. “We know that. But this job needs more than that. Let’s say—a certain skill in unusual fields. For example, the trick of getting people to confide in you.” He turned to his silent guest. “Who’s the King, Junior?”

  Junior said rude things.

  “You see?” said the Saint. “The atmosphere isn’t right. But just wait till I have a heart-to-heart talk with him. I’ll even bribe him, if necessary. I’ll introduce him to a good dentist. I know he can’t enjoy being mistaken for a rat every time he passes an exterminator service. Besides, I’m sure he can’t chew his food properly. Bad digestion probably soured his temper in youth and led him into a life of crime. We can fix that. We take him to a dentist, and just ask him whether he’ll have it with or without Novocaine. Now if you call me tomorrow—”

  Monica Varing, to her astonishment, found that she was at the door.

  “Wait a minute!” she protested. “I started this—”

  “And a nice job you did,” said the Saint sincerely. “But Junior’s vocabulary may shock you when we really go to work on him. And I promised you wouldn’t be late for your curtain. But I’ll report progress—do you get up for lunch?”

  He closed the door after her, and came back to stand thoughtfully over Junior.

  “Chees,” said Hoppy, giving voice to a profound conclusion. “Who’d ever tink dat old sack was an actress?”

  “She may surprise you next time you see her,” said the Saint, “even if she doesn’t use fans in her act…She’s given me an idea, too. Hoppy, I feel Thespian urges.”

  Mr Uniatz appeared shocked. Luckily, before he could speak, Simon set his mind at ease.

  “I’m going to be an actor. I’m going to play the role of a beggar. After all, I can be bait just as well as Monica Varing…First, though, we’d better put Junior on ice.”

  “Dat’s gonna be tough, boss,” Hoppy said dubiously. “Won’t de cement stores be shut?”

  “Then we’ll have to try something else,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Do you know where we can park Junior till they open? A warm, cosy oubliette?”

  Hoppy considered.

  “Lemme see. I useta know a guy called Sammy de Leg.”

  “Then by all means pick up the phone and call Samuel. Ask him if he’d like to have a house guest.”

  “Listen!” the latter burst out. “I don’t know nothing about this beggar racket! That dame chased me up the alley—”

  “With your gun in her back,” Simon agreed. “I saw it. You need protection. If beggar women keep chasing you up alleys, you won’t be safe till you’re locked up where they can’t get at you. Hoppy and I feel we must take care of you.”

  He finished his drink contentedly while Mr Uniatz completed a cryptic conversation.

  “It’s all set, boss,” Hoppy announced finally. “We can go dere right now.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere!” Junior cried desperately.

  “How you do talk,” said the Saint.

  4

  Two miles north of Wheaton, Simon Templar turned his car, at Hoppy’s direction, into a driveway bordered by high hedges.

  Even the Saint’s fortitude was slightly shaken by the rambling lunatic monstrosity of a house that squatted like Tom o’ Bedlam in the midst of well-kept lawns. Simon was no great authority on architecture, but he felt that the man who had designed this excrescence should have been shot, preferably in the cradle. It had once been a mansion; there was a carriage house, converted into a garage, and servants’ quarters hung precariously on the structure’s grey scaling back, like a laggard extra hump on a camel. Gambrels, cupolas, balconies, railings, warts, wens, and minor scrofulous scraps were all over the house. It was a fine example of the corniest period in unfunctional design.

  “Dis is it,” Hoppy said proudly. “De classiest jernt in de county, when Capone had it.”

  Simon brought the car to a halt, and smiled encouragingly upon the troubled passenger beside him.

  “Don’t let the rococo touch scare you, Junior,” he said. “I’ve seen mortuaries that looked like night clubs, too—Unpack him, Hoppy.”

  Mr Uniatz, the other half of the sandwich whose ham was Junior, had already emerged. He jerked the rug from Junior’s knees and deftly unbuckled the strap that had immobilised the gunman’s ankles.

  “C’mon,” he said. “I seen lotsa better guys dan you walk in here, even if dey was carried out.”

  The rickety front porch creaked under them. Hoppy rang the bell, and almost instantly something resembling a beer barrel covered with a thick pelt of black fur rolled out and began beating Hoppy violently about the ears. Simon watched in amazement. Yells, curses, and jovial threats curdled the air. Mr Uniatz, a horrible grin splitting his anthropoid face, locked in a death struggle with his opponent, and in this manner they revolved across the threshold and vanished into the house. A muffled bellowing leaked out behind them.

  “Don’t leave us,” the Saint said, reaching out to collar Junior. “You wouldn’t get anywhere.”

  He lugged his burden through the doorway, where he found that the brawl had broken up, and Hoppy and the beer barrel were lumbering around each other, cursing furiously.

  “Is this Queensberry rules, or would anyone like a knife?” Simon asked interestedly.

  A voice boomed from the beer barrel.

  “I be Gat-damned,” it said. “So you’re this here Saint character? What kinda mob you runnin’ round with now, Uniatz? Hey, mitt me, bud. Any friend o’ Hoppy’s a pal o’ mine, chum.”

  “Meet Sammy de Leg,” Hoppy said unnecessarily.

  “What a grip,” Sammy yelled, extricating his paw from Simon’s palm and shaking it vigorously. “Come on in. Have a beer.”

  With shouts and cries he fell upon Mr Uniatz and bore him beyond a beaded portière. The Saint followed at a discreet distance, propelling his Junior ahead of him.

  There was a huge white refrigerator set up in one corner of an old-fashioned living-room, and Sammy the Leg was already extracting bottles and handing them around. He paused before Junior.

  “This is the guy you want put away?” he asked. “Well, he don’t get none. Siddown an’ shaddup.”

  He thrust Junior violently into the depths of a chair and made faces at him.

  The Saint relaxed and drank beer. Its cold, catnip flavour tingled pleasantly at the back of his throat. He felt agreeably at home. Simon Temp
lar had a feeling that he was going to like Sammy the Leg very much indeed. The man had a certain directness that was refreshing, once you decided to sidetrack Emily Post.

  “For a pal,” Sammy said, waving his bottle, “anything in the whole wide world, as far south as Indianapolis. You don’t need to say a word. Since I bought this here place, I’m my own boss. Nobody bothers me. I can keep a guy under wraps here, but indefinitely.”

  The Saint leaned back more comfortably. He nodded towards his prisoner.

  “Ever seen Junior before?”

  Sammy’s small eyes dug tiny holes in the specimen. “Uh-uh. He’s imported. Not one of the Chi boys. Though I could be wrong, at that, I guess. Where’d you blow from, bub?

  “You go to hell,” Junior said unoriginally, but his voice cracked.

  Sammy the Leg bellowed with laughter. “Tells me to go to hell! What a joker. Ja hear him?”

  “A character,” the Saint said. “I’ve an idea he’s working for another character. Somebody called the King of the Beggars.”

  “Look, pal,” Sammy said cautiously, “I don’t know from nothin’. I just rent rooms. Now I’m gonna take a walk. When you want me, ring that bell over there by you, Saint. Then I’ll put your chum under wraps for you. There’s more beer in the icebox.”

  He grinned, and waddled out.

  Simon listened to the tinkling of the beaded portière as it fell back into place. It jingled again as Sammy the Leg thrust his face back through it.

  “Get that there electric broiler down from that shelf an’ stick his feet in it,” he advised. “It works well.”

  He vanished; and the Saint gazed speculatively at the indicated shelf.

  “Not a bad idea,” he drawled. “Hoppy, what goes with Sammy?”

  “Huh?” Hoppy said. “He went out.”

  “Yes, I noticed. What I want to know is whether you’re sure Sammy the Leg is levelling with us.”

  “Lissen,” Hoppy said, almost indignantly, “Sammy an’ me was in Joliet togedder.”

  He made this statement more devastatingly than any Harvard graduate identifying a brother alumnus, and in the face of such credentials Simon relaxed.