15 The Saint in New York Page 21

  He told Valcross what had been happening, in terse, crackling sentences pared down to the uttermost parched economy of words. The other's eyes were opening wider from the intervention of Fay Edwards at the last moment of the ride—on through the slaying of Dutch Kuhlmann to the unpleasantness of Mr. Kestry and the amazing reprieve that Fernack had offered. The whole staggering course of those last few hectic hours was sketched out in clipped impression­istic phrases that punched their effect through like a rattle of bullets. And all the while the Saint's eyes were scanning the road and sidewalks, his fingers were curled round the butt of Fernack's gun, his nerves were keyed to the last milligram of vigilance.

  "So you see it's been a big night," he wound up. "And there isn't much of it left. Fernack's probably wondering already whether I haven't skipped into Canada and left him to hold the baby."

  "And Fay Edwards told you the Big Fellow would be here at nine?" said Valcross.

  "Not exactly. She asked me to be here at nine—and she was looking for the Big Fellow. I'm hoping it means she knows something. I'm still hoping."

  "It's an amazing story," said Valcross thoughtfully. "Do you know what to make of that girl?"

  Simon shrugged.

  "I don't think I ever shall."

  "I shall never understand women," Valcross said. "I wonder what the Big Fellow will think. That marvellous brain—an organization that's tied up the greatest city in the world into the greatest criminal combine that's ever been known— and a harlot who falls in love with an adventurer can tear it all to pieces."

  "She hasn't done it yet," said the Saint.

  Valcross was silent for a few moments; and then he said: "You've done your share. You've got five men out of the six names I gave you. In the short time you've been working, that's almost a miracle. The Big Fellow's your own idea—you put him on the list. If you fail—if you feel bound to keep your word and go back to Fernack—I can't stop you. But I feel that you've earned the reward I promised you. I've had a million dollars in a drawing account, waiting for you, ever since you came over. I'd like to give it to you, anyhow. It might be some use to you."

  Simon hesitated. Valcross's eyes were fixed on him eagerly.

  "You can't refuse," he insisted. "It's my money, and I think it's due to you. No one could have earned it better."

  "All right," said the Saint. "But you can pay me in propor­tion. I haven't succeeded—why try to make out that I have?"

  "I think I'm the best judge of that," said Valcross and let himself out of the cab with a quick smile.

  Simon watched him go with a troubled frown. There was an unpleasant taste in his mouth which he had not noticed before. So the accounts of death would be paid according to their strict percentages, the blood money handed over, and the ledger closed. Six men to be killed for a million dollars. One hundred and sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six dollars and -sixty-six cents per man. He had not thought of it that way before—he had taken the offer in his stride, for the adventure, without seriously reckoning the gain. Well, he re­flected bitterly, there was no reason why a man who in a few short weeks would be a convicted felon should try to flatter his self-esteem. He would go down as a hired killer, like any of the other rats he had killed. . . .

  Valcross was closing the door, turning away towards the bank; and at that moment another taxi flashed past the one in which Simon sat, and swung in to the curb in front of them. The door opened, and a woman got out. It was Fay Edwards.

  Simon grabbed at the door handle and flung himself out onto the sidewalk. And then he saw that the girl was not looking at him, but at Valcross.

  The Saint had never known anything to compare with that moment. There was the same curious constricted feeling at the back of his knees as if he had been standing with his toes over the edge of a sheer precipice, looking down through space into an unimaginable gulf; seconds passed before he realized that for a time he had even stopped breathing. When he opened his lungs again, the blood sang in his ears like the hissing of distant surf.

  There was no need for anything to be said—no need for a single question to be asked and answered. The girl had not even seen him yet. But without seeing her face, without catch­ing a glimpse of the expression in her eyes—he knew. Facts, names, words, events, roared through his mind like a turmoil of machinery gone mad, and fell one by one into places where they fitted and joined. Kestry's harsh voice stating: "Why did the guy that was phoning for you say 'This is the Big Fel­low'?" He had never been able to think who could have given him away—except the one man whom he had never thought of. Fay Edwards saying: "The last I heard of Curly Ippolino, he was in Pittsburgh." Valcross had just returned from Pitts­burgh. Fay Edwards saying: "All the profits were paid into one bank. It was agreed that the racket should run for three years . . . divide the surplus equally . . . Since you've been here, there aren't many of them left to divide . . . That means a lot of money for somebody." Valcross on his way to the bank— Valcross on his way back from Pittsburgh, where the last sur­viving member of the partnership had been. Fay Edwards say­ing: "He told me to try and make things easy for you." Nat­urally—until the job was finished. Valcross meeting him in Madrid. The list of men for justice—all of them dead now. The story of his kidnapped and murdered son, which it had never occurred to the Saint to verify. "I'll pay you a million dollars." With seventeen million at stake, the fee was very modest. You might clean up this rotten mess of crooks and grafters." Oh, God, what a blind fool he'd been!

  In that reeling instant of time he saw it all. Jack Irboll dead. Morrie Ualino and Eddie Voelsang dead. The news flashed over the underworld grapevine, long before the news­papers caught up with it, that Hunk Jenson and Dutch Kuhl­mann had also died. The knowledge that the Saint's sphere of usefulness was rapidly drawing to a close, and the bill would remain for payment. The trip to Pittsburgh and the telephone message to police headquarters. The last Machiavellian gesture of that devilish warped genius which had gone out and picked up the scourge of all secret crime, the greatest fighting outlaw in the world, bought him with a story and the promise of a million dollars, used him for a few days of terror, and cast him off before his curiosity became too dangerous. The final shock when Valcross saw the Saint that morning, alive and free. And the simple, puerile, obvious excuse to continue into the bank—and, once there, to slip out by another exit, and perhaps send a second message to the police at the same time. Simon Templar saw every detail. And then, as Fay Edwards turned at last and saw him for the first time, he read it all again, without the utterance of a single word, in that voiceless interchange of glances which was the most astounding solution to a mystery that he would ever know.

  Æons of time and understanding seemed to have rocketed past his head while he stood there motionless, taking down into his soul the last biting, shattering dregs of comprehension; and yet in the chronology of the world it was no time at all Valcross had not even reached the doors of the bank. And then, as Fay Edwards saw the Saint and took two quick steps towards him, some supernatural premonition seemed to strike Valcross as if a shout had been loosed after him, and he turned round.

  He saw Fay Edwards, and he saw the Saint.

  Across the narrow space Simon Templar stared at Valcross and saw the whole mask of genial kindliness destroyed by the blaze of horrible malignity that flamed out of the old man's eyes. The change was so incredible that even though he under­stood the facts in his mind, even though he had assimilated them into the immutable truths of his existence, for that weird interval of time he was paralyzed, as if he had been watching a spaniel turn into a snake. And then Valcross's hand streaked down towards his hip pocket.

  Simon's right hand started the hundredth part of a second later, moving with the speed of light—and the stiffness of his wounded shoulder caught it in midflight like a cruel brake. A stiletto of pain stabbed through his back like a hot iron. In the hypnotic grasp of that uncanny moment his disability had been driven out of his mind: he had used his righ
t hand by instinct which moved faster than thought. In an instant he had corrected himself, and his left hand was snatching at Fernack's revolver in his coat pocket; but by that time Val­cross was also holding a gun.

  A shot smacked past his ear, stunning the drum like the blast of an express train concentrated twenty thousand times. His revolver was stuck in his pocket. Of the next shot he heard only the report. The bullet went nowhere near him. Then he twisted his gun up desperately and fired through the cloth; and Valcross dropped his automatic and clutched at his side, swaying where he stood.

  Simon hurled himself forward. The street had turned into pandemonium. White-faced pedestrians blocked the sidewalk on either side of the bank, crushing back out of the danger zone. The air was raucous with the screams of women and the screech of skidding tires. He caught Valcross round the waist with his sound arm, swung him mightily off his feet, and started back with him towards the cab. He saw Mr. Lipski, his features convulsed with intolerable excitement, scrambling down from his box to assist. And he saw Fay Edwards.

  She was leaning against the side of the taxi, holding onto it, with one small hand pressed to the front of her dress; and Simon knew, with a terrible finality, where Valcross's second shot had gone.

  Something that was more than a pang came into his throat; and his heart stopped beating. And then he went on.

  He jerked open the door and flung Valcross in like a sack. And then he took Fay Edwards in his arms and carried her in with him. She was as light in his arms as a child; he could not even feel the pain in his shoulder; and yet he carried the weight of the whole world. He put her down on the seat as tenderly as if she had been made of fragile crystal, and closed the door. The cab was jolting forward even as he did so.

  "Where to, pal?" bellowed the driver over his shoulder.

  Simon gave him Fernack's address.

  There was a wail of police sirens starting up behind them— far behind. Weaving through the traffic, cornering on two wheels, whisking over crossroads in defiance of red lights, supremely contemptuous of the signs on one-way streets, per­forming hair-raising miracles of navigation with one hand, Mr. Sebastian Lipski found opportunities to scratch the back of his head with the other. Mr. Lipski was worried.

  "Chees!" he said bashfully, as if conscious that he was guilty of unpardonable sacrilege, and yet unable to overcome the doubts that were seething in his breast. "What is dis racket, anyway? Foist ya puts de arm on a guy wit' out any trouble. Den ya lets him go. Den ya shoots up Fift' Avenue an' brings him back again. Howja play dis snatch game, what I wanna know?"

  "Don't think about it," said the Saint through his teeth. "Just drive!"

  He felt a touch on his arm and looked down at the girl. She had pulled off her hat, and her hair was falling about her cheeks in a flood of soft gold. There were shadows in her amazing amber eyes, but the rest of her face was untroubled, unlined, like unearthly satin, with the bloom of youth and life undimmed on it. The parting of her lips might have been the wraith of a smile.

  "Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going with you—very far."

  "That's nonsense," he said roughly. "It's nothing serious. "You're going to be all right"

  But he knew that he lied.

  She knew, too. She shook her head, so that the golden curls danced.

  "It doesn't hurt," she said. "I'm comfortable here."

  She was nestling in the crook of his arm, like a tired child. The towers and canyons of New York whirled round the win­dows, but she did not see them. She went her way as she had lived, without fear or pity or remorse, out of the unknown past into the unknown future. Perhaps even then she had never looked back, or looked ahead. All of her was in the present. She belonged neither to times nor seasons. In some strange freak of creation all times and seasons had been mingled in her, were fused in the confines of that flawless in­carnation; the eternal coordinates of the ageless earth, death and desire. She sighed once.

  "I'm so sorry," she said. "I suppose it wasn't meant to hap­pen—this time."

  He could not speak.

  "Kiss me again, Simon," she said quietly.

  He kissed her. Why had she seemed unapproachable? She was himself. It was his own lawless scorn of life and death which had conquered her, which had brought her twice to save his life and taken her own life in the end. If the whole world had condemned her, he could not have cast a stone. He did not care. They moved in the same places, the wide sierras of outlawry where there were no laws.

  She slipped back, gazing into his face as if she were trying to remember every line of it for a hundred years. She was smiling, and there was a light in her darkening amber eyes which he would never understand. He could see her take breath to speak.

  "Au revoir, Simon," she said; and as she had lived with death, so she died.

  He let her go gently and turned away. Strange tears were stinging his eyes so that he could not see. The taxi lurched round a corner with its engine growling. The noises of the city ebbed and swelled like the beat of a tidal sea.

  He became aware that Valcross was tugging at his arm, whining in a horrible mouthy incoherence of terror. The yammering words came dully through into his brain:

  "Can't you do something? I don't want to die. I've been good to you. I didn't mean to cheat you out of your million dollars. I'll do anything you say. I don't want to die. You shot me. You've got to take me to a doctor. I've got money. You can have anything you like. I've got millions. You can have all of them. I don't want them. Take what you want——"

  "Be quiet," said the Saint in a dreadful voice.

  "Millions of dollars—in the bank—they're all yours——"

  Simon struck him on the mouth.

  "You fool," he said. "All the money in the world couldn't pay for what you've done."

  The man shrank away from him, and his babbling rose to a scream.

  "What is it you want with me, then? I can give you any­thing. If it isn't money, what do you want? Damn you, what is your racket?"

  Then the Saint turned towards him, and even Valcross was silent when he saw the look on the Saint's face. His mouth worked mutely, but the words would not leave his throat. His trembling hands went up as if to shield himself from the stare of those devilish blue eyes.

  "Death," said the Saint, in a voice of terrible softness. "Death is my racket."

  They turned into Washington Square from the south. Simon had never noticed what route they took to shake off pursuit, but the wail of sirens had ceased. The muttering thunder of the city had swallowed it up. The taxi was slowing down to a more normal pace. Buses rumbled ponderously by; the endless stream of cars and vans and taxis flowed along, as it would flow day and night while the city stood, one of a myriad impersonal rivers on which human activities took their brief bustling voyages, coming and going without trace. A newsboy ran down the sidewalk, bawling his ephemeral sensation. In a microscopic corner of one infinitesimal speck of dust floating through the black abysses of infinity, inconsiderable atoms of human life hurried and fumed and fretted and were broken and triumphant in the trivial affairs of their brief instant in eternity. Lives began and lives ended, but the primordial ac­cident of life went on.

  The cab stopped, and the driver looked round.

  "Dis is it," he announced. "What next?"

  "Wait here a minute," said the Saint; and then he saw Fernack standing on the steps of his house.

  He got out and walked slowly towards the detective, and Fernack stood and watched him come. The strong, square-jawed face did not relax; only the flinty grey eyes under the shaggy brows had any expression.

  Simon drew out the pearl-handled gun, reversed it, and held it out as if he were surrendering a sword.

  "I've kept my word," he said. "That's the end of my parole."

  Fernack took the revolver and slid it into his hip pocket.

  "Didn't you find the Big Fellow?"

  "He's in the taxi."

  A glimmer of immeasurable content passed across Fernack's
eyes, and he looked over the Saint's shoulder, down towards the waiting cab. Then, without a word, he went past the Saint, across the pavement, and opened the door. Valcross half fell towards him. Fernack caught him with one hand and hauled the slobbering man out and upright. Then he saw something else in the taxi, and stood very still.

  "Who's this?" he said.

  There was no answer. Fernack turned round and looked up and down the street. Simon Templar was gone.

  Epilogue

  Mr. Theodore Bungstatter, of Brooklyn, espoused his cook on the eleventh day of June in that year of grace, having finally convinced her that his inability to repeat his devotion coherently on a certain night was due to nothing more unre­generate than a touch of influenza. They spent their honey­moon at Niagara Falls, and on the third day of it she induced him to sign the pledge; but in spite of this concession to her prejudices she never cooked for him again, and the rest of their wedded bliss was backgrounded by a procession of disgruntled substitutes who brought Mr. Bungstatter to the direst agonies of dyspepsia.

  Mr. Ezekiel Inselheim paced his library and said to a depu­tation of reporters: "It is the duty of all public-spirited citi­zens to resist racketeering and extortion even at the risk of their own lives or the lives of those who are nearest and dear­est to them. The welfare of the state must override all con­siderations of personal safety. We are fighting a war to the death with crime, and the same code of self-sacrifice must guide every one of us as if we were at war with a foreign power. It is the only way in which this vile cancer in our midst can be rooted out." And while he spoke he remembered the cold appraising eyes of the outlaw who had faced him in that same room, and behind the pompous phrasing of his words was the pride of a belief that if he himself were tried again he would not be found wanting.

  Mr. Heimie Felder, wrestling in argument with a circle of boon companions in Charley's Place, said: "Whaddya mean, de guy was nuts? Coujja say a guy dat bumped off Morrie Ualino an' Dutch Kuhlmann was nuts? Say, listen, I'm tellin'ya ....