15 The Saint in New York Page 8

  "Sure I know," said the Saint. "Why else do you think I should have let your tame gorillas fetch me along here? There isn't any other attraction about the place—except that chat about complexion creams that you and I were going to have."

  "He's nuts," explained one of the guards vaguely, as if seek­ing comfort for his own reeling sanity.

  Simon smiled to himself and looked towards the open win­dow. Through it he could see the edge of the roof hanging low over the oblong of blackness, the curved metal of the gutter catching a gleam of light from the bulb over the table. From the sill, it should be within easy reach; and the rest lay with the capricious gods of adventure. ... And he found his gaze wandering back with detached curiosity, even in that terrific moment, to the girl who must be Fay Edwards. He could see her over Ualino's shoulder, watching him steadily; but he could read nothing in her amber eyes.

  Ualino took the hand down from caressing his hair and stuck the thumb in his vest pocket. He seemed to be playing with a vial of sadistic malignance as a child might play with a ball, for the last time.

  "What did you think you'd do when you got here?" he asked; and the Saint's level gaze returned to his face with the chill of antarctic ice still in it.

  "I'm here to kill you, Ualino," Simon said quietly.

  One of the pinochle players moved his leg, and a card slipped off the sofa and hit the floor with a tiny scuff that was as loud as a drumbeat in the soundless void. A stifling silence blanketed the air that was like no silence which had gone be­fore. It was a stillness that reached out beyond the deadest in­finities of disbelief, an unfathomable immobility in which even incredulity was punch-drunk and paralyzed. It rose out of the waning vibrations of the Saint's gentle voice and throbbed back and forth between the walls like a charge of static electricity; and the Saint's blue eyes gazed through it in an in­clement mockery of bitter steel. It could not last for more than a second or two—the fierce tension of it was too intolerable— but for that space of time no one could have interrupted. And that quiet, gentle voice went on, with a terrible softness and simplicity, holding them with a sheer ruthless power that they could not begin to understand:

  "I am the Saint; and I have my justice. This afternoon Jack Irboll died, as I promised. I am more than the law, Ualino, and I have no corrupt judges. Tonight you die."

  Ualino stood up. His tawny eyes stared into the Saint's with a greenish glow.

  "You're pretty smart," he said venomously; and then his fist lashed at Simon's face.

  The Saint's head rolled coolly sideways, and Ualino's sleeve actually brushed his cheek as the blow went by. A moment later the Saint's right hand touched the hilt of his knife and slid it up in its sheath—with both his arms twisted up behind his back it was hardly more difficult than it would have been if his hand and wrist had come together in front of him. Ualino's eyes blazed with sudden raw fury as he felt his clenched fist zip through into unresisting air. He drew his arm back and smashed again; and then a miracle seemed to happen.

  The man on the Saint's right felt a stab of fire lance across the tendons of his wrist, and all the strength went out of his fingers. He stared stupidly at the gush of blood that broke from the severed arteries; and while he stared, something flashed across his vision like a streak of quicksilver, and he heard Ualino cry out.

  That was about as much as anybody saw or understood. Somehow, without a struggle, the Saint was free; and a steel blade flashed in his hand. It swept upwards in front of him in a terrible arc; and Ualino clutched at his stomach and sank down, with his knees buckling under him and a ghastly crim­son tide bursting between his fingers. . . . Nobody else had time to move. The sheer astounding speed of it numbed even the most instinctive processes of thought—they might as easily have met and parried a flash of lightning. . . . And then the knife swept on upwards, and the hilt of it struck the electric light bulb over the table and brought utter darkness with an explosion like a gun.

  Simon leapt for the window.

  A hand touched his arm, and his knife drew back again for a vicious thrust. And then, with a sudden effort, he checked it in mid-flight. . . .

  For the hand did not tighten its grip. Halting in the black dark, with the shouts and blunderings of infuriated men roar­ing around him, his nostrils caught a faint breath of perfume. Something cold and metallic touched his hand, and instinc­tively his fingers closed round it and recognized it for the butt of an automatic. And then the light touch on his sleeve was gone; and with the trigger guard between his teeth he sprang to the windowsill and reached upwards and outwards into space.

  Chapter 4

  How Simon Templar Read Newspapers, and Mr. Papulos Hit the Skids

  He lay out on the tiles at a perilous downward angle of forty-five degrees, as he had swung himself straight up from the windowsill, with his feet stretched towards the sky and only the grip of his hands in the gutter holding him. from an imminent nosedive to squishy death. Directly below him he could see the torsos and bullet heads of two gorillas illumi­nated in the light of a match held by a third, as they leaned out from the window and raked the dark ground below with straining, startled eyes. Their voices floated up to him like the music of checked hounds to a fox that has crossed its own scent.

  "He must of gone that way."

  "Better get down an' see he don't take the car."

  "Take the car hell—I got the keys here."

  The craning bodies heaved up again and vanished back into the room. He heard the quick thumping of their feet and the crash of the door; and then for a space another silence settled on the Long Island night.

  Simon shifted the weight on his aching shoulders and grinned gently under the stars. In its unassuming way it had been a tense moment, but the advantage of the unexpected was still with him. The minds of most men run on well-charted rails, and perhaps the mind of the professional killer in times of sudden death has fewer sidetracks than any other. To the four raging and bewildered thugs who were even then pound­ing down the stairs to guard their precious car and comb the surrounding meadows, it was as inconceivable as it had been to Inspector Fernack that any man in the Saint's position, with the untrammelled use of his limbs, should be interested in any other diversion than that of boring a hole through the horizon with the utmost assiduousness and dispatch. But like Inspector Fernack, the four public enemies who fell into this grievous error were enjoying their first encounter with that dazzling recklessness which made Simon Templar an incalcu­lable variant in any equation.

  With infinite caution the Saint began to manoeuvre himself sideways along the roof.

  It was a gymnastic exercise for which no rules had been de­vised in any manual of the art. He had circled up to the roof in that position because it was quicker than any other; and, once he was up there, it was practically impossible to reverse it. Nor would he have gained anything if he had by some in­credible contortions managed to get his feet down to the gutter and his head up to its proper elevation, for his only means of telling when he had reached his destination was by peering down over the gutter at the windows underneath. And that destination was the room outside which the scrawny-necked individual had been lounging when he arrived.

  Once a loose section of metal gave him the most nerve-racking two-yard journey of his life; more than once, when one of the men who were searching for him prowled under the house, he had to remain motionless, with all his weight on the heels of his hands, till the muscles of his arms and shoulders cracked under the strain. It was a task which should have taken the concentration of every fibre of his being, but the truth is that he was thinking about Fay Edwards for seven-eighths of the way.

  What was she doing now? What was she doing at any time in that bloodthirsty half-world? Simon realized that even now he had not heard her speak—his assumption that she was the girl of Nather's telephone was purely intuitive. But he had seen her face an instant after his knife had laid Ualino open from groin to breastbone, and there had been neither fear nor horror i
n it. Just for that instant the amber eyes had seemed to blaze with a savage light which he could not understand; and then he had smashed the electric bulb and was on his way. He might have thought that the whole thing was a moment's hallucination, but there was the metal of the automatic still between his teeth to be explained. His brain tangled with that ultimate amazing mystery while he warped himself along the edge of yawning nothingness; and he was no nearer a solution when the window that he was aiming for came vertically under his eyes.

  At least there was nothing intangible or mysterious about that; and he knew that there was no prospect of the general tempo of whoopee and carnival slackening off before he got home to bed. With one searching glance over the ground be­low to make sure that there was no lurking sentinel waiting to catch him in midair, the Saint slid himself forward head first into space, neatly reversed his hands, and curled over into the precarious dark.

  He hung at the full stretch of his arms, facing the window of his objective. It was closed; but a stealthily inquiring pressure of one toe told him that it was fastened only by a single catch in the centre.

  There was no further opportunity for caution. The rest of his evening had to be taken on the run, and he knew it. Taking a deep breath, he swung himself backwards and outwards; and as his body swung in again towards the house on the returning pendulum he raised his legs and drove his feet squarely into the junction of the casements.

  The flimsy fastening tore away like tissue paper under the impact, and the casements burst inwards and smacked against the inside wall with a crash of breaking glass. A treble wail of fright came out to him as he swung back again; then he came forward a second time and arched his back with a supple twist as his hands let go the gutter. He went through the window neatly, skidded on a loose rug, and fetched up against the bed.

  The room was in darkness, but his eyes were accustomed to the dark. A small white-clad shape with dark curly hair stared back at him, big eyes dilated with terror, whimpering softly. From the floor below came the thud of heavy feet and the sound of hoarse voices, but the Saint might have had all the time in the world. He took the gun from between his teeth and pushed down the safety catch with his right hand; his left hand patted the girl's shoulder.

  "Poor kid," he said. "I've come to take you home."

  There was a surprising tenderness in his voice, and all at once the child's whimpering died down.

  "You want to go home, don't you?" asked the Saint.

  She nodded violently; and with a soft comforting laugh he swung her up in the crook of his arm and crossed the room. The door was locked, as he had expected. Simon held her a little tighter.

  "We're going to make some big bangs, Viola," he said. "You aren't frightened of big bangs, are you? Big bangs like fire­works? And every time we make a big bang we'll kill one of the wicked men who took you away." She shook her head.

  "I like big bangs," she declared; and the Saint laughed again and put the muzzle of his gun against the lock.

  The shot rocked the room like thunder, and a heavy thud sounded in the corridor. Simon flung open the door. It was the scrawny-necked individual on guard outside who had caused the thud: he was sprawled against the opposite wall in a gro­tesque huddle, and nothing was more certain than that he would never stand guard anywhere again. Apparently he had been peering through the keyhole, looking for an explanation of the disturbance, when the Saint shot out the lock; and what remained of his face was not pleasant to look at. The child in Simon's arms crowed gleefully.

  "Make more bangs," she commanded; and the Saint smiled.

  "Shall we? I'll see what can be done."

  He raced down the passage to the stairs. The men below were on their way up but he gained the half-landing before them with one flying leap. The leading attacker died in his tracks and never knew it, and his lifeless body reared over backwards and went bumping down to the floor below. The others scuttled for cover; and Simon drew a calm bead on the single frosted bulb in the hall and left only the dim glow from the bar and the dance room for light.

  A tongue of orange fire spat out of the dark, and the bullet spilled a shower of plaster from the wall a yard over the Saint's head. Simon grinned and swung his legs over the banisters. Curiously enough, the average gangster has standards of marks­manship that would make the old-time bad man weep in his grave: most of his pistol practice is done from a range of not more than three feet, and for any greater distances than that he gets out his sub-machine-gun and sprays a couple of thou­sand rounds over the surrounding county on the assumption that one of them must hit something. The opposition was dan­gerous, but it was not certain death. One of the men poked an eye warily round the door of the bar and leapt back hur­riedly as the Saint's shot splintered the frame an inch from his nose; and the Saint let go the handrail and dropped down to the floor like a cat.

  The front door was open, as the men had left it when they rushed back into the house. Simon made a rapid calculation. There were four men left, so far as he knew; and of their num­ber one was certainly watching the windows at the back, and another was probably guarding the parked cars. That left two to be taken on the way; and the time to take them was at once, while their morale was still shaken by the divers preposterous calamities that they had seen.

  He put the girl down and turned her towards the doorway. She was moaning a little now, but fear would lend wings to her feet

  "Run!" he shouted suddenly. "Run for the door!"

  Her shrill voice crying out in terror, the child fled. A man sprang up from his knees behind the hangings in the dance-room entrance; Simon fired once, and he went down with a yell. Another bullet from the Saint's gun went crashing down a row of bottles in the bar; then he was outside, hurdling the porch rail and landing nimbly on his toes. He could see the girl's white dress flying through the darkness in front of him. A man rose up out of the gloom ahead of her and lunged, and she screamed once as his outstretched fingers clawed at her frock. Simon's gun belched flame, and the clutching hand fell limp as a soft-nosed slug tore through the fleshy part of the man's forearm. The gorilla spun round and dropped his gun, bellowing like a bull, and Simon sprinted after the terrified child. An automatic banged twice behind him, but the shots went wide. The girl shrieked as he came up with her, but he caught her into his left arm and held her close.

  "All right, kiddo," he said gently. "It's all over. Now we're going home."

  He ducked in between the parked cars. He already knew that the one in which he had arrived was locked: if Ualino's car was also locked there would still be difficulties. He threw open the door and sighed his relief—the key was in its socket. What was it Fernack had said? "He rides around in an ar­moured sedan." Morrie Ualino seemed to have been a thoughtful bird all round, and the Saint was smiling appreciatively as he climbed in.

  A scattered fusillade drummed on the coachwork as he swung the car through a tight arc in reverse, and the bullet­proof glass starred but did not break. As the car lurched for­ward again he actually slowed up to wind down an inch of window.

  "So long, boys," he called back. "Thanks for the ride!" And then the car was swinging out into the road, whirling away into the night with a smooth rush of power, with the horn hooting a derisively syncopated farewell into the wind,

  Simon stopped the car a block from Sutton Place and looked down at the sleepy figure beside him.

  "Do you know your way home from here?" he asked her.

  She nodded vigorously. Her hysterical sobbing had stopped long ago—in a few days she would scarcely remember.

  He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and made a little drawing on it. It was a skeleton figure adorned with a large and rakishly slanted halo.

  "Give this to your daddy," he said, "and tell him the Saint brought you home. Do you understand? The Saint brought you back."

  She nodded again, and he crumpled the paper into her tiny fist and opened the door. The last he saw of her was her white-frocked shape trotting round the next corner
; and then he let in the clutch and drove on. Fifteen minutes later he was back at the Waldorf Astoria, and Morrie Ualino's armour-plated sedan was abandoned six blocks away.

  Valcross in pyjamas and dressing gown, was dozing in the living room. He roused to find the Saint smiling down at him a little tiredly, but in complete contentment.

  "Viola Inselheim is home," said the Saint. "I went for a lovely ride."

  He was wiping the blade of his knife on a silk handkerchief; and Valcross looked at him curiously.

  "Did you meet Ualino?" he asked; and Simon Templar nodded.

  "Tradition would have it that Morrie sleeps with his fa­thers," he said, very gently; "but one can't be sure that he knows who they were."

  He opened the bureau and took out a plain white card. On it were written six names. One of them—Jack Irboll's—was already scratched out. With his fountain pen he drew a single straight line through the next two; and then, at the bottom of the list, he wrote another. It was The Big Fellow. He hesitated for a moment and then wrote an eighth, lower down, and drew a neat panel round it: Fay Edwards.

  "Who is she?" inquired Valcross, looking over his shoulder; and the Saint lighted a cigarette and pushed back his hair.

  "That's what I'd like to know. All I can tell you is that her gun saved me a great deal of trouble, and was a whole lot of grief to some of the ungodly. . . . This is a pretty passable beginning, Bill—you ought to enjoy the headlines tomorrow morning."

  His prophecy of the reactions of the press to his exploits would have been no great strain on anyone's clairvoyant gen­ius. In the morning he had more opportunities to read about himself than any respectably self-effacing citizen would have desired.

  Modesty was not one of Simon Templar's virtues. He sat at breakfast with a selection of the New York dailies strewn around him, and the general tenor of their leading pages was very satisfactory. It is true that the Times and the Herald Tribune, following a traditional policy of treating New York's annual average of six hundred homicides as regrettable faux pas which have no proper place in a sober chronicle of the passing days, relegated the Saint to a secondary position; but any aloofness on their part was more than compensated by the enthusiasm of the Mirror and the News. SAINT RESCUES VIOLA, they howled, in black letters two and a half inches high. UALINO SLAIN. RACKET ROMEO'S LAST RIDE. UALINO, VOELSANG, DIE. SAINT SLAYS TWO, WOUNDS THREE. LONG ISLAND MASSACRE. SAINT BATTLES KIDNAPPERS. There were photographs of the rescued Viola Inselheim with her stout papa, photographs of the house where she had been held, gory photographs of the dead. There was a photograph of the Saint himself; and Simon was pleased to see that it was a good one.