Call for the Saint s-27 Page 8

  Sammy the Leg was staring at him with a mixture of grief and consternation that made him look as if he was going to cry.

  "You mean . . . they gave you my house?"

  His eyes actually grew moist as they stole lingeringly around the appalling interior.

  "Don't worry-I'll give it back to you," said the Saint gener­ously. "All I want from you is just as much as you can tell me. For instance: when Frankie and Fingers were talking, did they let anything drop that would give you any idea where the King of the Beggars has his main hideaway? Or where they might have kept Junior, if they'd wanted to keep him?"

  Sammy chewed thoughtfully for a while, and made a de­cision.

  "I ain't no squealer," he said, "but after what those two rats done to me . . . They didn't say much, either. But Fingers said, 'Why not work him over here ?' and Frankie said, 'They're waiting for us at Elliott's, and we got a better trick there.' "

  Mr. Uniatz came out of a prolonged silence during which he. had been refreshing himself from a pint bottle of bourbon which he had discovered among Sammy's supplies. His return to the conversation might have been due to the stirring of a thought, or to the fact that the bottle was now empty.

  "De Elliott Hotel?" he said. "But we just come from dere--"

  "And we didn't search it," Simon said. "That was only the place where I started thinking about secret passages. So natu­rally I was too dumb to start there . . . Wait a minute!" He came to his feet suddenly, and his eyes were alight. "Sammy-did he say 'Elliott's' or 'the Elliott Hotel'?"

  "He said 'Elliott's,' " he stated positively. "I never heard of an Elliott Hotel."

  "Of course he did," said the Saint, with a lilt in his quiet voice like muted trumpets. "Of course he did. Anyone who meant the Elliott Hotel would say so, or call it 'the Hotel' or 'the Elliott.' They wouldn't call it 'Elliott's.' ... Hoppy, we're on our way!"

  Hoppy struggled obediently but foggily to his feet.

  "Okay, boss."

  "That'll be five bucks for the bourbon," Sammy said. He closed his hairy fist on the bill that Simon placed in it, and added: "Just one thing. Try to leave Fingers for me, will you? I sort of feel I ought to get him myself, for the looks of things."

  "We'll try," Simon promised.

  He drove back into Chicago with the speedometer needle exactly on the legal limit, for this was one time when he did not want to be stopped. His first destination was his own hotel: he was gambling that that might well be the last place where Kearney would expect him to show up again, but in any case he was riding a hunch that justified the chance.

  And the piece fell into place as if it had been machined to fit, with the uncanny smoothness that so often seemed to lubricate the gears of Simon Templar's destiny.

  There was a letter in his box at the desk, a product of the last delivery. It was addressed to Hoppy, but Simon opened it as soon as he saw the name of the firm of realtors it came from.

  DEAR MR. UNIATZ: We have finally been able to trace the ownership of the property in which you are interested at 7204 Kelly Drive.

  The owner is a Mr. Stephen Elliott, and we understand he would consider an offer--

  Simon read no more. He stuffed the letter into his pocket, and sapphires danced in his eyes.

  "Let's go, Hoppy," he said, "and arrange an abdication."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The telephone at the clerk's elbow buzzed. He picked it up and said: "Night clerk speaking . . ." His eyes went to the Saint and he said: "Yes, he just came in--"

  Then his eyes bugged while they still rested on the Saint. Simon watched them grow wider and rounder before the man backed away from the counter and turned his head.

  The Saint deliberately dawdled over lighting a cigarette, but even his supersensitive ears could pick nothing up, for all the rest of the conversation came from the other end of die line, until the clerk muttered: "Okay, I'll do my best."

  Simon started to move away.

  "Er-Mr. Templar--"

  He turned.

  "Yes?"

  The clerk was sweating. His face had a slightly glazed sur­face from the strain of trying to look natural.

  "The manager just called, Mr. Templar, and wanted to speak to you about-about an overcharge on your bill."

  "I'll be glad to speak to him in the morning," said the Saint co-operatively. "We should have lots to talk about-everything on my bill looks like an overcharge to me."

  "He's on his way here now, sir," said the clerk from his tonsils. "If you could wait a few minutes--"

  The Saintly smile would have glowed ethereally in a stained-glass window.

  "I'm afraid I haven't time," he said. "But when Lieutenant Kearney gets here, do congratulate him for me on his new job. Oh, and give him this letter, will you?"

  He laid the communication from the real-estate agents on the desk, and hurried Hoppy out of the lobby before the clerk could reassemble his wits for another attempt to delay him.

  Again his car snaked through the traffic at the maximum speed that would still leave it immune from legal interference.

  The Saint's hands were light and steady on the wheel, his keen tanned profile implacably calm against the passing street lights. And while he drove like a precision machine he thought about Monica. Monica drugged, her velvet voice incoherent, her enigmatic eyes blank, her proud body listless and helpless ... He thought of worse things than that; and a black cold­ness lanced through him with an aching intensity that froze his eyes as they stared ahead.

  "I'm the dope, Hoppy," he said, in a dead toneless level. "I should have known better than to think I could push her off the stage. . . . She put on that beggar woman's outfit again, of course. She went back to the Elliott Hotel. But on account of what Junior had spilled, she didn't last a minute. They were probably taking care of her last night while I was lying there wondering why they didn't do anything about me." His voice had a bitterness beyond emotion. "By this time they've given her a treatment and they know all the rest about me. Except where I am now. This is the showdown."

  "Who'd t'ought it," Hoppy said amazedly. "Elliott-de old goat!"

  Simon said nothing.

  The house on Kelly Drive was as dark as the last time they had seen it, an unimaginative two-story pile of brick with drawn blinds that made the windows look like sightless eyes.

  Simon went to the back door, with Hoppy at his heels. Hav­ing picked the lock once before, he took a mere few seconds to open it again.

  They stepped into darkness and silence broken only by the monotonous slow pulse of a dripping tap. This was the kitchen. On the other side of the room was the door at the head of the stairs that led down to the basement where initiations into the brotherhood of beggars were performed. As Simon touched it, it gave way a fraction: it was not quite closed, but the darkness was blacker still beyond the slight opening. He stopped and listened again, and heard nothing. The darkness of the house had not seemed to indicate that there was a guard, but he was jumping to no rash conclusions.

  He balanced the gun in his hand and pushed the door wider.

  Then he heard it-a faint but clear rustle of movement that threw a momentary uncontrollable syncopation into his heart­beats and sent a flying column of eskimo beetles skirmishing up into his scalp. And with the rustle, a low sleepy inarticulate moan.

  "What's dat?" breathed Mr. Uniatz hoarsely.

  The Saint hardly bothered to whisper. After the first in­stant's shock, he understood the rustle and the moan so vividly that the needlessness of further stealth seemed to be estab­lished.

  "That's Monica," he said, and went down the steps.

  His pencil flashlight broke the darkness as he reached the bottom; and in the round splash where the beam struck he saw her.

  She lay on a canvas cot in one corner of the cellar. Her wrists were strapped to the side members. As he had expected, she was dressed in the grimy shapeless rags in which he had first met her; but most of the beggar-woman make-up had been roughly wiped from her f
ace. Her eyes were closed, but as the light fell on them her eyelids lifted a little as if with an in­finite effort.

  "No," she mouthed huskily. "No . . ."

  "Monica," he said.

  He checked the eagerness of his stride as he reached the cot, to come up to her gently.

  "It's me," he said. "Simon Templar."

  Her eyes sought for him as he touched her, and he could see the pin-point contraction of the pupils. He turned the flashlight on his own face, then back to her.

  She knew him--the sound of his voice and the glimpse of him. Even through the mists of the drug he saw the awareness of him struggle into her mind, and saw the tiny smile that lighted her whole face for an instant. She tried to raise her head, and her lips formed his name: "Simon . . ."

  The effort was all she could make. Her head fell back, and the lids closed over that shining look.

  And then suddenly there was a blaze of lights that smashed away all shadows and wiped out the beam of his pencil light like a deluge would put out a match.

  "Okay," said the saw-toothed voice of Frankie Weiss. "This is a tommy gun. Don't try anything, or I'll blast all three of you."

  The Saint turned.

  The stairs behind him had horizontal treads but no solid risers. Thus a man concealed behind them had a good vantage point. The unmistakable nozzle of a submachine gun pro­jected through one of the openings; and behind the Saint, Monica Varing lay directly in the line of fire.

  "Drop your guns and reach," Frankie said.

  Simon obeyed.

  Hoppy said: "Boss--"

  "No," said the Saint. "You haven't a chance. Do what Frankie tells you."

  Hoppy's Betsy clattered ignominiously on the floor.

  The gross bulk of Big Hazel Green came out from behind the stairs. She circled around them, kicked their guns out of reach, and searched them with competent hamlike hands. Then she stepped aside again, and Frankie Weiss moved out into the open.

  There was a small dew of perspiration on his face, but the weapon he held was perfectly steady.

  "How nice to see you, Frankie," Simon drawled. "You're looking well, too. That workout we had together must have done you good."

  "You think you're smart, don't you?" Frankie bit out of the side of his mouth. "Well, when I get through giving you a workout--"

  "The same old dialogue," sighed the Saint. "I wish I could remember how many times I've heard that line. Frankie, you kill me."

  "Maybe you're not kidding," Frankie sneered. "Sit down on the bed and keep your hands where I can see 'em."

  The Saint sat down, and Monica Varing stirred again un­easily. He felt very calm and quiet now. The inward exulta­tion that danger could always ignite in him had steadied down and chilled. He had a cold estimate of all their chances, an equally cold watchfulness for his own first opening, an arro­gant confidence that when the time came he would do more than any other human being could do.

  "I just want you to know," he said, "that if you've done anything to Monica Varing--"

  "Don't be ridiculous, Mr. Templar," said a new voice from the top of the stairs. "We may have to kill Miss Varing, but I would never allow that sort of thing."

  It was Mrs. Laura Wingate.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Saint watched her come down the stairs, while his brain struggled dizzily to recover its balance. It was fantastic, preposterous. In a story, of course, he would have guessed it long ago; but he had been thinking strictly in realities. This was unreal, and yet he was seeing it with his own eyes.

  She was still the same fantastic figure out of a Helen Hokin­son cartoon. She protruded fore and aft, a plump, apparently brainless woman whose thoughts should have dealt with noth­ing more dangerous than planning theater parties or buying Renoirs she couldn't appreciate, Her lower lip protruded a little; that was the only change.

  She looked at the Saint, and he felt one small flicker of chill as their eyes met. The glaring light seemed to bleach all color out of her eyes, and the ruthless ophidian coldness of the gaze in that powdered face was shocking.

  "Good evening, Your Majesty," he said.

  He started to stand up.

  "Siddown!" Frankie barked; and the Saint raised his eye­brows as he subsided.

  "Excuse me. It was just my old-world manners. I was always taught to stand up when a lady comes into the room-espe­cially if she's a Queen."

  Hoppy said incredulously: "Ya mean dat's de King of de Beggars? Dat old bag?"

  "Shut up," Frankie snarled.

  "It doesn't matter what they say now," Mrs. Wingate said. "Hazel--"

  Big Hazel nodded and went to a small side table. She pulled out a drawer and took out the materials for a hypodermic in­jection-a syringe, ampules, cotton, alcohol. She began to fit a needle on the glass barrel of the syringe, as efficiently as a trained nurse. Simon realized that she might once have been one.

  "Do we get the treatment too?" he asked.

  Mrs. Wingate gave him a pale-eyed glance.

  "Of course. There are several things I need to know imme­diately. I want to be sure you tell the truth."

  "You want to know how many people I've talked to, is that it?"

  "A good deal depends on that, Mr. Templar. I have made my arrangements to disappear if necessary. But I hope it will not be necessary yet-or ever."

  "I see," Simon murmured. "If you can keep your secret safe by a few more murders-very wise of you, Mrs. Wingate. I should have remembered my chess better-it's the Queen that's the most dangerous piece in the game. Not the King."

  "Chees," Hoppy said blankly. "A dame-de King of de Beggars. An" I t'ought--"

  "That it was Elliott. Well, we had some reason to. We were looking for a man in the first place. That's exactly the false scent Mrs. Wingate meant to leave when she coined her title. You know, Hoppy, there was an Egyptian woman a long time ago who had herself crowned Pharaoh. She even insisted on appearing in public with a beard on state occasions. Mrs. Wingate never went quite that far, but the disguise was good enough, anyhow. And then she made such good use of Stephen Elliott's property. The hotel, and this. She seems to specialize in that sort of operation-like giving me Sammy the Leg's house. I don't doubt that if anyone else gets hot on the trail, Elliott is the one who's going to have the explaining to do." He gazed at Mrs. Wingate thoughtfully. "Just between our­selves, and since it won't go any farther, Laura, I wouldn't mind betting now that Elliott isn't even in the racket at all."

  A chilly smile lifted the corners of the woman's mouth.

  "Just between ourselves-and since it won't go any farther, Mr. Templar-you'd win that bet."

  Simon nodded, and watched Big Hazel break the neck of an ampule and begin to fill the syringe.

  "In the same vein," he said, "would it be inquisitive to ask what happens to us after I've told you that Lieutenant Kearney knows where we are and is on his way after us?"

  Laura Wingate's fat face gave no visible response.

  "An old bluff like that doesn't frighten me," she said. "Es­pecially since I shall know the truth in a few minutes. But I'm glad to answer your question. As you may remember, we have a whisky bottle which you were kind enough to open for Big Hazel, I had meant to plant that in Sammy the Leg's house, to help fix the Cleve Friend killing on you. Now Miss Varing's interference has made me change my plans. I shall use it some­where else to prove that you killed your man Uniatz in a quar­rel over some stolen jewels-I think I shall arrange for them to be stolen from me. Shortly afterwards, you and Miss Varing will be found in your car, both shot with your gun, with a suitable farewell note which you will write while you are drugged-the victims of a sensational suicide pact. . . . Go ahead, Hazel."

  The room felt colder to Simon Templar when she had ceased to speak. He lost then any compunctions he might have enter­tained before. These bleached cold eyes regarded him dispas­sionately as Big Hazel advanced on him with the syringe in one hand and an alcohol-sodden scrap of cotton in the other.

  "Rol
l up your sleeve, Saint," Mrs. Wingate said. "Unless, of course, you would prefer Frankie to start shooting now. But I think common sense will tell you that this will be much the most painless way-for all of you."

  It was paralyzing to think that this was the same woman speaking whose verbal italics and vapid girlish giggle had once made him think of her as a ludicrous caricature of a stock type.

  Slowly Simon began to take off his coat. His deliberate calm of a short while ago had congealed to a glacial calculation. He had left a broad enough clue for Kearney; but he had no guar­antee that it would click, or click in time. He knew with great clarity what he would have to do, and what split-second timing it would demand of him.

  "Hoppy," he said, "I'm afraid we've made a few mistakes. If you'd only kept up with your marksmanship-like a busy bee . . . bee . . ."

  Hoppy blinked.

  "Huh?"

  The Saint resignedly began on his sleeve.

  "Forget it. You can't hit the bull's-eye every time."

  He finished rolling up the sleeve, and from a corner of his eye he saw dawning comprehension break over Hoppy's face.

  Simon said: "An underground chamber and all the props of violent melodrama. This calls for a last-minute rescue by the Marines, Mrs. Wingate."

  The woman flickered her icy glance at him.

  "Put your arm out, Mr. Templar."

  Simon sighed, and offered his brown left forearm to Big Hazel. She dabbed the cotton on it, and grasped his wrist with a wrestler's hand.

  One quick glance assured him that Frankie's tommy gun was almost obstructed by Big Hazel's huge frame; after that he didn't look at it. He watched the approach of the syringe that was all but engulfed in her giant paw; and all his whipcord muscles were relaxed and waiting. "Now, Hoppy," he said coolly.

  There came a sound he recognized-the indescribable noise, akin to pthoo! that marked the expulsion of a BB shot from between Hoppy Uniatz's teeth. . . .