“We’ll try the park,” Fernack said.
A heavy blucher tramped on the starter, and the gears meshed. They turned out of Tenth Street and swung north up Seventh Avenue. Simon leaned comfortably back and used the lighter on the dashboard for his cigar; nothing more was said until they were threading the tangle of traffic at Times Square.
“You know,” said the Saint calmly, “I’m getting a bit tired of throwing this gun around. Couldn’t we dispense with it and call this conference off the record?”
“Okay by me,” rumbled Fernack, without taking his eyes from the road.
Simon dropped the automatic into the side pocket of his coat and relaxed into the whole-hearted enjoyment of his smoke. There was no disturbing doubt in his mind that he could rely absolutely on the truce. They rode on under the blazing lights and turned into Central Park by the wide entrance at Columbus Circle.
A few hundred yards on, Fernack pulled in to the side of the road and killed the engine. He switched on his shortwave radio receiver and lighted his cigar deliberately before he turned. The glow of the tip as he inhaled revealed his rugged face set in a contour of phlegmatic inquiry.
“Well,” he said, “what’s the game?”
Simon shrugged.
“The same as yours, more or less. You work within the law and I work without it. We’re travelling different roads, but they both go the same way. On the whole, my road seems to get places quicker than yours—as witness the late Mr Irboll.”
Fernack stared ahead over his dimmed lights.
“That’s why I’m here, Saint. I told the Commissioner this morning that I could love any man who rubbed out that rat. But you can’t get away with it.”
“I’ve been getting away with it pretty handsomely for a number of years,” answered the Saint coolly.
“It’s my job to take you in, sweat a confession out of you, and send you up for a session in the hot squat. Tomorrow I may be doing it. You’re slick. I’ll hand it to you. You’re the only man who ever took me for a ride twice in one hour and made me like it. But to me you’re a crook—a killer. The underworld has a big enough edge in this town, without giving it any more. Officially, it’s my job to put you away. That’s how the cards are stacked.”
“Fair enough. You couldn’t come any cleaner with me than that. But I’ve got my own job, Fernack. I came here to do a bit of cleaning up in this town of yours, and you know how it needs it. But it’s your business to see that I don’t get anywhere. You’re hired to see that all the thugs and racketeers in this town put on their galoshes when it rains, and tuck them up in their mufflers and make sure they don’t catch cold. The citizens of New York pay you to make sure that the only killing is done by the guys with political connections—”
“So what?”
“So maybe, off the record, you’d answer a couple of questions while there isn’t an audience.”
Fernack chewed the cigar round to the other corner of his mouth, took it out, and spat expertly over the side of the car. He put the cigar back, and watched a traffic light turn from green to red.
“Keep on asking.”
“What is this Big Fellow?”
The tip of Fernack’s cigar reddened and died down, and he put one elbow on the wheel.
“I should like to know. Ordinarily, it’s just a name that some of these big-time racketeers get called. They called Al Capone ‘The Big Fellow.’ All these rats have got egos a mile wide. ‘The Big Boy’—‘The Big Shot’—it’s the same thing. It used to make ’em feel more important to have a handle like that tacked on to ’em, and it gave the small rats something to flatter ’em with.”
“Used to?”
“Yeah.” The detective’s cigar moved through an arc at the end of his arm as he flicked ash into the road. “Nowadays things are kind of different. Nowadays when we talk about the Big Fellow we mean the guy nobody knows: the man who’s behind Morrie Ualino and Dutch Kuhlmann and Red McGuire and all the rest of ’em—and bigger than any of them ever were. The guy who’s made himself the secret king of the biggest underworld empire that ever happened…Where did you hear of him?” Fernack asked.
The Saint smiled.
“I was eavesdropping—it’s one of my bad habits.”
“At Nather’s?”
“Draw your own conclusions.”
Fernack turned in his seat, his massive body cramped by the wheel, and the grey eyes under his down-drawn shaggy brows reflected the reddish light of his cigar-end.
“Get this,” he said harshly. “Everything you say about me and the rest of the force may be true. I’m not arguing. That’s the way this town’s run, and it’s been like that ever since I was pounding a beat. But I’m tellin’ you that someday I’m gonna pin a rap on that mug, judge or no judge—an’ make it stick! If that line you shot at me was said to Nather, it means there’s something dirty brewing around here tonight, and if there’s any way of tying Nather in with it, I’ll nail him. And I’ll see that he gets the works all the way up the line!”
“Why should it mean that?”
“Because Nather is just another stooge of the Big Fellow’s, the same as Irboll was. Listen: if that bunch is going out tonight, there’s always the chance something may go blooey. One or two of ’em may get taken in by the cops. That means they’ll get beaten up. Don’t kid yourself. When we get those guys in the station house we don’t pat them with paper streamers. Mostly the only punishment they ever get is what we give them in the back room. An’ they don’t like it. You can be as tough as you like and never let out a peep, but a strong-arm dick with a yard of rubber hose can still hurt you. So when a bunch is smart, they have a lawyer ready to dash in with writs of habeas corpus before we can even get started on ’em—and those writs have to be signed by a judge. One day a law will be passed to allow racketeers to make out the writs themselves an’ save everyone a lot of expense, but at present you still gotta find a judge at home.”
“I see,” said the Saint gently.
Fernack grunted, and his thick fingers hardened on the cigar.
“Who gave that order?” he grated.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said the Saint untruthfully. He sympathised with Fernack, but it was too late in his career to overcome an ingrained objection to letting any detective get ahead of him. “The speech came over the phone, and that’s all there was.”
“What did you go to Nather’s for?”
“I asked you the same question, but I don’t have to repeat it. I stayed right under the window and listened.”
Fernack’s cigar fell out of his mouth and struck his knee with a fountain of sparks.
“You what?”
“Just in case you’d decided to follow me,” explained the Saint blandly. “This business of haring for the tall timber in front of squads of infuriated policemen is all right for Charlie Chaplin but it’s a bit undignified for me.” He grinned reminiscently. “I admired your vocabulary,” he said.
The detective groped elaborately for his fallen weed.
“I had to do it,” he growled. “That swine pulled just one too many when he acquitted Irboll. I may be transferred for it, but I couldn’t of stayed away if I’d been told beforehand that I was going to wake up tomorrow pounding a two-mile beat out on Staten Island.”
Simon put his head back and gazed up at the low roof of the sedan.
“What’s the line-up?”
Fernack leaned on the wheel and smoked, staring straight ahead again. Taxis and cars thrummed past them in conflicting streams, and up in a tree over their heads a night-bird bragged about what it was going to do to its wife when she came home.
The traffic lights changed twice before he answered.
“Up at the top of this city,” he said slowly, “there’s a political organisation called Tammany Hall. They’re the boys who fill all the public offices, and before you were born they’d made electioneering into such an exact science that they just don’t even think about it anymore. They turn out th
eir voters like an army parade, their hired hoodlums guard the polls, and their employees count the votes. The Boss of Tammany Hall is a man called Robert Orcread, and the nickname he gave himself is Honest Bob. Outside the City Hall there’s a fine bit of a statue called Civic Virtue, and inside there’s the biggest collection of crooks and grafters that ever ran a city.
“There’s a district attorney named Marcus Yeald who’s so crooked you could use him to pull corks with, and his cases come up before a row of judges like Nather. Things are different here from what they are in your country. Over here our judges get elected, and every time a case comes up before them they have to sit down and figure out what the guy’s political pull is, or maybe somebody higher up just tells ’em so they won’t make any mistake, because if a judge sends a guy up the river who’s got a big political drag there’s going to be somebody else sittin’ in his chair when the next election comes round.
“The politicians appoint the Police Commissioner, and he does what they say and lays off when they say lay off. The first mistake they ever made was when they put Quistrom in. He takes orders from nobody, and somehow he’s gotten himself so well liked and respected by the decent element in this city that even the politicians daren’t try and chisel him out now—it’d make too much noise. But it all comes to the same thing in the end. If we send a guy up for trial, he’s still got to be prosecuted by Marcus Yeald or one of Yeald’s assistants, and a judge like Nather sits on the case an’ sees that everything is nice and friendly.
“There’s a bunch of rats an’ killers in this town that stops nowhere, and they play ball with the politicians and the politicians play ball with them. We’ve had kidnapping and murder and extortion, and we’re goin’ to have more. That’s the Big Fellow’s game, and it’s the perfect racket. There’s more money in it than there ever was in liquor—and there’s less of an answer to it. Look at it yourself. If it was your son, or your wife, or your brother, or your sister, that was bein’ held for ransom, and you knew that the rats who were holding ’em were as soft-hearted as a lot of rattlesnakes—wouldn’t you pay?”
The Saint nodded silently. Fernack’s slow dispassionate summary added little enough to what he already knew, but it filled in and coloured the picture for him. He had some new names to think about, and that realisation brought him back to the question in his mind that he had tactfully postponed.
“Who is Papulos?” he asked, and Fernack grinned wryly.
“You’ve been getting around. He’s pay-off man for Morrie Ualino.”
“Pay-off man for Ualino, eh?” Simon might have guessed the answer, but he gave no sign. “And what do you know about Morrie?”
“He’s one of the big shots I mentioned just now. One of these black-haired, shiny guys, as good-lookin’ as Rudolf Valentino if you happen to like those kind of looks—lives like a swell, acts an’ talks like a gent, rides around in an armoured sedan, and has two trigger men always walking in his shadow.”
“What’s he do for a living?”
“Runs one of the biggest travelling poker games on Broadway. He’s slick—and poison. I’ve taken him to Ossining once, an’ Dannemora once, myself, but he never stayed there long enough to wear through a pair of socks.” Fernack’s cigar spun through the darkness in a glowing parabola, and hit the road with a splutter of fire. “Go get him, son, if you want him. I’ve told you all I can.”
“Where do I find him?”
Fernack jerked his head round and stared. The question had been put as casually as if the Saint had been asking for the address of a candy-shop, but Simon’s face was quite serious.
Fernack turned his eyes back to the road, and after a while he said, “Down on Forty-Ninth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, there’s a joint called Charley’s Place. It might be worth paying a visit—if you can get in. There’s a girl called Fay Edwards who might—”
The inspector broke off short. A third voice had cut eerily into the conversation—an impersonal metallic voice that came from the radio under the dashboard.
“Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Viola Inselheim, age six, kidnapped from home in Sutton Place…”
Fernack snapped upright, and the lights of a passing car showed his face graven in lines of iron.
“Good God!” he said. “It’s happened!”
He was switching on the ignition even while the metallic voice droned on.
“…Kidnappers escaped in maroon sedan. New York licence plate. First three serial numbers 5-F-3 or 5-F-8. Inspector Fernack call dispatcher. Inspector Fernack call dispatcher. Calling all cars…”
The engine surged to life with a staccato roar of power, and Simon abruptly decided to be on his way.
“Hold it!” he called, as the car slipped forward. “That’s your party.”
Fernack’s reply was lost in the song of the motor as it picked up speed. Simon opened the door and climbed out on to the running-board. “Thanks for the ride,” he said, and dropped nimbly to the receding asphalt.
He stood under a tree and listened to the distancing wail of the car’s imperative siren, and a slight smile came to his lips. The impulse that had led him back to Fernack had borne fruit beyond his highest hopes.
Beyond Nather was Papulos, beyond Papulos was Morrie Ualino, beyond Ualino was the Big Fellow. And crumpled into the Saint’s side pocket, besides his gun, was the slip of paper that had accompanied a gift of twenty thousand dollars which Nather had made such an unsuccessful effort to defend. The inscription on the paper—as Simon had read it while he waited for Fernack under the library window—said, quite simply, “Thanks. Papulos.”
It seemed logical to take the rungs of the ladder in their natural sequence. And if Simon remembered that this process should also lead him towards the mysterious Fay Edwards, he was only human.
CHAPTER THREE:
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR TOOK A GANDER AT MR PAPULOS AND MORRIE UALINO TOOK A SOCK AT THE SAINT
1
Valcross was waiting for him when he got back to the Waldorf Astoria, reaching the tower suite by the private elevator as before. The old man stood up with a quick smile.
“I’m glad you’re back, Simon,” he said. “For a little while I was wondering if even you were finding things too difficult.”
The Saint laughed, spiralling his hat dexterously across the room to the chifferobe. He busied himself with a glass, a bottle, some cracked ice, and a siphon.
“I was longer than I expected to be,” he explained. “You see, I had to take Inspector Fernack for a ride.”
His eyes twinkled at Valcross tantalisingly over the rim of his glass. Valcross waited patiently for the exposition that had to come, humouring the Saint with the air of flabbergasted perplexity that was expected of him. Simon carried his drink to an armchair, relaxed into it, lighted a cigarette, and inhaled luxuriously, all in a theatrical silence.
“Thank God the humble Player’s can be bought here for twenty cents,” he remarked at length. “Your American concoctions are a sin against nicotine, Bill. I always thought the Spaniards smoked the worst cigarettes in the world, but I had to come here to find out that tobacco could be toasted, boiled, fried, impregnated with menthol, ground into a loose powder, enclosed in a tube of blotting-paper, and still unloaded on an unsuspecting public.”
Valcross smiled.
“If that’s all you mean to tell me, I’ll go back to my book,” he said, and Simon relented.
“I was thinking it over on my way home,” he concluded, at the end of his story, “and I’m coming to the conclusion that there must be something in this riding business. In fact, I’m going to be taken for a ride myself.”
Valcross shook his head.
“I shouldn’t advise it,” he said. “The experience is often fatal.”
“Not to me,” said the Saint. “I shall tell you more about that presently. Bill—the more I think about it, the more it seems like the most promising avenue at this moment. But while you’re pouring me out another drink, I
wish you’d think of a reason why anyone should be so heartless as to kidnap a child who was already suffering more than her share of the world’s woes with a name like Viola Inselheim.”
Valcross picked up a telephone directory and scratched his head over it.
“Sutton Place, you said?” He looked through the book, found a place, and deposited the open volume on Simon’s knee. Simon glanced over the Inselheims and located a certain Ezekiel of that tribe whose address was in Sutton Place. “I wondered if that would be the man,” Valcross said.
The name meant nothing in Simon Templar’s hierarchy.
“Who is he?”
“Zeke Inselheim? He’s one of the richest brokers in New York City.”
Simon closed the book.
“So that’s why Nather is staying home tonight!”
He took the glass that Valcross refilled for him, and smoked in silence. The reason for the all-car call and Fernack’s perturbation became plainer. And the idea of carrying on the night in the same spirit as he had begun it appealed to him with increasing voluptuousness. Presently he finished his drink and stood up.
“Would you like to order me some coffee? I think I’ll be going out again soon.”
Valcross looked at him steadily.
“You’ve done a lot today. Couldn’t you take a rest?”
“Would you have taken a rest if you were Zeke Inselheim?” Simon asked. “I’d rather like to be taken for that ride tonight.”
He was back in the living-room in ten minutes, fresh and spruce from a cold shower, with his dark hair smoothly brushed and his gay blue eyes as bright and clear as a summer morning. His shirt was open at the neck as he had slipped it on when he emerged from the bathroom, and the left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow. He was adjusting the straps of a curious kind of sheath that lay snugly along his left forearm: the exquisitely carved ivory hilt of the knife it carried lay close to his wrist, where his sleeve would just cover it when it was rolled down.
The Saint In New York (The Saint Series) Page 6
