Call for the Saint s-27

by Leslie Charteris

  CHAPTER NINE

  The only connection that the Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company might possibly have had with the animal for which it was named, Simon decided as he entered the premises, was the arctic quality of its proprietor's stare. This personality, however, was a far cry from the conventional bearded skull-capped shylock that was once practically a cliche in the public mind. He was, in fact, a pale smooth-shaven young man with curly black hair, elegantly attired in a sports jacket and striped flannels, who scanned the Saint as he entered with eyes of a peculiar ebony hardness. He barely lifted a brow in recognition as he caught sight of Hoppy on Simon's heels.

  "Hi, Ruby," Hoppy said. "I have a idea I remember dis jernt from 'way back. Long time no see, huh?"

  To the Saint's unsentimental blue eyes, Ruby slipped into a familiar niche like a nickel into a slot. Just as a jungle dweller knows at a glance the vulture from the eagle, the ruminant from the carnivore, so the Saint knew that in the stone jungles of the city this specimen was of a scavenger breed-with a touch of reptile, perhaps. And the fact that Mr. Uniatz knew the place of old was almost enough to confirm the discredit of its stony-eyed proprietor.

  Ruby flinched instinctively as Mike Grady's revolver ap­peared in the Saint's fist, held for an instant with its muzzle pointed at the pawnbroker's midriff, before Simon laid it on the counter.

  "This gun," said the Saint, "was pawned here a few days ago. Remember?"

  The pawnbroker studied it a moment. His delicately curved brows lifted slightly, the tailored shoulders accompanying them upwards in the mere soupçon of a shrug.

  "I see lots of guns," he said tonelessly. "Every day."

  He looked at Simon with eyes that had the blank unfocused quality of the blind.

  "Whitey Mullins hocks it," Hoppy amplified. "Ya know Whitey."

  "However, he didn't claim it himself," Simon went on. "Someone else did-a few days ago. I want to know who."

  "Who are you?" Ruby asked in his flat monotone. "What gives?"

  Hoppy grabbed his shoulder in a bone-crushing clutch and, with his other hand, pointed a calloused digit directly under Simon's nose.

  "Dis," he explained unmistakably, "is de Saint. When de boss asks ya a question, ya don't talk back."

  Ruby shook off Hoppy's paw and flicked imaginary contami­nation from where it had been. He looked back to the Saint.

  "So?" he said.

  "This gun," Simon continued pleasantly, "was redeemed. Who turned in the ticket? I promise there's no trouble in it for you."

  The young man across the counter sighed and stared moodily at the gun.

  "Okay, so you give me a promise. Can my wife cash it at the bank if I get knocked off for talkin' too much?"

  "No," Simon conceded. "But your chances of living to a ripe and fruitless old age are far better, believe me, if you do give me the information I want."

  The pawnbroker's eyes slid over him with obsidian opacity.

  It began to be borne in upon Mr. Uniatz that his old pal was being very slow to co-operate. His reaction to that realiza­tion was a darkening scowl of disapproval. Backgrounded by the peculiar advantages of Hoppy's normal face, this expres­sion conveyed a warning about as subtle as the first smoke ris­ing from an active volcano. . . . Ruby caught a glimpse of it; and whatever cogitation was going on behind the curtain of his face reached an immediate conclusion.

  "Why ask me?" he complained wearily. "I don't ask his monicker. I ain't interested. He's a tall skinny jerk with a face like a horse. He bought a set of throwing knives from me once. That's all I know."

  The Saint's perspective roamed through a corridor of memory that Ruby's description had faintly illuminated. A nebulous image formed somewhere in the vista, and tried to coalesce within recognizable outlines; but for the moment the shape still eluded him.

  "Give you ten on the rod," Ruby offered disinterestedly.

  Simon picked up the revolver and slipped it back into his pocket.

  "I'm afraid it isn't mine," he said truthfully; and a sardonic glimmer flickered in the young pawnbroker's eyes for an instant.

  "You don't say."

  "As a matter of fact, it belongs to George Murphy, whose initials are M G, spelled backwards," Simon informed him solemnly, and sauntered from the shop with Hoppy in his wake.

  It was perhaps the way the black sedan roared away from the curb at the end of the block that pressed an alarm button in the Saint's reflexes. It forced itself into the stream of traffic with a suddenness that compelled the drivers behind to give way with screaming brakes. For one vivid instant, as if by the split-second illumination of a flash of lightning, Simon saw the driver, alone in the front seat, hunched over the wheel, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his face hidden in the shadow of the brim, a glimpse of stubbled jowl barely visible. He had an impression of two others crouched in the deeper shadow of the back seat, their faces obscured by handkerchiefs, the vague angle of their upraised arms pointing towards him. . . . All this the Saint saw, absorbed, analyzed, and acted upon in the microscopic fragment of time before he kicked Hoppy's feet from under him so that they both dropped to the sidewalk together as the black sedan raced by, sending a fusillade of bullets cracking over them into the pawnshop window beyond.

  Hoppy Uniatz, prone on his stomach, fumbled out his gun and fired a single shot just as the gunmen's car cut in ahead of a truck and beat a red light.

  "Hold it! Simon ordered. "You're more likely to hurt the wrong people."

  They scrambled up and dusted off their clothes.

  "You okay, boss?" Hoppy asked anxiously.

  "Just a bit chilled from the draft of those bullets going by."

  Hoppy glared up the street at the corner where their assail­ants had vanished.

  "De doity bastards," he rumbled. "Who wuz it, boss?"

  The Saint had no answer; but if he had had, it would have been interrupted by the yelp of the curly-haired young man peering pallidly from behind the edge of the pawnshop door­frame.

  "Get the hell away from here!" he bawled, with a shrill vibrato in his voice. "Get yourselves knocked off some other place!"

  Hoppy turned on him redly, like a buffalo preparing to charge; but Simon grabbed one beefy bicep and yanked him back on his heels.

  "Stop it, you damn fool!" he snapped. "Don't take it out on him!"

  He stepped to the doorway, drawing the knife strapped to his forearm.

  From within the pawnshop Ruby's voice, strident with fear, screeched: "Come in here and so help me God, I'll blast ya!"

  Simon spotted him crouching behind a counter, goggling over the sights of a sawed-off shotgun. He thrust out a knee as a barrier to Hoppy's impulsive acceptance of the challenge, and began working quickly.

  He was aware of the scared faces starting to peer out of windows, of people moving out of doorways and peeping around corners. A crowd seemed to be converging from every direction, drawn by the shots and the wildfire smell of excite­ment.

  In a few seconds he cut out one of the bullets imbedded in the doorframe. He dropped the scarred slug in his. pocket, and moved away.

  "Let's get out of here," said the Saint, taking Hoppy's arm. "I still think it would be a social error to be arrested on Sixth Avenue, even if they have tried to change the name to 'Avenue of the Americas.' "

  CHAPTER TEN

  "Who done it?" Mr. Uniatz asked once more, his neanderthaloid countenance still furrowed with the remnants of rage. "He makes me get mud on dis new suit."

  The Saint grinned as he swung the convertible around a corner.

  "Never mind, Hoppy," he said. "It helps to tone down the pattern. , , . Anyway, all I saw was two gentlemen with handkerchiefs over their faces in a black sedan with no rear license plate."

  Hoppy scowled.

  "I seen dat too," he grumbled. "What I wanna know is, who wuz dey?"

  "Did you notice the outside hand of the fellow driving the car? It flashed in the sun."

  Mr. Uniatz blinked.

 
; "Huh?"

  "He was wearing a lot of finger jewelry."

  "Finger jewelry?"

  "Rings-large flashy rings."

  For a long moment Hoppy strove painfully to determine the relation of the driver's digital ornamentation to his identity.

  "Ya can't never tell about pansies," he concluded despond­ently.

  The car swung east to Fifth Avenue and then south, moving leisurely with the traffic.

  The Saint was in no hurry. He wanted a breathing spell to summarize the situation.

  So far, two attempts had been made to murder him since the affair in the dressing room the previous night. An emotional thug might have found the Saint's insolence sufficiently pro­vocative to inspire an urgent desire for his death; and certainly a blow in the solar plexus would be regarded in some circles as an act of war, and worthy of an act of reprisal. But somehow the Saint could not conceive of Dr. Spangler, even with that kind of provocation, taking the risk of a murder charge. For Spangler was neither emotional nor reckless. He was an operator who had learned from experience to be thrifty of risks, to allow as wide a margin of safety as possible to every enterprise. An attempt to bribe Nelson was in line with that; but the only motive Spangler was likely to consider strong enough to justify an attempt at murder would be the fear that the Saint's interference might affect the Angel's chance of taking the title.

  Would Spangler, even with a guilty conscience, have taken alarm so precipitately? Would he be afraid, on such scanty evidence, that the Saint had discovered the secret of the Angel's victories? . . . For that matter, was there any secret more sinister than common chicanery and corruption? So far, he could only conjecture.

  "And that," said the Saint, "leaves us just one more call to make."

  "Who we gonna see now, boss?" asked Mr. Uniatz, settling philosophically into the social whirl.

  "That depends on who's home."

  Simon swung the car toward Gramercy Park, and presently slowed down as he turned into a secluded side street lined with graystone houses as conservatively old-fashioned in their way as the Riverside Drive brownstones were in theirs, but with a polished elegance that bespoke substantially higher rents.

  "What home, boss?" Hoppy insisted practically.

  The Saint peered at the numbers of the houses slipping by.

  "Doc Spangler's."

  Hoppy's eyes became almost as wide as shoe buttons.

  "Ya mean it's de Doc what tries to gun us?"

  "It was more likely one of the bad boys he chums around with," said the Saint. "But he probably knew about it. Bad companions, Hoppy, are apt to get a man into trouble. Of course you wouldn't know about that."

  "No, boss," said Mr. Uniatz seriously.

  The Saint was starting to pull in towards one of the gray-stone houses when he saw the other car. The rear license plate was on now, but there was no doubt about the genesis of the neat hole with its radiation of tiny cracks that perforated the rear window. Simon pointed it out to Hoppy as he kept the convertible rolling and parked it some twenty yards further down the block.

  "Chees," Hoppy said in admiration, "I hit it right in de middle. Dey musta felt de breeze when it goes by."

  "I hope it gave them as bad a chill as theirs gave us," said the Saint.

  They walked back to the house and went up the broad stone steps and rang the bell. After a while the door opened a few inches. Simon leaned on it and opened it the rest of the way. It pushed back a long lean beanpole of a man with a sad horse face and dangling arms whose wrists stuck out nakedly from the cuffs of his sweater. And as he saw him, a gleam of recognition shot through the Saint's memory.

  The tall man's recognition was a shade slower, perhaps be­cause his faculties were slightly dulled by the surprise of feeling the door move into his chest. He exhaled abruptly, and staggered back, his long arms flying loosely as though dangling on strings. As he recovered his balance he took in Hoppy's monstrous bulk, and then the slim supple figure of the Saint closing the door after him and leaning on it with the poised relaxation of a watchful cat, the gun in his hand held almost negligently. . . . Slowly, the long bony wrists lifted in surrender.

  The young pawnbroker's description repeated itself in the Saint's memory. Also he recalled Mike Grady's office and a tall thin character among the loiterers in the reception. This was the same individual. The odyssey of the gun was beginning to show connections.

  "Who are you, chum?" Simon asked, moving lightly to­wards him.

  "I know him, boss," Hoppy put in. "De name is Slim Mancini. He useta be a hot car hustler."

  "I work here," the beanpole said in a whining nasal tenor that had a distinct equine quality about it. He sounded, the Saint thought, just like a horse. A sick horse. "I'm the butler," Mancini added. He glanced back at a door down the hall and opened his mouth a fraction of a second before the Saint stepped behind him and clamped a hand over it.

  "No announcements, please," the Saint said, his other arm curving about Mancini's neck like a band of flexible steel. "This is strictly informal. You understand, don't you?"

  The man nodded and gasped a lungful of air as the Saint removed the pressure on his throat.

  "Slim Mancini-buttlin'!" Hoppy sneered hoarsely. "Dat's a laugh." He grunted suddenly as Simon jabbed a warning elbow into his stomach.

  The muffled voices in the room down the hall had gone silent.

  "Walk ahead of us to that door," the Saint whispered to Spangler's cadaverous lackey, "and open it and go in. Don't say anything. We'll be right behind you. Go on."

  Mancini's sad eyes suddenly widened as he stared over the Saint's shoulder, apparently at something behind him.

  Simon rather resented that. It implied a lack of respect for his experience, reading background, and common intelligence that was slightly insulting. However, he was accommodating enough to start to turn and look in the indicated direction. It was only a token start, and he reversed it so quickly that Mancini's hand was still inches from his shoulder holster when the Saint's left exploded against his lantern jaw.

  Simon caught the toppling body before it folded and low­ered it noiselessly to the carpet.

  Mr. Uniatz kicked it carefully in the stomach for additional security.

  "De noive of de guy," he said. "Tryin' a corny trick like dat. Whaddas he t'ink we are?"

  "He'll know better next time," said the Saint. "But now I suppose we'll have to open our own doors--"

  Blam!

  The stunning crash of a heavy-caliber pistol smashed against their eardrums and sent them diving to either side of the hall­way.

  The Saint lay there, gun at the ready, waiting. The shot had come from the room ahead, where they'd heard the voices; but he noticed that the door was still shut. . . . Seconds passed. ... A weak moan, muffled by the closed door, punctu­ated the silence.

  Simon signaled Hoppy with a lift of his chin, and they stood up again and advanced noiselessly. He motioned Hoppy back into the shadows as they reached the door. Then he turned the knob, kicked the door open, and stayed to one side, out of reach of possible fire.

  There was silence for a moment. All he could see in the sunlit portion of the room visible to him was a huge fireplace and a corner of a desk. . . . Then from within came a challenge in an accent that was unmistakable.

  "Well?" Dr. Spangler barked impatiently. "Come in!"

  The Saint stood there a moment, looking into the triangle of the interior visible to him, estimating his chances of meeting a blast of gunfire if he showed himself. In the two seconds that he stood there, weighing the odds, he also realized that an unexpected diversion had taken place. What it was he didn't know. But it did lend some excuse for hoping his pres­ence might yet be miraculously undiscovered. ... It was a flimsy enough hope, but he decided to gamble on it. He signaled Hoppy to stay back and cover him as best he could, and stepped into the room.

  Doc Spangler was seated at the desk, leaning forward, his arms on the desk, staring at him. Beyond him in a corner of the
big room was Karl, down on one knee beside the prostrate body of a man whose head was concealed by the squat body of Spangler's ursine lieutenant. There was a gun in his hand, pointed at the Saint from his hip, as if he had been interrupted in his examination of the man he had apparently just shot.

  For one second it was quite a skin-prickling tableau; and then Simon took a quick step to one side which placed Spangler's body between him and Karl's gun muzzle.

  "Better tell your baboon to lay his gun on the floor, Doc," he suggested, and his smile was wired for sudden destruction. ''You might get hurt."

  Spangler half turned in his swivel chair toward Karl.

  "You imbecile!" he spat, his usual fat complacency tempo­rarily disconnected. "I told you to put up that gun! It's gotten me into enough trouble for one day. Put it on the floor as he says."

  Karl laid the gun down slowly, grudgingly, glooming balefully past Spangler at the Saint.

  "Thank you," said the Saint. "Now get up and stand away."

  Karl rose to his feet slowly and shuffled aside as the Saint stepped around the desk and came to a startled halt.

  He was looking down incredulously at the face of the man lying on the floor. One side of it was caked with blood and the hair was red with it, but that presented no obstacle to recognizing the owner. It was Whitey Mullins.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mr. Uniatz's heavy breathing reverber­ated in Simon's ear.

  "Dey got Whitey!" His head jerked up suddenly at Karl and Spangler, his gun lifting. "Whitey was me pal!" he snarled. "Why, you--"

  Simon stopped him.

  "Don't shoot the Doc-yet. Whitey may need him." 'The Saint's eyes were cold blue chips. "Let's have the score, Spangler, and make it fast."

  "He isn't dead," wheezed the fat man damply. "It's only a graze. He brought it on himself, coming here to my home to assault me. Karl had to stop him, but he didn't hurt him much. You can see that for yourself. The bullet just grazed his scalp and went into the wall there-see?"

  He pointed a plump finger to a hole in the wall above Mr. Mullin's prostrate form.