Another trail had dragged across it a herring that had turned out to be the numbers racket. During his brief examination of exponents of mathematical larceny, he had been led again, by one of the collectors, to Cookie's.
He had run down a couple of false leads that led nowhere except to the decision that this was a Mecca for the chiseller, and that some of almost everybody's best friends are petty crooks at bottom.
The Saint was looking for bigger game. Perhaps the rising elevator would bring some.
It regurgitated two young men who were beyond doubt fresh in from the sea. They wore shore clothes, but the sea was in their tanned faces, their hard hands, and the set of their legs, braced automatically for the roll of a deck. The Saint couldn't see their eyes in the hall's gloom, but he knew they would have the characteristic look of those who gaze habitually on circular horizons.
They walked without speaking to James Prather's door, thumbed the button, were admitted. The Saint moved catlike to the door, but listening brought nothing. The door was heavy, the walls designed to give privacy to the occupant. Simon sighed, summoned the elevator, and joined Avalon, who was sitting in one of those chairs that clutter the lobbies of apartment houses and gazing at the uninspiring wallpaper with a forlorn expression.
"I beg your pardon, Miss," he said, "but I was attracted by your beauty, and can't help asking you a question. I am a representative of Grimes Graphite, Inc—'Grimes' gets the grime,' you know—and felt certain that you must use it. Is that what makes your skin glow so?"
"My mother before me, and her mother before her, rubbed their faces each night with Grimes's graphite. But I don't use it myself. I loathe it."
"That is hardly the point at issue, is it? We can use that line about your maternal progenitors, run a photo of yourself—do you ski?—no matter, we can fix that. And we might even be persuaded to raise the ante."
"You twisted my bankbook," Avalon said. "I'm your gal."
"Really?"
She smiled. "Really."
They looked at each other for a long moment, until several persons came through the front door in a group, of which the male members stared at Avalon with very obvious admiration. The Saint took her outside.
"An idea has slugged me," he said, "and I don't want you to be seen talking to me until we're ready. I just hope our sailor boys give me a couple of minutes to tell you."
"What are you talking about?" she demanded as he hailed a passing taxi.
He helped her in.
"Wait," he told the driver, and closed the glass panel separating the production end of the cab from the payload.
"I have a faint hunch," he told Avalon in a low voice. "Two young men will presently issue from that door. Possibly you saw them come in. Tanned, one in a freshly-pressed gray suit, the other in blue? Did they notice you?"
"Looked right through me."
"Don't be bitter, darling. They had big things on their minds. On their way down, they'll be free of care and ready to paint the town. On the way down, they'll remember you, and would be anxious to spend their newly-acquired wealth on you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
By not so much as the twitch of a nerve end did the Saint reveal his thoughts. He had not talked too much; he never talked too much. But if Avalon were among the Ungodly—and his every red corpuscle stood up on its hind feet and howled at the thought—she would know whether he was breathing hard on the heels of truth or not. Her knowledge would then be communicated to the Boys Above.
He hoped, and was not prepared to admit even to himself how much he hoped, that his shadowy objectivity had no foundation in fact. But in his unorthodox plan of maneuvering, a failure to appraise situations and people with a fishy eye often led to the filling of mourners' benches. He'd helped to fill a few himself in his day.
And so the smile he gave Avalon was gay as confetti on New Year's Eve.
"I'm not so sure, old thing, that I myself know what I'm talking about. But if I do, those boys will come out of there with one single first desire: transportation to celebration. And I'd rather they kept greedy eyes off our cab." He opened the glass panel. "Pull up to the corner and wait," he told the driver.
With one of those lightning decisions that was the despair of his enemies and the envy of his friends, Simon Templar reorganised his offense. He wanted to talk to those two young men who had gone a-knocking at James Prather's door, but he didn't want them to know that he wanted to talk to them.
He looked gravely at Avalon.
"Will you do something for me?"
"I'll make a cake or slice a throat," she said softly. "Or cross Fortysecond and Broadway against the traffic light at Saturday noon."
"This is an even greater sacrifice," he said mockingly. "I want you to go back into that apartment house and do some lobbyloitering."
Avalon didn't frown, didn't raise her eyebrows. She meditated for the space of ten seconds. Then she raised her eyes to his.
"I get the pitch, except for one thing. Who are you?"
"Your agent, of course."
"Of course. So I manage to be seen when they come down, and will be here at the curb with them when you drive up. I'll be telling them I can't go with them, but you'll allow me to be persuaded, provided you come along. Then we all go off in your cab." She gave him a quick kiss. "I should fall for a ten percenter yet. Everything happens to me."
She was out and clicking along the sidewalk on slim heels. The Saint watched her for a moment and wondered. What a partner she would make! She had divined his scheme of action, and with no prompting. She had known, without words, what his plan was. All he had had to do was sketch the bare outlines, and she had filled in the details.
"Drive around the block," he told the driver.
It was on the third circumnavigation that the Saint saw Avalon and the two seamen at the curb in front of the apartment house. He amused himself with the idea that these were the only live persons he had seen on his rounds: all others had been members of the Bronx nobility walking their dogs.
"Stop there," he commanded, and the cab driver drew up with a satisfying squeal of rubber.
"Darling," the Saint said to Avalon, "I was afraid you'd have gone. I'm horribly late."
"Aren't you, just?" she said. "I was about to take off. Well, since you're here——By the way, these are Joe Hyman and Sam Jeffries. Joe is the one with the glint."
Simon shook hands.
"Simon Simplon, I," he said. "Hello, kids. Where away?"
Avalon looked dubious.
"I'm not sure you're invited on this jaunt, Simon. The boys and I were just setting out to give the town a reddish hue."
The Saint said: "But I'm your agent. You can't do anything without me."
She raised her eyebrow.
"Anything?"
"Well——"
The sailors snickered.
Avalon stamped a foot
"You know what I mean."
"Miss Dexter," Simon told her sternly, "according to law, I am your agent. Perhaps that phrase carries implications which need not be considered here. I still say that I should be able to advise you on your goings about."
She put a curl into her lip.
"Because you're my agent?"
"Lowly though that may be, yes."
Joe Hyman, stocky, gray-suited, and Sam Jeffries, tall in blue, shifted from one foot to the other.
The Saint could have kissed her. She showed that perfect combination of camaraderie and contempt, of distrust and declination, that a temperamental artist exhibits toward her agent.
"How do you do?" the Saint said, and shook hands.
Joe Hyman was inarticulate, with small hard hands. He shook as if his life depended upon it. Sam Jeffries gave the Saint a handful of limp bananas.
"We were just about to go out and put an edge on the town," Jeffries said.
The Saint appeared to consider.
"A sound idea, seems to me. Why don't we all do it?
"
Each of the boys looked at Avalon. They obviously didn't relish extra company. She looked at them, then at the Saint. She shrugged. Sam Jeffries said, "Why not?"
So they all climbed into the Saint's cab. As Simon followed them into the interior, he glanced upward. He saw peering from a window the face of James Prather.
4
The first thing the Saint noticed, when he was seated in the jump seat—so he could watch through the rear window to see if they were being followed—was that Sam Jeffries had drawn from his pocket a snub-nosed revolver and pointed it unwaveringly at the vitals of Simon Templar.
"My goodness," the Saint ejaculated mildly.
The revolver was held so that Avalon couldn't see it. She elevated exciting eyebrows. The Saint looked at her, then at Sam Jeffries. He shrugged. "The meter," he said, gesturing at his back. "It clicks and clicks."
The revolver seemed to waggle approbation.
Sam Jeffries eyed Simon for a long time.
"You're quite a guy, ain't you, bud?"
Simon shrugged.
"Oh—I wouldn't go that far."
"We think you're quite a guy," Sam insisted. "We've been told you're more'n that. You see, I recognized you. You've had too many photos printed in the papers—Saint."
Simon smiled, a devil-may-care smile, a smile as light as butterflies' worries.
"So? And now that we're putting everything on the barrelhead, why are you holding that cannon on me?"
Avalon gasped, and glanced sidewise.
"Well," Sam Jeffries said, "I guess it ain't necessary. I really wouldn't shoot you without'n you done more'n you've did."
Simon grinned.
"Thanks. Just to get the record straight, I really am this young lady's agent. She's a nightclub singer."
Stocky Joe Hyman said: "Huh?"
Sam Jeffries made a threatening motion at his pal.
" 'F she says she's a singer, she's a singer, see? 'N 'f he says he's her agent, well, shaddup, see?"
"I didn't mean nothing," Joe said.
"Well, Mister?" Sam said to Simon.
The Saint eyed the gun, the neat blue suit, the maroon tie, the long tanned face of Sam Jeffries. He began to move one hand toward his inner coat pocket.
"May I smoke?"
"Sure," Sam said.
The Saint took out his cigarette case, that case which had special properties that had before now helped him out of tighter spots than this. Not that the case seemed to differ from any similar case made of gold and embellished with a tasteful amount of precious gems. No, it seemed functional in design, if a bit on the ornate side. And functional it was; for one of its edges could be used as a razor. The toughest beard would fall before that redoubtable keenness. Not only was it a weapon for cutting bonds or throats, it contained ammunition which could be applied in sundry ways to the confusion of the Ungodly.
Interspersed among his regular brand were other special cigarettes which could blind, frighten, and fling into chaos such unsavory members of the human race as the Saint wished to blind, frighten, or fling into chaotic action. Each of these explosive tubes consisted almost entirely of magnesium.
His sensitive fingers felt among the case's cargo to light upon a bona fide smoke, which he lighted. He puffed a blue cloud at the ceiling and placed the case in a convenient jacket pocket. There might be use for it later. In doing so, he felt the outline of the small knife, Belle, which nestled in her case up his sleeve.
He eyed Sam Jeffries with that devilish carelessness that had made his name not only a by-word but a guide to independence.
"What do you mean, what now?"
"Well," Sam said, "I didn't recognize you at first. But after we was in the cab, see, I says, 'Sam, that's the Saint,' I says. And I asks myself what would the Saint want of the likes of us, and I gets no answer, see. So then I says to myself it'd be a good idea maybe if I didn't take no chances, so I hauls out my rod."
"Which fails to comfort me," the Saint murmured. His inaudible sigh of relief was let out carefully and imperceptibly. His mind was concerned with one beautiful thought: Sam Jeffries hadn't expected him to show up.
Avalon hadn't, then, tipped them off. If she were one of the Ungodly, she would have warned the two sailor boys. But she hadn't, and that made for singing in the veins.
He caught up his sudden joy in two mental hands and looked at it. It could be a treacherous kind of joy, going off half cocked at the most stupid stimuli. Suppose she had warned Sam Jeffries. Would he be clever enough to put on an act of this sort? Perhaps not but perhaps yes, too. At any rate, Avalon might have been clever enough to instigate such an act.
So the whole situation solved nothing, as far as his estimate of Avalon was concerned. And it was becoming increasingly important that he arrive at a correct estimate of her intents and purposes.
For himself he had no fear. These were young men—boys, really, in experience—whom he could overpower, escape from, or capture, if he chose to do so. But if Avalon were in this with him, his actions might explode along a certain line; if she were not, they would certainly explode along other and more uncomfortable lines.
Not that the end result would be affected. The Saint felt that he was travelling along the right road. As soon as the sea came into the picture, he was convinced that at long last he was approaching the goal.
For he had mental visions of ships sailing out of New York harbour, through the Canals, Panama or Suez, heading west or east, but always with the Orient at one end of the run. Small ships, 3000-ton freighters, carrying cargo to Calcutta; big ships, 20,000-ton liners of the restless deep, taking men and women to build a new world from the shattered remains.
And on these ships he saw men—boys from Glasgow, oldsters from the Bronx, trim officers from Liverpool—with an idea: "Benny sent me."
That Open Sesame formula of speakeasy days applied here, too. Benny sent me. The grilled door opened, you could libate at the bar, the house was yours. Every prospect pleased, and only the liquor was vile. Here, too, and now, Benny sent me. An agent passed over a parcel, it was stowed away, returned to New York and eventually to Benny.
Benny, in this case, being James Prather.
Maybe. In any case, it was vital to learn what these boys knew. What cares had they while sailing the seven (Seven ? the Saint could think of nine, offhand) seas? What errands run, what messages carried? Where they unwitting or willing tools of—of whom?
That was the question.
And so the Saint said, in an effort to relax Sam Jeffries' upraised black brows and Joe Hyman's corrugated forehead: "Do you want to see my union card?"
This had not the desired effect on Joe's forehead, but Sam grinned sheepishly.
"That you're her agent? Naw, I guess not. Maybe I was a little quick on the draw, but I seen times when to be slow was to be too damned slow. Look, Mister, I'm sorry, I guess. What say we forget it?"
"Would you like to shake lefthanded," Simon asked pleasantly, "or would you like to put away that postage stamp pistol?"
Sam dropped it into his jacket pocket, grinned anew, and gave Simon a hand that was hard as iron.
"Less just have fun, Saint."
"A pleasure, Sam."
Avalon went "Phew!" in an explosive release of tension.
"Pardon my nerves," she said, "but these unorthodox introductions have a tendency to throw me."
Joe looked at everybody at once, a feat that did strange things to his round face.
"Ya mean this guy's d' Saint? Th' guy what diddles cops an' crooks too, all at once? 'Zat who he is?"
Sam Jeffries gazed patiently at his shipmate.
"Look, we been talkin' for fifteen minutes about who he is, while we run up three bucks on the meter and'll wind up in the drink if we don't tell the guy where to go, so shaddup."
"I didn't mean nothin'," Joe murmured. "But hell's—hully criminy, I mean—the Saint!"
"So he's th' Saint, so what? Right now he's a guy goin'
along to put a few belts away. Got any arguments?"
"Naw, but it's like—well, you know, well, hell, I mean "
"Shaddup." To Avalon, Sam said: "Uh, Miss Dexter, we asked you to come along with us, 'n it seems to me this oughta be your party. Whyn't you tell th' helmsman where to throw out the anchor?"
Avalon looked at the Saint. He looked away. She turned to Joe, who was still wandering around in wonder at the Saint's being present.
"I'll go wherever Joe wants to go."
She was rewarded by one of the most complete smiles she had ever seen.
Not that Joe reminded you of a vaudeville comic hamming romantic embarrassment; there was no calculation in his pleasure. It was just that: pure pleasure. His round face took on a glow that made it like a lamp in a mine tunnel.
The Saint took his eyes away from the back window, through which he had been scrutinising traffic in their wake, and let them rest on Joe. Where would Joe want to go? The Stork? 21 ? Leon and Eddie's? Or some waterfront joint—Bill's Place, or some such.
It seemed that Joe was going to require some time to decide. He was obviously accustomed to having decisions made for him: "Swab the deck," "Coil that rope," "Kick that guy in the kidneys." Here was responsibility, and he wasn't quite ready for it. If Avalon had simply told him to jump out of the cab window, there was no doubt in the world that he would have done it. He might have asked if she wanted him to do a jackknife or a belly-buster, but his final action would have been to drape himself on the asphalt. But now there was a choice concerned, he was so pleased at having his opinion asked that the fact of the choice slipped his mind.
He sat grinning for so long that Sam jabbed him with: "Well?"
Joe blinked. His grin faded slowly, like sky writing in a gentle breeze.
"Huh? Oh. Well, gosh, I don't care."
The Saint was becoming very fond of Joe. Here was a boy would give out like a defective slot machine if manipulated properly.
"She ast ya," Sam said patiently. "So you don't care. We keep flitting around behind this meter till ya make up ya mind? Name some place, any place!"
Joe blinked, and you could almost hear unused mental machinery begin to rattle and clank. The machinery ground to a stop. His face once more was like a harvest moon.
The Saint Sees It Through s-26 Page 7
