His voice broke off on one high, rasping note; and he sat with his mouth half open, saying nothing more.
He looked into the muzzle of Dutch Kuhlmann's gun, levelled at him across the table; and the warmth of the whisky he had drunk evaporated on the cold weight in his stomach.
"You talk too much, Pappy," said Kuhlmann amiably. "It's a goot job you don't mean everything you say."
The other essayed a smile.
"Don't get me wrong, Dutch," he pleaded weakly. "What I mean is, if we got to knock somebody off, why not knock off the Saint?"
"Dat's right," chimed in Heimie Felder. "We'll knock off de Saint. Why didn't any of youse mugs t'ink of dat before? I'll knock him off myself, poissonal."
Dutch Kuhlmann smiled, without moving his gun.
"Dot is right," he said. "Ve'll knock off der Saint, und not have nobody making any more mistakes. You're a goot boy, Pappy. Go outside and vait for us, Pappy—we have a little business to talk about."
The thumping died down in the Greek's chest, and suddenly he was quite still and strengthless. He sighed wearily, knowing all too well the futility of further argument. Too often he had heard Kuhlmann pronouncing sentence of death in those very words, smiling blandly and genially as he spoke: "You're a goot boy. Go outside and vait for us. . . ."
He stood up, with a feeble attempt to muster the stoical jauntiness that was expected of him.
"Okay, Dutch," he said. "Be seein' ya."
There was an utter silence while he left the room; and as he closed the door behind him his brief display of poise drained out of him. Simon Templar would scarcely have recognized him as the same sleek, self-possessed bully that he had encountered twelve hours ago.
The doorkeeper sat in a far corner, turning the pages of a tabloid. He looked up with a start as Papulos came through but the Greek ignored him. Under sentence of death himself, probably to die on the same one-way ride, a crude pride held him aloof. He walked up to the bar and rapped on the counter, and Toni came up with his smooth expressionless face.
"Brandy," said Papulos.
Toni served him without a word, without even an inquisitive glance. Outside of that back room from which Papulos had just emerged, no one knew what had taken place; the world went on without a change. No one could have told what Toni thought or guessed. His olive-skinned features seemed to possess no register of emotion. The finger might be on him, too: he had served the Saint, and directed him to the Graylands Hotel, at the beginning of all the trouble—he might have received his own sentence in the back room, three hours ago. But he said nothing and turned away as Papulos drank.
There was a swelling emptiness below the Greek's breastbone which two shots of cognac did nothing to fill. Even while he drank, he was a dead man, knowing perfectly well that there was no Appellate Division in the underworld to find a reversible error which might give him a chance for life. He knew that in a few useless' hours death would claim him as certainly as if it had been inscribed in the book of Fate ten thousand years ago. He knew that there was no one who would join him in a challenge to Kuhlmann's authority—no one who could help him, no one who could rescue him from the vengeance of the gang. ...
And then suddenly the flash of a wild idea illumined some dark recess of his memory.
In his mind he saw the face of a man. A bronzed reckless face with cavalier blue eyes that seemed to hold a light of mocking laughter. The lean hard-muscled figure of a man whose poise held no fear for the vengeance of all the legions of the underworld. A man who was called the Saint. . . .
And in that instant Papulos realized that there was one man who might do what all the police of New York could not do— who might stand between him and the crackling death that waited for him.
He pushed his glass forward wordlessly, watched it refilled, and drained it again. For the first time that morning his stomach felt the warmth of the raw spirit. The doorkeeper knew nothing; Toni Ollinetti knew nothing—could not possibly know anything. If Kuhlmann came out and found him gone the mob would trail him down like bloodhounds and inevitably find him even though he fled to the uttermost ends of the continent; but then it might be too late.
Papulos flung a bill on the counter and turned away without waiting for change. His movements were those of an automaton, divorced from any effort of will or deliberation, impelled by nothing but an instinctive surging rebellion against the blind march of death. He waved an abrupt, careless hand. "Be seein' ya," he said; and Toni nodded and smiled, without expression. The doomed doorkeeper looked up as he went by, with a glaze of despair in his dulled eyes: Papulos could feel what was in the man's mind, the dumb resentful envy of a condemned man seeing his fellow walking out into the sweet freedom of life: but the Greek walked by without a glance at him.
The bright morning air struck into his senses with its intolerable reminder of the brief beauty of life, quickening his steps as he came out to the street. His movements had the desperate power of a drowning man. If an army had appeared to bar his way, he would have drawn his gun and gone down fighting to break through them.
His car stood at the curb. He climbed in and stamped on the self-starter. Before the engine had settled down to smooth running he was flogging it to drag him down the street, away from the doom that waited in Charley's Place. He had no plan in his mind. He had no idea how he would find the Saint, where all the police organizations of the city had failed. He only knew that the Saint was his one hope of reprieve, and that the inaction of waiting for execution like a bullock in a slaughter line would have snapped his reason. If he had to die, he would rather die on the run, struggling towards life, than wait for extinction like a trapped rat. But he looked in the driving mirror as he turned into Seventh Avenue, and saw no one following him.
But he saw something else.
It was a hand that came up out of the back of the car—a lean brown hand that grasped the back of his seat close to his shoulder and dragged up a man from the floor. His heart leapt into his throat, and the car swerved dizzily under his twitching hands. Then he saw the face of the man, and a racing trip hammer started up under his ribs.
The man squeezed himself adroitly over into the vacant front seat and calmly proceeded to search the dashboard for a lighter to kindle his cigarette.
"What ho, Pappy," said the Saint.
Chapter 5
How Mr. Papulos Was Taken off, and Heimie Felder Met with Further Misfortunes
Papulos steadied the car clumsily and flashed it under the indignant eyes of a traffic cop who was deliberating the richest terms in which he could describe a coupla mugs who seemed to think they had a P.D. plate in front of 'em, and who deliberated a second too long. The trip hammer inside his ribs slowed up to a heavy, rhythmical pounding.
"I'm glad to see you," he said, in a voice that croaked oddly in his throat. "I was goin' out lookin' for you."
With the glowing lighter at the end of his cigarette, Simon half turned to glance at him.
"Were you, Pappy?" he murmured pleasantly. "What a coincidence! It seems as if we must be soul mates, drifting through life with our hearts singing in tune. Tell me some more bedtime stories, brother—I like them."
Papulos swallowed. The Saint's almost miraculous appearance had caught him before he had even had time to consider a possible line of approach; and for the first time since he had plunged out of Charley's Place on that mad quest he became aware of the hopeless obstacles that didn't even begin to crop up until he had found his quarry. Now, unasked and uninvited, his quarry had obligingly found him; and he was experiencing some of the almost hysterical paralysis that would seize an ardent huntsman if a fox walked up to him and rolled over on its back, expectantly wagging its tail. The difference in this case was that the quarry was much larger and more cunning and more dangerous than any fox; it had a wickedly mocking gleam in its steel-blue eyes; and under the bantering surveillance of that clear and glittering gaze Mr. Papulos recalled, in a most unwelcomely apt twi
st of reminiscence, that on the last occasion when he had seen the quarry face to face, and there were a considerable number of armed and husky hoodlums within call, he, Mr. Papulos, had been misguided enough to poke the said quarry in the kisser. The prospects of establishing a rapid and brotherly entente seemed a shade less bright than they had appeared in his first exuberant enthusiasm for the idea.
"Yeah—I was lookin' for you," he repeated jerkily. "I thought you and me might have a talk."
"One gathers that you were in no small hurry to exercise your jaw," Simon remarked. "You nearly left the back part of the bus behind when you started off. What's after you?"
Something inside the Greek rasped through to the surface under the pressure of that gentle bantering voice. His breath grated in his throat.
"If you want to know what's after me," he blurted, "it's a bullet. A whole raft of bullets."
"Do they travel on rafts?" asked the Saint interestedly. "I didn't know you were joining the navy."
Papulos gulped.
"I'm not kidding," he got out desperately. "The finger's on me—on account of you. I sent you to Morrie, with that knife on you, an' they're saying I double-crossed 'em. You gotta listen to me, Saint—I'm on the spot!"
The Saint's eyebrows lifted.
"So you figure that if you go out and bring my head back in an Oshkosh they may forgive you—is that it?" he drawled. "Well, well, well, Pappy, I'm not saying it wasn't a grand idea; but I've got a morbid sort of ambition to be buried all in one piece——"
"I tell you I'm not kidding!" Papulos pleaded wildly. "I gotta talk to you. I'll talk turkey. Maybe we can make a bargain——"
"How much credit do you reckon to get on that sock you gave me last night?" inquired the Saint.
Papulos swallowed again and found difficulty in doing it. His eyes, mechanically picking a route through the traffic, were reddened and frantic.
"For God's sake," he gasped, "I'm talkin' turkey. I'm tryin' to make a deal——"
"Not for sanctuary?"
"Yeah—if that's the word for it."
The Saint's eyes narrowed. His smile suddenly acquired a tremendous skepticism.
"That sounds like an awful lot of fun," he murmured. "How do we play this game?"
"Any way you like. I'm on the level, Saint! I wouldn't double-cross you. I'm shootin' square with you, Saint. The mob's after me. They're putting me on the spot—an' you're the only guy in the world who might get me off of it. ... Yeah, I took that sock at you last night—but that was different. You can take a sock back at me any time—you can take twenty! I wouldn't stop you. But what the hell, you wouldn't see a guy rubbed out just because he took a sock at you—"
Simon pondered gently; but beneath his benign exterior it was apparent that he regarded the Greek with undiminished suspicion and distaste.
"I don't know, Pappy," he said reflectively. "Blokes have been rubbed out for less—much less."
"I was just nervous, Saint. It didn't mean a thing. I guess you might of done the same yourself. Lookit, I could help you a lot if you forgot last night an' helped me ——"
"In exchange for what?" asked the Saint, and his voice was even less reassuring than before.
Papulos licked his lips.
"I could tell you things. Say, I ain't the only guy in the racket. I know you were waitin' to take me for this ride when I came out, but ——"
For the first time since he had been there the Saint laughed. There was no comfort for Papulos in that laugh, no more than there had been in his soft voice or his pleasant smile; but he laughed.
"You flatter yourself, Pappy," he said. "You aren't nearly so important as that. We step on things like you on our way, wherever they happen to wriggle out—we don't make special appointments for 'em. I thought this car belonged to Dutch. But since you happen to be here, Pappy, I'm afraid you'll have to do. As you kindly reminded me, we have one or two slight arguments to settle—"
"You want Dutch, don't you? You want Dutch more'n you want me—ain't that right? Well, I could help you to get Dutch. I can tell you everything he does, an' when he does it, an' where he goes, an' how he's protected. I could help you to get the whole mob, if you want 'em. Listen, Saint, you gotta let me talk!"
Simon smiled pleasantly. His face was tolerant and kindly, but Papulos did not see that. Papulos saw only the cold blue steel in his eyes—and a vision of death that had come to Irboll and Voelsang and Ualino. Papulos heard the hard ring behind the gentle tones of his voice and knew that he had yet to convince the Saint of his terrible sincerity.
The Saint gazed at him through a wreathing screen of smoke; and his left hand did not stir from his coat pocket, where it had rested ever since he had been in sight.
A checkered and perilous career had done much to harden that tender trustfulness in which Simon Templar's blue eyes had first looked out upon the light of day. Regretfully, he admitted that the gross disillusionments of life had left their mark. It is given to human faith to survive just so much and no more; and a man who in his time has been scarred to the core by the bitter truth about fairies and Santa Claus cannot be blamed if a certain doubt, a certain cynicism, begins in later life to taint the virgin freshness of his innocence. Simon had met Papulos before and had taken his measure. He did not believe that Papulos was a man who could be driven by the fear of death to betray the unwritten code of his kind.
What he forgot was the fact that most men live in frightful fear of death—frightful fear of that black oblivion which will snatch their lusts and their enjoyments from them in a single tortured instant. He forgot that though a man like Papulos would fight in the battles of gangland like a maniac, though he would stand up brutally unafraid under the hails of hot death that come whistling through the open streets, he might become nothing but a cringing coward in the threat of coldblooded unanswerable obliteration. Even the stark panic that showed in the Greek's eyes did not convince him.
"I wouldn't lie to you," Papulos was babbling hoarsely. "This is on the level. I got nothin' to gain. You don't have to promise me nothin'. You gotta believe me."
"Why?" asked the Saint callously.
Papulos swung the car round Columbus Circle and headed blindly to the east. His face was haggard with utter despair.
"You think this is a stall—you don't believe I'm on the level?"
"Yes," said the Saint, "and no."
"What d'ya mean?"
"Yes, brother," said the Saint explicitly, "I do think it's a stall. No, brother, I don't believe you're on the level. ... By the way, Pappy, which cemetery are you heading for? It'd save a lot of expense if we did the job right on the premises. You can take your own choice, of course, but I've always thought the Gates of Heaven Cemetery, Valhalla, N. Y., was the best address of its kind I ever heard."
Papulos looked into the implacable blue eyes and felt closer to death than he had ever been.
"You gotta listen," he said, almost in a whisper. "I'm shootin' the works. I'll talk first, an' you can decide whether I'm tellin' the truth afterwards. Just gimme a break, Saint.. I'm shootin' square with you."
Simon shrugged.
"There's lots of time between here and Valhalla," he pointed out affably. "Shoot away."
Papulos caught at the breath that would not seem to fill the void in his lungs. The sweat was running down his sides like a trickle of icicles, and his mouth had stiffened so that he had to labour over the formation of each individual word.
"This is straight," he said. "Puttin' the snatch on that kid was an accident. That ain't the racket any more—it's too risky, an' there ain't any need for it. Protection's the racket, see? You say to a guy like Inselheim: 'You pay us so much dough, or it'll be too bad about your kid, see?' Well, Inselheim stuck in his toes over the last payment. He said he wouldn't pay any more; so we put the arm on the kid. You didn't do him no good, takin' her back."
"You don't tell me," said the Saint lightly; but his voice was grim and watchful.
Papul
os babbled on. He had spent long enough getting a hearing; now that he had it, the words came in a flood like a breaking dam. In a matter of mere minutes, it might be too late.
"You didn't do no good. Inselheim got his daughter back, but he's still gotta pay. We won't be snatching her again. Next time, she gets the works. We phoned him first thing this morning: 'Pay us that dough, or you won't have no daughter for the Saint to rescue.' Even a guy like you can't bring a kid back when she's dead."
"Very interesting," observed the Saint, "not to say bloodthirsty. But I can't somehow see that even a story like that, Pappy, is going to keep you out of the Gates of Heaven. You'll have to talk much faster than this if we're going to fall on each other's shoulders and let bygones be bygones."
The Greek's hands clenched on the wheel.
"I'll tell you anything you want to know!" he gabbled wildly. "Ask me anything you like—I'll tell you. Just gimme a break——"
"You could only tell me one thing that might be worth a trade for your unsavoury life, you horrible specimen," said the Saint coldly. "And that is—who is the Big Fellow?"
Papulos turned, white-faced, staring.
"You can't ask me to tell you that——"
"Really?"
"It ain't possible! I'd tell you if I could—but I can't. There ain't nobody in the mob could tell you that, except the Big Fellow himself, Ualino didn't know. Kuhlmann don't know. There's only one way we talk to him, an' that's by telephone. An' only one guy has the number."
Simon drew the last puff from his cigarette and pitched it through the window.
"Then it seems just too bad if you aren't the guy, Pappy," he said sympathetically; and Papulos shrank away into the farthest corner of the seat at the ruthless quietness of his voice.
"But I can tell you who it is, Saint! I'm coming clean. Wait a minute—you gotta let me talk——"
15 The Saint in New York Page 10
