Call for the Saint (11 page)

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.

“Roll 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… .

For weeks Hoppy had been improving in, accuracy, force, and the principles of oral ballistics. Had the interior of his mouth been rifled like a gun barrel, his aim might have been bettered, but at this close range there was no chance of a miss. The BB, impelled with velocity and violence, completed the last touch of outrageous grotesquerie by hitting Big Hazel Green in the left eye.

“Next to a custard pie,” the Saint reflected, with some irrepressibly cynical part of his mind that sat in judgment with an eyebrow raised, “I couldn’t think of an improvement. Now the balance of the situation tipped with dazzling suddenness. Big Hazel’s instant reaction to the introduction of a foreign particle into her optic apparatus was to bellow like a wounded bull, let go the Saint’s wrist, and clap her free hand to the injured organ. But simultaneously, without even waiting for that release, the Saint’s free right hand was moving.

If he had merely tried to seize Big Hazel, or to hit her on the jaw, the woman would probably have got away. But Simon Templar’s arm flashed down with a speed that almost blurred the vision, and his hand closed with murderous suddenness over hers. And the hand it closed on was holding a hypodermic syringe of brittle glass.

The barrel of the syringe became instantly a non-cohesive assortment of razor-sharp fragments, slicing agonizingly deeper into Big Hazel’s flesh as the Saint’s merciless grip ground tighter. All of her faculties were concentrated, to the exclusion of every other thought, on the immediate, vital, and hysterical necessity of opening her hand before the fingers began falling off. And being thus occupied, she was in no condition to realize that the Saint’s hand had also swung her around until she completely blocked Frankie’s line of fire.

At the same moment, Mr. Uniatz moved with an agility that threw a surprising side light on his nickname. He dived for the nearest gun on the floor, and fired almost as his paw closed on it. The only sound Frankie Weiss made was a queer sort of choking cough as he went down; and the tommy gun never spoke at all… .

“All right,” Kearney’s voice said from the top of the stairs. “Break it up, or I’ll let all of you have it.”

Simon pushed Big Hazel away and smiled up at him.

“Good old Alvin,” he said. “Never too late to take a bow.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Monica Varing turned her head upon the pillow, and her hair moved with it in a shining skein on he bare satin of her shoulder. The robe she wore swooped downward from there in a V so deep that Simon Templar, leaning on the high footboard of her hospital bed, was aware of not wholly inexplicable vertigo whenever his eyes wandered that way.

He sighed ostentatiously.

Monica smiled. Her voice was warm temptation.

“Is anything wrong? I thought all your problems were wound up nicely.”

“They are-nearly all.” He grinned rather wryly. “Kearney got a promotion, Elliott cleared his good name, Laura Wingate-” The blue darkened. “Laura Wingate held out a lot longer than I expected, but she’s finally made a confession. Even Fingers Schultz.” The grin came back. “It seems that a mug named Fingers Schultz was picked up in the street last night with tire marks all over him, apparently the victim of a hit-run driver; but I haven’t asked Sammy the Leg what his car looks like.”

Monica leaned forward, clasping her knees, and smiled at him dazzlingly. The Saint enjoyed his ensuing vertigo.

“Why the deep sighs, then?”

“Because now we’ll have hardly any excuse for seeing each other. How soon do you expect to get out of this joint?”

“By evening. It was nonsense bringing me in at all, but my manager insisted on a few days’ rest. Tonight I play Nora as usual.”

“And after the show?”

“I was waiting to be asked. What were you thinking of?”

The Saint smiled.

“Exactly the same thing as you,” he said.

BOOK TWO:
THE MASKED ANGEL

CHAPTER ONE
At this moment Simon Templar was not quite enjoying the thrill of a lifetime.

Relaxed as much as the immediate carpentry would permit in his ringside seat between Hoppy Uniatz and Patricia Holm, he blended the smoke of his own cigarette with the cigar-and-sweat aroma of the Manhattan Arena, and contemplated the dying moments of the semi-final bout with his sapphire eyes musing under lazily drooping lids. Never addicted to obtaining his thrills vicariously, the man who was better known to the world as the Saint would have found small cause for excitement even if he had been addicted to such sedentary pursuits. Being there anyhow, he slouched in easy grace, the clean-cut lines of his face etched in a bronze mask of sardonic detachment as he watched the two gladiators move about the ring with all the slashing speed of ballet dancers in leg irons performing under water, and dedicated himself uncomplainingly to whatever entertainment the soiree of sock might provide.

In the great world outside, there were uncountable characters who would have considered his presence there with no equanimity. Some of them, who in one way or another had participated in much shadier promotions than prize fights, would have considered it a personal injustice that anyone like Simon Templar should still be at large when so many of their best friends were not. Others, whose standard of righteousness was vouched for by at least a badge, would have moaned just as loudly that there was nothing basically unhappy about a policeman’s lot except what the Saint might plant in it.

If Inspector Fernack, for instance, had seen him there, that bulldogged minion of the law would have pondered darkly. He would have sensed from long experience in previous encounters with this amazing modern buccaneer that the Saint could have no orthodox interest in such a dreary offering of Promoter Mike Grady’s salon of swat. Of course the main bout between Torpedo Smith and the celebrated Masked Angel would probably be more interesting, but Simon Templar wasn’t there just for the entertainment. That was something John Henry Fernack would never have believed.

And on this occasion, for instance, he would have been right.

Jeers swept in derisive breakers over the two Ferdinands in the ring without in the least disturbing the equilibrium of their mitt minuet. The massed feet of the cash customers began to stamp in metronomic disapproval, and Simon’s chair jumped as the boxcar brogans on his left added their pile-driving weight to the crashing cantata. Their owner’s klaxon voice lifted in a laryngismal obbligato, a brassy, belly-searching ululation with overtones reminiscent of the retching bellow of a poisoned water buffalo. This, the Saint recognized, was merely Hoppy Uniatz’s rendition of a disgusted groan.

“Boss,” Hoppy heaved, “dis is moider!” The narrow strip of wrinkles that passed for Hoppy’s forehead was deep with scorn. “I oughta go up dere and t’row ‘em bot’ outta de ring.”

Hoppy’s impulses were beautiful in their straightforward simplicity and homicidal honesty. The small globule of protoplasm that lurked within his rock-bound skull, serving the nominal function of a brain, piloted his anthropoidal body exclusively along paths of action, primitive and direct, unencumbered by any subtleties of thought or teleological considerations. The torture of cerebration he left entirely to the man to whose lucky star he had hitched his wagon. For, to Hoppy, the Saint was not of this ordinary world; he was a Merlin who brought strange wonders to pass with godlike nonchalance, whose staggering schemes were engineered with supernatural ease to inevitable success through miracles, of intellect which Hoppy followed in blind but contented obedience.

The Saint smiled at him tenderly.

“Relax, chum. This isn’t the fight we came to see anyway.”

The dream with the spun-gold hair on Simon’s right smiled.

“Never,” admonished Patricia Holm, “look gift horses in the mouth.”

“To corn a phrase,” the Saint observed dryly.

“Huh?” Hoppy stared at the Saint’s lady in openmouthed perplexity. “Horses ?” His face, which bore a strong family resemblance to those seen on totem poles designed to frighten evil spirits, was a study in loose-lipped wonder. “What horses ?”

“After all,” Pat said, “we’re here as guests and—”

The clanking of the bell terminated both the fight and the need for further explanation. The sound pulled the trigger on a thunderclap of boos as the unfatigued gladiators were waved to their respective corners to await the decision. It came swiftly. A well-booed draw.

“What a clambake,” Hoppy muttered.

“No hits, no runs, no fight,” Simon murmured sardonically.

“They had a lot of respect for each other, hadn’t they?” Pat observed innocently.

“Respect!” Hoppy exploded. “Dem bums was doggin’ it. I could beat bot’ deir brains out togedder wit’ bot’ hands tied behind me.” He simmered with righteous outrage. “I only hope de Masked Angel don’t knock out Torpedo Smith too quick. Dey oughta let him stay for at least a coupla rounds so maybe we’ll see some fightin’.”

“If there’s any fighting to be seen,” Simon said, absently, “at least we’re in a good position to see it.”

The chiseled leanness of cheekbone and jaw were picked out vividly as he lighted a cigarette. Pat, glancing at the flame momentarily reflected in those mocking blue eyes, felt a familiar surge of yearning and pride. For he was a very reincarnation of those privateers who once knew the Spanish Main, a modern buccaneer consecrated to the gods of gay and perilous adventure, a cavalier as variable as a chameleon, who would always be at once the surest and the most elusive thing in her life.

“Yeah,” Hoppy agreed grudgingly. “Dey ain’t nut’n wrong wit’ de seats. Ya must have some drag wit’ de promoter, boss.”

“I’ve never even met him.”

Simon wasn’t listening really. His eyes were angled to his left, gazing through a meditative plume of smoke to where Steve Nelson was rising about a dozen seats away and climbing into the ring to be introduced as the champion who would defend his title against the winner of tonight’s bout. However, it wasn’t Nelson whom Simon was watching. It was the girl in the seat beside Nelson-a girl with curly raven hair, big green eyes, and a nose whose snub pertness was an infinitely lovelier reproduction of her Irish sire’s well-publicized proboscis.

“I suppose he just thought this would be a nice way to introduce himself,” Patricia mocked. “Three little ringside tickets, that’s all. Sent by special messenger, no less. Compliments of Mike Grady and the Manhattan Arena!”

The girl with the dark hair had turned and, for a brief instant, met Simon’s gaze. He spoke without taking his eyes off her.

“Pat darling, you’re taking too much for granted. It wasn’t Mike who sent them.”

“No?”

“No. It was his daughter, Connie. Third from the aisle in the front row.”