Catch the Saint (25 page)

“You’re very clever,” Simon said.
“You should be a detec
tive.”

“Not funny,”
Ryner rasped. “If you got soft on that gang for
some
reason, it’s gotta be because you don’t realise what’s really
going on. Open up this briefcase, wouldja, and look at what’s inside.
My hands ain’t working too good on zippers; they never do after somebody’s
walked on my knuckles.”

Simon took the plastic
case from the other man, who sank
back exhausted
against the sofa cushions.

“What am I going to
look at?”

“Get ready to get sick,” Ryner said.
“You’re gonna see just
how the great
Supremo operates.”

From the briefcase Simon
took a thick set of eight-by-ten
photographs, and what he
saw as he went through them made
even a man as hardened to
violence as the Saint feel sickness
gnawing and clawing
at his insides.

“Not just a slug in
some punk’s gut, huh?” Ryner said. “Not
just
a cop with a couple broken ribs. Look at it! Acid and knives.
That’s what they like best. Especially the acid.”

Simon turned one of the
photographs towards him.

“This girl,” he
said. “She couldn’t be more than ten years old.”

“Nine,” Ryner
affirmed. “She’s the daughter of a judge who
wouldn’t
play ball. She’ll never see out of that eye. I think the
other young
girl there was luckier. She didn’t make it. A girl’s
not going to have much of a life if men can’t stand to look at her
face.”

The butchery and
mutilation shown in the police photographs
had
more of an effect on Simon than hours of argument could
have done. He had been thinking, until now, in terms of inter-
racket shakedowns, vice monopolies, crooked political manoeu
vres, and real-estate hanky-panky. Now he was brought face
to
face, on the most brutal personal level, with the
products of
power combined with uninhibited
ferocity.

“Do you want to hear
about some of the other cute tricks
they’ve
pulled?” Ryner asked.

“No,” Simon
said.

He put the pictures back into the briefcase. If
the Supremo
could have seen the Saint’s
face or heard the sound of his voice
there
would have been considerable unease in the City of Broth
erly Love at that moment.

“Are you still gonna
back out?” Ryner insisted.

“No.”

“Well, so what are
you gonna do?”

“Don’t push me,”
said the Saint. “I never thought I’d have to
make
the toughest choice of my life twice in one day. Just let me
know where I can contact you later, this afternoon. I’ve got a
date to keep first.”

Simon no longer wanted to
meet Carole for lunch but he knew
that he had to. She
threw her arms round him happily when she
got
out of her taxi at the William Penn Grill, where he was waiting for her,
forcing the noontime river of surging protoplasm to
wash
round them on the sidewalk. The air was fresh and crisp
after the recent rains. Brilliant sunshine brought dazzling
high
lights to Carole’s long blond hair, which was obviously fresh
from the attentions of a beauty parlor. A heavy
drizzling overcast
and impenetrable
fog would have been more suitable to the
Saint’s mood, but now he put on
the false face he had not worn
in
Lieutenant Stacey’s office. He had plenty of deception ahead
of him, so he might just as well start now.

“Last night I
wondered if I’d ever see you again,” Carole was
chattering
happily, squeezing his hand as they went in. “I really
did. Now here we are. And I’m simply dying to hear your
story
about last night. It had better be good!”

It was impossible to put
her off for longer than it took to order
cocktails.

“I’m afraid it’s
terribly dull,” he said. “But it makes me feel
pretty
stupid. I had to look up these … business connections,
and I found they had rather riotous ideas about
conferences. They had to show me the town as a warm-up. And I ended up
losing track of the time. To put it bluntly, I was
out cold for a w
hile.”

“I would have
thought,” she said meditatively, “that the Saint
had a stronger head than that.”

He was able to keep his
mask expressionless.

“What saint?”

“It’s no good,”
she said, and her eyes were still twinkling. “I
know
who you are. You were mean not to tell me yourself.”

“Who did tell
you?”

“My father. He thought
he recognised the name, and he
checked it up. Or Dick Hamlin did. They always
worry about
me.”

“But it didn’t worry
you?”

“I was thrilled. So
long as you weren’t getting murdered some
where
… Now, what
did
really happen last night?”

“Just what I’ve told
you, skipping the gory details. On my
honour,” he
told her truthfully.

Her eyes would not shift
from his face.

“Well, do you have to
have any more of these conferences?”

He rubbed his brow
ruefully.

“I should hope not.
I’d rather retire in one piece, if I thought I
could
afford to.”

“You could afford
to.” Her fingers lay on his wrist, only for a moment. “I see I’ll
have to show you how to enjoy life.”

Somehow he got through the
lunch. Carole’s thoughts were all
on the
future—tomorrow, next week, next month. She pictured
herself
and Simon together at the theatre, on rides, at parties, on country walks,
sprawled in front of a fireplace in the evening.
Simon’s
thoughts were walled in by this single day, whose ending
would form a stone barrier between him and Carole. He knew
how she would really feel tomorrow, and it would not be as
she
now imagined.

But he smiled and laughed
and asked questions, while evading
answering any
himself. He did caution her that his life wasn’t a
long vacation …
that he was going to have things to do and
places
to go in the weeks to come. Nothing so minor as that could
squelch her
exuberance. Life was just beginning. Give her a
chance, and she could make anything possible.

When Carole fell she fell
hard, and there was nothing the
Saint could do now to
cushion the crash at the bottom.

He wanted to end his own
ordeal as quickly as possible. Her
bright blue eyes,
her soft expressive lips, were working at his de
fences
like the summer sun on a block of ice. He could not look
at her without a shattering impulse to take her in his arms and
kiss her.

“I’m afraid I’ll have
to cut this short,” he told her over coffee. “If I’m going to take a
holiday, I’ve got some loose ends I must tidy up first.”

“You said you’d had
enough of those conferences.”

“Of last night’s
kind, yes. This one is a bit different.”

She took a gold
cigarette-case from her purse, and a cigarette from it.

“Is it getting rid
of that other woman?” she accused, less seri
ously.

“Not only her, but
all the children,” he said glibly, and gave
her
a light from the match booklet on the table. “By the way,
does your father know you’re out with me now?”

“Yes, of
course.”

“And he didn’t
object?”

“Yes, of
course.”

“I see. But he’ll be
pacing up and down till you get home
safely.”

“They say that
walking’s wonderful exercise for men of his
age—”

She broke off as another
man materialised seemingly from nowhere beside their table. From being
perplexed, she became
dumbfounded as he sat
down quietly in the vacant chair opposite her and proffered an open wallet that
displayed a badge and an
identity card.

“Police
Department.” He took the cigarette from her fingers
and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “I believe this
contains mari
juana, and that you have others like
it in your possession. You
are under arrest, and
will be formally charged at Headquarters.”

“Are you out of your
mind?” Carole exploded. “Do you know
who
I am?”

“You bet I do, lady.
We’ve been watching you for quite some time. Now will you come quietly, or will
I beckon up some help
and we can all get our
pictures in the papers?”

“This has got to be a
mistake,” Simon protested. “I didn’t
smell
any marijuana when I lit that cigarette—and I know the
smell.
She’s got a right to call a lawyer—”

The look that Lieutenant
Stacey turned on him was as cold as
if they had never
met.

“After we’ve booked
her, smarty. Or you can do it for her as
soon
as we’ve left. Unless you’d rather come along too, and be
charged with aiding, abetting, conspiring, and anything
else we
might think up.”

Carole turned to stare at
the Saint in blank desperation.

“Don’t get yourself
in dutch, Simon,” she said huskily. “This
has
got to be a frame-up. Get in touch with my father. He’ll
know what to do.”

“Okay,” the
Saint promised stonily, knowing precisely what
that
acquiescence would mean.

CHAPTER 10

Hyram Angelworth lounged
in an armchair in his living-room
idly scanning
The
Wall Street Journal
to the accompaniment of
soft
music from the record player. He did not hear a sound be
yond the strains of Guy Lombardo until a firm, resonant
voice
almost at his elbow said, “Good evening,
Hyram.”

For a split second it
seemed to him that the voice must have
come
from the radio, since he was alone in the apartment. But as
his hands jerked the newspaper with surprise, and he looked up, he saw
that he was not alone. Simon Templar stood next to him, tall and grim, but as
relaxed as if they had just met by chance in
the
street.

“What are you doing
in here?” Angelworth spluttered. “How did you get into my
apartment?”

“Generally I walk
through walls, but in this case it was sim
pler:
I borrowed your daughter’s key for a few minutes and had a
duplicate made. She didn’t know it of course. She’s too
fond of
you for that, poor misguided girl.”

Angelworth dropped the
paper to the floor as he stood up. His
voice
was unsteady.

“Where is Carole?
Isn’t she here? She said she was going to lunch with you.”

Angelworth was looking
round as if someone else must surely
have entered the
room with Simon.

“Your daughter’s
social life isn’t what I’ve come to talk to you
about,”
said the Saint. “I’ll let you have it very straight: I know
this is the
Supremo’s address, and I’m here to talk to the Su
premo.”

“Supremo?” Hyram
Angelworth said in a soft incredulous
voice. He looked as
Santa Claus might look if accused of being Beelzebub in disguise. “You
mean the gangster?”

“That’s right,” Simon replied.
“King Sin himself. I can’t say
I’ve
been dying to meet him, but I nearly did. As you damn well
know.”

Hyram Angelworth raised
both hands piously and backed
away, shaking his head.
Simon recognised a fellow actor. Angel
worth
was having trouble deciding between laughing at the absurdity of the
accusation and flying into a rage because of it.

“There’s just no
point carrying this on any further,” he pro
tested.
“You’re talking to the wrong man.”

Simon allowed himself a
few dramatics of his own. He leaned
forward and brought his fist down
fiercely on the back of the
chair Angelworth
had just vacated.

“Now, look,” he
shouted. “I haven’t got time to waste on those games! You’re not talking
to one of your bootlicking ward-heel
ers. Listen to what I’m telling you,
Angelworth: I come from
West Coast Kelly.
He’s twice as big as you’ll ever be, and he’s go
ing to be bigger soon because he’s going to merge you into his
business. While you’ve been sitting round getting
fat, he’s been taking up your slack and buying up some of your boys. In other
words, he’s taking over your operation, and if
you’re willing to
talk turkey and
come to terms you won’t do too badly. We’re not
greedy. We just want some co-operation.”