Catch the Saint (19 page)

“You know something
us public servants don’t know?”

“No,” Simon answered. “But if
you’ll let me, I might be able
to help
you.”

CHAPTER 4

It was a strange offer for
the Saint to make, and an uncharacter
istic way for him to
word it:
But if you’ll let me, I might be
able
to help you.
Stacey had been right; Simon Templar
did
not work for big or little Caesars. He did not work
for anybody
but himself. Yet in the circumstances his usual motives
were
thrust into the background,
temporarily at least, because of the
responsibility
he felt for what had happened to Brad Ryner in
trying to expose the man known as the Supremo.

“Look,” he said
to the two detectives. “Brad was brought into this game because he wasn’t
known in Philadelphia. I got him
knocked out of the game,
right on his head, even if I didn’t know
what
I was doing. What you do when that happens in football
is
send in a substitute. Well, here I am.”

The silence that followed
was full of astonishment, doubt, and
awe of the net of
red tape that was bound to descend upon any
one
who departed from officially marked paths of police in
vestigation.

“You ain’t thinking
of becoming a cop, are you?” Brad Ryner
asked
nervously.

“I was thinking more
in terms of becoming a fellow-traveller.”

“Before I say
anything,” Stacey said cautiously, “I’d better
find out exactly what you have in mind.”

“I have an idea for
getting close to the Supremo,” Simon said.
“Possibly
even face to face with him. And I’m in a good position
to
do it: I’m from out of town—further out than Brad was. I
have a breath-taking gift for bamboozling people. I have a
fan
tastic record of successfully overwhelming criminals of every
size and shape. And I have the strength of ten
because my heart is pure.”

“Bravo,” Ryner
said feebly. “Bravo!”

Lieutenant Stacey looked
fascinated but dubious.

“It’s very good of
you to think of doing something like that,
but I’m not even sure I
could consider … Even if I felt con
vinced
it was the best thing, I don’t have the authority to …”

“Would it help any if
I told you I intend to go ahead and do
it
anyway, no matter what you decide?” The Saint’s expression
was not so much defiant as blandly innocent, as if he were
mak
ing an announcement of what he intended to have for
his
lunch.

Lieutenant Stacey came
out with a kind of snorting laugh,
because it was all
he could think of to come out with. Ryner
was
too uncomfortable to waste his breath.

“Good,” he said
with conviction. “You do it. But what is it?”

“What’s the name of
that club you mentioned, that the Su
premo’s gang uses
as an operational HQ?”

“The Pear
Tree,” Lieutenant Stacey replied. “Do you know of it?”

“Only by name,”
the Saint answered. “Very elegant spot, I’ve
heard.”

“This is a very
elegant crew,” Stacey said.

“I could tell that
last night,” Simon remarked. “That large
gentleman
had a very refined way of putting his dancing pumps
into
Brad’s stomach.”

“Those were just the
floor-sweepings of the gang,” Brad Ryner said. “I had to start
somewhere.”

“Well, I intend to
start at The Pear Tree,” Simon told them.
“My
first job is going to be to get somebody other than the
bouncer or the headwaiter to listen to me. I may have to
use a
little muscle, but somehow or other I’ll get word up
the communications lines that I have to see the big chief.”

“Big chief, big
deal!” Ryner said sceptically. “I might as well
walk into the White House and say I have to see the President.”

“But if you were the
ambassador from France, you wouldn’t
have much trouble
getting an appointment.”

“So where are you an
ambassador from?”

“West Coast
Kelly.”

The name West Coast Kelly
did not, at that time, require fur
ther explanation. To the
California-Nevada kingdom of high
crimes
and misdemeanors, West Coast Kelly was as Stalin to
Russia or Peron to Argentina. Once a lover of
publicity, fond of
grinning
newspaper photographs of his moustachioed self arm-in-
arm with rapturous movie starlets, he had been
taught, by a
couple of
all-expense-paid vacations in Alcatraz and three generous but noisy attempts to
send him into peaceful retirement at Elysian Fields Cemetery, the value of
privacy and seclusion. He still ran the rackets, still commanded felonious
armies, still ma
nipulated vast
wealth, but had become almost as aloof as Phila
delphia’s Supremo. He did his business through subalterns;
and it had been rumoured recently that he was
yearning for new worlds to conquer, sending out feelers to areas beyond his
long
conceded territory. So there was
nothing too fantastic in the
Saint’s
suggestion that he might pose as one of West Coast Kel
ly’s emissaries. Brad Ryner and Lieutenant Stacey
acknowledged
that much without
question.

“But what news does
the ambassador bring?” Stacey enquired.

“That West Coast Kelly has big plans of
his own for Philly.
To put it bluntly, Kelly
wants a big slice of the pie here, or he
threatens to take over the whole show.”

“Not very subtle, but
it might get the Supremo to listen,”
Stacey
granted. “You might even arrange it so Kelly’s instructed
you not to speak to anybody but the top man himself.”

“Easy enough,”
Simon said, “since I’m giving my own orders.”

“Easy!” Ryner snorted. “You’ll
see how easy it is to get your
head blown
off. Don’t you think they’ll check out on the West
Coast to see if you’re for real?”

“Whom do they check
with? They’d have to get on to Kelly
himself to prove
that his personal ambassador wasn’t really sent
by
him.” Simon was moving restlessly round the room. “Any
way, my idea isn’t to become a permanent fixture round the
place. All I
want to do is barge straight in and see how close I
can get to the Supreme Stinko. I think he could feel so threat
ened that he’ll at least have to listen.”

Stacey rubbed his chin.

“But what happens then? The Supremo’s
still going to keep
his identity a secret,
or do something to cover up his tracks.”

Simon came to a halt
again beside the bed.

“I’ll just have to
play it by ear from there,” he said. “You don’t
try to predict a chess match before you’ve seen the
opening.”

“I dunno,” Ryner
finally admitted. “I guess any plan is better
than
none. And if you’ve stayed alive this long, you might stay alive through this,
but I doubt it.”

“With those cheering
words, off I go into the fray.”

Stacey stood up.

“What can I say?
There’s nothing I want worse than the
Supremo. Or even
just to know his initials, or where he gets his
hair cut, or what
shaving lotion he uses. But how can I author
ise
…”

“You don’t need
to,” said the Saint. “Just give me a telephone
number where I can reach you. I’m going to visit The Pear Tree
tonight and see what kind of partridges are roosting in
it.”

Only after he got back to
the New Sylvania after lunch did he
remember that he had
promised Carole Angelworth that he
would phone her. He had no lack of
reminders: According to
notes in his box, she
had already called him three times.

He settled down in an
armchair in his room, had the switch
board dial her number, and after one
ring heard her voice say
ing breathlessly:
“Hullo?”

“Hullo. This is
Simon. How are things?”

“Oh, I was so worried about you! I thought
you’d be calling me earlier, and when I tried getting you a couple of hours ago
and you weren’t there, and nobody knew
where you were, I was sure you’d gotten yourself killed.”

“I thought you’d be catching up on your
beauty sleep and I didn’t want to disturb it, so I went out and made a sort of
duty
call on a sick friend.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s
already half-past two, and I was hoping I
could
show you round a little today. I hope you haven’t gone
and
made other plans.”

One thing that Simon had
decided was not to give Carole
even a hint of what he was
up to in connection with the Su
premo. The way she was
behaving now satisfied him that he
had been right:
Even if he could have trusted her completely not
to
babble to anyone, she would have driven him crazy with hys
terical concern for his safety.

“I do have some
business to attend to this evening,” he con
fessed.

“This
evening?
Why
in the world do you have to work at
night?”

“I carry on all kinds of mysterious
activities at all sorts of
strange hours.
It’s one of the things about me that makes me so fatally attractive to innocent
young girls.”

Her pout was audible.

“This afternoon then?
You won’t be in town for ever. Can’t
you spare a couple
of hours?”

Simon could have used a
couple of hours’ rest, having had
very little the night before, and
anticipating very little for the
night to
come, but he found himself saying: “All right; I’ll meet
you in half an hour.”

“Wonderful!”
Carole bubbled. “Half an hour. In the garage—
this
time we’ll take my car.”

When he had hung up,
Simon wondered why he had surren
dered so easily. He
discovered, in scanning his feelings, that it
was
not only that he did not want to disappoint her, but also—a
little disconcertingly—that he would have been disappointed
if
he had not seen her.

CHAPTER 5

At seven o’clock, Simon
and Carole were in a midtown cocktail lounge whose soft leather, velvet
draperies, and impressionistic
nudes were, in
considerable contrast to the hospitality of Sammy’s
Booze
& Billiards. A “couple of hours” had stretched quite
painlessly into four.

“I have to
admit,” Simon remarked, “that this is the first time I’ve ever had a
whirlwind tour of an orphanage, a clinic for re
tarded
children, and the offices of a vigilance committee, all in
the same day.

Carole sat closer to him
that even the limits of their banquette
required,
sipping a frozen Daiquiri.

“I suppose it’s not what you’d call light
entertainment,” she
said. “Were
you bored?”

“No. Your father’s
good works are very impressive, and you could make a visit to Independence Hall
seem like more fun than
a trip to the Folies Berg
è
res.”

“I’m glad I could show you round instead
of Dick Hamlin. I
bet he’d have taken over,
the next time he met you.”

“How does he get on
with the Law Enforcement watchdogs?”

“Why, he’s their prize exhibit… Let’s
forget him!”

She slipped her arm round his. Throughout the
afternoon,
Simon had become more and more
conscious that the efferves
cent,
happily chattering girl beside him was much more emo
tionally involved with him than would have seemed
possible in such a short time.

The Saint was accustomed
to the admiration of women. Na
ture had endowed him with
that almost unbelievably handsome
face which, combined
with his other attributes of mind and
body, made him as
irresistible to the female sex as a fox to a pack
of
hounds. But in this case he was dealing with a very susceptible girl who was
obviously looking for something much more serious
than
a few days of fun. As much as Simon was also attracted to
her, and tempting as it was to give free rein to his hormones, he felt
an obligation to avoid doing or saying anything that would
draw her more deeply into the pit of disappointment she was
digging for herself.