Saint in New York (28 page)

She had not moved from where he had last seen
her. The
dead body of Maxie lay at her feet; but she was not
looking at
it, and she had made no attempt to possess herself of the
automatic that was still clutched in his hand. The light
was too
dim for the Saint to be able to see the expression on her face; but the poise
of her body reminded him irresistibly
of the night when she had watched him
kill Morrie Ualino,
and more recently of the tune, only an hour or two ago,
when
he himself had been sent out from the back room of Charley’s
Place on
the ride which had only just ended. There was the
same impregnable aloofness,
the same inscrutable carelessness of death, as though in some impossible way
she had detached
herself from every human emotion and dominated even the
last
mystery of dissolution. He walked up closer to her, slowly,
because it
hurt him a little when he breathed, until he could
see the brightness of
her tawny eyes; but they told him nothing.

She did not speak, and he hardly knew what to
do. The situ
ation was rather beyond him. He saluted her vaguely, with
the
ghost of a
bow, and let his arm fall to his side.

“Thank you,” he said.

Her eyes were pools of amber, still and
unreadable.

“Is that all?” she asked in a low voice.

Again he felt that queer leap of expectation
at the husky music which she made of words. He moved his hands in a
slight
helpless gesture.

“I suppose so. It’s the second time
you’ve helped me—-I
don’t know why. I haven’t asked. What else is
there?”

“What about this?”

Suddenly, before he knew what she was doing, her arms were
around his neck, her soft slenderness pressed
close to him, the
satin of her cheek
against his. For a moment he was too
amazed
to move. Hazily, he wondered if the terrible strain he
had been through had unhinged some weak link in
his imag
ination. The tenuous perfume
of her skin and hair stole in
upon his
senses, sending a creeping trickle of fire along his
veins; her lips found his mouth, and for one mad
second he
was shaken by the awareness of her passion. He winced imperceptibly,
and she drew back.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You see,
you didn’t get here quite soon enough. I stopped one.”

Instantly she forgot everything else. She drew
him over to
the car, switched on the headlights, and made him take
off
his coat. With quick, gentle hands she slipped his shirt down
over his
shoulder; he could feel the warm stickiness of blood
on his back. On the
ground close by, the chauffeur still lay as
if asleep.

“Better make sure he doesn’t wake up
while you’re doing the
first aid,” said the Saint, with a
rather weary gesture towards
the unconscious man.

“He won’t wake up,” she answered
calmly. “I killed him.”

Then Simon saw that the shadow between the
driver’s shoul
der blades was the hilt of a small knife, and a phantom
chill went through him. He understood now why Maxie’s call had
gone
unanswered. The girl’s hands were perfectly steady on his
back; he
couldn’t see her face because she was behind him,
but he knew what he
would have found there. It would have
been masked with the same cold beauty,
the same unearthly contempt of life and death and all their associations, which
he
had only once seen broken—so strangely, only a few moments
before.

She fastened his handkerchief and her own over
the wound, replaced his shirt, and drew his coat loosely over the shoulder. Her
hand rested there lightly.

“You’ll have to see a doctor,” she
said. “I know a man in
Passaic that we can go to.”

He nodded and moved round to the side of the
car. Com
petently, she lowered the hood over the engine and
forestalled
him at the wheel. He didn’t protest.

It was impossible to turn the car about in the
confined
space, and she had to back up the lane until they reached
the highway. She did it as confidently as he would have expected
her to,
although he had never met a woman before who had
really achieved a complete
mastery of the art of backing. In
animate stones seemed to have become
alive, judging by the way they thrust malicious obstacles into the path of the
tires
and threatened to pitch the car into the shrubbery, but her
small
right hand on the wheel performed impossible feats. In
a remarkably short
time they had broken through the trees
and swung around in
the main road; and the powerful sedan,
responding instantly
to the pressure of her foot on the accelerator, whirled away like the wind
towards Passaic. The Saint saw
no other car near the side road and was
compelled to repeat
Maxie’s
question.

“How did you get here?”

“I was in the trunk behind,” she
explained. “Hunk was
hanging around so long that I thought I’d
never be able to get
out. That’s why I was late.”

The strident horn blared a continuous warning
to slower
cars as the speedometer needle flickered along the dial.
She
drove fast, flat out, defiantly, yet with a cold machine-tooled
precision
of hand and eye that took the recklessness out of
her contempt for every
other driver’s rights to the road. Per
haps, as they scrambled blasphemously
out of her path, they
caught a glimpse of her fair hair and pale
careless face as she
flashed by, like a valkyrie riding past on
the gales of death.

Simon lay back in his corner and lighted a
cigarette. His
shoulder was throbbing more painfully, and he was glad to
rest. But the puzzle in his mind went on. It was the second
time she
had intervened, this time to save his life; and he was still without a reason.
Except—the obvious one. There seemed
to be no doubt about that; although
until that moment she
had never spoken a word to him. The Saint had
lived his life.
He had philandered and roistered with the best, and done
it
as he did most other things, better than any of them; but in
that mad
moment when she had kissed him he had felt some
thing which was unlike
anything else in his experience, some
thing of which he could almost be
afraid… .

He was too tired to go deeper into it then.
Consciously, he
tried to postpone the accounting which would be forced on
him soon
enough; and he was relieved when the lights of Passaic
sprang up around
them, even though he realized that that
only lessened the
time in which he must make up his mind.”

The girl stopped the car before a small house
on the out
skirts of the town and climbed out. Simon hesitated.

“Hadn’t you better wait here?” he
suggested. “If this bird is
connected with your mob——”

“He isn’t. Come on.”

She was ringing the bell when he reached the
door. After a
lengthy interval the doctor opened it, sleepy-eyed and
dishevelled, in his shirt and trousers. He was a swarthy, stocky man
with a
loose lower lip and rather prominent eyes which
shifted salaciously
behind thick pebble glasses—Simon would not have cared to take his wife there,
but nevertheless the doc
tor’s handling of the present circumstances
was commendable in every way. After one glance at the Saint’s stained shirt and
empty sleeve he led the way to his surgery and lighted the gas
under a
sterilizing tray.

He gave the Saint a long shot of brandy and
proceeded to
wash
his hands methodically in a cracked basin.

“How’ve you been keeping, Fay?” he asked.

“Pretty well,” she replied
casually. “How about you?”

He grunted, drying his hands.

“I’ve been fairly busy. I haven’t taken a
vacation since I
went to the Chicago exhibition.”

The bullet had entered the Saint’s back at an
angle, pierced
cleanly through the latissimus dorsi, ricochetted off a
rib, and
lodged a few inches lower down in the chest wall. Simon
knew
that the lung had not been touched—otherwise he would prob
ably have
been dead before that—but he was grateful for
knowing the exact
extent of the injury. The doctor worked
with impersonal
efficiency; and the girl took a cigarette and watched, passing him things when
he asked for them. Simon
looked at her face—it was impassive, untouched
by her
thoughts.

“Have another drink?” asked the
doctor, when he had
dressed the wound.

Simon nodded. His face was a trifle pale
under his tan.

Fay Edwards poured it out, and the doctor
went back to his
cracked basin and washed his hands again.

“It was worth going to, that
exhibition,” he said. “I was too
hot to enjoy it, but
it was worth seeing. I don’t know how they
managed to put on some
of those shows in the Streets of
Paris.”

He came back and peered at the Saint through
his thick
lenses, which made his eyes seem smaller than they were.

“That will cost you a thousand
dollars,” he said blandly.

The Saint felt in his pockets and remembered
that he hadn’t
a nickel. Fortunately, he had deposited his
ten-thousand-dollar
bonus in a safe place before he went to interview
Inselheim,
but all his small change had been taken when he was
searched
after his capture. That was a broad departure from the un
derworld
tradition which demands that a man who is taken
for a ride shall be
left with whatever money he has on him,
but it was a tribute
to the fear he had inspired which could
transform even a
couple of five-dollar bills and some silver
into potential lethal
weapons in his hands. He smiled crook
edly.

“Is my credit good?”

“Certainly,” said the surgeon
without hesitation. “Send it
to me tomorrow. In small bills,
please. Leave the dressing on
for a couple of days, and try to take things
easy. You may have a touch of fever tomorrow. Take an aspirin.”

He ushered them briskly down the hall,
fondling the girl’s
hand
unnecessarily.

“Come and see me any time you want
anything, Fay. Good
night.”

Throughout their visit he bad not raised an
eyebrow or
asked a pertinent question: one gathered that a wounded
man
waking him up for attention in the small hours of the morning
was nothing
epoch-making in his practice, and that he had
long since found it wise
and profitable to mind his own busi
ness.

They sat in the car, and Simon lighted a
cigarette. The doc
tor’s brandy had taken off some of the deathly lassitude
which
had drained his vitality before; but he knew that the stimula
tion was
only temporary, and he had work to do. Also there
was still the enigma
of Fay Edwards, which he would have to
face before long. If
only she would be merciful and leave the time to him, he would be easier in his
mind: he had his normal
share of the instinct to put off unpleasant
problems. He
didn’t know what answer he could give her; he wanted time
to
think about it, although he knew that time and thought
would bring
him no nearer to an answer. But he knew she
would not be merciful.
The quality of mercy was rare enough
in women, and in anyone like her it
would be rarest of all. She
would face his answer in the same way that
she faced the fact
of death, with the same aloof, impregnable detachment; he
could only sense, in an indefinable intuitive way, what would
lie behind
that cold detachment; and the sensation was
vaguely frightening.

“Where would you like to go?” she asked.

He smoked steadily, avoiding her eyes.

“Back to New York, I suppose. I haven’t
finished my job
tonight. But you can drop me off anywhere it suits
you.”

“You’re not fit to do any more
today.”