Saint in New York (33 page)

He scratched his chin ruminatively for a
moment and then
turned and walked heavily over to the far end of the
room,
where there was a side table with a box of cheap cigars. Si
mon’s eyes
were riveted, in weird fascination, on the pearl-handled revolver which the
detective had left behind. It lay in
solitary magnificence in the exact
centre of the bare table—
the Saint could have stood up and reached it
in one step—
but Fernack was not even looking at him. His back was
still
turned, and he was absorbed in rummaging through the cigar
box.

“On the other hand,” the deep voice
boomed on abstract
edly, “nobody would know before morning. An’ a lot of
things
can happen in a few hours. Take the Big Fellow, for instance.
There’s a
guy that this city is wantin’ even worse than you. It’d
be a great
day for the copper that brought him in. I’m not
sure that even the
politicians could get him out again—be
cause he’s the man
that runs them, an’ if he was inside they’d
be like a snake with
its head cut off. We’ve got a new municipal election comin’ along, and this
old American public has a
way of waking up sometimes, when the right
thing starts ‘em
off. Yeah—if I lost you but I got the Big Fellow instead,
Kestry’d
have to think twice about where he laughed.”

Fernack had found the cigar which he had been
hunting
down. He turned half round, bit off the end, and spat it
through
his teeth. Then he searched vaguely for matches.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully,
“there’s a lot of responsibility wrapped up in a guy like you.”

Simon cleared his throat. It was oddly
difficult to speak dis
tinctly.

“Suppose any of those things happened—if
you did get the
Big Fellow,” he said jerkily. “Nobody’s ever
seen him. Nobody could prove anything. How would that help you so much?”

“I don’t want proof,” Fernack
replied, with a flat arrogance
of certitude that was more deadly than
anything the Saint had
ever heard. “If a guy like you, for
instance, handed a guy to
me and said he was the Big Fellow—I’d get my
proof. That’s
what you don’t understand about the third degree. When you
know you’re right, a full confession is more use than any
amount of
evidence that lawyers can twist around backwards. Don’t worry. I’d get my
proof.”

Simon emptied his glass. His cigarette had
gone out and he
had not noticed it—he threw it away and lighted another.
A
new warmth was spreading over him, driving away the intoler
able
fatigue that gripped his limbs, crushing down pain; it
might have been the
quality of Fernack’s brandy, or the dawn
of a hope that had
been dead for a long time. The unwonted
hoarseness still clogged his throat.

But the fight was back in him. The hope and
courage, the
power and tie glory, were creeping back through his veins
in
a mighty tide that washed defeat and despondency away. The
sound of
trumpets echoed in his ears, faint and far away—how
faint and far, perhaps
no one but himself would ever know.
But the sound was there. And if it was
a deeper note, a little
less brazen and flamboyant than it had ever
been before, only
the Saint knew how much that also meant.

He stood up and reached for the gun. Even
then, he could
scarcely believe that it was in his power to touch it—that
it wouldn’t vanish into thin air as soon as his fingers came within
an inch of
it, a derisive will-o’-the-wisp created by weariness
and despair out of the
fumes of unnatural stimulation. At
least, there must be a string tied to
it—it would be jerked
suddenly out of his reach, while the detective
jeered at him
ghoulishly… . But Fernack wasn’t even looking at him.
He
had turned away again and was fumbling with a box of
matches as
if he had forgotten what he had picked them up
for.

Simon touched the gun. The steel was still
warm from
Fernack’s pocket. His fingers closed round the butt,
tightened
round its solid contours; it fitted beautifully into his
hand. He
held it a moment, feeling the supremely balanced weight of
it
along the muscles of his arm; and then he put it away in his
pocket

“Take care of it,” Fernack said,
striking his match. “I’m
rather fond of that gun.”

“Thanks, Fernack,” said the Saint
quietly. “I’ll report to
you by half-past nine—with or without the Big
Fellow.”

“You’d better wash and clean up a bit
and get your coat
on properly before you go,” said Fernack casually.
“The way
you look now, any dumb cop would take you in on
sight.”

Ten minutes later Simon Templar left the
house. Fernack
did not even watch him go.
 

*
   
*
   
*

Chris Cellini himself appeared behind the bars
of his basement door a few moments after Simon rang the bell. He recog
nized the
Saint almost at once and let him in. In spite of the
hour, his rich voice
had not lost a fraction of its welcoming
cordiality.

“Come in, Simon! I hope you don’t want a
steak now, but
you can have a drink.”

He was leading the way back towards the
kitchen, but
Simon hesitated in the corridor.

“Is anyone else here?”

Chris shook his head.

“Nobody but ourselves. The boys have
only just gone—we had a late night tonight, or else you’d of found me in
bed.”

He sat the Saint down at the big centre
table, stained with the relics of an evening’s conviviality, and brought up a
bot
tle and a couple of clean glasses. His alert brown eyes took in
the pallor
of Simon’s face, the marks on his shirt which showed
beyond the edge of
his coat, and the stiffness of his right arm.

“You’ve been in the wars, Simon. Have
you seen a doctor?
Are
you all right?”

“Yes, I’m all right,” said the
Saint laconically.

Chris regarded him anxiously for a moment
longer; and
then his rich habitual laugh pealed out again—a big, mean
ingless,
infectious laugh that was the ultimate expression of
his sunny
personality. If there was a trace of artificiality about
it then,
Simon understood the spirit of it.

“Say, one of these days you’ll get into
some serious trouble,
and I shall have to go to your funeral. The
last time I went to
a funeral, it was a man who drank himself to death. I remem
ber a
couple of years ago
…”

He talked with genial inconsequence for nearly
an hour,
and Simon was unspeakably glad to have all effort taken
out
of his hands. Towards the end of that time Simon was watch
ing the
slow crawling of the hands of the clock on the wall till
his vision
blurred; the sudden jangle of the bell in the passage
outside made him
start. He downed the rest of his drink
quickly.

“I think that’s for me,” he said.

Chris nodded, and the Saint went outside and
picked up
the receiver.

“Hullo,” said a thick masculine
voice. “Is dat Mabel?”

“No, this is not Mabel,” said the
Saint viciously. “And I
hope she sticks a knife in you when you do
find her.”

Over in Brooklyn, a disconsolate Mr.
Bungstatter jiggered the hook querulously and then squinted blearily at the
danc
ing figures on his telephone dial and stabbed at them dog
gedly
again.

The Saint went back to the kitchen and
shrugged heavily
in answer to Chris’s unspoken question. Chris was silent
for
a short while and then went on talking again as if nothing had
happened.
In ten minutes the telephone rang again.

Simon lighted a fresh cigarette to steady his
nerves—he was
surprised to find how much they had been shaken. He went
out and
listened again.

“Simon? This is Fay.”

The Saint’s heart leaped, and his hand
tightened on the
receiver; he was pressing it hard against his ear as if he
were
afraid of missing a word. She had no need to tell him who it
was—the
cadences of her voice would ring in his memory for
the rest of his life.

“Yes,” he said. “What’s the
news?”

“I haven’t been able to get him yet.
I’ve tried all the usual channels. I’m still trying. He doesn’t seem to be
around. He
may get one of my messages at any time, or try to get
through
to me on his own. I don’t know. I’ll keep on all night if I have
to. Where will you be?”

“I’ll stay here,” said the Saint

“Can’t you get some rest?” she
asked—and he knew that
he would never, never again hear such soft
magic in a voice.

“If we don’t find him before
morning,” he said gently, “I
shall have all the
time in the world to rest.”

He went back slowly into the kitchen. Chris
took one look
at his face and stood up.

“There’s a bed upstairs for you, Simon.
Why don’t you lie
down for a bit?”

Simon spread out his hands.

“Who’ll answer the telephone?”

“I’ll hear it,” Chris assured him
convincingly. “The least
little thing wakes me up. Don’t worry.
Directly that telephone
rings, I’ll call you.”

The Saint hesitated. He was terribly tired,
and there was no
point in squandering his waning reserve of strength.
There
was nothing that he himself could do until the vital message
came
through from Fay Edwards. His helplessness, the futile
inaction of it,
maddened him; but there was no answer to the
fact. The rest might
clear his mind, restore part of his body,
freshen his brain and
nerves so that he would not bungle his
last chance as he had
bungled so much of late. Everything, in the end, would hang on his own
quickness and judgment; he knew that if he failed he would have to go back to
Fernack,
squaring the account by the same code which had given him
this one fighting break.
…

Before he had mustered the unwilling instinct
to protest,
he had been shepherded upstairs, his coat taken from him,
his tie loosened. Once on the bed, sleep came astoundingly. His
weariness
had reached the point where even the dizzy
whirligig of his mind
could not stave off the healing fogs of
unconsciousness any
longer.

When he woke up there was a brilliant New
York morning
in the translucent sky, and Chris was standing beside his
bed.

“Your call’s just come, Simon.”

The Saint nodded and looked at his watch. It
was just before
eight o’clock. He rolled out of bed and pushed back his
dis
ordered hair, and as he did so felt the burning temperature of
his
forehead. His shoulder was stiffened and aching. Yet
he felt better and
stronger than he had been before his sleep.

“There’ll be some coffee and breakfast
for you as soon as
you’re ready,” Chris told him.

Simon smiled and stumbled downstairs to the
telephone.

“I’m glad you’ve had a rest,” said
the girl’s voice.

The Saint’s heart was beating in a rhythmic
palpitation
which he could feel against his ribs. His mouth was dry
and
hot, and the emptiness was trying to struggle back into his
stomach.

“It’s done me good,” he said.
“Give me anything to fight,
and I’ll lick it. What do you know,
Fay?”

“Can you be at the Vandrick National Bank
on Fifth
Avenue at nine? I think you’ll find what you want.”

His heart seemed to stand still for a second.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“I had to park the car,” she went
on. “There were too many
cops looking for it after last night Can you
fix something
else?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”