Saint Steps In (14 page)

The Saint straightened up.

He took the gun out of his shoulder holster and thumbed
off the safety catch with his right
hand while his left turned
the
door handle and eased the door open. The hinges re
volved without a creak. He crossed the hallway in
three soundless steps, and stood just inside the laboratory.

“Hullo, Karl,” he said softly.
  

3

The man whirled at his voice, and then stood rigidly as the
Saint moved his automatic very
slightly to draw attention to
its place in the conference.

“Looking for something?” Simon inquired politely.

The man didn’t answer. Above the fold of the handkerchief
that crossed his nose, his eyes were
cold and ugly. The Saint
had no more doubt whatever about one part of his identification. He
wouldn’t forget those eyes. They were the kind that
didn’t like anybody, and wanted to show it. They were the kind
of eyes that the Saint loved to be disliked by.

“Suppose you take the awning off your kisser,” Simon sug
gested, “and let’s really get acquainted.

The man finally
spoke.

“Suppose I don’t.”

If there had been any doubt left, it would have ended then.
That hoarse cavernous voice was recorded in the Saint’s mem
ory as accurately as the eyes.

“If
you don’t,” Simon said definitely, “I’ll just have to shoot
it off. Like this.”

The
gun in his hand coughed once, a crisp bark of power
that slammed the eardrums, and the bullet ruffled the cloth over
one of the man’s ears before it spanged into the
wall behind
him. The man ducked after
the bullet had gone by, and felt
the
side of his head with an incredulous hand. His forehead
was three shades paler.

“Please,” said the Saint.

He
was not particularly concerned about noise any more.
The windows were closed, and they were far enough from the
house to be alone even for shooting purposes.

The man put his hands up slowly and untied the handker
chief behind the back of his head,
revealing the rest of his face.
He had a short
beak of a nose and a square bony chin, and the
mouth between them was thin and bracketed with deep ver
tical wrinkles. And the Saint knew him that way,
too.

He had been a silent member of Frank Imberline’s entourage
at the Shoreham the night before.

He certainly got around.

One of his hands
was moving self-consciously towards his
pocket
with the crumpled handkerchief, and the Saint said
gently: “No, brother. Just hold it. Because if
you tried a fast
draw I might have to
kill you, and then we wouldn’t be able
to talk without a medium, and I’m
fresh out of mediums.”

The movement
stopped; and Simon smiled again.

“That’s
better. Now will you turn around?” The man obeyed.
“Now walk backwards towards me.”

The man shuffled back, dragging his feet reluctantly. When
he was still six feet away, the Saint
took two noiseless strides to
meet him. Without changing his grip on his gun, he brought
up his right hand and smashed the butt
down on the back of
the
man’s head. The man’s knees buckled, and he feel for
ward on to his hands. Simon trod hard on the small of his back
and flattened him. Then he came down on him with
his knees.

He dropped his
gun into a side pocket, grasped the lapels of
the
man’s coat, and hauled it back over the man’s shoulders
to the level of
his elbows. In a few lightning movements he
emptied
the man’s pockets. He got a short-barreled revolver
from one hip, and a blackjack from the other. The
other pockets yielded very little—a ten-dollar bill, some small change, a
car key, one of those pocket-knives that open up
into the
equivalent of a small chest
of tools, and a thin wallet.

Simon
gathered up the revolver, the blackjack, the knife,
and the wallet, and retreated with them to the
nearest work
bench. He put the revolver
and the knife in another of his
pockets. Then he took out his own automatic again and kept it in his
hand. He sat side-saddle on the bench while he emptied
the wallet. It contained three new twenty-dollar
bills, a cou
ple of stamps, the stub of
a Pullman ticket, a draft card with a
4-F classification, and a New York driving license.

Both the draft
card and the driving license bore the name of
Karl
Morgen.

“Karl,”
said the Saint softly, “it was certainly nice of you to
drop in.”

The
man on the floor groaned and struggled to get his
head off the ground.

Simon
Templar fished out a cigarette and then a book of matches. He thumbed one of
the matches over until he could
rub the head on the striking pad one-handed. His eyes and his
gun stayed watchfully on his prisoner.
And all of him was
awake with
a great and splendiferous serenity.

If
there could have been anything better than a hundred
per cent fulfillment of the wildest possibilities he had dreamed of, he
had been modest enough not to ask for it.

He could get along very beautifully with this much.

Karl Morgen. A
man who had something to do with Imberline. A man who could be used for
kidnaping. A man who had
once worked for
Calvin Gray. A man of very questionable
antecedents. A man who might tie many curious things to
gether.
All combined in one blessed bountiful bonanza.

The Saint exhaled smoke and regarded him almost affec
tionately.

He said: “Get up.”

Morgen had his head off the ground. He got his elbows un
der him and hunched his back. Then he
gathered in his long
legs. Somehow he got himself together and crawled up off the
floor. He stood unsteadily, clutching
the end of the work
bench
for support.

“Karl,”
said the Saint, “you used to work here.”

“So what?”

“Why did you come back?”
           

The man’s eyes were unflinchingly malevolent.

“That’s none
of your business, bud.”

“Oh, but it
is. Where were you last night?”

Morgen took his time.

Then
he said: “In Washington.”

“So you were. You were in the dining room of the Shoreham
with Frank Imberline.”

“That’s
no crime.”

“We
got a bit crowded, and you slipped a note in my
pocket.”

“I did not.”

“The
note said ‘Mind your own business.’ “

“Why don’t you do that, bud?”

The Saint was still patient.

“Where
were you after that?”

Again that deliberate pause. This wasn’t a man who pan
icked. He thought all around what he
was going to say before
he said it.

“I
was with a friend. Playin’ cards.”

“You were with a friend. But you weren’t playing cards.
You were trying to kidnap Miss Gray. That was when we met
again.”

“You’ll have to prove that, bud.”

“Both
Miss Gray and I are ready to identify you.”

“And my friend will say we were playin’ cards.”

“Quite
a while after that,” Simon continued unperturbed,
“did you by any chance take a long shot at me
through my
window at the
Shoreham?”

“No.”

Simon
inhaled throughtfully.

“No,
maybe that wasn’t you. That was probably your
chunky friend.” He glanced down at the Pullman
stub for a
moment. “You came up
on the sleeper last night, so you’d
have been headed for the station by that time.”

“It’s
a free country.”

“I
didn’t think you’d be a guy who appreciated free coun
tries.”

The
other went on looking at him with his mouth clamped
shut and his eyes hard with hate.

“I
hope you know just what sort of a spot you’re in,” said
the Saint carefully. “Kidnaping
has been a federal rap for
quite
a while now, and I don’t imagine you’d be very happy about having a lot of
G-men move in on your life. On top of
that, I catch you breaking in here——
”

“I didn’t break anything. The door was unlocked.”

“That
doesn’t make any difference. And you know it. You
were carrying concealed weapons——
”

“Only because you say so.”

“And
just how do you explain being here?”

“I
left a coupla books,” Morgen said slowly. “I forgot them when I was
packin’. I came back to get them.”

“Why
didn’t you go to the house and ask for them?”

“I
didn’t want to make any trouble. I just thought I could
find them and take them away.”

Simon shook his
head judicially.

“It’s
a lovely story, Karl. The FBI will have lots of fun with it.”

“Go ahead. Tell them.”

“Aren’t
you afraid they might be a little rough with you?”

“Why don’t you turn me in and find out?”

“Because,”
said the Saint, “I want to talk to you myself
first.”

The man licked his lips, standing very stiffly and still holding
on to the work-bench with big bony
hands.

“I don’t
want to talk to you, bud.”

“But you don’t have any choice,” Simon pointed out mildly.
“And I’ve got a whole lot of
questions I want answered. I
want to know who gave you that note to put in my pocket at
the Shoreham. I want to know who hired
you to put the arm
on
Madeline Gray. I want to know who you’re working for,
in a general way. I want to know where Calvin Gray
is right
now.”

“You better ask somebody who can tell you.”

“And who’s that?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The Saint smiled very faintly.

“Tough guy, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“So am I,” Simon said, rather diffidently. “I’m sure you
know who I am. And I expect you’ve heard about
me before.
I’m a pretty tough guy too, Karl.
I could have quite a good
time
getting rough with you.”

“Yeah? When do you start?”

“You don’t want to play?”

“No,
bud.”

The smile didn’t leave the Saint’s lips.

“Bud,” he said, “your dialogue is a little dull.”

He put his weight on the foot that was on the floor, and fol
lowed it with the other.

He knew exactly what he was going to do, and he was per
fectly calm about it. It wouldn’t be
pretty, but that wasn’t
his
fault. He couldn’t see anything handy to tie Morgen up
with at the moment, and he couldn’t afford to take
any chances.
The man really was tough,
out of the down-to-bone fiber of
him—and dangerous.

The Saint’s
expression was amiable and engaging, and he really felt that way, taking an
audit of his good fortune. Only
the icy
blue of his eyes matched the part of his mind that was detached and passionless
and without pity or friendliness.

He
walked around the bench until he was within arm’s
length of Morgen, and raised his right hand until his gun was at the
level of Morgen’s face. The other stared at it without
blinking. Simon swung his wrist and forearm through a sudden
arc that smashed the gun barrel against the side
of the man’s
head. Morgen staggered
and clung to the table. The Saint
took
another step towards him and jabbed the muzzle of the
gun like a kicking piston into the region of his
solar plexus.
Morgen gasped throatily
and sagged towards him.

The Saint took a half step back and slipped the automatic
into his pocket. He used Morgan’s chin
like a punch-bag,
giving
him a left hook and then a right. The man let go the
table and reeled back until he crashed into the wall
behind him
and slid down it to the
floor.