“Where do I find Valcross?”
“I don’t know,” said the Saint, with splinters of steel glittering in his eyes. “The last time I saw him, he was occupying a private cage in the monkey-house at the Bronx Zoo, disguised as a retired detective.”
Kestry’s fist smacked out again with malignant force, and the Saint staggered and gripped the edge of the door for support.
“Where’s Valcross?”
Simon shook his head mutely. There was no strength in his knees, and he felt dazed and giddy. He had never dreamed of being hit with such power.
Kestry’s flinty eyes were fixed on him mercilessly.
“So you think you won’t talk, eh?”
“I’m rather particular about who I talk to, you big baboon,” said the Saint unsteadily. “If this is your idea of playing at detectives, I don’t wonder that you’re a flop.”
Kestry’s stare reddened.
“I’ve got you, anyhow,” he grated, and his fist swung round again and sent the Saint reeling against a bookcase.
He caught the Saint by his coat lapels with one vast hand, and dragged him up again. As he did so, he seemed to notice for the first time that one of Simon’s sleeves was hanging empty. He flung the coat off his right shoulder, and saw the dull red of drying stains on his shirt.
“Where did you get that?” he barked.
“A louse bit me,” said the Saint. “Now I come to think of it, he must have been a relation of yours.”
Kestry grabbed his wrist and twisted the arm up adroitly behind his back. The strength of the detective’s hands was terrific. A white-hot blaze of pure agony went through the Saint’s injured shoulder, and a kind of mist swam across his eyes. He knew that he could not hold up much longer, even though he had nothing to tell. But the medieval methods of the third degree would batter and torture him into unconsciousness before they were satisfied with the consolidation of their status as the spiritual heirs of Sherlock Holmes.
And then, through the hammering of many waters that seemed to be deadening his ears, he heard the single sharp ring of a bell, and the racking of his arm eased.
“See who it is, Dan,” ordered Kestry.
Bonacci nodded and went out. Kestry kept his grip on the Saint’s arm, ready to renew his private entertainment as soon as the intrusion was disposed of, but his eyes were watching the door.
It was Inspector Fernack who came in.
He stood just inside the room, pushing back his hat, and took in the scene with hard and alert grey eyes. His crag-like face showed neither elation nor surprise; the set of his massive shoulders was as solid and immutable as a mountain.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“We got the Saint,” Kestry proclaimed exultantly. “The other guy—Valcross—ain’t been here, but this punk’ll soon tell me where to look for him. I was just puttin’ him on the grill—”
“You’re telling me?” Fernack roared in on him abruptly, in a voice that dwarfed even the bull-throated harshness of his subordinate’s. “You bloody fool! Who told you to do it here? Where d’you get that stuff, anyway?”
Kestry gulped as if he could not believe his ears.
“But say, Chief, where’s the harm? This mug wouldn’t come through—he was wisecrackin’ as if this was some game we were playin’ at—and I didn’t want to waste any time gettin’ Valcross as well—”
“So that’s what they taught you at the Police Academy, huh?” Fernack ripped in searingly. “I always wondered what that place was for. That’s a swell idea, Kestry. You go ahead. Tear the place to pieces. Wake all the other guests in the hotel up an’ get a crowd outside. Bonacci can be ringing up the tabloids an’ gettin’ some reporters in to watch while you’re doing it. The Commissioner’ll be tickled to death. He’ll probably resign and hand you his job!”
Kestry let go the Saint’s wrist and edged away. Simon had never seen anything like it. The great blustering bully of a few moments ago was transformed into the most ludicrous semblance of a schoolboy who had been caught stealing apples. Kestry practically wriggled.
“I was only tryin’ to save time, Chief,” he pleaded.
“Get outside, and have a taxi waiting,” Fernack commanded tersely. “I’ll bring the Saint down myself. After that you can go home. Bonacci, you stay here an’ wait for Valcross if he comes in…”
Simon had admired Fernack before, but he had never appreciated the dominance of the man’s character so much. Fernack literally towered over the scene like a god, booming out curt precise directions that had the effect of cannon-balls. In less than a minute after he had entered the room he had cleaned it up as effectively as if he had gone through it with a giant’s flail. Kestry almost slunk away, vacating the apartment as if he never wished to see it again. Bonacci, who had been edging away into an inconspicuous corner, sank into a chair as if he hoped it would swallow him up completely until the thunder had gone. Fernack was left looming over the situation like a volcano, and there was a gleam in his frosted gaze which hinted that he would not have cared if there had been another half-dozen pygmies for him to destroy.
He eyed the Saint steadily, taking in the marks of battle which were on him. The detective’s keen stare missed nothing, but no reaction appeared on the granite squareness of his face. From the beginning he had given no sign of recognition, and Simon, accepting the cue, was equally impassive.
“Come on,” Fernack grunted.
He took the Saint’s sound arm and led him out to the elevator. They rode down in silence, and found Kestry waiting sheepishly with a taxi. Fernack pushed the Saint in and turned to his lieutenant.
“You can go with us,” he said.
They journeyed downtown in the same atmosphere of silent tension. Kestry’s muteness was aggrieved and plaintive, yet wisely self-effacing; Fernack refrained from talking because he chose to refrain—he was majestically unconcerned with what reasons might be attributed to his taciturnity. Simon wondered what was passing in the iron detective’s mind. Fernack had given him his chance once, had even confessed himself theoretically in sympathy, but things had passed beyond a point where personal prejudices could dictate their course. The Saint thought that he had discerned a trace of private enthusiasm in the temperature of the bawling-out which Fernack had given Kestry, but even that meant little. The Saint had given the city of New York a lot of trouble since that night when he had talked to Fernack in Central Park, and he respected Fernack’s rugged honesty too much to think of any personal appeal. As the cards fell, so they lay.
The Saint was getting beyond caring. The vast weariness which had enveloped him had dragged him down to the point where he could do little more than wait with outward stubbornness for whatever Fate had in store. If he must go down, he would go down as he had lived, with a jest and a smile, but the fight was sapped out of him. His whole being had settled down to the acceptance of an infinity of pain and fatigue. He only wanted to rest. He scarcely noticed the brief order from Fernack which switched the cab across towards Washington Square, and when it stopped and the door was opened he climbed out apathetically, and was surprised to find that he was not in Centre Street.
Fernack followed him out and turned to Kestry.
“This is my apartment,” he said. “I’m going to have a talk to the Saint here. You can go on. Report to me in the morning. Good night.”
He took the Saint’s arm again and led him into the house, leaving the bewildered Kestry to find his own explanations. Fernack’s apartment was on the street level, at the back. Simon was a trifle perplexed to find that it had a bright comfortable living-room, with a few good etchings on the walls and bookcases filled with books which looked as if they had been read.
“You’re never too old to learn,” said Fernack, who missed nothing. “I been tryin’ to get some dope about these Greeks. Did you ever hear of Euripides?” He pronounced it Eury-pieds. “I asked a Greek who keeps a chop-house on Mott Street, an’ he hadn’t, but the clerk in the book store told me he w
as a big shot.” He threw his hat down in a chair and picked up a bottle. “Would you like a drink?”
“I could use it,” said the Saint with a wry grin.
Fernack poured it out and handed him the glass. It was a liberal measure. He gave the Saint time to swallow some of it and light a cigarette, and then spat at the cuspidor which stood out incongruously by the hearth.
“Saint, you’re a god-damn fool,” he said abruptly.
“Aren’t we all?” said the Saint helplessly.
“I mean you more than most. I’ve talked to you once. You know what it’s all about. You know what I’m supposed to do now.”
“Fetch out the old baseball bat and rubber hose, I take it,” said the Saint savagely. “Well, I know all about it. I’ve met your Mr Kestry. As a substitute for intelligence and a reasonable amount of routine work, it must be the slickest thing that was ever invented.”
“We use it here,” Fernack said trenchantly. “We’ve found that it works as well as anything. The only thing is, some fools don’t know when you’ve gotta use it and when you’re wastin’ your time. That ain’t the point. I got you here for something else. You’ve been out and around for some time since we had our talk. How close have you got to the Big Fellow?”
The question slammed out like a shot, without pause or artifice, and something in the way it was put told Simon that the time for evasions and badinage was over.
“I was pretty damn near it when I walked into Kestry’s loving arms,” he said. “In fact, I could have picked up a message in about an hour that ought to have taken me straight to him.”
Fernack nodded. His keen grey eyes were fixed steadily on the Saint’s face.
“I’m not askin’ you how you did it or who’s sending you the message. You move fast. You’re clever. It’s queer that one little bullet can break up a guy like you.”
He put a hand in his hip pocket, as if his last sentence had suggested a thought which required concrete expression, and pulled out a pearl-handled gun. He tossed it in the palm of his hand.
“Guns mean a lot in this racket,” he said. “If a bullet out of a gun hadn’t hit you, you might have got away from Kestry and Bonacci. I wouldn’t put it beyond you. If you had this gun now, you’d be able to get away from me.” He dropped the revolver carelessly on the table and stared at it. “That would be pretty tough for me,” he said.
Simon looked at the weapon, a couple of yards away, and sank back farther into his chair. He took another drink from his glass.
“Don’t play cat-and-mouse, Fernack,” he said. “It isn’t worthy of you.”
“It would be pretty tough,” Fernack persisted, as if he had not heard the interruption. “Particularly after I brought Kestry as far as the door an’ then sent him home. There wouldn’t be anything much I could put up for an alibi. I didn’t have to see you alone in my own apartment, without even a guy waitin’ in the hall in case you gave any trouble, when I could’ve taken you to any station house in the city or right down to Centre Street. If anything went wrong, I’d have a hell of a lot of questions to answer, an’ Kestry wouldn’t help me. He must be feelin’ pretty sore at the way I bawled him out at the Waldorf. It’d give him a big kick if I slipped up an’ gave him the laugh back at me. Yeah, it’d be pretty tough for me if you got away, Saint.”
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. Simon’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 abstractedly, “nobody would know before morning. An’ a lot of things can happen in a few hours. Take this 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—because 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 distinctly.
“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 intolerable 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 the 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 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.
2
Chris Cellini himself appeared behind the bars of his basement door a few moments after Simon rang the bell. He recognised 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 bottle 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, meaningless, 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 remember 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 watching 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 dancing figures on his telephone dial and stabbed at them doggedly again.
The Saint In New York (The Saint Series) Page 20