He peeled a dozen ten-pound notes off a thick pack and slipped them contemptuously across the table. Nilder picked them up, fingered them nervously, and pushed them into his pocket. He knew that Goldman could order him about as he willed-he was afraid of the big man from St. Louis, afraid of his cold black eyes and deep masterful voice, even more afraid of what the man from St. Louis could have told the police. But he was not happy. Violence was not in his line-not even when he had to take no active part in it, and was still paid generously.
He rose and picked up his hat.
"All right, Mr. Goldman. I'll be going."
"Just a minute."
Tex Goldman came out of his chair, stepped across to the smaller man. He caught Nilder by the lapel of his coat, quite gently; but his cold black eyes drilled into the other's brain like jagged iron.
"Talking of telling things to the dicks don't sound so good between friends, Nilder. Let's say I just mentioned it in case you didn't feel like listening to reason. You don't want to go thinking up any ideas like that by yourself. You play ball with me, and I'll play ball with you. But any time you think it might pay you to squeal . . ."
He never sounded like finishing the sentence. And Ronald Nilder went away with that deliberate half-threat ringing in his head, and the memory of Tex Goldman's grim stare before his eyes.
The interview took place at Tex Goldman's apartment. Tex had started his sojourn in London at a West End hotel, but with the prospect of a longer stay in front of him he had moved out to an apartment of his own in an expensive modern block near Baker Street. It was the nearest approach he could find to the American model to which he was accustomed, and on the whole it suited him very well. The rent was exorbitant, but it had the advantage of being on the first floor with an, emergency fire-escape exit down to an alleyway which communicated with a dirty lane in the rear.
It was eight o'clock when Nilder left. Goldman dressed himself leisurely in a new suit of evening clothes, put on a white Panama hat, and went down to W. 1.
He dined at the Berkeley, without haste, and went on later to a night club that was still waiting to be invaded by the after-theatre patrons. There was a girl there who came to his table-he had met her there regularly before. Tex Goldman ordered champagne.
"Guess you're too good for this, baby," he said. "Why don't you take a rest?"
He had asked that before; and she made the equivalent of every other answer she had given him.
"Would I get a lot of rest in your flat?"
Tex Goldman grinned and discarded another half-smoked cigar. He knew what he wanted, knew how to get it, and had an infinite capacity for patience in certain directions.
It was after two o'clock when he left the club-and the girl-and took a taxi back to Baker Street. In his apartment he exchanged his tail coat for a silk dressing gown, removed his collar and tie, and settled himself in an armchair over an evening paper.
Half an hour later his bell rang, and he went to open the door. A red-eyed Ted Orping stood outside, looking rather dishevelled in spite of his flashy clothes, with Clem Enright a little behind him.
"Well?"
There was trouble plainly marked on every feature of Ted Orping's face, ratified in the peaked countenance of Clem Enright; but Tex Goldman showed no emotion. He let the Green Cross boys pass, closed the door after them, and followed them through to the sitting room. Clem Enright sat awkwardly on the edge of an upright chair, while Ted Orping flung himself asprawl in an armchair and kept his hat on. Naturally it was Ted Orping who was the spokesman.
"Boss-we were hijacked."
Goldman gauged the length of his cigar butt calmly.
"How?"
"It was Corrigan's fault. Joe said he must have a drink before we did the job, an' he drove us round to Sam Harp's. Sam don't care what time it is if he's awake. We had a couple, an' came out-Clem an' me first, an' Joe last. Least, we thought it was Joe. We got in the car and drove off. We could only see what we thought was Joe's back, driving, an' we went up Regent Street to Peabody's. Did the job properly, just as it'd been fixed, an' hopped back in the wagon. There was a copper-a bull-on the beat, but he never got near us. We went around Regent's Park, an' then this guy cut out of it an' stopped. I still thought it was Joe. I asked him what he was playin' at, an' then he turned round. It wasn't Joe."
"Who was it?"
"The Saint." Ted looked at Goldman grimly and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "He stuck us up with a gun, an' took the bag. I went for him, an' his gun squirted ammonia in my face. He had another wagon fixed for his getaway. I was blind for a quarter of an hour. Clem had to drive me here."
Tex Goldman's cigar had gone out. He shredded it into the wastepaper basket.
" Where's Corrigan?"
"I dunno. We come straight here. There wasn't nothing we could do."
Goldman sat down. His square stubby fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, while his narrowed black eyes remained fixed on Ted Orping's face.
"We ain't here to be hijacked," he said. "We're here for all we can get. Get it quick-no mistakes-and scram. No one's gonna give us the runaround. Not dicks, Saints, nor anyone else. Anyone that gets in the way-well, it'll be just too bad about him. You got a gun. It's meant to be used. Back where I come from, we shoot fast and often. It saves trouble."
"Sure."
The black eyes swivelled round to Clem.
"You got a gun, Enright?"
"N-no, sir."
Goldman hitched open a drawer and dragged out a heavy blue-black automatic and a box of cartridges. He tossed the items, one after another, across the room to the little cockney.
"You got one now-and I didn't give it you for ornament. There's no room for pikers or double-crossers in this racket. Anyone that don't toe the line is only safe in one place. Anyone-understand ?"
"Y-yes, sir."
Clem Enright turned the gun over in his hand, felt the weight of it, tested his fingers round the grip. He put it away in his pocket, reluctantly, with the box of cartridges, his eyes gleaming. He drew a deep breath and held some of it back, giving himself a chest, and conscious all the time of Ted Orping's critical scrutiny.
"I'll use it, Mr. Goldman," he said.
The whir of the front-door buzzer broke in on them sharply, sounding again and again, insistently.
Tex Goldman raised the lid of a cigar box.
"See who it is, Ted."
Orping slouched up and went out. The front door opened, and Joe Corrigan came bursting through into the sitting room. Ted Orping followed him in. Corrigan's hair was awry, his tie loose and askew; and his clothes looked as if he had been pulled backwards through a hedge. He stood just inside the room, breathing heavily, glancing from one face to another.
Goldman surveyed him with distaste.
"What d'you mean by coming here like that?" he demanded harshly. "Are you aiming to tell the world I'm in the habit of entertaining a pack of hoboes in my apartment at three o'clock in the morning ?"
"I'm sorry," Corrigan said stolidly. "I thought I'd better come here at once and tell you what happened."
"I've heard most of it. What happened to you?"
Corrigan rubbed the palms of his hands down his trousers.
"We went to Sam Harp's, and I was coming out last. Ted was in a hurry to go, and I stayed to pay for the last round. There's a dark corridor between Sam's private room and the side door, and as I came down there I was caught from behind. There was two of 'em- whoever they were-and they had a handkerchief with chloroform on it. I sort of passed out. When I woke up I was lying on a heap of bricks in a building lot just next to Sam's."
"What did Harp say about it?"
"He didn't know anything. Said he locked the door after he let us in, and couldn't see that anyone had forced it."
"Have you any idea who the other guy was-besides the Saint?"
"I don't know, Mr. Goldman. I didn't hear neither of them speak --"
Corrigan's voice died away.
The cold black eyes of Tex Goldman, screwed down to vicious pinpoints, were boring into his face with an inclement ferocity that appalled him. Ted Orping started up-one abrupt menacing movement. Clem Enright moved his feet restlessly, his mouth opening in stupid perplexity.
Tex Goldman's cigar waved a slight gesture of restraint.
"You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned the Saint, Corrigan," said the gunman silkily. "Who told you that was who it was ?"
"I don't . . . Nobody told me, Mr. Goldman. I-I s'pose --"
"You skunk!"
Goldman moved with startling suddenness, swiftly and savagely. He pulled himself out of his chair and stepped up to within a foot of the Irishman. His eyes never left the other's face. One of his hands grasped the man's coat collar; the other dived into Corrigan's pockets, one after another, like a striking snake. It came out of one trouser pocket with a roll of new one-pound notes.
He flung Corrigan back. Ted Orping seized Corrigan from behind as the Irishman's fists clenched.
"You dirty double-crossing rat! So you sold us to the Saint!"
Goldman tore the notes across and across, and scattered them over the floor.
"Get out of here!"
"Listen, Goldman-I didn't --"
"Get out!"
Ted Orping twisted the man round and pushed him towards the door. Corrigan's eyes flamed, and he took a pace back into the room. Orping's hand touched his hip.
Then Joe Corrigan turned on his heel and left the apartment.
Tex Goldman looked at Orping steadily. There was a question in Ted Orping's gaze, another question in Tex Goldman's. Temporarily forgotten in his corner, Clem Enright shuffled his feet again, open-mouthed.
"There's only one way to deal with traitors," Goldman said.
Ted Orping nodded. He shrugged, with the callous understanding that he had been taught, and pulled down the brim of his hat. He went out without a word.
He caught Joe Corrigan in the street.
"Walk a little way with me, Joe?"
"You get away from me," grated Corrigan surlily. "I don't want your company."
Ted Orping took his arm.
"Aw, come on, Joe. You don't understand the boss. He's a great guy, but naturally he has to be suspicious. You must admit what you said didn't sound right. I just took his part so's I could try an' make things right for you when he cools off."
"I never double-crossed anyone," said Corrigan. "I dipped a toff's wallet on a bus this morning, and got those notes."
"O' course, Joe. That's what he ought to have thought of. I understand."
They walked up Baker Street from the Marylebone Road crossing. Near the top, a few yards from Regent's Park, Orping steered the other off to the right into a dimly lighted mews. They went a little way down it, and Corrigan stopped.
"What's the idea?" he demanded sullenly. "We don't want to go this way."
Ted Orping looked left and right.
"This'll do," he said.
"What for?"
"Just to give you what's coming to you, rat."
He fired three times before Joe Corrigan could speak
CHAPTER III SIMON TEMPLAR came back from Amsterdam a few days later. The items of jewellery which sometimes came his way were never fenced in England-the Saint was far too notorious for that, and caution in the right place was still his longest suit. He travelled by roundabout routes, for his movements were always a subject of absorbing interest to the watchful powers of Scotland Yard. That particular trip took him the best part of a week, but it was worth three thousand pounds to him. He felt no remorse on account of Mr. Peabody. The insurance companies would cover most if not all of the loss, and Mr. Peabody had definitely asked for it. As for those insurance companies, Simon felt that the blow would not be likely to shake their stock to its foundations. In a misguided moment of altruistic zeal he had once attempted to insure his own life, and had discovered that so long as he undertook not to fly aeroplanes, travel in tropical parts, enter into naval or military service, become a lion-tamer or a steeplejack, or in fact do anything whatsoever that might by any conceivable chance endanger the life of a reasonably healthy and intelligent man, the insurance company would be charmed to accept his premiums. His opinion of insurance companies was that they were bloated organizations which were delighted to take anybody's money over risks that had been eliminated from every angle that human ingenuity could foresee. They were fair game so far as he was concerned, and his conscience was even more pachydermatous than usual over their rare misfortunes.
But he came back to a London in which the insurance companies were more worried than they had been for many years.
Patricia Holm met him in the Haymarket, where the Air Union bus decanted him after an uneventful journey from Ostend. One of the first things he saw was a crimson evening newspaper poster proclaiming "Another Bank Hold-up," but he was not immediately impressed. They strolled up to Oddenino's for a cocktail, and she sprang the news on him rather suddenly.
"They got Joe Corrigan," she said.
Simon raised his eyebrows. He read the newspaper cutting which she handed him, and smoked a cigarette.
"Poor devil!. . . But what a fool! He shouldn't have gone back-at least, I thought he'd have the sense to put up a good story. Goldman must have caught him out somehow. . . .. Tex is clever!"
The cutting simply described the finding of the body and its identification. Corrigan was the man of doubtful associations with three convictions to his name, and the police were hopeful of making an early arrest.
"I saw Claud Eustace in Piccadilly the day before yesterday," said Patricia. "He as good as told me they hadn't a hope of getting the man who did it."
"I suppose it'd be a long shot if the night porter in Tex's block recognized the photograph," said the Saint thoughtfully. "It isn't particularly flattering to Joe. And the whole Green Cross bunch would have their alibis." He speared a cherry and frowned at it. "Tex might have done it himself-or else it was Ted Orping. I don't see Brother Clem as a cold-blooded killer."
"There've been some odd-looking men hanging about Manson Place," she told him; and the Saint's eyebrows slanted again-dangerously.
"Any trouble?"
"No. But I've been taking care not to come home late at night."
Simon sipped his Bronx and gazed at the Bacchanalian array of shakers and glasses stencilled on the coloured glass behind the bar.
"I expected things would be quiet. Tex isn't the lad to waste his energies on side issues when there's big stuff in the offing. Now that I'm home, South Kensington may get unhealthy. Glory be, Pat-wouldn't you love to see the faces of the local trouts if Tex started spraying S.W.7 with Tommy guns for my benefit?"
It was characteristic of him to turn off the menace with a flippant remark, and yet he knew better than anyone what a threat hung over others in London besides himself-others who had a far sounder claim than he to object to a lavish expenditure of ammunition. The Saint had never cared to live safely; but there were others who held their lives less lightly.
Before dinner was over he had learned more. Things had been happening quickly in London while he had been away, and behind them all he could see the guiding hand of the man from St. Louis. After the fiasco of the Peabody raid it seemed as if Goldman had gone all out for a restoration of confidence in his followers. The work was rapid, ruthlessly thorough, a desperate bid for power under the standards of sudden death. The day after the Peabody raid, another jeweller's shop had been successfully smashed in Bond Street, and on the same night a small safe deposit off the Tottenham Court Road had been blasted open and half emptied while masked men with revolvers held a small crowd at bay and covered the escape of the inside party before the police reached the scene. In those cases the victims were discreet rather than valorous.
It was different at the Battersea branch of the Metropolitan Bank, which the same men held up the following midday. A cashier attempted to reach for a gun under the counter, and was shot dead where
he stood. The gang escaped with over two thousand pounds in cash.
While officialdom was still humming with that outrage, another bank in Edmonton was similarly held up; but with the warning of the Metropolitan Bank murder fresh in their memories, the staff showed no resistance.
Conferences were held, and special reserves of armed men in plain clothes were called out to cover as many likely spots as possible. But the police were again outguessed. The next day, an excess of confidence on the part of the management concerned allowed a private car bearing the week's pay envelopes for half a dozen branches of a popular library to leave a bank in the City. It was intercepted at its first stop, the messenger sandbagged, and fifteen hundred pounds in cash stolen. A constable on point duty saw the incident and tried to pursue the bandits' car on the running board of a commandeered taxi. He was shot off it by the fugitives and seriously injured, but it was expected that he would live.
The tale went through a sequence of barefaced brigandage that was staggering.
"We're getting 'em scared," Tex Goldman said. "That's the only way to do it. Hit 'em, and keep on hitting. Don't give 'em time to think. In a month or two they'll be begging for mercy."
"You bet," said Orping.
He had automatically become Goldman's aide-decamp, and held his position by his own audacity. It was he who had shot the Metropolitan Bank cashier- in a week he had become a confirmed killer, with two notches on his gun and the bravado of experience. "Basher" Tope, who had shot the policeman, ran him a fair second.
Ted Orping poured out a dose of brandy from a silver hip flask. He had learned that trick too, and he used it often. Alcohol braced his recklessness up to a point at which murder meant nothing.
"The guy I'm wantin' to see again is the Saint," he said.
"You'll get your chance," said Goldman. "We'll know about it the minute he comes home. I'd like to see him myself."
He might or might not have been pleased to know that Simon Templar shared that wish with him in no uncertain manner.
As far as the Saint was concerned, the desired opportunity came his way with a promptness for which he had only a stretch of coincidence to thank. On the night when some of the events already mentioned were told to Simon they had dined at a favourite restaurant of theirs in Beak Street, a quiet little Spanish eating-house where the food was good and cheap and the crowd neither fashionable nor pseudo-Bohemian. It was some time after eleven o'clock when they left, and wandered through side streets towards Shaftesbury Avenue with the vague idea of having another cup of coffee somewhere before going home. They were just turning a corner when Simon saw the man from St. Louis emerging from a doorway. In a flash Simon had caught Patricia's arm and jerked her back into the narrow lane from which they had just been turning. He leaned against the wall, covering her with his body, with his broad back turned to the Yankee gunman.
The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint) Page 9