Call for the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Hoppy grunted, “Some heister crashes de Saint’s flat last night. He leaves de rod.”

  “Yeah? Who was it?”

  “That,” said the Saint amiably, “is what I’d like to know. If you got rid of this gun, what did you do with it?”

  Mullins snapped his fingers as if smitten by recollection.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” He reached into his coat, extracted a wallet, and selected a ten and a five. He offered the two bills to Connie. “Here. It’s your dough.”

  “Mine?” She didn’t touch the money. “Why?”

  “It’s the dough I got for it at th’ hock shop,” he explained. “Ten bucks on the rod—five bucks for the pawn ducat I sell for chips in a poker session the other night.”

  She shook her head quickly.

  “No. You keep it. For your trouble.”

  Whitey unhesitatingly replaced the money in his wallet.

  “Okay, if you say so.”

  “Who did you sell the ticket to?” Simon inquired casually.

  “Mushky Thompson,” Whitey said. “But it goes through his kick like a dose of salts. Pretty soon it’s movin’ from one pot to another like cash.”

  “Yes, but who got it in the end?” Nelson asked.

  “I quit at three in th’ morning. Who it winds up with, I couldn’t say.” Whitey glanced at his wrist watch. “’Bout time we was headin’ for the gym, Stevie.”

  “Was Karl sitting in on the game?” Simon persisted.

  Whitey blinked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s an expensive gun, Whitey,” Simon pursued mildly. “Is ten all you could get on it?”

  Mullins spread his hands, expressively.

  “No papers, no licence. Ten bucks and no questions asked is pretty good these days.”

  “I haven’t been following the market lately,” Simon confessed. “Where did you hock it?”

  The trainer lifted his derby and thoughtfully massaged the bald spot in his straw-coloured hair with two fingers of the same hand.

  “It’s a place off Sixth Avenue, as I recall,” he said finally, dropping his chapeau back on its accustomed perch. “’Neath Forty-Fourth. The Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company.”

  The Saint picked up the gun again.

  “Thanks. I may need this a bit longer—if nobody minds.” He slipped it into his pocket and glanced at Nelson. He said inconsequentially, “I wouldn’t do any boxing until that hand heals, Steve.”

  Whitey’s eyes flashed to the hand Steve Nelson had been carrying palm upwards to conceal the raw gash along its back. He swore softly as he examined it.

  “It’s just a scratch,” Nelson scoffed. “I was going to take care of it before we left.”

  “The next time our friend Karl visits you,” Simon advised him, “don’t give him a chance to touch you. That finger jewellery he wears is more dangerous than brass knuckles.”

  “Karl!” Whitey turned with outraged incredulity. “He was here.”

  “He had a little proposition,” Nelson said. “Wanted me to throw the fight for both ends of the gate.”

  “The louse!” Mullins exploded. “The dirty no-good louse. I mighta known Spangler’d try sump’n like that. He knows that ham of his ain’t got a chance.”

  Simon crushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray.

  “I’d feel even more sure of that if I could drop in and watch you train, Steve,” he said. “In fact, I’d rather like to work out with you myself.”

  “Any time,” Nelson said.

  “Tomorrow morning,” said the Saint. “Come on, Hoppy—let’s keep on the trail of the roving roscoe.”

  9

  The only connection that the Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company might possibly have had with the animal for which it was named, Simon decided as he entered the premises, was the arctic quality of its proprietor’s stare. This personality, however, was a far cry from the conventional bearded skull-capped shylock that was once practically a cliché in the public mind. He was, in fact, a pale, smooth-shaven young man with curly black hair, elegantly attired in a sports jacket and striped flannels, who scanned the Saint as he entered with eyes of a peculiar ebony hardness. He barely lifted a brow in recognition as he caught sight of Hoppy on Simon’s heels.

  “Hi, Ruby,” Hoppy said. “I have a idea I remember dis jernt from way back. Long time no see, huh?”

  To the Saint’s unsentimental blue eyes, Ruby slipped into a familiar niche like a nickel into a slot. Just as a jungle dweller knows at a glance the vulture from the eagle, the ruminant from the carnivore, so the Saint knew that in the stone jungles of the city this specimen was of a scavenger breed—with a touch of reptile, perhaps. And the fact that Mr Uniatz knew the place of old was almost enough to confirm the discredit of its agate-eyed proprietor.

  Ruby flinched instinctively as Mike Grady’s revolver appeared in the Saint’s fist, held for an instant with its muzzle pointed at the pawnbroker’s midriff, before Simon laid it on the counter.

  “This gun,” said the Saint, “was pawned here a few days ago. Remember?”

  The pawnbroker studied it a moment. His delicately curved brows lifted slightly, the tailored shoulders accompanying them upwards in the mere soupçon of a shrug.

  He looked at Simon with eyes that had the blank unfocused quality of the blind.

  “Whitey Mullins hocks it,” Hoppy amplified. “Ya know Whitey.”

  “However, he didn’t claim it himself,” Simon went on. “Someone else did—a few days ago. I want to know who.”

  “Who are you?” Ruby asked in his flat monotone. “What gives?”

  Hoppy grabbed his shoulder in a bone-crushing clutch and, with his other hand, pointed a calloused digit directly under Simon’s nose.

  “Dis,” he explained unmistakably, “is de Saint. When de boss asks ya a question, ya don’t talk back.”

  Ruby shook off Hoppy’s paw and flicked imaginary contamination from where it had been. He looked back to the Saint.

  “So?” he said.

  “This gun,” Simon continued pleasantly, “was redeemed. Who turned in the ticket? I promise there’s no trouble in it for you.”

  The young man across the counter sighed and stared moodily at the gun.

  “Okay, so you give me a promise. Can my wife cash it at the bank if I get knocked off for talkin’ too much?”

  “No,” Simon conceded. “But your chances of living to a ripe and fruitless old age are far better, believe me, if you do give me the information I want.”

  The pawnbroker’s eyes slid over him with stony opacity.

  It began to be borne in upon Mr Uniatz that his old pal was being very slow to co-operate. His reaction to that realisation was a darkening scowl of disapproval. Backgrounded by the peculiar advantages of Hoppy’s normal face, this expression conveyed a warning about as subtle as the first smoke rising from an active volcano…Ruby caught a glimpse of it, and whatever cogitation was going on behind the curtain of his face reached an immediate conclusion.

  “Why ask me?” he complained wearily. “I don’t ask his monicker. I ain’t interested. He’s a tall skinny jerk with a face like a horse. He bought a set of throwing knives from me once. That’s all I know.”

  The Saint’s perspective roamed through a corridor of memory that Ruby’s description had faintly illuminated. A nebulous image formed somewhere in the vista, and tried to coalesce within recognisable outlines, but for the moment the shape still eluded him.

  “Give you ten on the rod,” Ruby offered disinterestedly.

  Simon picked up the revolver and slipped it back into his pocket.

  “I’m afraid it isn’t mine,” he said truthfully, and a sardonic glimmer flickered in the young pawnbroker’s eyes for an instant.

  “You don’t say.”

  “As a matter of fact, it belongs to George Murphy, whose initials are ‘MG,’ spelled backwards,” Simon informed him solemnly, and sauntered from the shop with Hoppy in his wake.

/>   It was perhaps the way the black sedan roared away from the curb at the end of the block that pressed an alarm button in the Saint’s reflexes. It forced itself into the stream of traffic with a suddenness that compelled the drivers behind to give way with screaming brakes. For one vivid instant, as if by the split-second illumination of a flash of lightning, Simon saw the driver, alone in the front seat, hunched over the wheel, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his face hidden in the shadow of the brim, a glimpse of stubbled jowl barely visible. He had an impression of two others crouched in the deeper shadow of the back seat, their faces obscured by handkerchiefs, the vague angle of their upraised arms pointing towards him…All this the Saint saw, absorbed, analysed, and acted upon in the microscopic fragment of time before he kicked Hoppy’s feet from under him so that they both dropped to the sidewalk together as the black sedan raced by, sending a fusillade of bullets cracking over them into the pawnshop window beyond.

  Hoppy Uniatz, prone on his stomach, fumbled out his gun and fired a single shot just as the gunmen’s car cut in ahead of a truck and beat a red light.

  “Hold it!” Simon ordered. “You’re more likely to hurt the wrong people.”

  They scrambled up and dusted off their clothes. “You okay, boss?” Hoppy asked anxiously.

  “Just a bit chilled from the draught of those bullets going by.”

  Hoppy glared up the street at the corner where their assailants had vanished.

  “De doity lowsers,” he rumbled. “Who wuz it, boss?” The Saint had no answer, but if he had, it would have been interrupted by the yelp of the curly-haired young man peering pallidly from behind the edge of the pawnshop doorframe.

  “Get the hell away from here!” he bawled, with a shrill vibrato in his voice. “Get yourselves knocked off some other place.”

  Hoppy turned on him redly, like a buffalo preparing to charge, but Simon grabbed one beefy bicep and yanked him back on his heels.

  “Stop it, you damn fool!” he snapped. “Don’t take it out on him!”

  He stepped to the doorway, drawing the knife strapped to his forearm.

  From within the pawnshop Ruby’s voice, strident with fear, screeched, “Come in here and so help me God, I’ll blast ya!” Simon spotted him crouching behind a counter, goggling over the sights of a sawed-off shotgun. He thrust out a knee as a barrier to Hoppy’s impulsive acceptance of the challenge, and began working quickly.

  He was aware of the scared faces starting to peer out of windows, of people moving out of doorways and peeping around corners. A crowd seemed to be converging from every direction, drawn by the shots and the wildfire smell of excitement. In a few seconds he cut out one of the bullets imbedded in the doorframe. He dropped the scarred slug in his pocket and moved away.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said the Saint, taking Hoppy’s arm. “I still think it would be a social error to be arrested on Sixth Avenue, even if they have tried to change the name to ‘Avenue of the Americas.’ ”

  10

  “Who done it?” Mr Uniatz asked once more, his neanderthaloid countenance still furrowed with the remnants of rage.

  The Saint grinned as he swung the convertible around a corner.

  “Never mind, Hoppy,” he said. “It helps to tone down the pattern…Anyway, all I saw was two gentlemen with handkerchiefs over their faces in a black sedan with no rear licence plate.”

  Hoppy scowled.

  “I seen dat too,” he grumbled. “What I wanna know is, who wuz dey?”

  “Did you notice the outside hand of the fellow driving the car? It flashed in the sun.”

  Mr Uniatz blinked.

  “Huh?”

  “He was wearing a lot of finger jewellery.”

  “Finger jewellery?”

  “Rings—large flashy rings.”

  For a long moment Hoppy strove painfully to determine the relation of the driver’s digital ornamentation to his identity.

  “Ya can’t never tell about pansies,” he concluded despondently.

  The car swung east to Fifth Avenue and then south, moving leisurely with the traffic.

  The Saint was in no hurry. He wanted a breathing spell to summarise the situation.

  So far, two attempts had been made to murder him since the affair in the dressing-room the previous night. An emotional thug might have found the Saint’s insolence sufficiently provocative to inspire an urgent desire for his death; and certainly a blow in the solar plexus would be regarded in some circles as an act of war, and worthy of an act of reprisal. But somehow the Saint could not conceive of Dr Spangler, even with that kind of provocation, taking the risk of a murder charge. For Spangler was neither emotional nor reckless. He was an operator who had learned from experience to be thrifty of risks, to allow as much a margin of safety as possible to every enterprise. An attempt to bribe Nelson was in line with that, but the only motive Spangler was likely to consider strong enough to justify an attempt at murder would be the fear that the Saint’s interference might affect the Angel’s chance of taking the title.

  Would Spangler, even with a guilty conscience, have taken alarm so precipitately? Would he be afraid, on such scanty evidence, that the Saint had discovered the secret of the Angel’s victories?…For that matter, was there any secret more sinister than common chicanery and corruption? So far, he could only conjecture.

  “And that,” said the Saint, “leaves us just one more call to make.”

  “Who we gonna see now, boss?” asked Mr Uniatz, settling philosophically into the social whirl.

  “That depends on who’s home.”

  Simon swung the car towards Gramercy Park, and presently slowed down as he turned into a secluded side street lined with grey stone houses as conservatively old-fashioned in their way as the Riverside Drive brownstones were in theirs, but with a polished elegance that bespoke substantially higher rents.

  “What home, boss?” Hoppy insisted practically.

  The Saint peered at the numbers of the houses slipping by.

  “Doc Spangler’s.”

  Hoppy’s eyes became almost as wide as shoe buttons.

  “Ya mean it’s de Doc what tries to gun us?”

  “It was more likely one of the bad boys he chums around with,” said the Saint. “But he probably knew about it. Bad companions, Hoppy, are apt to get a man into trouble. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.”

  “No, boss,” said Mr Uniatz seriously.

  The Saint was starting to pull in towards one of the grey stone houses when he saw the other car. The rear licence plate was on now, but there was no doubt about the genesis of the neat hole with its radiation of tiny cracks that perforated the rear window. Simon pointed it out to Hoppy, as he kept the convertible rolling and parked it some twenty yards farther down the block.

  “Chees,” Hoppy said in admiration, “I hit it right in de middle. Dey musta felt de breeze when it goes by.”

  “I hope it gave them as bad a chill as theirs gave us,” said the Saint.

  They walked back to the house and went up the broad stone steps and rang the bell. After a while the door opened a few inches. Simon leaned on it and opened it the rest of the way. It pushed back a long lean beanpole of a man with a sad horse face and dangling arms whose wrists stuck out nakedly from the cuffs of his sweater. And as he saw him, a gleam of recognition shot through the Saint’s memory.

  The tall man’s recognition was a shade slower, perhaps because his faculties were slightly dulled by the surprise of feeling the door move into his chest. He exhaled abruptly, and staggered back, his long arms flying loosely as though dangling on strings. As he recovered his balance he took in Hoppy’s monstrous bulk, and then the slim supple figure of the Saint closing the door after him and leaning on it with the poised relaxation of a watchful cat, the gun in his hand held almost negligently…Slowly, the long bony wrists lifted in surrender.

  The young pawnbroker’s description repeated itself in the Saint’s memory. Also he recalled Mike Grady’s
office and a tall thin character among the loiterers in the reception. This was the same individual. The odyssey of the gun was beginning to show connections.

  “Who are you, chum?” Simon asked, moving slightly towards him.

  “I know him, boss,” Hoppy put in. “De name is Slim Mancini. He useta be a hot car hustler.”

  “I work here,” the beanpole said in a whining nasal tenor that had a distinct equine quality about it. He sounded, the Saint thought, just like a horse. A sick horse. “I’m the butler,” Mancini added. He glanced back at a door down the hall and opened his mouth a fraction of a second before the Saint stepped behind him and clamped a hand over it.

  “No announcements, please,” the Saint said, his other arm curving about Mancini’s neck like a band of flexible steel. “This is strictly formal. You understand, don’t you?”

  The man nodded and gasped a lungful of air as the Saint removed the pressure on his throat.

  “Slim Mancini—buttlin’!” Hoppy sneered hoarsely. “Dat’s a laugh.” He grunted suddenly as Simon jabbed a warning elbow into his stomach.

  The muffled voices in the room down the hall had gone silent. “Walk ahead of us to that door,” the Saint whispered to Spangler’s cadaverous lackey, “and open it and go in. Don’t say anything. We’ll be right behind you. Go on.”

  Mancini’s sad eyes suddenly widened as he stared over the Saint’s shoulder, apparently at something behind him.

  Simon rather resented that. It implied a lack of respect for his experience, reading background, and common intelligence that was slightly insulting. However he was accommodating enough to start to turn and look in the indicated direction. It was only a token start, and he reversed it so quickly that Mancini’s hand was still inches from his shoulder holster when the Saint’s left exploded against his lantern jaw.

  Simon caught the toppling body before it folded and lowered it noiselessly to the carpet.

  Mr Uniatz kicked it carefully in the stomach for additional security.

  “De noive of de guy,” he said. “Tryin’ a corny trick like dat. Whaddas he t’ink we are?”

  “He’ll know better next time,” said the Saint. “But now I suppose we’ll have to open our own doors—”