"He is. When I started, I didn't think he'd last a week, even though his ideas were good. It takes something more than good ideas to hold your own in the racket. And he couldn't use personality—direct contact—of any kind. He was determined to be absolutely unknown to anyone from beginning to end. As a matter of fact, he hasn't got much personality—certainly not of that kind. Perhaps he knows it. That may be why he did everything through me—he wouldn't even speak to any of the mob over the telephone. Probably he's one of those men who are Napoleons in their dreams, but who never do anything because directly they meet anyone face to face it all goes out of them. The Big Fellow found a way to beat that. He never met anyone face to face—except me, and somehow I didn't scare him. He just kept on dreaming, all by himself."
A light was starting to glimmer in the depths of Simon Templar's understanding. It wasn't much of a light, little more than a faint nimbus of luminance in the caverns of an illimitable obscurity; but it seemed to be brightening, growing infinitesimally larger with the crawling of time, as if a man walked with a candle in the infinities of a tremendous cave. He had an uncanny illogical premonition that perhaps after all the threads were not so widely scattered—that perhaps the wall might not be so blank as he had thought. Some unreasonable standard of the rightness of things demanded it; anything else would have been out of tune with the rest of his life, a sharp discord in a smooth flow of harmony; but he did not know why he should have that faith in such a fantastic law of coincidence.
"Were his ideas very clever?" he asked.
"He had ways for us to communicate that nobody ever found out," she replied simply. "Morrie Ualino tried to find out who he was—so did Kuhlmann. They tried every trick and trap they could think of, but there was never any risk. I call that clever. He had a way of handling ransom money, between the man who picked it up and the time when he eventually got his share himself, which took the dicks into a blind alley every time. You know the trouble with ransom money—it's nearly always fixed so that it can be traced. The Big Fellow never ran the slightest risk there, either, at any time. That was only the beginning. Yes, he's clever."
Simon nodded. All of that he could follow clearly. It was grotesque, impossible, one of the things that do not and cannot happen; but he had known that from the start. And yet the impossible things had to happen sometimes, or else the whole living universe would long since have sunk into a stagnant morass of immutable laws, and the smug pedants whose sole ambition is to bind down all surprise and endeavour into their smugly catalogued little pigeonholes would long since have inherited their empty earth. That much he could understand. To handle thugs and killers, the brutal, dehumanized cannon fodder of the underworld, men whose scruples and loyalties and dissensions are as volatile and unpredictable as the flight of a flushed snipe, calls for a peculiar type of dominance. A man who would be a brilliant success in other fields, even a man who might organize and control a gigantic industry, whose thunder might shake the iron satraps of finance on their golden thrones, might be an ignoble failure there. The Big Fellow had slipped round the difficulty in the simplest possible way—had possibly even gained in prestige by the mystery with which he shielded his own weakness. But the question which Maxie had not had time to answer still remained.
"How did the Big Fellow start?" asked the Saint.
"With a hundred thousand dollars." She smiled at his quick blend of puzzlement and attention. "That was his capital. I went to Morrie Ualino with the story that this man, whose name I couldn't give, wanted another man kidnapped and perhaps killed. I had the contact, so we could talk straight. You can find some heels who'll bump off a guy for fifty bucks. Most of the regulars would charge you a couple of hundred up, according to how big a noise the job would make. This man was a big shot. It could probably have been done for ten thousand. The Big Fellow offered fifty thousand, cash. He knew everything—he had the inside information, knew everything the man was doing, and had the plans laid out with a footrule. All that Morrie and his mob had to do was exactly what the Big Fellow told them, and ask no questions. They thought it was just some private quarrel. They put the snatch on this man, and then I went behind their backs and put in the ransom demand, just as the Big Fellow told me. It had to be paid in thirty-six hours, and it wasn't. The Big Fellow passed the word for him to be rubbed out, and on the deadline he was thrown out of a car on his own doorstep. That was Flo Youssine."
"The theatrical producer? ... I remember. But the ransom story came out as soon as he was killed—"
"Of course. Morrie sent back to the Big Fellow and said he could do that sort of thing himself, without anybody telling him. The Big Fellow's answer was, 'Why didn't you?' At the same time he ordered another man to be snatched off, at the same price. Morrie did it. There was just as much information as before, the plan was just as perfect, there wasn't a hitch anywhere. Youssine having been killed was a warning, and this time the ransom was paid."
"I see." Simon was fascinated. "And then he worked on Kuhlmann with the same line——"
"More or less. Then he linked him up with Ualino. Naturally it wasn't all done at once, but it was moving all the time. The Big Fellow never made a mistake. After Youssine was killed, nobody else refused until Inselheim hung out the other day. The mobs began to think that the Big Fellow must be a god—a devil—their mascot—anything. But he brought in the money, and that was good enough. He was smarter than any of them had ever been, and they weren't too dumb to see it."
It was so simple that the Saint could have gasped. It had the perfection of all simple things. It was utterly and comprehensively satisfactory, given the initial genius and the capable mouthpiece; it was so obvious that he could have kicked himself for ever allowing the problem to swell to such proportions in his mind, although he knew that nothing is so mysterious and elusive as the simple and obvious. It was like the thimble in the old parlour game—one came on it after an intensive search with a shock of surprise, to find that it had been staring everyone in the face from the beginning.
The development of which Papulos had spoken followed easily. Once a sufficient terrorism had been established, the crude mechanics of kidnapping could be dispensed with. The threat of it alone was enough, with the threat of sudden death to follow if the first warning were ignored. He felt a little less contemptuous of Zeke Inselheim than he had been: the broker had at least made his lone feeble effort to resist, to challenge the terror which enslaved a thousand others of his kind.
"And it's been like that ever since?" Simon suggested.
"Not quite," said the girl. "That was only the beginning. As soon as the racket was established, the Big Fellow organized it properly. There was nothing new about it—it's been done for years, here and there—but it had never been done so thoroughly or so well. The Big Fellow made an industry of it. He couldn't go on hiring Ualino and Kuhlmann to do isolated jobs at so much a time. Their demands would have gone up automatically—they might have tried to do other jobs on their own, and one or two failures would have spoiled the market. All the Big Fellow's victims were handpicked—he was clever there, too. None of them were big public figures, none of them would make terrific newspaper stories, like Lindbergh, none of them would get a lot of public sympathy, none of them had a political hook-up which might have made the cops take special interest, none of them would be likely to turn into fighters; but they were all rich. The Big Fellow wanted things to go on exactly as he had started them. He organized the industry, and the other big shots came in on a profit-sharing basis."
"How was that worked?"
"All the profits were paid into one bank, and all the big shots had a drawing account on it limited to so much per week. The Big Fellow had exactly the same as the rest of them —I handled it all for him. The rest of the profits were to accumulate. It was agreed that the racket should run for three years exactly, and at the end of that time they should divide the surplus equally and organize again if they wanted to. Since you've bee
n here," she added dispassionately, "there aren't many of them left to divide the pool. That means a lot of money for somebody, because last month there were seventeen million dollars in the account."
Her cool announcement of the sum took Simon Templar's breath away. Even though he vaguely remembered having heard astronomical statistics of the billions of dollars which make up America's annual account of crime, it staggered him. He wondered how many men were still waiting to split up that immense fortune, now that Dutch Kuhlmann and Morrie Ualino were gone. There could not be many; but the girl's eyes were turned on him again with quiet amusement
"Is there anything else you want to know?"
"Several things," he said and looked at her. "You can tell me—who is the Big Fellow?"
She shook her head.
"I can't."
"But you said you could find him for me."
"I think I can. But when we began, I promised him I would never tell his name to anyone, or tell anyone how to get in touch with him."
The Saint took a cigarette. His hand was steady, but the steadiness was achieved consciously.
"You mean that if you found him, and I met you in such a way that I accidentally saw him and jumped to the conclusion that he was the man I wanted—your conscience would be clear."
"Why not?" she asked naively. "If that's what you want, I'll do it"
A slight shiver went through the Saint—he did not know whether the night had turned colder, or whether it was a sudden, terrible understanding of what lay behind that flash of almost childish innocence.
"You're very kind," he said.
She did not reply at once.
"After that," she said at length, "will you have finished?"
"That will be about the end."
She threw her cigarette away and sat still for a moment, contemplating the darkness beyond the range of their lights. Her profile had the aloof, impossible perfection of an artist's ideal.
"I heard about you as soon as you arrived," she said. "I was hoping to see you. When I had seen you, nothing else mattered. Nothing else ever will. When you've waited all your life for something, you recognize it when it comes."
It was the nearest thing to a testament of herself that he ever heard, and for the rest of his days it was as clear in his mind as it was a moment after she said it. The mere words were unimpassioned, almost commonplace; but in the light of what little he knew of her, and the time and place at which they were said, they remained as an eternal question. He never knew the answer.
He could not tell her that he was not free for her, that even in the lawless workings of his own mind she was for ever apart and unapproachable although to every sense infinitely desirable. She would not have understood. She was not even waiting for a response.
She had started the car again; and as they ran southwards through the park she was talking as if nothing personal had ever arisen between them, as if only the ruthless details of his mission had ever brought them together, without a change in the calm detachment of her voice.
"The Big Fellow would have liked to keep you. He admired the way you did things. The last time I saw him, he told me he wished he could have got you to join him. But the others would never have stood for it. He told me to try and make things easy for you if they caught you—he sort of hoped that he might have a chance to get you in with him some day."
She stopped the car again on Lexington Avenue, at the corner of 50th Street.
"Where do we meet?" she asked.
He thought for a moment. The Waldorf Astoria was still his secret stronghold, and he had a lurking unwillingness to give it away. He had no other base.
"How long will you be?" he temporized.
"I ought to have some news for you in an hour and a half or two hours."
An idea struck him from a fleeting, inconsequential gleam of memory that went back to the last meal he had enjoyed in peace, when he had walked down Lexington Avenue with a gay defiance in the tilt of his hat and the whole adventure before him.
"Call Chris Cellini, on East 45th Street," he said. "I probably shan't be there, but I can leave a message or pick one up. Anything you say will be safe with him."
"Okay." She put a hand on his shoulder, turning a little towards him. "Presently we shall have more time—Simon."
Her face was lifted towards him, and again the fragrant perfume of her was in his nostrils; the amazing amber eyes were darkened, the red lips parted, without coquetry, in acquiescence and acknowledgment. He kissed her, and there was a fire in his blood and a delicious languor in his limbs. It was impossible to remember anything else about her, to think of anything else. He did not want to remember, to strive or plot or aspire; in the surrender to her physical bewitchment there was an ultimate rest, an infinity of sensuous peace, beyond anything he had ever dreamed of.
"Au revoir," she said softly; and somehow he was outside the car, standing on the pavement, watching the car slide silently away into the dark, and wondering at himself, with the freshness of her lips still on his mouth and a ghost of fear in his heart.
Presently he awoke again to the throbbing of his shoulder and the maddening tiredness of his body. He turned and walked slowly across to the private entrance of the Waldorf apartments. "Well," he thought to himself, "before morning I shall have met the Big Fellow, and that'll be the end of it" But he knew it would only be the beginning.
He went up in the private elevator, lighting another cigarette. Some of the numbness had loosened up from his right hand: he moved his fingers, gingerly, to assure himself that they worked, but there was little strength left in them. It hurt him a good deal to move his arm. On the whole, he supposed that he could consider himself lucky to be alive at all, but he felt the void in himself which should have been filled by the vitality that he had lost, and was vaguely angry. He had always so vigorously despised weariness and lassitude in all their forms that it was infuriating to him to be disabled—most of all at such a time. He was hurt as a sick child is hurt, not knowing why; until that chance shot of Maxie's had found its mark, the Saint had never seriously imagined that anything could attack him which his resilient health would not be able to throw off as lightly as he would have thrown off the hangover of a heavy party. He told himself that if everything else about him had been normal, if he had been overflowing with his normal surplus of buoyant energy and confidence, not even the strange sorcery of Fay Edwards could have troubled him. But he knew that it was not true.
The lights were all on in the apartment when he let himself in, and suddenly he realized that he had been away for a long time. Valcross must have despaired of seeing him again alive, he thought, with a faint grim smile touching his lips; and then, when no familiar kindly voice was raised in welcome, he decided that the old man must have grown tired in waiting and dozed off over his book. He strolled cheerfully through and pushed open the door of the living room. The lights were on there as well, and he had crossed the threshold before he grasped the fact that neither of the two men who rose to greet him was Valcross.
He stopped dead; and then his hand leapt instinctively towards the electric:light switch. It was not until then that he realized fully how tired he was and how much vitality he had lost. The response of his muscles was slow and clumsy, and a twinging stab of pain in his shoulder checked the movement halfway and put the seal on its failure.
"Better not try that again, son," warned the larger of the two men harshly; and Simon Templar looked down the barrel of a businesslike Colt and knew that he was never likely to hear a word of advice which had a more soberly overwhelming claim to be obeyed.
Chapter 8
How Fay Edwards Kept Her Word, and Simon Templar Surrendered His Gun
"Well, well, well!" said the Saint and was surprised at the huskiness of his own voice. "This is a pleasant surprise." He frowned at one of the vacant chairs. "But what have you done with Marx?"
"Who do you mean—Marx?" demanded the large man alertly.
"I'm sorry," he said genially. "For a moment I thought you were Hart & Schaffner. Never mind. What's in a name?—as the actress said to the bishop when he told her that she reminded him of Aspasia. Is there anything I can do for you, or has the hotel gone bankrupt and are you just the bailiffs?"
The two men looked at each other for a moment and found that they had but a single thought. The smaller man voiced it, little knowing that a certain Heimie Felder had beaten him to it by a good number of hours.
"It's a nut," he affirmed decisively. "That's what it is. Let's give it the works."
Simon Templar leaned back against the door and regarded them tolerantly. He was stirred to no great animosity by the opinion which the smaller man had expressed with such an admirable economy of words—he had been hearing it so often recently that he was getting used to it. And at the back of his mind he was beginning to wonder if it might contain a germ of truth. His entrance into that room had been one of the most ridiculously careless manoeuvres he had ever executed, and his futile attempt to reach the light switch still made him squirm slightly to think of. Senile decay, it appeared, was rapidly overtaking him. . . .
He studied the two men with grim intentness. They have been classified, for immediate convenience, as the larger and the smaller man; but in point of fact there was little to choose between them—the effect was much the same as establishing the comparative dimensions of a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus. The "smaller" man stood about six feet three in his shoes and must have weighed approximately three hundred pounds; the other, it should be sufficient to say, was a great deal larger. Taken as a team, they summed up to one of the most undesirable deputations of welcome which the Saint could imagine at that moment.
The larger man bulked ponderously round the intervening table and advanced towards him. With the businesslike Colt jabbing into the Saint's middle, he made a quick and efficient search of Simon's pockets and found the gun which had belonged to the late lamented Joe. He tossed it back to his companion and put his own weapon away.
15 The Saint in New York Page 18