Call for the Saint (6 page)

Mrs. Wingate giggled; but she relinquished her grip on the pendant rather reluctantly.

“Surely you’re not-I mean —”

She glanced around apprehensively. Simon smiled at her.

“Even Jack the Ripper must have had his social hours,” he said. “Please consider me on my best behavior. You need have no fears for your sapphires, your silver, or your honor, though the latter …” He beamed at Mrs. Wingate, who snickered again, unaware that the sentence might have been finished in many more ways than one, and at least half of them unflattering.

Elliott introduced himself, “-since Laura is too flustered, I gather,” he said gravely. “Miss Varing? How do you do? Meeting two such notable figures is rather an event. I’ll celebrate it by joining you in a drink.”

He beckoned to a passing tray.

“To crime,” the Saint suggested, and they drank, though Mrs. Wingate had a moment’s startled pause first.

“To crime,” Elliott repeated. “I’m surprised to hear that from you, Mr. Templar. I thought the Saint changed sides a while ago.”

“There was a war on at the time,” Simon said casually, “and some of it seemed sort of important. But now I’m back to stirring up my own trouble. You might call it my private reconversion problem. … As a matter of fact, I’m working on a case now, and I find I haven’t lost much of my knack.”

“A case?” Elliott asked.

“Yes. It should interest you, in view of the work you’ve been doing among Chicago’s poor. Have you ever heard of someone called the King of the Beggars?”

Simon threw out the phrase with perfect carelessness, and just as airily made no point of watching for a reaction.

It would have made little difference if he had. Stephen Elliott’s Santa Claus eyebrows merely drew together in a vaguely worried way; while Mrs. Wingate bridled as if her position in the Social Register had been questioned, and then said: “It’s fantastic. Utterly fantastic. I’ve heard rumors, of course, but-Mr. Templar, you must realize that such things are-are—”

“Fantastic?” the Saint prompted.

“Not too much so in my opinion,” Stephen Elliott answered him. “There certainly is some sort of, criminal organization victimizing the poor in Chicago. I’m not blind, Mr. Templar. But just how widespread is it?.”

Simon shrugged.

Elliott’s distinguished equine face worked uncomfortably.

“I know,” he said at last. “It’s a pernicious racket, no matter how small. It should be stamped out. And you say you’re going after it?”

The Saint flipped a mental coin, and decided to hold his course.

“Yes. I haven’t been able to find out much yet. I wonder if you could help me?”

Elliott pursed his lips.

“I’m afraid they don’t talk to me. Not about that. It’s hard to break down the wall of reticence a socially unfortunate man has had to build up. I can inquire, if that will help.”

“You haven’t been interested enough so far to ask questions?” Monica put in.

“It’s a police matter. I feel that I can do more good in my own way. … Of course, if I could be of any use—”

Mrs. Wingate said abruptly: “Why, you’re the blind beggar!”

This time the Saint was naturally watching Elliott. He saw blank startled astonishment leap into the man’s eyes. He held his own reflexes frozen under an unmoving mask of bronze and waited, while Mrs. Laura Wingate babbled on,“I don’t understand. I’m sure I can’t be mistaken! But-but- I never forget a face, Mr. Templar. What in the world—”

Elliott’s hand moved toward the watch chain stretched across his vest.

“What do you mean, Laura?”

“I’m sure I must be making a fool of myself. But, Stephen, you know I’ve got a photographic memory. I think you were with me, too… . Yesterday! Mr. Templar—”

The coin had come down and bedded itself flatly in hot solder. There wasn’t even a theoretical chance any more of it landing on its edge. Its verdict had been delivered with more finality even than the Saint had played for. But he had always been a sucker for the fast showdown, the cards on the table and the hell with complicated stratagems. , . .

He relaxed with an infinitude of relaxation, and smiled at Laura Wingate with a complete happiness that could only stem from that.

“She’s perfectly right,” he said. “I often travel incognito. As a matter of fact, I was trying to get some information about the King’s organization. To do that, I had to pose as a beggar. I hope you’ll keep it confidential.”

“Oh, goodness,” Mrs. Wingate said breathlessly. “How romantic!”

Stephen Elliott maintained his mildly worried expression.

“Since we’ve stumbled on something that’s apparently secret,” he said temperately, “I suspect we’d better not ask any more questions. If Mr. Templar really has taken up the chase, and if his quarry should learn about it, it might be extremely dangerous for him. Perhaps even”-he shot the Saint a deliberate measuring glance-“fatal.”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling a soul,” Mrs. Wingate protested. “I just wish I weren’t so curious!”

Elliott’s attention remained on the Saint.

“In fact,” he said, “I’m not at all sure that it’s wise for you to go on with this project, even now. From what little I have heard, the King of the Beggars protects his absolute sovereignty as ruthlessly as any despot. I have a great admiration for your exploits, and I should hate to see anything happen to you.”

“Thank you,” Simon said. “I’ve a great admiration for yours.”

Elliott hesitated, staring.

“Scarcely in the same category—”

“I mean your charities. The Elliott Hotel, for example.”

The philanthropist nodded.

“I am trying to follow a plan,” he said, a slightly fanatical glaze coming into his eyes. “I’ll admit that the several rooming houses I own in Chicago aren’t in the same class as the Palmer House, but I think, all told, I have more guests in my various establishments than any single Chicago hotel. The greatest good for the greatest number of the needy automatically means that one must supply bread, not eclairs.”

“Also,” said the Saint, holding his gaze directly, “the dispenser of bread can hardly stand by while some racketeer taxes the needy for the privilege of receiving it.”

“I can only work within my limitations and in my own way—”

Mrs. Wingate was off on a tangent, figuratively clutching Elliott’s coattails and riding along.

“There must be roses too,” she remarked, and everyone looked at her blankly.

Finally Simon said: “Chacun ŕ son gout,” in such a significant manner that Mrs. Wingate nodded several times with intense solemnity, as if she had heard the Pope affirm a historic dogma.

“Man does not live by bread alone,” she said. “Stephen is concerned with the bodies of the poor. My interest is in their souls. The unfortunates do have souls, you know. I try to bring something more than bread into their dark narrow lives. You should see… . Stephen! Do you think—”

“What, Laura?”

“I’m sure you’d be willing to help us, Mr. Templar. You’re notorious for your charities —”

Elliott said: “Notorious is perhaps the wrong word, Laura. And, if I may say so, the Saint’s charities are not exactly in line with what we’re trying to do.”

Mrs. Wingate plunged on excitedly, as if she had not even heard him.

“And you, Miss Varing-of course. You see, we try to make the unfortunates realize something of the higher things. It gives them incentive. We arrange to put on little entertainments for them sometimes. Now tomorrow night there’s one at the Elliott Hotel—”

“In the boiler room,” Elliott said with dry humor. “You mustn’t give the impression that it’s like the Drake.”

“But it’s an enormous room,” Mrs. Wingate went on, no whit dashed. “There’ll be songs and coffee and-and-speeches, and it would be simply wonderful if you both could drop in for just a few moments. If you could do a reading, Miss Varing, and Mr. Templar, if you could-ah—”

“Now just what could I do?” Simon asked thoughtfully. “A lecture on safe-cracking would hardly be quite the thing.”

“A speech, perhaps, showing that crime does not pay?” Elliott seemed in earnest, but the Saint could not be sure.

Mrs. Wingate clasped her hands in front of her bust.

“At eight-thirty? We would so appreciate it!”

“I’m afraid eight-thirty is my curtain time,” Monica said, with an excellent air of regret. “Otherwise I’d have loved it.”

Mrs. Wingate blinked.

“Oh, of course. I’d forgotten. I’m so sorry. Thank you, my dear.” She forgot Monica completely as she turned back to the Saint. “But you’ll be able to make it, won’t you, Mr. Templar?”

Simon only hesitated a moment.

“I’d be delighted,” he said. “I don’t think I can get much heart into the speech till I work myself into the right mood, but I’ll do my best. You see,” he added, beaming at Elliott, “it’s been my experience that crime pays very well indeed. But, as I said before—”

“Chacun ŕ son gout?” Elliott suggested unsmilingly.

“How true,” Mrs. Wingate said vaguely. “Another cocktail, perhaps?”

CHAPTER TEN
Simon left Monica at the theater and went back to his hotel to receive a purely negative report from a discouraged Hoppy Uniatz. Hoppy had spent the afternoon circulating among various pool halls and saloons where he had old acquaintances, and where Sammy the Leg was also known. That his peregrinations had done little to satisfy his chronic thirst for bourbon was understandable: the distilling industry had been trying in vain to cope with that prodigious appetite for years. But that his thirst for information had been unslaked by so much as one drop of news was a more baffling phenomenon.

Sammy the Leg had been seen in none of his usual haunts, and none of his dearest cronies had heard either of or from him. Nor had rumor any theories to advance. He had not been reported dead, sick, drunk, in love, in hiding, or departed from town. He had simply dropped out of the local scene, without a word or a hint to anyone.

“I don’t get it, boss,” Mr. Uniatz summed up, confirming his earlier conclusion.

Simon rescued the bottle from which Hoppy was endeavoring to fill some of the vacua which had defied the best efforts of Chicago’s bartenders, and poured himself a modest portion.

“We now have,” he said, “a certain problem.”

“Dat’s right, boss,” Hoppy agreed.

He waited hopefully for the solution, experience having taught him that it was no use trying to compete with the Saint in such flights of speculation. A man without intellectual vanity, he was content to leave such scintillations to nimbler minds. Also this saved overloading his own brain, a sensitive organ under its osseous overcoat.

“The question is, who knows how much about what?” said the Saint. “If anyone at that cocktail party is connected with the King of the Beggars, I might as well walk barefooted into a den of rattlesnakes as show up to claim my reservation at the Elliott Hotel. But by the same token, if I don’t show up, I’m announcing that I have reasons not to-which may be premature.”

“Yeah,” Hoppy concurred, with the first symptoms of headache grooving his brow.

“On the other hand,” Simon answered himself, “if the ungodly are expecting me tomorrow, they won’t be expecting me tonight, and this might be a chance to keep them off balance while I case the joint.”

“I give up,” said Mr. Uniatz sympathetically.

The Saint paced the room with long restless strides. He was at a crossroads before which far more subtle strategists than Mr. Uniatz might well have been bewildered, with the signpost spinning over them like a windmill. Simon even felt his own cool judgment growing dizzy with its own contortions. He was in a labyrinth of ifs and buts to which there seemed to be no key… .

Mr. Uniatz pinged BBs monotonously through his teeth at the electric light, drawing from it the clear sharp notes of repeated bull’s-eyes.

“I get better at dis all de time, boss,” he remarked, as if in consolation. “Dis afternoon I stop in a boilicue an’ get in de toid row. Dey is a stripper on who is but lousy-she shoulda stood home wit’ her grandchildren. Well, I start practicin’ on her wit’ my BBs. I keep hittin’ her just where I’m aimin’, an’ she can’t figure where dey come from. It breaks up de act—”

The Saint halted in the middle of a step and swung around.

“Hoppy,” he said, “I never expected to see you cut Gordian knots, but I think you’ve done it.”

“Cheez, boss, dat’s great,” said Mr. Uniatz. “What did I do?”

“You’ve given me an idea,” said the Saint. “In your own words-if the ungodly can’t figure where it’s coming from, it might break up the act.”

“Sure,” Hoppy agreed sagely. “But who is dis guy Gordian?”

Simon Templar had always lived by inspiration, even by hunches; but his recklessness had no relation to any unconsciousness of danger. On the contrary, he was never more watchful and calculating than in his rashest moves. He diced with fate like a seasoned gambler, taking mathematical risks with every shade of odds coldly tabulated in his head. It was simply that once his bet was down he gave himself up to the unalloyed delight of seeing how it would turn out. The anxiety was over for him once the dice began to roll. After that there was only the excitement of riding with them, and the taut invigoration of waiting poised like a fencer to respond to the next flick of steel.

“Which is a nice trick if you can do it,” he mused, blinking through his dark glasses as he tapped his way along the sidewalk towards the Elliott Hotel a couple of hours later.

He looked interestedly at the huge ramshackle structuret which despite its new coat of brown paint could scarcely have brought much inspiration to the souls of the poor unfortunates who inhabited it. The building had been constructed after the Chicago fire, but not much later; and it had an air of rather desperately sterile cheer, like an asthmatic alderman wheezing out Christmas carols.

The front door yawned, more rudely than invitingly, Simon decided. He made pleading gestures at a passing pedestrian.

“Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for the Elliott Hotel. Can you tell me —”

“Right here,” said the florid man Simon had accosted. “Want to go in?” He took the Saint’s arm and guided him up the steps to the door. “Okay now?”