Call for the Saint (20 page)

Mullins snapped his fingers as if smitten by recollection.

“Oh, Christ! 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 fer 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 headjn’ 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 license. 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-colored hair with two fingers of the same hand.

“It’s a place on Sixth Avenue, as I recall,” he said finally, dropping his chapeau back on its accustomed perch. “Near 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 jewelry 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.”

CHAPTER NINE
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 cliche 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 stony-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.

“I see lots of guns,” he said tonelessly. “Every day.”

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 obsidian 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 realization 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 recognizable 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 M G, 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, analyzed, 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 draft of those bullets going by.”

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

“De doity bastards,” he rumbled. “Who wuz it, boss?”

The Saint had no answer; but if he had 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.’ “

CHAPTER TEN
“Who done it?” Mr. Uniatz asked once more, his neanderthaloid countenance still furrowed with the remnants of rage. “He makes me get mud on dis new suit.”

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 license 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 jewelry.”

“Finger jewelry?”

“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 summarize 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 wide 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 toward Gramercy Park, and presently slowed down as he turned into a secluded side street lined with graystone 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 gray-stone houses when he saw the other car. The rear license 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 further down the block.