The Saint to the Rescue (28 page)

Joseph Sholto, enjoying the expansive euphoria
induced
by a narrow escape of which even he had been far from
confident,
would at this moment have guffawed hysterically
at any suggestion that
he would ever doubt the maxim which
had been one of the guiding principles
of his adult career, that a bad boy’s best friend is his lawyer.

Joe Sholto (to the initiated he was more
generally known
as “Dibs”) had come a long way since he was
doing his own
strong-arm and squirt-gun work to try to put over a pro
tection
racket on Mobile’s laundries and dry cleaners. When he had achieved enough
limited success to be noticed, he
received the standard accolade from
the Syndicate: come in
or get out. Prudently, Dibs decided to sell,
but kept his own
independence; when he came in, he wanted it to be as an
equal, not
as one of a host of minor hangers-on. He had his
ups and downs, but
thanks to a ruthless devotion to his
own welfare and his faith in the best
legal chicanery he
managed to avoid any disastrous collisions with constitu
tional
justice, so that he became one of those semi-mythologi
cal names which are
vaguely known to the public and baldly
referred to by the
press as “gangsters” without ever having suffered a major conviction.

He hit the jackpot when he saw the
possibilities of the
trading stamp business. At this time the
craze for these minia
ture coupons was booming from coast to coast,
and probably
half the families in America were daily pasting up
“stamps” of various colors and designs, given to them by local mer
chants at
the rate of ten for every dollar they spent, in
booklets which when
filled and accumulated in sufficient num
bers could be
exchanged for almost anything from a razor
to a refrigerator.
These stamps were offered to the stores as a merchandising gimmick by a number
of reputable firms
which also undertook to redeem them, and the competition
between
them was simply to offer the most attractive pre
miums at the best
price.

One day it dawned upon Dibs Sholto that he
too could
have a part of this business. The investment in printing
the
stamps and the booklets to stick them in was relatively trivial,
and the
goods they would eventually be exchanged for could
be bought out of the
money the storekeepers would pay for
the stamps. It seemed like such a
magnificently automatic
way of multiplying mazuma that he was
slightly disgusted
with himself for not having thought of it ten years
before.
The only trouble now was that the best potential customers,
if they
were interested at all, had already been signed up
by the
old-established stamp firms, or in the case of some
chains had even set up
their own stamp systems.

Again he was too wise to begin by tussling
with giants,
but there were plenty of pygmies who could be taken for an
impressive total poundage. The beauty of the stamp scheme
was that
it was not limited to any type of sale or service:
theoretically, every
single shop in every town and village
could use them to attract new customers
or keep old ones.
Yet it was still true that in spite of the wide spread of
the
craze a majority of smaller enterprises had not succumbed to
it,
feeling that their modest business did not need or could
not afford
such promotion. It was in these small tradesmen
that Sholto saw his
market; and the smaller they were the
more likely they were to succumb to
the kind of salesmanship
in which he specialized, which offered the
cogent induce
ments of freedom from broken windows, slashed tires, stink
bombs, and even personal injury.

Thus with the encouragement of some property
damage
and a few salutary beatings. Dibs Sholto’s gaudily colored
Double
Dividend Stamps throve and spread over the south
east corner of the
country until they were as familiar as any
other brand to the
housewives of five states, most of whom
had no notion
whatever of how some of the merchants they
dealt with had been
persuaded to feature them. Being, un
like a barefaced protection racket, an
ostensibly legitimate
enterprise, the Double Dividend organization
managed to
escape the monopolistic attention of the criminal
hierarchy,
and was able to handle local complaints at the county
level: there were surprisingly few of these, for Sholto’s small sales
force of
goons were trained to select the prospects most
likely to be
terrorized. It was Double Dividend’s own suc
cessful expansion
which had brought the first serious trouble
on itself. A
Congressional Committee nosing into the trading
stamp business in
general had heard some evidence, an At
torney General had
been prodded to take action, and Sholto
had found himself on
trial in Washington on the federal
charges from which it had taken all
Carlton Rood’s genius to
extricate him.

But now that that briefly disconcerting
obstacle had been disposed of, Dibs Sholto could see nothing to stop him en
larging his
stamp system into a nation-wide network from
which the dividends
to himself would be not double but
tenfold.

“Next time, the big boys won’t tell
me—they’ll ask me,”
he said to himself. “And they’ll make
the deal
I
want. I’m
on top of something that’s all mine, and
nobody in the world
has a thing on me.”

In this mood of resurgent arrogance after a
fright which
had shaken him more than he would ever admit now to
anyone, he
was discussing plans for the future with two
of his chief
lieutenants in the stately Colonial mansion north
of the city of Atlanta which he had made
his residence, when
the white-haired Negro
butler who was part of the expensive
scenery announced an uninvited
visitor.

“Who the hell is Sam Temple?” Sholto
wanted to know.

Since no one could tell him, he sent one of
his aides to
find out. In a few minutes the man came back with an
answer.

“He’s a two-bit private eye, but he says
he ain’t here to
ask questions—he’s got something to sell.”

Simon Templar never needed such crude
accessories as a
false beard to create a character, when he thought there
was
little danger of being recognized by his features. Merely by
plastering his hair down with
odorous oil, leaving his shoes
unshined, and
putting on the same soiled shirt that he had
worn all the previous day, with the addition of a garish tie,
a pair of loud and clashing socks, and a large
diamond ring,
all bought at the same
dime store, and a little grime under
his
fingernails, he struck exactly the right note of seedy flashi
ness; and his manner as he entered Sholto’s
presence was a
convincing blend of
obsequiousness and bluster.

“You won’t be sorry you saw me, Dibs.
What I’ve got to
sell
is worth plenty, but I’m not going to make this a stick-up.
I’d rather have you feeling you still owed me
something than
drive a hard bargain.
Some other time I might want to ask
you
for a favor, if you know what I
mean.”

“What’re you selling?” Sholto
growled.

He was a rather short rotund man with a
snub-nosed face which he consciously tried to make less porcine by carrying
his chin
stuck out at an angle of permanent challenge, and
the same crude aggressiveness was
duplicated by his habitual voice. But his small shoe-button eyes were coldly
calculating
and as unemotional as marbles.

“It’s
like
this,” said the
Saint. “A couple of nights ago I
broke into a lawyer’s office in New York. I can tell you
that
because I know it won’t go any farther,
after we get through
talking. A
client had hired me to find out if a certain thing
was in his files, and you can’t be too fussy how
you go about
a job like that, if you
know what I mean.”

“Who was this lawyer?”

“Mr. Carlton Rood, Dibs—your own
mouthpiece, according
to what I read in the papers. That’s why I’m
here now. But
what I was looking for didn’t have anything to do with
you.
Only while I was looking, I found a recording machine in
his desk which he can turn on
if he wants to record a con
versation. So I
sat down and played the tape that was in it,
in case it had anything on it about my client, or anything else that
might be useful, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Sholto
snarled. “So what did
you hear?”

“There was this piece about you, Dibs.
And I knew you’d
be interested. So I found a spare spool of tape and made
a copy of
it—that was easy, machines like that being part
of my business, if you
know what I mean, and it didn’t tip
him off like it would if I’d taken the
original tape. But you
know his voice, and I thought you’d like to
hear it.”

Simon opened the small attache case he had
brought in
with him, whose purpose now became apparent: with the lid
off, it proved to be a portable tape recorder and play-back.
At a nod
from Sholto, one of the lieutenants helped him to
plug in the cord.
There was no longer any problem of piquing
the interest of the
audience.

The Saint twiddled a couple of knobs, and
suddenly the
opulent accents of Carlton Rood boomed with startling re
alism from
the instrument:

“You say that Mrs. Yarrow has already
been operated on?”

Then another voice, commonplace but incisive:
“Almost
a week ago. The operation was completely
successful. In a
few weeks she’ll have normal vision, and
could be called
to identify the man who squirted acid at her
in Mobile.”

Rood’s florid tones again:
“But that
case was thrown out
twelve years ago.”

“Sholto was never tried for shooting the
husband. And
there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“But what extraordinary lengths to go
to—to revive an
ancient case like that—”

“The Senator’s determined to get
Sholto. And several other
big scalps. He figures he needs them for his next election
campaign. He’s paying for all this out of his own pocket, and
he can afford to.”

“Indeed. But why are you telling me this,
Mr. Simons?”

“The Senator is a practical man. In
politics, if you can’t
lick ‘em, you join ‘em—within limits, of course. The Senator
would rather have you on his side than have to
fight you.
You
know how ambitious he is, and he
wants this very badly.
Here’s what I’m authorized to offer. Three hundred thousand,
dollars cash for all the information and leads you
can supply,
which of course will
never be attributed to you—and it can be handled so as to make it tax free. And
a Federal judge
ship, which will give
you a distinguished peak to retire from
in a few years and a perfect out
from having to turn down
defending your old
clients.”

The Saint gave a quick twist of one finger and
thumb,
and the sound stopped abruptly.

Sholto glared at him.

“What did you do that for?”

“I think that’s plenty for a
sample,” Simon answered. “I
know you want to know what Mr. Rood
said, but I’ve got to
leave myself something to sell, if you know what
I mean.”

One of the lieutenants moved menacingly
closer, and Simon
looked him in the eye and ostentatiously took his hand off
the machine.

“Don’t be hasty,” he said.
“You’ve heard all I brought
with me. The rest is on another tape, in a
safe place.”

Sholto’s teeth clamped down on his cigar.