The Saint to the Rescue (29 page)

“How much?”

“It should be worth ten grand,
easily.”

“To hear Rood tell this jerk to tell his
Senator to go take
a running jump at himself?” Sholto scoffed.
“What kind of
sucker d’you take me for?”

“I’m not telling you what he says.
That’s the part you
have to pay for.”

“And if all you’re selling is a false
alarm, you know how
sorry you’d be?”

“You won’t get it out of me that way,
Dibs,” said the
Saint with a thin smile. “But I’m taking
the risk that you won’t think you were gypped when you’ve heard it.” He
paused.
“Besides, if we do business, I’m hoping to sell you
something
else.”

“What’s that?”

“I expect you’ll want to know where this
Mrs. Yarrow is. Confidential investigations are my business. I could help you
find
her—for a little extra, that is. But you won’t be dis
appointed. I guarantee
I could locate her in less than four days, because of something you haven’t
heard yet, if you
know what I mean.”

The racketeer’s eyes stayed on him
unblinking, expression
less beads of jet, for a long count of
seconds, while his stubby
fingers beat a mechanical tattoo on his knee.
But behind that impenetrable stare Simon knew that an exceptionally shrewd
brain was
working, for even in the brutal jungles of Dibs
Sholto’s world a man
does not rise to eminence who is slow
to grasp and react.

There was obviously no doubt in Sholto’s mind
about the
genuineness of the tape record. And Simon had not for a
moment
anticipated that there would be, for the friend in
New York who had made
it for him—after half an hour’s first
hand study of Mr. Rood’s vocal
mannerisms during an abor
tive discussion of a problem in willing a
million-dollar estate
—had in the heyday of radio been one of the
most sought-
after multi-voiced actors, and was now a professional
mimic who made a fairly steady living in the secondary night-club
circuit
with an act in which he impersonated sundry celebri
ties. It was a poetic
touch that the Saint could never have
resisted, to hook Joe Sholto with a
similar trick to one of
those that Carlton Rood had used twelve years
ago to get
him off. And from that point Simon felt he could almost
hear
the turning of cog-wheels behind Sholto’s inscrutable scowl.

“I’ll have to think it over,” Sholto
said at last. As Simon
shrugged and stood up, he went on: “No,
you can stick
around. It’ll take a while, but not that long.” He
jerked his
cigar at his second lieutenant. “Take him in the
dining room,
Earl. Buy him a drink.”

Earl opened the door, and Simon followed him
docilely
across the hall into a room on the other side. There was
an assortment of bottles on the sideboard, among which Simon
noticed
the label of Peter Dawson.

“Help yourself,” Earl said
hospitably.

He raked together a pack of cards that were
scattered over
one end of the table, and riffled them thoughtfully.

“You play gin rummy?”

“Not very well,” said the Saint
modestly.

Joe Sholto was already dialing Long Distance
to give the
number of one of his special representatives who worked
out of Biloxi, and had the good luck to catch him at his office,
which was a
local pool room.

“Look for a Mrs. Agnes Yarrow, who’s been
living down
there,” Sholto said. “Find out if she’s in town
or where she’s
gone—anything else you can pick up. Call me back right
away.”

The next number he asked for was in New York,
and
presently it brought the sonorous tones of Carlton Rood over
the wire.

“Good afternoon, Joseph.”

“Hiya, Carl.” Sholto’s voice had all
the bluff bonhomie his
abrasive disposition could put into it.
“I hear you had bur
glars… . Yeah, one of my boys saw it in
the paper. Hope
you didn’t lose anything important… . Well, that’s too
bad, but it could of been worse. Two hundred bucks you can
put on the
next sucker’s bill—but it better not be mine!”

So Rood’s office had indeed been broken
into—that much
of the story checked. They talked for a while about
divers
loose ends and lesser upshots of the recent trial, and the conversation
had about run its natural course when Sholto
casually tossed in his
booby trap.

“By the way, Carl, you ever meet a guy
named Simons?”

Mr. Rood was startled enough not to answer
instantly.
He recalled his recent interviewer’s emphasis on
anonymity,
and the advantage it offered to his own vanity which he
had not
overlooked in thinking about the proposition since,
and decided that some
professional reserve was justified.

“Why on earth do you ask that,
Joseph?” he inquired
cautiously.

“He’s an attorney who’s been bothering a
friend of mine
about some broad he may have knocked up,” Sholto
said. “I just thought you might know him.”

“Oh, no,” said Mr. Rood, relieved
that he was not to be
faced with a problem. “I don’t believe I
know anyone of
that name.”

They signed off with the conventional
cordialities, and
Sholto slammed down the receiver and hurled his cigar
stump
savagely
into the fireplace.

“The dirty, stinking, lying, double-crossing son of a
bitch!”

His first lieutenant was already looking at him in full com
prehension, but Sholto’s indignation had to have
the first outlet of words.

“If he hadn’t told me before, that was
his chance to say something. That’s when he
had
to say it, if he was
ever going
to be on the level. But no. ‘I don’t believe I know
anyone
of that name,’ he says. The bastard! I need to hear the rest
of that
tape like a hole in the head. I
know
what he must’ve
said to
Simons.”

He pulled the spool of tape off the recorder
and glowered
at it for a moment as if he were wondering what insensate
violence to inflict on it. Then he took out another cigar, bit
off the
end, lighted it, and went back to his armchair. He sat
in hard-mouthed
grim-jawed silence which his lieutenant was
too wise to interrupt, turning the spool
over and over monot
onously in one hand; and
there was something even more
terrifying
in his impassive concentration than in his rage.

It was an hour and a half before the
telephone rang again,
and he heard the voice of his henchman in
Biloxi.

“I think I got all you wanted,
Dibs.”

“What is it?”

“The dame has a newsstand-shop here in town. Had it five
years. She lives with a married sister. But right
now she’s
away. She went to California
to have her eyes operated on, account of she’s blind. Seems someone met her in
the shop
and offered to pick up the
tab, but nobody knows who he was.
Nobody
else saw him, and she couldn’t tell anything about
him, account of being blind. A mystery man.”
“Do they know where she went in California?”
“Santa Barbara. I got the name of the doctor.
I’ll spell it
out for you—”

Sholto wrote it down, grunted his thanks, and
hung up.
He took out another cigar, and this time he carefully cut
off
the end.

“That’s all we need,” he said, and
repeated what his corre
spondent had told him.

“Didn’t he get the address where she
is?” asked the lieutenant.

“What’s that matter?” Sholto snarled. “If the doc
clams up,
we ask all the hospitals. There
can’t be so many in Santa
Barbara.”
He was not to know that the Saint had already
foreseen and forestalled
this. “Get that crummy pee eye back
here.”

Simon Templar entered with the air of thinly
disguised
nervous
expectancy proper to bis part, and Sholto wasted no
time crushing him.

“I thought your proposition over, bub,
and it’s no sale.”

“You mean you don’t
want
to know
what Mr. Rood said?”

“I know what he said. You ain’t dumb
enough to think you
could get away with a record of him turning this guy
Simons
down, so I guess he says okay. I don’t pay ten grand to hear
that.”

“But you’d like to find Mrs. Yarrow,
wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll find her if I want to, and cheaper
than you can do it.”

“But after all, Dibs,” whined the
Saint aggrievedly, “if I
hadn’t—”

“Yeah, I know,” Sholto said.
“I do owe you something for
the tip-off. And nobody ever said I welshed
on nothing rea
sonable. I don’t have no obligation, but I’ll pay you
what I
think the tape I heard is worth.”

He dug into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of green
paper bound with a gold clip. He detached two
bills from the
top and held them out,
and the Saint looked down and saw
that
the denominations were a thousand dollars each.
“Take it,” Sholto rasped, “before I change my mind.”
Simon swallowed and took it.

Then he turned to the second lieutenant, who
had followed
him back in, and produced a sheet from a score pad.

“And you owe me eighty-five dollars and
ten cents, Earl,” he
said.

“Pay him,” Sholto said. “And
throw him out.”
He stood at the window and watched the
Saint’s car going
down the drive, and then turned briskly as the second
lieuten
ant returned.

“Call the airport, Earl,” he
ordered. “Get us on the next plane to New York. We’ll all go.”

“What about the dame in
California?” asked the first
lieutenant.

“We’ll have plenty of time for her. She’s
bound to be in
the hospital for some time yet. But Rood won’t wait. I
could
pass the word to the big boys, but I think we’ll take care of
him
ourselves.” Sholto took out the spool of tape and
weighed it
meditatively in his hand again. “I wouldn’t be
surprised to see ‘em
coming to us with their hats in their
hands when they hear what I’ve done for
‘em.”

With no inkling of the role that had been
chosen for him in
Dibs Sholto’s pursuit of his ambitions, Mr. Carlton Rood
re
turned to his apartment in the East Sixties that night after
an
excellent dinner, feeling very comfortably contented with the perspective of
his life. His literary endeavor had been
completed and safely
deposited, and that very afternoon he
had dropped the first strategically
aimed word about it, in a quarter from which he knew the grapevine would
rapidly circulate it to all interested ears. He felt a mild glow of gratitude
to Mr.
Simons for the suggestion, and benevolently hoped
that something good
would come of the business they had
discussed.

As he reached the doorway, two men got out of
a car
parked nearby and came quickly towards him. Mr. Rood saw
them out of
the corner of his eye, and suddenly realized that
what he had glimpsed of one of them was
familiar. He turned,
and recognized a valued
client.

“Why, Joseph!” he exclaimed.
“This is a surprise—”

“I bet it is, you lousy squealer,” Sholto said, and
personally
fired the first shot of a
fusillade.

“You see,” said, the Saint tranquilly, “the law of
the land says
that if there’s any reasonable
doubt about a man’s guilt, he must be acquitted. The law of the underworld is
just the
opposite. On the other side of the fence, if there’s any serious
doubt about a man’s reliability, they make sure he can’t pos
sibly worry them any more. I thought that since
Carlton Rood
had worked so hard to
protect the tribe that lives by that phi
losophy, he might like to have it tried on himself.”

“I’m sure he loved it,” said his
friend the ophthalmologist
“But what about this sequel?”