Saint in New York (30 page)

“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 am
bition 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 every
thing 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 ran
som 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. Nat
urally 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
comprehen
sively
satisfactory, given the initial genius and the capable
mouthpiece; it was so obvious that he could have kicked him
self 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 in
dustry,
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 been
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, con
templating
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 mat
tered. 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 desir
able. 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 cor
ner 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 be
fore 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. Any
thing you say will be safe with him.”