Saint in New York (32 page)

Kestry’s fist smacked out again with
malignant force, and
the Saint staggered and gripped the edge of
the door for sup
port.

“Where’s Valcross?”

Simon shook his head mutely. There was no
strength in his knees, and he felt dazed and giddy. He had never dreamed of
being hit
with such power.

Kestry’s flinty eyes were fixed on him
mercilessly.

“So you think you won’t talk, eh?”

“I’m rather particular about whom I talk
to, you big ba
boon,” said the Saint unsteadily. “If this is
your idea of playing at detectives, I don’t wonder that you’re a flop.”

Kestry’s stare reddened.

“I’ve got you, anyhow,” he grated,
and his fist swung round
again and sent the Saint reeling against a
bookcase.

He caught the Saint by his coat lapels with
one vast hand
and dragged him up again. As he did so, he seemed to
notice
for the first time that one of Simon’s sleeves was hanging
empty. He
flung the coat off his right shoulder and saw the
dull red of drying
stains on his shirt.

“Where did you get that?” he barked.

“A louse bit me,” said the Saint.
“Now I come to think of it,
he must have been a relation of yours.”

Kestry grabbed his wrist and twisted the arm
up adroitly
behind his back. The strength of the detective’s hands was
terrific. A white-hot blaze of pure agony went through the Saint’s injured
shoulder, and a kind of mist swam across his eyes. He
knew that he could
not hold up much longer, even though he
had nothing to tell.
But the medieval methods of the third
degree would batter and torture him
into unconsciousness be
fore they were satisfied with the
consolidation of their status as the spiritual heirs of Sherlock Holmes.

And then, through the hammering of many waters
that
seemed to be deadening his ears, he heard the single sharp
ring of a
bell, and the racking of his arm eased.

“See who it is, Dan,” ordered Kestry.

Bonacci nodded and went out. Kestry kept his
grip on the
Saint’s arm, ready to renew his private entertainment as
soon
as the
intrusion was disposed of, but his eyes were watching the
door.

It was Inspector Fernack who came in.

He stood just inside the room, pushing back
his hat, and
took in the scene with hard and alert grey eyes. His
craglike
face showed neither elation nor surprise; the set of his
massive
shoulders was as solid and immutable as a mountain.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“We got the Saint,” Kestry
proclaimed exultantly. “The
other guy—Valcross—ain’t been here, but this
punk’ll soon tell me where to look for him. I was just puttin’ him on the
grill ——
”

“You’re telling me?” Fernack roared
in on him abruptly, in
a voice that dwarfed even the bull-throated
harshness of his
subordinate’s. “You bloody fool! Who told you to do
it here?
Where
d’you get that stuff, anyway?”

Kestry gulped as if he could not believe his ears.

“But say, Chief, where’s the harm? This
mug wouldn’t come
through—he was wisecrackin’ as if this was some game we
were
playin’ at—and I didn’t want to waste any time gettin’ Val
cross as
well ——
”

“So that’s what they taught you at the
Police Academy,
huh?” Fernack ripped in searingly. “I always
wondered what
that place was for. That’s a swell idea, Kestry. You go
ahead.
Tear the place to pieces. Wake all the other guests in the hotel
up an’ get
a crowd outside. Bonacci can be ringing up the
tabloids an’ gettin’
some reporters in to watch while you’re do
ing it. The
commissioner’ll be tickled to death. He’ll probably
resign and hand you his job!”

Kestry let go the Saint’s wrist and edged
away. Simon had
never seen anything like it. The great blustering bully
of a
few moments ago was transformed into the almost ludicrous
semblance
of a schoolboy who has been caught stealing apples.
Kestry practically
wriggled.

“I was only tryin’ to save time.
Chief,” he pleaded.

“Get outside, and have a taxi
waiting,” Fernack commanded
tersely. “I’ll bring the Saint down
myself. After that you can
go home. Bonacci, you stay here an’ wait for
Valcross if he
comes in… .”

Simon had admired Fernack before, but he had
never ap
preciated the dominance of the man’s character so much.
Fernack
literally towered over the scene like a god, booming
out curt, precise
directions that had the effect of cannon balls.
In less than a minute
after he had entered the room he had
cleaned it up as effectively as if he
had gone through it with a
giant’s flail. Kestry almost slunk away,
vacating the apartment
as if he never wished to see it again.
Bonacci, who had been
edging away into an inconspicuous corner, sank
into a chair
as if he hoped it would swallow him up completely until
the
thunder had gone. Fernack was left looming over the situation like a
volcano, and there was a gleam in his frosted gaze which
hinted that
he would not have cared if there had been another
half-dozen pygmies for him to destroy.

He eyed the Saint steadily, taking in the
marks of battle
which were on him. The detective’s keen stare missed
nothing,
but no reaction appeared on the granite squareness of his
face. From
the beginning he had given no sign of recognition;
and Simon, accepting the cue, was equally
impassive.

“Come
on,” Fernack grunted.

He took the Saint’s sound arm and led him out
to the ele
vator. They rode down in silence and found Kestry waiting
sheepishly with a taxi. Fernack pushed the Saint in and turned
to his
lieutenant.

“You can go with us,” he said.

They journeyed downtown in the same atmosphere
of silent
tension. Kestry’s muteness was aggrieved and plaintive,
yet
wisely
self-effacing; Fernack refrained from talking because he
chose to refrain—he was majestically unconcerned
with what
reasons might be attributed
to his taciturnity. Simon wondered
what
was passing in the iron detective’s mind. Fernack had
given him his chance once, had even confessed
himself theo
retically in sympathy;
but things had passed beyond a point
where
personal prejudices could dictate their course. The Saint
thought that he had discerned a trace of private
enthusiasm in
the temperature of the
bawling out which Fernack had given Kestry, but even that meant little. The
Saint had given the city
of New York a
lot of trouble since that night when he had
talked to Fernack in Central Park, and he respected Fernack’s
rugged honesty too much to think of any personal
appeal. As
the cards fell, so they
lay.

The Saint was getting beyond caring. The vast
weariness
which had enveloped him had dragged him down to the point
where he could do little more than wait with outward stubbornness for
whatever Fate had in store. If he must go down,
he would go down as
he had lived, with a jest and a smile; but the fight was sapped out of him. His
whole being had settled down to the acceptance of an infinity of pain and
fatigue. He
only wanted to rest. He scarcely noticed the brief order
from Fernack which switched the cab across towards Washington
Square; and
when it stopped and the door was opened he
climbed out
apathetically, and was surprised to find that he
was not in Centre
Street

Fernack followed him out and turned to
Kestry.

“This is my apartment,” he said.
“I’m going to have a talk
to the Saint here. You can go on. Report to
me in the mom-
ing.
Good-night.”

He took the Saint’s arm again and led him into
the house,
leaving the bewildered Kestry to find his own
explanations.
Fernack’s apartment was on the street level, at the back—
Simon was a
trifle perplexed to find that it had a bright, com
fortable living room,
with a few good etchings on the walls and bookcases filled with books which
looked as if they had been
read.

“You’re never too old to learn,”
said Fernack, who missed
nothing. “I been tryin’ to get some dope
about these Greeks.
Did you ever hear of Euripides?” He pronounced it
Eury-pieds. “I asked a Greek who keeps a chop house on Mott
Street,
an’ he hadn’t; but the clerk in the bookstore told me he
was a big
shot.” He threw his hat down in a chair and picked
up a
bottle. “Would you like a drink?”

“I could use it,” said the Saint
with a wry grin.

Fernack poured it out and handed him the
glass. It was a
liberal measure. He gave the Saint time to swallow some of
it and light a cigarette, and then spat at the cuspidor which stood
out
incongruously by the hearth.

“Saint, you’re a damn fool,” he
said abruptly.

“Aren’t we all?” said the Saint helplessly.

“I mean you more than most. I’ve talked
to you once. You
know what it’s all about. You know what I’m supposed to do
now.”

“Fetch out the old baseball bat and
rubber hose, I take it,”
said the Saint savagely. “Well, I know
all about it. I’ve met
your Mr. Kestry. As a substitute for
intelligence and a reason
able amount of routine work, it must be the
slickest thing that
was ever invented.”

“We use it here,” Fernack said
trenchantly. “We’ve found
that it works as well as anything. The only
thing is, some fools
don’t know when you’ve gotta use it and when
you’re wastin’
your time. That ain’t the point. I got you here for
something
else. You’ve been out and around for some time since we
had
our talk. How
close have you got to the Big Fellow?”

The question slammed out like a shot, without
pause or ar
tifice, and something in the way it was put told Simon
that the
time for
evasions and badinage was over.

“I was pretty damn near it when I walked
into Kestry’s loving arms,” he said. “In fact, I could have picked
up a message
in about an hour that ought to have taken me straight to
him.”

Fernack nodded. His keen grey eyes were fixed
steadily on
the
Saint’s face.

“I’m not askin’ you how you did it or
who’s sending you the
message. You move fast. You’re clever. It’s
queer that one little
bullet can break up a guy like you.”

He put a hand in his hip pocket, as if his
last sentence had
suggested a thought which required concrete expression,
and
pulled out a pearl-handled gun. He tossed it in the palm of
his hand.

“Guns mean a lot in this racket,” he
said. “If a bullet out of
a gun hadn’t hit you, you might have got away
from Kestry
and Bonacci. I wouldn’t put it beyond you. If you had
this gun now, you’d be able to get away from me.” He dropped
the
revolver carelessly on the table and stared at it. “That
would be
pretty tough for me,” he said.

Simon looked at the weapon, a couple of yards
away, and
sank back further into his chair. He took another drink
from
his glass.

“Don’t play cat-and-mouse, Fernack,”
he said. “It isn’t
worthy of you.”

“It would be pretty tough,” Fernack
persisted, as if he had
not heard the interruption. “Particularly
after I brought K
estry as far as the door an’ then sent him home. There
wouldn’t
be anything much I could put up for an alibi. I
didn’t have to see you
alone in my own apartment, without
even a guy waitin’ in the hall in case
you gave any trouble,
when I could ‘ve taken you to any station
house in the city or
right down to Centre Street. If anything went
wrong, I’d have
a hell of a lot of questions to answer; an’ Kestry
wouldn’t help
me. He must be feelin’ pretty sore at the way I bawled
him
out at the Waldorf. It’d give him a big kick if I slipped up an’ gave him
the laugh back at me. Yeah, it’d be pretty tough for
me if you got away, Saint.”