Saint in New York (37 page)

“You boys have taken up the finest job in
the world,” were
his last words to them; and the harshness of
thirty years
dropped out of his great voice for that short time.
“I’ve given
my whole life to it, an’ I’d do it ten times over again.
It ain’t
an easy job. It ain’t easy to stand up an’ take a slug in
the guts. It ain’t easy to see your best friends go out that way—plugged
by some
lousy rat that happened to be quick with a gun. It
ain’t easy to remember
the oath you take when you go out of
here, when you see guys higher up
takin’ easy money, an’
that same money is offered to you just for
shuttin’ your eyes
at the right moment. It’s a tough job. You gotta be rough.
You’re dealin’ with rats and killers, guys that would shoot their own
mother in the back for five bucks, the whole scum of the
earth—an’
they don’t understand any other language. We
here, you an’ me, are
carryin’ on the toughest police job in
the world.
But”—and at that point they saw John Fernack,
Iron John Fernack,
square his tremendous shoulders like a
man settling an easy
load, while a light that was almost beau
tiful came into his
eyes—“don’t let it make you too tough.
Because some day, out
of all the scum; you’re gonna meet a
guy who’s as good a man as you, an’ if
you don’t know when to
give him a break you’re gonna miss the
greatest thing in the
world, which is seein’ your faith in a guy
made good.”

And in the garden of an inn beside the
Thames, in the
cool of the darkness after a summer day, with a new moon
turning
the stream to a river of silver, Miss Patricia Holm,
who had long ago
surrendered all her days to the Saint, said:
“You’ve never
told me everything that happened to you in
New York.”

His cigarette glowed steadily, a red spark in
the darkness,
and his quiet voice answered her gently out of the
shadows.

“Maybe I shall never know everything
that happened to
me there,” he said; but his memories were three
thousand
miles away from the moon on the river and the black
sentinels
of the trees, and there was the thunder of a city in his
ears,
and the whisper of a voice that was all music, which said:
“Au
revoir…
.”