Saint on Guard (11 page)

It seemed quite unfortunate at that moment that the Algonquin Hotel had omitted to provide two vats of soft plaster of paris among the otherwise well-planned furnishings of the joint. If it had not been for that almost incredible lack of foresight, the cataleptic rigidity of the two men might easily have allowed the Saint to immerse them and withdraw them again without the slightest disturbance of their articulation, thereby creating a pair! of moulds for which any wax museum would have been glad to bid. But such sad wastes are an inevitable symptom of our un-planned economy, and Simon Templar had learned to exercise his philosophy on them.

He said, without undue gloom: “The hands up and clasped behind the back of the head, gentlemen—if you don’t mind my borrowing your own fancy formula, Ricco. Although to be quite’ candid it just struck me that your vocabulary had slipped a bit. Or is it because you save your party dialogue for the cash customers?”

Varetti put the bag down gradually and deliberately, and raised his hands in the same way, so that his movements were rather like those of a trained snake; and his eyes were a snake’s eyes, bright and beady and unblinking.

“How the hell did you get here?” demanded Mr “Walsh, almost indignantly.

“I heard you wanted me,” said the Saint, “so I came a-running. A little faster with the hands, if you don’t mind, Cokey… . Thank you… . Now if you’ll both turn your backs I’ll see whether you’ve picked up any new weapons since we last met, and if you are very polite I may refrain from goosing you.”

Apparently they had been rushed out of either the time or the opportunity to replenish their armory, or else they had anticipated no such disconcerting need for one, for the only trophy which rewarded his excavations was a six-inch jackknife from the pocket of Comrade Varetti with a trick spring that whipped the blade open when you pressed a button.

The Saint was not too disappointed. He had discovered before then that it is only in the less conscientious crime stories that the ungodly are endowed with inexhaustible reserves of artillery from which they can rebound on a few minutes’ notice from any setback, armed to the teeth again and spitting javelins; and moreover he realised that the armament program must have placed additional handicaps even on the hoodlums who were accustomed to buy their gats by the carton. But he did not complain. He was not the complaining type. He was prepared to make his small contribution to the exigencies of global war.

He put the knife through its paces with the most detached and fascinated interest while he allowed the two men to turn around again.

“Very ingenious, Ricco, and quite a credit to the Mafia, or whatever your dear old alma mater was,” he observed appreciatively. “I’m afraid you must have been a very bad little boy when you were young.”

Varetti showed his white rabbit teeth in a smile that was half a snarl.

“You’ll find out what kind of a bad boy I am before we’re through,” he said. “Your luck will run out one of these days, and I’m going to be there when it does. You and your exploding cigarettes! I certainly was a chump to be taken in by an old gag like that.”

“You certainly were, brother,” Simon agreed consolingly. “But you can cheer yourself with the thought that smarter men than you have fallen for it before. And now, if we have to keep up these old-world courtesies, may I trouble you two creeps to back off and park your bottoms on that beautiful period sofa behind you? Keeping the hands in the same position, if you don’t mind… . That’s the idea. … I want you to be comfortable, because I still think of you as my guests, and we are now going to have a brief chat about one thing and another.”

With just a little more thoughtful reluctance than Walsh, Varetti sank obediently on to the couch; but there was no shift in the bland display of his incisors.

“Don’t you know you’re wasting your time?” he asked. “We aren’t going to tell you anything. Why don’t you just call the cops?”

“And then?” Simon inquired, smiling and silky.

“Then you’ll have to prove that you didn’t invite us in here. And you’ll have to explain why you were so mad when we found that you had a bag full of stolen indium in your apartment.”

The Saint’s eyes danced with boreal lights.

“Mr Walsh,” he said, “would you be good enough to open the bag that Ricco is talking about? … Go on. … I won’t shoot you.”

In a state of partial hypnosis buffeted between the menace of the Saint’s gun and the impudent spear-tips in the Saint’s eyes, Mr Walsh slid dubiously off the sofa to obey. He laid the suitcase on its side, and clicked the catch. He raised the lid. He looked. .

So did Ricco Varetti.

They beheld what must have been one of the finest collections of assorted spheres that had ever been hastily improvised. It ranged from the ripe solidity of bowls that should have been booming smoothly down polished alleys, down to ball bearings designed to speed the wheels of roller skates, and down from there to buckshot and BB pills for airguns. It included baseballs, cricket balls, billiard balls, and one large sand-packed medicine ball. It was a truly amazing crop of balls.

“All right,” said the Saint amiably. “Let’s have the showdown on that basis. The cops are on their way already, whether you believe it or not, and they are a couple of tough babies. They’ll be crashing in here in a matter of minutes—if they take that long. I’m giving you this one chance to scream everything you can remember about your boss man; and if you don’t want to play with me I’m sure that Kestry and Bonacci will just love showing you the town.”

11 To any individual who, like the present chronicler, is acutely conscious of the need to conserve paper in order that there may never be any lack of raw materials on which the latest governmental artist can design new forms to be filled out in sesquicentuplicate, the mere thought of wasting one milligram of precious pulp which might be better devoted to the production of monogrammed kleenex is instinctively repugnant. Your corre-spondent therefore proposes to expend no words on describing the reactions of Messieurs Varetti and Walsh, beyond mentioning that they looked as if they had been kicked three inches above the navel by an exacerbated elephant.

Whereafter, as an equally simple matter of record, it was Cokey Walsh who digested the ultimate total into the single sizzling sentence without which all detective-story dialogue would have dried up long ago.

“I ain’t talking.”

“That remains to be seen,” said the Saint, with proper patience, having been in stories before. “But you’ll have to start with some sort of alibi when the cops arrive, and I thought you might like a rehearsal.”

Varetti moistened his lips.

“That’s still easy,” he said. “You brought us in here and started all this. You say we were trying to steal something. Well, what was it and where did you get it?”

“You’re doing fine,” said the Saint encouragingly. “Go on.”

Varetti shrugged.

“I don’t have to go on for you. But I can tell you that if there’s going to be any squealing at all, Cokey and I will squeal on you first. And if we have to take any rap, we’ll share it out with you.

We could even say that you were in with us all the time, until you started to double-cross us just now.”

“That’s right,” Cokey chimed in brightly. “When we found out what you was up to, we didn’t want any part of it. So we was just tryin’ to do our duty and turn you in.”

The Saint sighed.

“I can’t stop you dreaming,” he said, “but do you honestly believe that even the dumbest cop you ever hoped for is going to buy a yarn like that from a couple of characters like you?”

“What’s wrong with our characters?” Cokey demanded ag-grievedly. “Our word is as good as yours–-“

“But is it?” Simon asked gently. “I imagine that your record must be rather involved. And I don’t suppose you got your name because of your passion for drinking colas. I can see other stuff in your eyes now. Are you quite sure that a junkie’s word is as good as mine? What do you think, Ricco?—and incidentally, how is your police record? Will the YMCA vouch for you? Are you in line for an honorary commission in the Salvation Army?”

Varetti said nothing. He stared back at the Saint with adequate outward composure, and Simon gathered that he had all the misdirected courage of his profession. The Saint didn’t underestimate Mr Varetti, in spite of his revolting clothes and coiffure.

There was, meanwhile, the matter of a cigarette which was becoming increasingly overdue… . Simon dipped into his breast pocket and secured one with his left hand, without the most microscopic shift of the automatic in his right. He fished out a match booklet in the same way, and began shaping a match over without tearing it out, in order to strike it one-handed.

He said: “I don’t have to make speeches to you, either. I just hope you don’t think I’m kidding about Kestry and Bonacci. Because if you do, we’re wasting a lot of time, and we haven’t got much to spare.”

Varetti’s mouth curled derisively.

“Don’t give us that stuff. You didn’t know we were coming here until we walked into the room.”

“That’s true. I was only guessing that you were coming. But I knew that somebody was. I knew that somebody would be checking on me here, and I couldn’t bring that bag in in my pocket. Therefore somebody would know that something had gone wrong. And somebody would want to do something fast about getting the bag back. That’s what I told Inspector Fernack; and that’s why Kestry and Bonacci are on their way. I do hope you know Kestry and Bonacci. They don’t have any of those Lord Peter Wimsey whimsies, but they get a lot more confessions in their own way. Are you looking forward to a romp with them in the massage parlor?”

The hoodlum glared at him with hot hateful eyes.

“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “It’s a stall, that’s what it is.”

“Is that all you’re betting on?”

Varetti’s mouth was a tight line.

“If you mean I should spill, there isn’t a chance.”

Simon wiped his bent match over the striking strip on the booklet and put the flame to his cigarette.

He said: “How about you, Cokey? How are you looking forward to going without your inhaler for a while? Have you ever been through that experience before? I expect you have. On top of being slapped around a bit, it’s quite a lot of fun—isn’t it?”

Cokey Walsh’s face was pallid and lined. “With his hands clasped behind his head as he had been ordered, only his elbows could tremble. But they did. His eyes were jittering buttons in a yellow mask.

“Remember it, Cokey?” Simon asked gently. “Remember how all your nerves jump and twitch, and you’re all empty inside except for your stomach being a tight knot in the middle, and there are hammers inside your head beating it apart from the middle, and you know that if it doesn’t stop you’re going to scream and go crazy?”

Cokey swallowed twice as if he were trying to get a tough dry mouthful down his throat.

“I–-“

“You’re not talking, either,” Varetti cut in savagely. “Take hold of yourself, Cokey! This punk hasn’t got a thing on us, except maybe a breaking and entering charge that won’t stick. You make one peep, and you’ll wind up in the hot squat—unless I croak you first. Which I will, so help me!”

Cokey struggled again with the bolus of dry hay in his gullet.

“I ain’t talking,” he rasped again. “You can’t make me talk.”

Simon Templar took a deep rib-lift of smoke down into his system and let it circulate leisurely around. But the pulse in the back of his brain that was ticking away seconds had nothing leisurely about it. Time marched on, inexorably and alarmingly, and he was getting nothing out of it. There was no doubt that Cokey would sing eventually, if he had any music to give out, but there was also no doubt that he would take quite a little loosening up. Any fears he had of the police or even of the Saint himself were still plainly dominated by his fear of Varetti. And Varetti was still dominated, for one reason or another, by someone else. And it was still an impasse, and time was slipping away like water out of a bath… .

And the Saint’s idle smile still didn’t change as he let the smoke out through it and held the two gonsels with easy and impossible blue eyes.

“Now let’s face a few facts, kiddies,” he said quietly. “You were sent here to collect a lot of very valuable green dust. You don’t find any. You pick up a collection of spherical souvenirs which cost me quite a lot of dough, but which don’t have such a terrific market value. Therefore you are not going home and collect a great big commission on the trip. In fact, your boss may not even be pleased with you at all… . I’m trying to be honest with you, boys. I bought another bag and put the boodle you’re looking for in it, and it’s safe now where you’ll never get your hands on it again. So you can’t win. And Kestry and Bonacci will beat it out of you eventually, anyway. Why not tell me now and let me save you a lot of pain?”

“You’re scaring me to death,” sneered Varetti.

He should have been scared. For the Saint was most dangerous when his smile was gentle and detached like that. And it wasn’t always a physical danger. Varetti was tough enough to brace himself against that, at least for a time. He was concentrating on that.

And so it was unfortunate for him, and for certain other people, that he was psychologically satisfied with that threat alone. It was clear enough to him so that it was twisting up his nerves and drawing on all his resistance, while his constructive imagination was fully occupied with a desperate groping for some trick of escape. And that left him nothing to spare with which to encompass the really frightening idea that all of that build-up might only be a feint in force for a much more complicated attack in depth. He watched the falling bludgeon and never saw the stealthy approach of the stiletto.

The Saint stepped closer, and he looked taller and harder, and the edges were sharpening in his voice.

“Sure, Ricco, you’re tough,” he said. “You can take plenty. But how much can your girl friend take? How long will she keep her mouth buttoned when we start working on her? And where are you and Cokey going to find the answers when she sings about you?”