Catch the Saint

Chapter 1

In the course of his good works, of which he himself was not the smallest beneficiary, the man so paradoxically called the Saint had assumed many roles and placed himself in such a fantastic variety of settings that the adventures of a Sinbad or a Ulysses had by comparison all the excitement of a housewife’s trip to the market. His range was the world. His identities had encompassed cowboy and playboy, poet and revolutionary, hobo and millionaire. The booty he had gathered in his years of buccaneering had certainly made the last category genuine: The assets he had salted away would have made headlines if they had been exposed to counting. He could have comfortably retired at an age when most men are still angling for their second promotion. But strong as the profit motive was as a factor in his exploits, there were other drives which would never allow him to put the gears of his mind permanently in neutral and hang up his heels on the stern rail of a yacht. He had an insatiable lust for action, in a world that squandered its energies on speeches and account books. He craved the individual expression of his own personal ideals, and his rules were not those of parliaments and judges but those of a man impatient to accomplish his purposes, according to his own lights, by the most effective means available at the moment. This does not mean that all his waking hours were consecrated to one clear-cut objective or another, attached to which there had to be the eventual prospect of some pecuniary reward. Like anyone else, he often found himself enmeshed in quite aimless activities, some of which promised nothing but entries on the debit side of his imaginary ledgers.

Like, for instance, this very Main-Line charity ball in Philadelphia, for which the tickets cost a mere $100 each against the $1,000 that many social climbers would have paid to get one. In a situation that has nothing to do with this story, Simon Templar had been offered the ineffable privilege of buying one at cost, as a favour that he could not gracefully refuse; and since he had paid his money and had nothing more exciting on his agenda at the moment, he had decided that he might as well look in, in a spirit of scientific if not wholly unmalicious curiosity, and see what cooked in this particular segment of the Upper Crust.

It was an impulse for which his first impression was that he should have had his head examined. The Adelphi Ballroom of the New Sylvania Hotel was like a claustrophobic football field thronged with players attempting to get champagne glasses from one point to another without splashing the contents over themselves or their neighbours or being toppled by dancers encroaching on drinkers’ territory. The air was dense with the essence of acres of French flowers and the effluvium of smouldering tobacco leaves. Words were lost in a whirlpool of words. Individuality was swallowed up in the mass.

The Saint stood observing the scene cynically, restless, his mind in other places, like a privateer waiting for the tide that would set him free from the shore. When a plump warm hand touched his wrist it was no surprise, even though he had given no sign of anticipating it; his life had depended so frequently on his instincts that even in surroundings as apparently safe as these, even with his mind abstracted, it would have been virtually impossible for anyone to approach him from any direction without his being aware of it well in advance of arrival.

But he looked down into the doughy pink unity that constituted the face and chins of Miss Theresa Marpeldon as if her fragrant advent had been a complete surprise. He had met her once, briefly and unmemorably, at a cocktail party in Palm Beach. Miss Theresa Marpeldon was about seventy, and the heiress of a baked-bean fortune. She was heavily powdered, soaked in cologne, and wreathed in diamonds for this occasion. In the Saint’s imagination she resembled the decorative pudding of some baronial Christmas banquet.

“Simon,” she said, “there’s a young lady here who’s dying to meet you.”

“I already like her,” the Saint said amiably. “Who is she?”

“She’s right here. She was right here. Carole?”

Miss Marpeldon kept a precautionary hold on the Saint’s arm as she turned to look for her protégé.

From behind she was all beautiful young legs and long blond hair. When Miss Marpeldon turned her round, the Saint began to feel that he was getting value for his hundred dollars. She was in her twenties, with a pert Scottish nose and wide turquoise eyes. There were many decorative women in the room, but this girl stood out like a single flower in a field of grass. The turquoise eyes met the deep blue of the Saint’s with level playfulness.

“Carole, I was just telling Mr Templar that you were dying to meet him, and then you wandered off.”

“I never said I was dying to meet you,” the girl denied. “All I said was that if Theresa didn’t introduce us I was going to hang myself from that chandelier during the last waltz.”

Miss Marpeldon giggled loudly, like any good audience for society-ballroom wit.

“This is Carole Angelworth,” she said. “Carole, this is Simon Templar. I’m sure you two can find plenty to talk about.”

Miss Marpeldon was a born matchmaker, and was immediately off to the rescue of a gangly young man whose very costly tuxedo seemed to be doing him no good at all in his search for a dancing partner.

“I’m flattered that you were considering suicide over me before we’d even met,” Simon said to Carole Angelworth. “It’s understandable, but still flattering.”

“Oh, think nothing of it,” she replied airily. “I’ve told her the same thing about at least two other men this evening.”

“What happened to them?”

“Appearances can be deceiving. They just didn’t live up to their looks.” She paused and shrugged. “So I poisoned them.”

“Naturally,” the Saint nodded. “I have a feeling I’ll be safer if your hands are occupied. Let’s dance.”

“Well, normally I dance with my feet, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Much more of that corn and I might poison you,” Simon warned her.

She slipped easily into his arms, and they merged with the other dancers in a slow old-fashioned fox trot, or rather a sort of intimate shuffle, which was about as much movement as the crowded floor allowed. Something in the way her hand held his belied the cool banter of her gilt-edged accent. Before he had ever seen her, she had been watching him. Among the other younger males in the ballroom — who were generally over-fed, over-protected, and under-exercised — Simon Templar’s lean tall strength and almost sinister handsomeness had attracted her immediately. Now, as she danced close to him, his magnetism captured her even more, and she found it hard to breathe.

“I don’t know that much about you,” she said with an effort at her original nonchalance. “Do you really and truly think we ought to run away together?”

“Give me another half minute to think it over,” Simon said.

She leaned back a little and looked up at him.

“Who are you?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you at one of these brawls before.”

“I move round a lot,” he told her.

“Where?”

“Wherever my business takes me.”

“What’s your business?”

“It varies,” he said. “Mostly armed robbery, jewel thieving, large-scale swindles.”

“I knew you were the kind of man who wouldn’t tell anything about himself. You like being mysterious.”

“At least I’ve said something,” Simon replied. “What about you?”

“My name is Carole Angelworth,” she recited with her eyes closed. “I am twenty-three years old. I have a degree in sociology. My mother is dead. I live with my father, Hyram J. Angelworth, who is very rich and generous, and spoils me rotten. I am reasonably normal except for a mad urge to climb trees just before the full moon. I have a passion for back-rubs and strawberries.”

“At least back-rubs are never out of season,” Simon mused. “But then, I suppose neither are strawberries, when your father is Hyram J. Angelworth.”

“You’ve heard of him?” Carole asked.

The music ended just then, and they strolled towards one of the bars.

“You can’t be in Philadelphia long without hearing about him. The Angelworth Foundation. The Angelworth Children’s Clinic. The Citizens Committee for Law Enforcement. He’s done the town a lot of good.”

“He’s a good man,” Carole said earnestly. “Sometimes I’m afraid people take advantage of him. He worked hard for what he’s got, and now he gives it away right and left. You don’t even know a fraction of the things he does — the charities. But I hate that word. It sounds so condescending.”

“Well, there are worse ways for a man to get his kicks,” said the Saint. “And from the looks of that solid-silver dress of yours, he’s at least keeping enough cash round to pay the light bills.”

“It’s rude to comment on the price of things,” Carole remarked.

“Whoever said I wasn’t rude?” Simon retorted.

Once they had met, there was no question of their parting. Simon could see that behind her bantering façade, she really had developed an instant crush on him; and he would have been less than human if he had not responded to her dew-fresh beauty and youthful exuberance. They spent the evening happily together. Carole turned down several requests to dance with other men. It was only “when the ball had rolled beyond its midnight peak that she and Simon were surrounded by half a dozen of her friends insisting that they all go off together to a livelier spot. Simon left it up to Carole, who had no particular fondness for the overpowering elegance of the ballroom.

“Go ahead, and we’ll meet you there,” she told the other couples. “I want to tell Daddy good night and introduce him to Simon.”

He was mildly surprised when, at the elevators, she pressed an up button.

“We live here,” she explained. “In the penthouse apartment. Daddy glommed on to it when the hotel was being built.”

“I’ve always wanted to see how the under-privileged people make out,” he murmured.

“Where are you staying?”

“Here, too, as a matter of fact. But not in quite such grandeur. I took a room here because the ball was here and it seemed to save a lot of running about, and because they have a garage in the basement.”

“So you don’t mind a few modern comforts either.”

She found her father in a book-lined library off the formal drawing room, sitting in leather-upholstered comfort with three guests of about his own age and a considerably younger fourth — a tall hunched man with long arms and a watchful pair of ball-bearing eyes deeply imbedded under dark bushy brows — standing behind him. Bodyguard? Simon immediately asked himself, for the standing man’s face would have seemed more at home on a post-office wall than here in the company of the thoroughbred rich.

“Daddy, this is Mr Templar. He’s been taking beautiful care of your only daughter all evening, so I thought you’d like to express your gratitude.” She turned to Simon. “Daddy’s always petrified I’m going to fall in with evil companions, or be kidnapped or something.”

Angelworth put down his liqueur and rose from his green wing-backed chair to shake hands. He combined an air of command with a natural modesty which made him both impressive and likeable at first sight. He was in his late fifties, almost as tall as the Saint, with a carefully tended mane of white hair which contributed to making his head seem larger than the heads of the people around him. His mouth was broad and strong, but softened into an almost benign smile.

“If you’ve been making my daughter’s life happier I’m particularly pleased to meet you,” he said.

“And I’m particularly pleased to meet the father of the young lady who’s given me such a delightful evening,” Simon replied with equal graciousness.

The names of the others, punctiliously introduced, would have needed no references from Dun & Bradstreet, with the exception of the craggy-browed fourth, whose name was Richard Hamlin and whose handshake and grunt were as short on urbanity as his appearance.

“My secretary and aide-de-camp,” Angelworth explained.

Carole surveyed the other three suspiciously.

“You string-pullers aren’t still trying to talk my father into running for governor, are you?”

Hyram Angelworth sat down with a weary smile.

“I’m afraid that’s what they’ve been trying to do,” he said.

“Well, you just leave him alone,” Carole said. “He doesn’t need all those dirty politics, and he’s doing plenty of good just as he is.”

“Can’t promise you that,” one of the men said. “We need him. There aren’t many born winners round these days.”

Angelworth raised a hand.

“Don’t worry, dear,” he said to Carole, “the answer will go right on being no. I’m better as a gadfly than a demagogue.”

“As long as that’s understood,” his daughter said with mock sharpness, “Simon and I can leave you to take care of yourself. The gang’s going out for a little hot jazz. I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

Her father said good-bye in a barely perceptible tone of resignation, like a would-be disciplinarian who has long ago given up on a recalcitrant subject.

“You notice,” Carole murmured to Simon when they were out of earshot, “that I didn’t say we were going with the gang.”

“Oh? Do you have a different plan?”

“I don’t need all that noise tonight any more than my father needs to hornswoggle the masses into giving him the honour of having mud slung at him for four years. Let’s just find a quiet dump where we won’t be noticed and have a cup of coffee. It isn’t every day I meet somebody interesting enough to bother talking to.”

“What, in these rags?”

“After that second crack, I’ll change into something less gaudy. You do the same, and I’ll meet you in the garage in ten minutes. And I do mean ten minutes.”

It was not extraordinary that a girl with the background of Carole Angelworth should have had no inkling that any night out with him had a built-in risk of getting involved with more exciting, and more dangerous, things than talk.

Chapter 2

He would have bet that to a girl of her type “ten minutes” was only a figure of speech which might have covered any period up to a half or three quarters of an hour. But she was precisely as good as her word, having simply shucked the low-cut silver lamé creation in exchange for a plain sweater and skirt, in the same time as he had swapped his tuxedo for a jacket and slacks.

His knowledge of Philadelphia geography was minimal, and he let her direct him through rain-wet streets for something over twenty minutes in a direction that began well enough but became progressively more sordid, until they turned a corner close to some pretzels of garish red neon a little down the block which proclaimed the exotic ambience of SAMMY’S BOOZE & BILLIARDS.

Carole pointed.

“Let’s go in there.”

Simon’s brows slanted in a half rise, half frown. But he slowed up and pulled over to the kerb, not directly under the twisted neon but not many yards beyond. As they passed, he observed that to enhance the inspired title of the place there was an ornamental drunk sleeping propped up beside the entrance.

At that hour there was hardly any traffic, and finding parking space was not the problem.

“It looks delightful,” Simon said, “but I thought we were hunting for some place quiet and cosy.”

“I love slumming,” Carole said. She suddenly snuggled up against him and looked up fiendishly into his eyes. “You’re not scared to take me in there, are you?”

“I’m sure you’ll protect me,” Simon drawled. “On the other hand, I’m sure you must know a place or two that might be a little more romantic.”

“I’ve never felt more romantic in my life,” Carole insisted. “And I can’t imagine anything that would bore me more than one of those conventional all-night supper clubs.”

And so, against his better judgement, Simon Templar found himself escorting Carole Angelworth into Sammy’s Booze & Billiards on a particular night at a particular time, which proved once again that even in his most off-guard and idle moments the Saint could not escape the currents of destiny that sucked him involuntarily into adventure.

They tiptoed around the sloshed Cerberus couched beside the threshold, opened the door, and faced the dense dark atmosphere like a pair of divers suddenly plunged into a gloomy pond.

It soon became moderately clear that there was a bar with stools down to the right, booths along the wall paralleling it, and in a larger space to the left a pair of pool tables occupying the earnest attention of several men. Sammy’s pool-playing clientele varied from flashily over-dressed to shirt-sleeves and khakis. The trio at the nearest table fell into the flashy category — quick money, low taste. Simon would normally have regarded them as part of the furniture, but he hesitated and looked at one of them again. A look of slightly puzzled concentration came over his face, tentative recognition mixed with uncertainty.

The Saint’s brain had a fantastic capacity for keeping vast quantities of stored information available for conscious recall. Thousands of faces, names, aliases, and case histories swarmed beneath the surface of his everyday awareness, ready to be netted and re-examined on an instant’s notice. The very fact that Simon hesitated at all after spotting a face that looked vaguely familiar meant that the identity belonging to the face had never played an important part in his own experience. But Simon’s natural inquisitiveness, and his dislike of unsolved puzzles, kept him standing just inside the entrance until seconds later an invisible index flipped over in his head and matched the face. Just a name, with an undefined favourable feeling attached to it, but enough to make the Saint impulsively take Carole’s arm and step over to the pool table.

“Brad Ryner,” he said.

There had been a lull in the game, and the man to whom he spoke looked up from chalking his cue. The look was not one of friendly recognition, or even of ready interest. The other’s face — broken-nosed, ruddy, rough-skinned, surmounted by curly red hair — was immediately hostile.

“Who’re you talking to?” he asked angrily.

When confronted with animosity, the Saint’s self-imposed discipline was to relax rather than to let himself get nettled.

“To you,” he said easily. “Aren’t you Brad Ryner?”

“No, I’m not, and I never heard of him.” Fingers gripped the billiard cue so tightly that knuckles were white. “You’ve got your wires crossed, buster. The name’s Joe, and I don’t like people interrupting me when I’m trying to concentrate on a game.”

If Carole had known more about Simon Templar, she would have realised that his response was uncharacteristically apologetic.

“Sorry,” he said. “I made a mistake.”

“Okay, okay!” the other man snarled. “Do me a favour and cut out the yapping or you’re gonna wreck my concentration.”

His two companions at the table were watching him and the Saint with more interest now than at the beginning. One was a stout, bald, seal-like character with chocolate-coloured eyes and very small ears. The other had the build of a professional football tackle, but the unhealthy pallour of his skin hinted that not many of his activities took place out of doors. He scratched the back of his neck as he studied the face of the man Simon had called Brad Ryner.

Simon took Carole by the arm and moved away from the pool table.

“Nice friends you have,” Carole said in a loud voice. “Or non-friends.”

“Never mind,” the Saint said firmly, steering her to a booth at the other end of the bar. “You picked the place, so you shouldn’t be surprised to meet down-to-earth types. Or did you expect we’d be recognised and given the V.I.P. treatment?”

“That comes very close to sounding snide.”

“Nothing snide intended,” Simon said abstractedly. As he slipped into the dark booth next to the girl he could see that the three pool players had resumed their game. “I just pulled a boner, and I’m annoyed with myself.”

Carole shrugged.

“Well, anybody could mistake a face in this light, so don’t let it spoil our evening.”

“I won’t if you won’t.”

The unshaven shirt-sleeved counterman came and took their order for coffee.

“I still don’t see why he had to be so rude,” Carole said while they waited. “Or why you let him get away with it.”

“Forget it,” Simon answered. “I don’t want to talk about it here.”

They never did recapture the playfulness and gaiety of the earlier part of the evening. Simon parried Carole’s questions about his own life by drawing her out about her own. It had been a sheltered existence. Her mother had died while Carole was still a child. She had been nurtured by nannies, maids, and governesses. Her teens had unfolded trivially in a setting of sail-boats, tennis, house-parties, and debutante balls. Self-mocking, she described herself as a violet blossoming in the shade of a great oak.

The great oak was her father. He had not had her advantages when he was young, and typically he had tried to insulate her from the harsh realities which he had overcome.

“So it was rags to riches,” Simon prompted her, thinking how refreshing it was in these days to meet a rich girl who so positively and genuinely admired and adored the parent whose upward struggle had given her so much.

“Well, not exactly rags,” Carole replied. “Just the ordinary lower-middle-class slog, cutting corners and keeping a beady eye on the budget. Until he struck it rich when I was going to college. I was a spoiled brat, and for a long time I just rebelled against him, but I’ve finally gotten old enough to appreciate what he’s done. I can even admit how proud I am of him. When you have time, I’d like to show you a couple of places he’s responsible for creating.”

She turned her thick coffee-cup in its stained saucer and frowned slightly.

“Of course sometimes he goes too far. You’d think from all his law-and-order talk, and what a hardheaded businessman he is, that he’d be more careful. But he’s a great one for rehabilitating people — like that Richard Hamlin you met tonight. Richard’s an ex-convict. Embezzlement and who knows what else. But Daddy took him under his wing and made him his personal secretary.”

“Hire the handicapped, huh? I thought the casting director had done an off-beat job including Hamlin in that group. Still, he must have a fair set of brains. Embellishing books can be a fine art.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s dumb,” Carole said. “I just don’t trust him.”

“Why?” he asked with new interest.

But her dislike of Hamlin turned out to be based more on instinctive prejudice and unconscious snobbery (and perhaps a little jealousy of the secretary’s close and confidential relationship with her father) than on facts. It was a prejudice that many a wife has indulged — and usually denied — against the other woman in her husband’s office.

“Helping a lame dog over a stile is supposed to be good boy-scout Christianity,” Simon remarked judiciously. “Although personally I’ve always thought it was one of the silliest precepts ever coined. Did you ever look at a stile? I never saw one yet that a lame dog couldn’t wriggle over much faster than you could lift him over it.”

“Are you being symbolic or just smart?”

“Could be either.”

“I suppose you don’t believe in women’s intuition.”

“I pass.”

She caught Simon glancing at his watch.

“Am I boring you?” she enquired with some acidity.

“No, you’re not, but if you’ve finished your coffee I’d like to get out of here.”

Her reply was to push her empty cup away and pick up her bag from the seat beside her. As he walked with her to the door, Simon noted that the same groups were round the pool tables, and that the seal and the football tackle watched him as he left the bar.

Carole slumped disconsolately as he drove her back towards the New Sylvania.

“We were having such a good time,” she pouted. “What’s wrong? Did I say something? Are you just upset because you thought that man back there was somebody you knew?”

Seeing her stripped of her protective irony, admitting that her relationship with him meant enough to depress her, Simon felt that he owed her an honest answer.

“All right,” he” said. “I’ll tell you. It has nothing to do with you, and I don’t think you could bore me if you recited the telephone directory. I’m still kicking myself because of that imbecilic thing I did back in that bar.”

“What’s imbecilic about mistaken identity?” she demanded. “I’m surprised a man like you would worry about a thing like that. Male vanity?”

“It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity,” said the Saint. “It was a case of the mouth outrunning the brain. That man I spoke to really is named Brad Ryner. At least he was a couple of years ago when I met him out in California. And since he had a wife named Doris Ryner, and three kids with the same surname, I don’t think I need his birth certificate to prove the point.”

“Then why did he say his name was Joe?”

“Because Brad Ryner is a cop. A detective. Figure it out for yourself.”

Carole pondered, then said: “I think it would be faster if you explained it to me.”

The muscles of his face were tense.

“I’m afraid that Brad Ryner is involved in some kind of under-cover job, using a phoney name, Joe Something, and I just walked in and possibly blew the whole thing for him.”

“You mean he’s collecting information or something for the police?”

“Yes, and because I spilled the beans he may end up collecting bullets in the back.”

“Well,” Carole said, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it spilling the beans. Even if he was infiltrating a gang, or whatever he’s doing, how would the crooks know that somebody named Brad Ryner was a detective?”

“I’m hoping they won’t,” Simon said. “Ryner had a routine job in a fairly small town on the other side of the continent. There’s no reason anybody in Philadelphia should ever have heard his name.”

Carole put a hand on Simon’s shoulder and smiled.

“Then it wasn’t quite like walking in and saying, ‘Well, Sherlock Holmes, as I live and breathe!’ “

“Not quite,” he admitted. “But I’m worried that I might have done just enough to rouse somebody’s suspicions, and make them start checking out the name Ryner. Eventually that could mean real trouble.”

“At least he’s warned,” she said. “I mean, before anybody can find out that Brad Ryner is a cop he can get out of the picture.”

“And that’s my contribution to law and order,” said the Saint grimly.

“I’ll bet nobody thought a thing about it after we went and sat down,” Carole asserted. “They’ve forgotten the whole thing by now.”

“I hope so.”

She sensed his lack of conviction, but did not pursue it.

“We’re almost there,” she said. “Would you like to came up for a nightcap?”

“I’d enjoy it, but we’ve had a pretty full evening.” His concern for Brad Ryner showed clearly in his face and his voice. “Maybe another time.”

“I won’t chain myself to your bumper if you’ll promise to see me tomorrow. Here’s my private phone number.”

As Simon pulled his car to a halt in the garage, Carole scribbled the number on a scrap of paper from her handbag and gave it to him. Simon went with her as far as the elevator.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” Simon echoed.

Carole leaned against the wall next to the elevator buttons.

“Well, are you going to go out with me tomorrow, and well, are you going to kiss me good night?”

“Keep it up and you’ll make drill sergeant.”

“Would you rather I used womanly wiles? I’m just telling you what I want. You don’t have to do either one.”

Simon’s mind jumped forward over the next couple of days. He had no binding plans.

“I think I’ll do both,” he said.

He bent down and softly kissed her parted lips.

“I’ll have to phone you tomorrow about getting together,” he told her.

She was looking into his eyes with such melting adoration that he felt uncomfortable about having kissed her. She had asked for it, but apparently there was a very susceptible, childlike female just below that bold and mischievous surface. The elevator doors slid soundlessly open, and Simon shepherded her gently into the mahogany and brass of the cabin.

“Why aren’t you riding up too?” she asked.

“I didn’t park the car very tidily,” he said.

She seemed to come back to earth suddenly.

“You’re not going back to that bar, are you?”

“I’d much rather go to bed,” he said deviously. “Thanks for a wonderful evening.”

She felt an urge to reach for his hand and keep him there, to protect him from the danger she sensed was waiting for him out in the night, but he had stepped back from the elevator, and the doors moved between them. She was alone in a costly cocoon, as she had been during so much of her life, and then she was rising smoothly by virtue of some unseen mechanism to a roost high above the noise and grime of city streets.

She found her father in the living-room of the penthouse, relaxing in purple silk pajamas and dressing gown as he sipped a brandy. His white hair was neatly brushed as always, but his eyes were weary.

Carole kissed him on the cheek.

“I’ll bet you’re waiting up for me. You’re really incorrigible.”

“I don’t like you going off with strangers,” he said, gently rather than critically. “Especially late at night.”

“Simon isn’t a stranger,” she replied dreamily. “I feel as if I’d known him all my life. And if you really don’t trust him, I can tell you that I gave him all sorts of chances to kidnap me... hoping he would... but he didn’t.”

Hyram Angelworth smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re the one who’s incorrigible.”

She became aware that Richard Hamlin had materialised near the entrance to the adjacent study off the main room. He was ostensibly looking through some papers, but listening as always. Didn’t he ever sleep? And didn’t it ever occur to him that she might like to talk to her father alone?

She tossed her handbag on to a sofa and kicked off her shoes, trying not to let her irritation get the better of her.

“We did have a sort of adventure, though.” She flopped into a chair and pointed her toes and stretched her legs. “In my efforts to get myself kidnapped I lured Simon into a sleasy bar — Sammy’s Booze & Billiards, to be precise.”

An expression of intense pain developed on her father’s face as she recited the full name of Sammy’s establishment, which only served to encourage her to continue with greater relish.

“Simon wasn’t keen to go in, but I insisted, and there were these very underworld-looking characters playing pool, and Simon recognised one of them and called him by name. He didn’t remember until too late that this guy named Brad Ryner was a detective, and so he was probably pretending to be a crook to collect information for the police. Ryner claimed his name was Joe and he’d never seen Simon before. He really acted nasty. Simon’s worried to death he may have gotten this detective in trouble. Isn’t that thrilling?”

“It’s troubling,” Angelworth growled. “It’s bad enough to know there are so many crooks and parasites in the world without having to worry that my own daughter’s out rubbing elbows with them. I can’t say I think much of your friend for taking you to a place like that.”

“I needled him into it. I’ve been there a couple of times before, with the gang, and I wanted to see how he’d take it.”

“And what about this man Templar? We don’t know a thing about him. Why should he recognise a plainclothes policeman?”

Carole stood up, suddenly wanting to end the conversation as soon as she could.

“Well, at least he recognised the policeman instead of the crooks — if they were crooks.” She touched him on the shoulder. “It’s all over anyway, Daddy. I’m really tired, and you must be too. Good night.”

He was still brooding in his chair as she went down the hall to her bedroom, and she wondered if Richard Hamlin would be commenting on her escapade after she had left.

Chapter 3

Two alternatives duelled in Simon Templar’s mind: One claimed that the best thing he could do for Brad Ryner was to stay as far away from him as possible, hoping that Ryner’s playmates would forget the whole episode if they were not reminded of it; the other rebutted that having inadvertently placed Ryner in danger, the Saint owed it to him to get back in touch with him and help him in any way possible.

When logic was deadlocked, the Saint was inclined to let his instincts take over. He literally found himself driving towards Sammy’s Booze & Billiards before his rational mind had reached a conclusion.

Simon made no effort to resist the decision of his reflexes. His mind went on to process future possibilities. If Ryner was still at the pool table with his companions them the Saint would ignore them and try to follow Ryner when he left the bar. If the three men had left, he would try to trace one or more of them.

He had faultlessly memorised the route, in reverse, on the way back to the New Sylvania, and retracing it this time was no problem.

The neighbourhood of Sammy’s bar was a hodgepodge of shabby and squalid in the creeping process of becoming one hundred per cent squalid. Sammy’s was at the approximate halfway point of decay, and the Saint had to slow down sharply in order to avoid a couple of unsteady drunks who staggered into the road just ahead of him as he came within a block of the bar.

It occurred to him later that if those two alcohol-laden human tankers had not pitched and rolled across his path at just that time, Brad Ryner might have died. Because it was when Simon jammed on the brakes that the edge of his field of vision picked up a trace of movement in an alley to his right. It might have been a cat. It might have been some nocturnal stroller taking a short cut home. It might have been a newspaper blown by the wind that was whipping a few drops of rain against the windows of his car.

But the Saint was so keyed up and watchful that he could not ignore even such an undefined flash of motion in a dark place near Sammy’s bar. He pulled immediately over to the kerb under a no-parking sign about fifty feet beyond. He was out of the car in an instant, sprinting back along the sidewalk to the mouth of the alley. There he stopped short, drizzle sprinkling his face and wilting his clothes, and listened. There was an ominous economy in what he heard: feet scuffing on pavement, muffled thumps, a sudden stifled expulsion of cries...

The Saint judged the distance of the sounds down the alley, then catapulted into action. He knew that surprise would favour him for only a few seconds, but those few seconds were all he needed. His long legs carried him down the alley so fast that he just had time to take in the rudiments of the shadowy scene before he made physical contact with it: one man holding another while a third punched and kicked him.

The big man who was doing the beating turned with fist raised as the Saint bore down on him like some wild spectre set free by the night wind. The man’s flabbergasted defense would have had some effect against a less swift and co-ordinated blitzkrieg than the Saint’s, because this was the very big brawny man from the pool room, lowering in the semidarkness with a trace of street-light touching the raindrops on his sallow face, sparking a glint of squinting eyes and clenched teeth.

In spite of his size, he was caught off balance and the Saint hit him with approximately the effect of a locomotive striking a straw scarecrow. The man who had been a moment before slamming knuckles and shoe-leather into his defenseless victim did not exactly fly apart in several pieces, but he did the next thing to it. He was smashed back against the brick wall of the building forming one side of the alley, and fell away from it with the limp awkward grace of a dropped rag doll.

Simon Templar did not believe that his charge had done more than temporarily decommission the night football player, but he had to turn and meet a new problem. There was a glint of bright metal to his right, where the victim of the beating lay on the pavement. The man who had been holding him was a fat seal-like shape spearheaded with the long blade of a knife. The Saint was poised to receive an attack, but it did not come. The stout man slid through the shadows like a bloated fish through murky waters, always keeping the knife-point straight at the Saint. It became clear that he was more enthusiastic about getting away to the far end of the alley, away from the brightly lit street where Simon’s car was parked, than he was about giving battle.

Simon stalked him, as the fat man backed steadily away from the scene of combat. When the Saint increased his own pace, the other, never turning, quickened his, moving with surprising agility for a man so rotund. Still, Simon would have caught him, or run him down like a lion after a water buffalo, if there had not been a sudden scuff of steps behind the Saint’s back. Before he could turn, an arm locked round his throat like a thick noose. In the same instant, though, while his attacker was still in motion, Simon ducked forward and spun to the side, smashing the man behind him into the wall with an elbow driven back deep into his belly.

The Saint’s instant reactions weakened the big man’s hold enough to allow Simon to slip his head free. Meanwhile his stout comrade seemed to be encumbered by no inner conflicts about teamwork or loyalty. He took off for the other end of the alley without ever looking back. The other, taking advantage of the fact that the Saint had dropped to one knee in escaping the arm-lock on his neck, and having literally lost stomach for continuing the battle on his own, likewise turned and stumbled down the alley in pursuit of his portly pal.

Simon decided that Brad Ryner’s condition was more crucial than chasing down the men who had been beating him. He had a sickening feeling that he might already have been too late to save the policeman. The punishment he had been taking when the Saint arrived at the alley had looked more like a sadistic way of finishing him off permanently than just a rough lesson in the wages of spying.

The detective seemed lifeless when the Saint knelt beside him; his face and clothing were sticky with blood. But Simon could detect breath and a pulse-beat. He would have preferred not to move the man alone, risking worse damage, but he could not leave him there while he went for help. He picked him up in his arms as gently as he could and carried him to the street.

As he came out of the alley onto the sidewalk, stepping slowly and heavily under the weight of his burden, he saw a sight that even under the circumstances struck him as almost comically ironic: Parked in front of his own car in the no-parking zone was a police patrol car, and a uniformed officer was standing in the rain, busily writing out a ticket.

Another patrolman, less engrossed, spotted Simon first, jumped out of the police car, and strode towards him.

“Whaddaya think you’re doing?” he interrogated brilliantly.

Simon, still trudging forward with his bloodstained load, told him: “Carrying coals to Newcastle, maybe. Your department probably knows about this chap. He’s an under-cover agent from California named Brad Ryner. He was getting beaten up in that alley when I came along.”

The policeman looked at the crimson mess that had been Ryner’s face.

“God damn!” he breathed.

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t recognise him right now even if you knew him,” Simon said.

“Who are you?” the other patrolman asked.

“The good Samaritan. Don’t you think we’d better get this man to a hospital before we fill out a report in triplicate?”

The first policeman helped Simon deposit Ryner in the patrol car. The second pointed: “Is that your car?”

“I confess,” Simon replied. “When I saw somebody getting killed in that alley I didn’t take time to hunt up a parking lot.”

The officer ripped up the ticket he had been writing and dropped the fragments in the gutter, under a lamp-post sign warning about the penalties for depositing litter.

“What did you say his name is?^!’

“Ryner.” Simon spelled it. “Brad Ryner. I knew him slightly on the Coast, and I spotted him in Sammy’s boozer more than an hour ago.”

“You better come along with us,” the patrolman said, which was no more and no less than the Saint could have expected.

A moment later, siren howling, they were racing through the rain-swept streets.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning before Brad Ryner was able to talk to him. Even before Ryner had regained consciousness, just after daybreak, a tired but conscientious detective lieutenant had been called from his bed to oversee developments at the hospital, while a uniformed guard had been assigned to the door of Ryner’s room. Simon, meanwhile, after being thoroughly identified, had returned to his hotel at about four in the morning, on his own condition that he be phoned as soon as Ryner could talk. The call came at 10:15, and he was at the hospital twenty minutes later.

Brad Ryner was propped up in his bed, half sitting, one eye and half his face covered with bandages, when Simon entered the room.

“I almost hope you don’t remember me,” said the Saint grimly. “I wish I hadn’t remembered you. Calling your name was the stupidest thing I’ve done for a hundred years.”

The exposed half of Ryner’s face was heavily bruised; even so, the corner of his broad mouth managed a trace of a smile.

“Just the breaks of the game,” he said in a voice that sounded as if it came through a wad of cotton. “Don’t blame yourself, Simon.”

“I won’t waste time blaming myself. I’d rather know what I can do to make up for it.”

“You already made up for it,” Ryner said indistinctly. “You saved my life. Another minute or two and those bastards would have killed me.”

“That’s like thanking a man who’s stabbed you for pulling the knife out,” Simon said ruefully.

“You’re exaggerating,” said a new voice, and a tall, slender, prematurely grey-haired man who had been standing by the side of the bed stepped forward to shake Simon’s hand. “I’m Stacey, detective lieutenant. I was responsible for getting Brad here for this job in the first place.”

From there Lieutenant Stacey went on to say how pleased and intrigued he was to meet the famous Saint.

“Apparently nobody’s identity is safe round here,” Simon responded. “But now that you’ve seen an example of my genius in action you’ll understand how I got to be so notorious. The only excuse I can think of for blabbing Brad’s name is that I was under the spell of a beautiful young lady at the time.”

“You’re not kidding,” said Ryner.

“But just mentioning his name shouldn’t have blown the whole thing,” Lieutenant Stacey said. “Those hoods couldn’t know that somebody named Brad Ryner was a police officer out in California, and you didn’t press the point, did you?”

Simon shook his head.

“I hopped away like a flea off a hot griddle.”

“So why didn’t they just accept it as a case of mistaken identity? You don’t go out and kill one of your pool buddies just because some stranger thinks he’s somebody he used to know by another name.”

“They might have been suspicious already,” Simon suggested.

“I don’t know,” Brad Ryner said. “I didn’t realise it if they were, but of course they wouldn’t have told me if they smelled a rat, since I was the rat.”

“There’s no point wasting time theorising about that,” Stacey said. “What’s done is done. It’s a rotten shame, though, even if it was nobody’s fault.”

“Yeah,” said Ryner, shifting painfully in his bed. “I’m on the sidelines permanently as far as this game is concerned, and there’s nobody else on our side playing.”

“You mean playing under-cover?” Simon asked.

“Right,” Ryner croaked. “The lieutenant here already had one New York man disappear on this job; that’s why he called me in.”

“Sounds tough,” Simon said with growing interest. “What’s the game exactly?”

Lieutenant Stacey looked questioningly at Ryner. Ryner attempted a nod of approval.

“Have a chair,” Stacey said to the Saint, and the two men sat down beside the bed.

“It’s tough all right,” Stacey said. “We’re on the trail of a guy who’s getting all the organised crime in these parts sewn up. He makes the Mafia look like the Dead End Kids. When he gets finished, the only thing he won’t run in this state will be the clocks.”

“I suppose it would be superfluous to ask why you don’t arrest him,” Simon said. “No hard evidence?”

“Not only that,” Lieutenant Stacey said with a helpless gesture, “we don’t even know who he is.”

“That does make it difficult.”

“Evidence?” Ryner put in weakly. “There’s evidence all over the place, but it never leads to the top.”

“We’ve made arrests,” Stacey said. “Even got a few convictions — which isn’t easy, considering this guy seems to have half the judges in his pocket, and the witnesses have a way of vanishing or forgetting everything but their own names. But even the thugs who carry out his orders don’t know who the boss is. They call him the Supremo. We’ve found out that much.”

“Big deal,” Ryner said. “They could call him Sitting Bull, for all the good it does us.”

“And we know a few other fairly useless facts,” Stacey went on. “Such as the fact that some of the Supremo’s muscle men hang out at Sammy’s Booze & Billiards.”

“Is Sammy’s some kind of a headquarters or communications centre?” Simon asked.

“No,” Ryner answered. “Strictly for amusement.”

“But there is a club we think may be an operations centre for the organisation...” Stacey hesitated. “Why should I be taking up your time with all this? I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do on your visit here without listening to a cop’s tales of woe.”

Simon smiled.

“What you mean is, why should you be divulging information to somebody who’s not on your team?”

“Maybe,” the lieutenant conceded, “although Brad’s told me you can be trusted come hell or high water, and I know enough about you to realise that you’re your own man. You’d never work for the Supremo or any other gang boss.”

“I appreciate the confidence,” Simon said to Brad Ryner. “I wish I’d lived up to it better last night. Now I suspect you’re back to square one.”

“We never got past square one,” Ryner assured him. “The most I ever found out was some information about some little frogs in a mighty big pond.”

“And now we won’t even be getting that much,” Lieutenant Stacey said morosely. “We’re right where we were six months ago, and I’d be willing to bet we’ll be in exactly the same place a year from now.”

Simon stood up suddenly and paced across the white antiseptic room.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

Ryner, who had closed his one visible eye, opened it again. Stacey turned in his chair to peer up into the Saint’s intent face.

“You know something us public servants don’t know?”

“No,” Simon answered. “But if you’ll let me, I might be able to help you.”

Chapter 4

It was a strange offer for the Saint to make, and an uncharacteristic way for him to word it: But if you’ll let me, I might be able to help you. Stacey had been right; Simon Templar did not work for big or little Caesars. He did not work for anybody but himself. Yet in the circumstances his usual motives were thrust into the background, temporarily at least, because of the responsibility he felt for what had happened to Brad Ryner in trying to expose the man known as the Supremo.

“Look,” he said to the two detectives. “Brad was brought into this game because he wasn’t known in Philadelphia. I got him knocked out of the game, right on his head, even if I didn’t know what I was doing. What you do when that happens in football is send in a substitute. Well, here I am.”

The silence that followed was full of astonishment, doubt, and awe of the net of red tape that was bound to descend upon anyone who departed from officially marked paths of police investigation.

“You ain’t thinking of becoming a cop, are you?” Brad Ryner asked nervously.

“I was thinking more in terms of becoming a fellow-traveller.”

“Before I say anything,” Stacey said cautiously, “I’d better find out exactly what you have in mind.”

“I have an idea for getting close to the Supremo,” Simon said. “Possibly even face to face with him. And I’m in a good position to do it: I’m from out of town — further out than Brad was. I have a breath-taking gift for bamboozling people. I have a fantastic record of successfully overwhelming criminals of every size and shape. And I have the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”

“Bravo,” Ryner said feebly. “Bravo!”

Lieutenant Stacey looked fascinated but dubious.

“It’s very good of you to think of doing something like that, but I’m not even sure I could consider... Even if I felt convinced it was the best thing, I don’t have the authority to...”

“Would it help any if I told you I intend to go ahead and do it anyway, no matter what you decide?” The Saint’s expression was not so much defiant as blandly innocent, as if he were making an announcement of what he intended to have for his lunch.

Lieutenant Stacey came out with a kind of snorting laugh, because it was all he could think of to come out with. Ryner was too uncomfortable to waste his breath.

“Good,” he said with conviction. “You do it. But what is it?”

“What’s the name of that club you mentioned, that the Supremo’s gang uses as an operational HQ?”

“The Pear Tree,” Lieutenant Stacey replied. “Do you know of it?”

“Only by name,” the Saint answered. “Very elegant spot, I’ve heard.”

“This is a very elegant crew,” Stacey said.

“I could tell that last night,” Simon remarked. “That large gentleman had a very refined way of putting his dancing pumps into Brad’s stomach.”

“Those were just the floor-sweepings of the gang,” Brad Ryner said. “I had to start somewhere.”

“Well, I intend to start at The Pear Tree,” Simon told them. “My first job is going to be to get somebody other than the bouncer or the headwaiter to listen to me. I may have to use a little muscle, but somehow or other I’ll get word up the communications lines that I have to see the big chief.”

“Big chief, big deal!” Ryner said sceptically. “I might as well walk into the White House and say I have to see the President.”

“But if you were the ambassador from France, you wouldn’t have much trouble getting an appointment.”

“So where are you an ambassador from?”

“West Coast Kelly.”

The name West Coast Kelly did not, at that time, require further explanation. To the California-Nevada kingdom of high crimes and misdemeanors, West Coast Kelly was as Stalin to Russia or Peron to Argentina. Once a lover of publicity, fond of grinning newspaper photographs of his moustachioed self arm-in-arm with rapturous movie starlets, he had been taught, by a couple of all-expense-paid vacations in Alcatraz and three generous but noisy attempts to send him into peaceful retirement at Elysian Fields Cemetery, the value of privacy and seclusion. He still ran the rackets, still commanded felonious armies, still manipulated vast wealth, but had become almost as aloof as Philadelphia’s Supremo. He did his business through subalterns; and it had been rumoured recently that he was yearning for new worlds to conquer, sending out feelers to areas beyond his long conceded territory. So there was nothing too fantastic in the Saint’s suggestion that he might pose as one of West Coast Kelly’s emissaries. Brad Ryner and Lieutenant Stacey acknowledged that much without question.

“But what news does the ambassador bring?” Stacey enquired.

“That West Coast Kelly has big plans of his own for Philly. To put it bluntly, Kelly wants a big slice of the pie here, or he threatens to take over the whole show.”

“Not very subtle, but it might get the Supremo to listen,” Stacey granted. “You might even arrange it so Kelly’s instructed you not to speak to anybody but the top man himself.”

“Easy enough,” Simon said, “since I’m giving my own orders.”

“Easy!” Ryner snorted. “You’ll see how easy it is to get your head blown off. Don’t you think they’ll check out on the West Coast to see if you’re for real?”

“Whom do they check with? They’d have to get on to Kelly himself to prove that his personal ambassador wasn’t really sent by him.” Simon was moving restlessly round the room. “Anyway, my idea isn’t to become a permanent fixture round the place. All I want to do is barge straight in and see how close I can get to the Supreme Stinko. I think he could feel so threatened that he’ll at least have to listen.”

Stacey rubbed his chin.

“But what happens then? The Supremo’s still going to keep his identity a secret, or do something to cover up his tracks.”

Simon came to a halt again beside the bed.

“I’ll just have to play it by ear from there,” he said. “You don’t try to predict a chess match before you’ve seen the opening.”

“I dunno,” Ryner finally admitted. “I guess any plan is better than none. And if you’ve stayed alive this long, you might stay alive through this, but I doubt it.”

“With those cheering words, off I go into the fray.”

Stacey stood up.

“What can I say? There’s nothing I want worse than the Supremo. Or even just to know his initials, or where he gets his hair cut, or what shaving lotion he uses. But how can I authorise...”

“You don’t need to,” said the Saint. “Just give me a telephone number where I can reach you. I’m going to visit The Pear Tree tonight and see what kind of partridges are roosting in it.”

Only after he got back to the New Sylvania after lunch did he remember that he had promised Carole Angelworth that he would phone her. He had no lack of reminders: According to notes in his box, she had already called him three times.

He settled down in an armchair in his room, had the switchboard dial her number, and after one ring heard her voice saying breathlessly: “Hullo?”

“Hullo. This is Simon. How are things?”

“Oh, I was so worried about you! I thought you’d be calling me earlier, and when I tried getting you a couple of hours ago and you weren’t there, and nobody knew where you were, I was sure you’d gotten yourself killed.”

“I thought you’d be catching up on your beauty sleep and I didn’t want to disturb it, so I went out and made a sort of duty call on a sick friend.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s already half-past two, and I was hoping I could show you round a little today. I hope you haven’t gone and made other plans.”

One thing that Simon had decided was not to give Carole even a hint of what he was up to in connection with the Supremo. The way she was behaving now satisfied him that he had been right: Even if he could have trusted her completely not to babble to anyone, she would have driven him crazy with hysterical concern for his safety.

“I do have some business to attend to this evening,” he confessed.

“This evening? Why in the world do you have to work at night?”

“I carry on all kinds of mysterious activities at all sorts of strange hours. It’s one of the things about me that makes me so fatally attractive to innocent young girls.”

Her pout was audible.

“This afternoon then? You won’t be in town for ever. Can’t you spare a couple of hours?”

Simon could have used a couple of hours’ rest, having had very little the night before, and anticipating very little for the night to come, but he found himself saying: “All right; I’ll meet you in half an hour.”

“Wonderful!” Carole bubbled. “Half an hour. In the garage — this time we’ll take my car.”

When he had hung up, Simon wondered why he had surrendered so easily. He discovered, in scanning his feelings, that it was not only that he did not want to disappoint her, but also — a little disconcertingly — that he would have been disappointed if he had not seen her.

Chapter 5

At seven o’clock, Simon and Carole were in a midtown cocktail lounge whose soft leather, velvet draperies, and impressionistic nudes were, in considerable contrast to the hospitality of Sammy’s Booze & Billiards. A “couple of hours” had stretched quite painlessly into four.

“I have to admit,” Simon remarked, “that this is the first time I’ve ever had a whirlwind tour of an orphanage, a clinic for retarded children, and the offices of a vigilance committee, all in the same day.

Carole sat closer to him that even the limits of their banquette required, sipping a frozen Daiquiri.

“I suppose it’s not what you’d call light entertainment,” she said. “Were you bored?”

“No. Your father’s good works are very impressive, and you could make a visit to Independence Hall seem like more fun than a trip to the Folies Bergères.”

“I’m glad I could show you round instead of Dick Hamlin. I bet he’d have taken over, the next time he met you.”

“How does he get on with the Law Enforcement watchdogs?”

“Why, he’s their prize exhibit... Let’s forget him!”

She slipped her arm round his. Throughout the afternoon, Simon had become more and more conscious that the effervescent, happily chattering girl beside him was much more emotionally involved with him than would have seemed possible in such a short time.

The Saint was accustomed to the admiration of women. Nature had endowed him with that almost unbelievably handsome face which, combined with his other attributes of mind and body, made him as irresistible to the female sex as a fox to a pack of hounds. But in this case he was dealing with a very susceptible girl who was obviously looking for something much more serious than a few days of fun. As much as Simon was also attracted to her, and tempting as it was to give free rein to his hormones, he felt an obligation to avoid doing or saying anything that would draw her more deeply into the pit of disappointment she was digging for herself.

Now she was snuggling against him, and when he glanced at her, her eyes had that same poignant, misty, searching look that had disturbed him more than once during the afternoon. It was as if the real Carole, vulnerable and love-seeking, was for just a moment breaking through the razzle-dazzle of words and laughs that normally fluttered gaily between her and the rest of the world.

“Couldn’t you cancel that miserable business deal you say you’ve got lined up for tonight,” she pleaded, “and we can do something a little more exciting than look at orphans? I feel I owe it to you. After all, I’m the one who dragged you through Daddy’s charities. It probably shows a lack of self-confidence. Trying to build myself up vicariously by trotting out the good works of the paterfamilias. If I thought I could really trust myself to interest you, all on my own, I’d probably have taken you for a walk in the country.”

“Are you sure you didn’t major in psychology instead of sociology?” Simon bantered.

“A fortuneteller told me I need to live less in my head and more in my heart.”

Simon looked down into his glass noncommittally.

“I won’t try to compete with your fortuneteller, but I can tell you one thing: You don’t need Daddy or anybody else to make you interesting.”

“Give me a chance to prove it then,” she said eagerly, not letting go his arm.

“How?”

“Well, unless you’re really going out with another woman tonight, couldn’t you finish up your business early enough for us to get together? I could show you my prize-winning college essays or something, just to prove I’m a great kid all on my own.”

“You’ve already proved it,” Simon assured her. He was thinking fast. Should he break with her right now, knowing he would have to leave her behind before many days had passed anyway? Or should he let her down gently, striking a delicate balance between encouraging her too much and hurting her unnecessarily? The second choice seemed best. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait till tomorrow, though? I’m not sure what time I’ll get through tonight.”

She moved away from him a little, took a swallow of her drink, and looked at him with sly eyes over the rim of the glass.

“Are you going out with another woman?”

“Incredible as it may seem, I’ve managed to evade my panting pursuers, and the most exciting thing I can look forward to is a bottle of good wine with dinner.”

“Then you’ll see me after dinner? I mean, if you want to. If you don’t want to, don’t bother.” She suddenly broke her mock seriousness and laughed. “I really sound like a fool, don’t I? All these games I’m playing with you. But I’d really like it if you wanted to do something later this evening.”

Simon looked at his watch.

“If I start out soon, I just might finish before good little girls are all tucked up in bed.”

“I’ll wait up. I can afford to miss some sleep on the off-chance that I’ll get some relief from the stupefying social life I’ve been leading.”

They left the bar, stepped out into the perfume of exhaust fumes and the multicoloured city substitutes for moonlight, and walked to where she had parked her Lincoln convertible. Somehow, even with the best intentions, he had managed to more or less commit himself to Carole on that evening when he was already scheduled to risk his neck in a venture that could take an unpredictable number of hours. Apparently the current of their relationship flowed both ways to a greater extent than he wanted to admit to himself. Or was it a desire to unravel the girl’s feelings and set everything straight and clear before the tides of his life carried him away from her again?

Whatever the reason, he was assuming that he was going to complete his expedition to the Supremo’s presumed operations centre in time to see Carole again that night. He did not have optimistic visions of himself knocking on a door, saying his piece about West Coast Kelly, and being ushered with feverish haste into the throne room of the Supremo himself. He hoped instead to make contact with appropriate underlings, announce his supposed identity and mission, then leave the night club and wait for some action the next day.

He opened the car door for Carole, but made no move to get in beside her.

“Can’t I drop you off, wherever you’re going?” she offered. “Or are you afraid I’ll attack the other woman?”

“I’m afraid of her attacking you,” he replied, in exactly the same mischievous tone. “You’re not quite unknown in this town. A cab will be more discreet.”

“I’ll see you later, then.”

“It’s hard for me to make a promise, but if anything holds me up later than ten-thirty or eleven I’ll give you a ring.”

The Pear Tree was one of those places whose portals are virtually indistinguishable from their residential neighbours except upon close inspection. Along a quiet street of dignified apartments, its unobtrusive heavy wooden door betrayed its commercial genus only by a pair of long Spanish tile panels flanking it, whose glazed colours illustrated the arboreal namesake of the place. A more inquisitive search would then have discovered the small brass plaque on the door itself, engraved in copybook script with the words The Pear Tree.

Simon opened the door and found himself immediately confronted by a very large man in a tuxedo that looked as if it might have been forged from the same material used to make old black iron stoves. At least it gave an impression of such stiffness and weightiness, and was so vast and cylindrical around the man’s torso, that the comparison with a huge pot-bellied stove was irresistible. Perhaps the first thing the Saint definitely deduced about his faceless quarry was that the Supremo had a taste for over-sized myrmidons.

“Good evening, sir,” the iron cask rumbled. “How many, please?”

“Just one.”

“For dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

Simon was passed on to a beautifully dressed platinum blonde who in various ways might have symbolised a pear-bearing tree whose fruits were just passing the maximum of ripeness. There would be nothing too brash, too hurried here. From the dim red recesses of the bar where she guided him came a delicate ripple of piano music. A starched and freshly shaved headwaiter took his order while he savoured a dry martini on the rocks.

The dining room had the same restrained, polished plushness of the rest of the establishment. It was not easy to imagine that this compartment of elegance in the midst of middle-aged Main-Lineage could be the epicentre of a criminal empire, but the Saint had long since stopped feeling surprise at the discrepancies between appearance and reality, between façade and inner fact.

As he ate his lobster thermidor, he watched for any sign that this particular room, with its damask-covered tables and silver ice buckets, its fresh flowers and candles in tinted crystal, might be hosting something more sinister than well-heeled and well-served dinner guests. True, a few of the male diners possessed shoulders and features that looked more as if they had been formed in the saloons and gyms of New York’s Lower East Side than on the playing fields of Princeton, but that in itself proved nothing except the levelling potential of worldly success.

Only one feature of the room engaged the Saint’s attention more than any other, and that was a door at the rear marked private. Such a door was not particularly unusual. In fact the world was full of doors marked private that concealed nothing more mysterious than adding machines, toilets, or supplies of clean towels. But this door, which never opened while the Saint was eating his meal, was at least a promising starting point for exploration.

Now a man less blessed with courage and a flair for dramatic direct action than Simon Templar was might have made discreet enquiries about the nature of the room labelled private, might have requested an audience with the manager, or might have done any number of things less effective than what he did.

He finished his lobster, swallowed the last of his Bollinger, got up from his table, and walked over to the door marked private.

He had scarcely applied his knuckles to the varnished wood when his waiter, a nervous little man whose head-hair was entirely concentrated in a miniature black mop under his nose, raced up to him and tapped him on the arm.

“Don’t put your hands on me, Bug-face,” the Saint ordered him coarsely, “or I’ll play Turkey in the Straw’ with my heels all up and down your backbone.”

Suddenly a red-hot skillet could not have seemed less attractive to the waiter’s touch than the Saint’s forearm. Simon’s natural inflections had been flattened out for the occasion into a raspy Western accent, and his face had a cruel toughness that would have made a chunk of flint seem mushy by comparison.

“Was something wrong with your dinner, sir?” the waiter asked with quavering unctuousness.

“Where’s the manager?” Simon barked back.

The waiter was making frantic gestures in the air with one hand while trying to keep the Saint appeased with a servile smile.

“If you’ll tell me what was wrong...”

Simon bent over him menacingly.

“Look, you pinheaded spaghetti-wrangler, I won’t talk to anybody but the manager.”

The suave headwaiter arrived on the scene, more self-possessed than his. colleague.

“What seems to be the trouble, sir?” he enquired smoothly.

“What the hell use are you?” Simon growled. “Are you going to knock this door down for me? What do I have to do to see the manager here — dynamite the joint?”

He reckoned that the more noise he made, the sooner he would be admitted to the inner sanctum. With one possible danger: a bouncer (Simon had already spotted the black barrel shape of the front-door greeter taking an interest from the dining-room entrance) might simply try to throw him out. The Saint was confident that he could throw the bouncer out instead, but he preferred a less devious way of getting the attention of the higher ups. He banged harder on the private door.

The headwaiter, who was no more a roughhouse type than his subordinate, glanced around to locate the tuxedoed gorilla, who moved unobtrusively down one side of the dining room towards them.

“If you would please tell me what your complaint is,” the headwaiter said placatingly, “I’ll be glad to—”

“I don’t have no complaint,” Simon said. “I’m here on business, and I wanna see the manager.”

He continued pounding on the door. Just before the bouncer reached him, the barrier swung partially open. A surly crinkly-haired head appeared, and a voice said, “What’s going on out here?”

The Saint sensed the bouncer behind him, about to grasp his arms if necessary, and he decided that the moment for crossing this particular Rubicon had come. With a strength given added force by swiftness and surprise, he shoved the door farther open, stepped inside the private room, slammed the door again and turned the metal knob that threw the bolt. He did it so quickly that the three men behind him were left standing flat-footed in the dining room, excluded entirely from even the sound of the ensuing proceedings.

In front of Simon was the temporarily flustered man who had opened the door. Three other men sat on sofas or chairs, while another came to his feet behind a desk at the rear of the room. Within two seconds, two pistols had appeared.

Simon carefully showed the nature of his intentions by keeping his hands away from his body.

“Sorry to bust in like this,” he murmured, “but I’ve got important business that can’t wait.” Then he verbally lit the fuse of his private brand of dynamite and tossed it hissing into the centre of the room. “I want to see the Supremo.”

Chapter 6

A naked belly dancer erupting from a nine-layer cake at a conclave of the College of Cardinals could not have produced more of a sensation than Simon Templar did when he presented himself in the private room of the club Pear Tree. The hefty characters who had been decorating the furniture were all at attention, but their vocal cords were temporarily out of contact with their brains.

Although the Saint was now looking down the steel throats of four pistols, he relaxed. The character he was portraying never smiled, as Simon himself might have done under similar circumstances. Instead he swept his gaze from one side of the room to the other, taking in everyone and everything, while his lips held an arrogant sneer.

It was a very expensively furnished room, but designed for business, not for guests. There were as many telephones as there were pistols. There were two radios, two television sets, several filing cabinets, and a stock ticker, along with other knobbed and dialed devices which the Saint did not have time to identify. His new friends obviously liked to keep up with what was going on in the world. The place, on the face of it, looked more like a communications centre than a restaurant manager’s office, and that was exactly what Simon had expected.

The man behind the desk finally got his tongue back in touch with his cerebrum.

“Who the hell are you?” he snapped.

A couple of the men in the room, the two who had been fastest with their pistols, looked fairly brutish. This one had blond hair and an Ivy League accent. His blue silk tie was enviable; in more normal times, the Saint would have cheerfully complimented him on it.

“You’re not the Supremo,” Simon said roughly.

“I know what I’m not,” the other answered. He realised that he was clutching the edge of his desk, and eased his hands away. “I asked you who you are.”

“I’m somebody who wants to see the Supremo.”

The blond man jerked a half smile at one of his colleagues.

“What’s a Supremo — a cigar? You’ll find them in the lobby. By God, I’m going to have Ansel’s ears for letting drunks wander all over this building.” He focussed cold turquoise eyes on the Saint again. “This is a business meeting, and you’ve got no business here.”

“Funny,” Simon remarked, “it looks more like a shooting gallery. Or what are you scared of?”

The man at the desk drew back his shoulders.

“I’m not going to explain our security measures to you. I suggest you walk out of here right now, or else take your choice of being thrown out on your head or being arrested.”

“I’ve come too far to walk out,” Simon said flatly. “You say this is a business meeting. Well, I got business. But it’s got to be with the Supremo or nobody.”

“I’d put my money on nobody,” one of the other men said. “Are you walking out or getting carried out?”

“I guess you guys have heard of West Coast Kelly,” Simon said. “That’s who I’m talking for.”

He was expecting the announcement to have an interesting impact, and his disappointment was catastrophic. For at the same moment as it should have been registering, a door at the back of the room opened, and in walked the fat seal-like man Simon had met the night before.

He blinked exactly three times as his mouth formed a large O and his dewlaps dropped to his collarbones.

“That’s him!” he squealed. “That’s him — the sonovabitch I told you about, from Sammy’s!”

It was one of those disastrous sneaky backhanders with which a malicious Fate delights in upsetting applecarts, which a pessimist might have predicted but an optimist had no way to guard against. The Saint tried his best to cope with it, but even his inventiveness had been caught flat-footed.

“Sure, I stopped you and your meat-head pal from killing a cop who’d been playing you for suckers. I figured it was worth more to sell myself to him as a good guy, and get an ‘in’ that we could all use.”

“You didn’t need to play-act as hard as that!”

The seal, mindful of the juggernaut that had smitten him and his comrade in the rain-swept alley, was not about to calm down. He kept shouting, machine-gunning blasts of accusation round the room, urging the others to do something. As on the previous night, he did not place himself physically in the forefront of the battle, but the situation was still going his way.

Simon took a step back towards the door.

“Maybe I’d better drop round later, when you’ve all calmed down,” he said diplomatically.

“Don’t let him get out!” the seal howled.

The man behind the desk confirmed the order, and four thugs reached the Saint at the same instant. Simon’s hands, elbows, knees, and feet became deadly weapons. One of his attackers dropped to the floor, squirming in agony. A second staggered back, half blinded by a blow to his face that sent a cascade of blood streaming down over his lips and chin. But a fist caught Simon hard on his own jaw, slamming him back against the wall. Two apes were on him like one four-armed monster, and a knee in his stomach knocked the wind momentarily out of him. The seal was hopping up and down, trying to see the centre of the melee. Simon braced himself against the wall and managed to ram the toe of his right shoe into the solar plexus of one of his attackers, sending the man backwards into the seal. The two of them bounced across the carpet like bowling pins.

It was a satisfying sight, but the last that Simon saw for several hours. He was bashed on the head with something very hard. The room seemed to fill with black water, which rose very rapidly from floor to ceiling. The shouts and grunts and heavy breaths faded to silence.

There was no more of anything until after a timeless time he became strangely and vaguely aware of his own existence. He seemed to be floating in nowhere, unable to see or hear. His mind was not functioning at a level that would allow him even to wonder who or where he was. His being was a small unstable ball of pain. He felt his arm being manipulated, and a momentary new pinpoint of pain, and then nothingness again.

Carole Angelworth waited for his promised call until eleven-thirty. Her phone rang twice during the evening, but neither of those calls was the one she wanted.

She couldn’t really believe that he would stand her up deliberately. It wouldn’t be like him to lie. He would just have told her when he had left her at the end of the afternoon that he couldn’t possibly make it that night.

She was full of self-doubts. Had she thrown herself at him so obviously that he wanted to hurt her in order to get rid of her? Had she bored him to death with that tour of her father’s charities?

She wasn’t used to being refused anything that she wanted — a dress, a trinket, a car, or a man. She knew she was spoiled, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow a rejection. She had decided that she was madly in love. And now the man she was in love with was half an hour late phoning her. And the worst of it was that she felt a strange foreboding, an apprehension that could not be explained by the logical part of her mind.

She picked up the hotel phone and asked for his room. It didn’t answer.

She felt a need to talk to her father again, as she had always done when faced with anything beyond her ordinary capacity to handle. She went down the hall and through the living-room and found him in his study.

Richard Hamlin was there too, inevitably, carrying on an earnest conversation at her father’s big desk. He stopped speaking immediately and stood up, greeting her with the toothy, slightly deferential grin that he apparently thought would someday win her trust, if not her affection. He preferred hanging about in the background, almost shyly, where he could pretend not to notice what was going on, and where he could at least hope that no one was noticing him. But whenever confronted directly he came up with that same grin, which Carole had once said reminded her of a slightly dishonest medieval sheepherder tugging his forelock at his feudal lord’s daughter.

“Well, ready for bed?” her father asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Not really,” Carole answered. She walked up to the desk and said quite rudely: “Richard, I wish you weren’t here every time I come in. But just this once, I’d like to speak to my father alone.”

Hamlin looked at Hyram Angelworth, who nodded. Carole waited until her father’s man Friday had left the study and then got straight to the point. She felt secure in this room, with its warm pine panelling, heavy leather upholstering, and massive, solid furniture.

“I’m very worried about Simon,” she began, “and don’t tell me you don’t know who Simon is.”

Her father had a habit of ignoring the existence of male friends of hers whom he did not approve of.

“It would be a little hard for me not to have heard the name,” he said indulgently. “You’ve mentioned it at least thirty times in the past twenty-four hours. Exactly what is it you’re worried about?”

“He had some business tonight, and I made him promise to call me by eleven, and he hasn’t done it.”

The springs of Hyram Angelworth’s desk chair squeaked lightly as he leaned further back and shrugged.

“Catastrophe,” he sympathised. “I can remember occasionally being kept busy after eleven at night myself. Why don’t you just stop fretting and get some sleep? I don’t doubt that you’ll track him down in the morning.”

Carole settled on the edge of the desk and looked seriously at him.

“This isn’t something to joke about,” she said. “I’m in love with him.”

Her father breathed deeply, sat forward, and drilled at his desk blotter with his pen.

“Carole, in the first place you haven’t known him long enough to know whether you’re in love with him or not.”

“Before you go on to the second place, please let me dispose of that. I am in love with him. You haven’t heard me say that since I came of age, have you? This one isn’t just for laughs. It’s taken me a long time to feel like this, maybe because you set an example that’s hard for most fellows to compete with.”

Angelworth flushed with pleasure, but shook his head.

“Well, you can still pardon me for being a little sceptical. You’ve known this man for almost a whole day—”

“And I’ve never met anybody like him before.”

Angelworth suddenly gave her a penetrating, almost brutal look.

“I’m sure you haven’t,” he said.

She bridled.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“Simon Templar is not exactly unknown to me. By reputation. In fact he’s... I can’t use any other word... notorious.”

Carole stood up.

“Notorious!” she exclaimed unbelievingly. “What do you mean, notorious? And how do you know? Have you been checking up on him because he took me out?”

Angelworth raised a soothing hand.

“Dick checked on him, dear. It wasn’t very difficult. The name didn’t register when I first met him last night, but it came back to me later. I don’t want to upset you, but the man’s... well, an adventurer. I can almost guarantee that his ‘business’ tonight wouldn’t be approved by the Chamber of Commerce. And the longer he stays here, the more likely he is to get in serious trouble.”

Hyram Angelworth was not prepared for his daughter’s reaction. Her lips began to quiver, and her eyes brimmed with tears. And if there was one thing that everybody knew about Hyram Angelworth, it was that he could not bear to see his daughter unhappy. He was not one of those rich men who doles out handsome allowances to his offspring as a substitute for love. His actions and attitudes had made it clear ever since his wife had died that his lavish generosity to his daughter was an expression of a love that focussed exclusively on her. He had no other children. Now he had no wife, and any women in his life were hired conveniences rather than objects of affection.

So when he saw his daughter about to cry, Angelworth got spontaneously to his feet and hurried to put his arms round her.

“Are you telling me he’s a crook or something?” Carole asked, holding stiffly back from co-operating in the embrace, and struggling to control her voice.

“He pretends to be some sort of modern Robin Hood.” Angelworth looked into Carole’s face as he let his arm slip away from her shoulder. “Simon Templar is well known to operate on both sides of the law, taking the law into his own hands. He may have some misguided good intentions, but that doesn’t alter the fact that he thinks nothing of breaking the law. Somehow or other he seems to have gotten away with it very well, financially; but that’s no excuse for him either.”

“Well, at least he has some excuse! What about Richard?” Carole pointed in the general direction of the absent Hamlin. “He’s a convicted criminal, but you trust him.”

“That’s different,” her father said. “I investigated him, got to know him, proved him over a long period, decided to give him a chance, promoted him gradually. And I’m not married to him, which is apparently what you have in mind with Simon Templar.”

“You might as well be married to Richard,” Carole retorted. “He’s round here day and night.”

Angelworth shook his head and paced across the room and back.

“It disappoints me very much to see us on the verge of quarrelling with one another,” he said in a new, deeper, quieter voice. “I’m only thinking of what’s best for you, but I can understand that it’s hard for you to see the other side of the picture—”

“But if what you’ve told me is true, the police would have done something about it.”

“They’ve been trying to, for years. I suppose you didn’t connect his real name with things you must have read in the papers. They usually call him The Saint.”

It was almost as if he had struck her physically with the revelation.

“Oh, no!” she breathed. “The Saint...”

“Dick Hamlin thinks — and I agree — that if he has any business here, it’s liable to have something to do with our local crime boss, the ‘Supremo.’ And you wouldn’t want to get involved with that, on any side.”

Her eyes were wide, but the rest of her face was still blank with shock, a mask behind which her father tried vainly to read her innermost feelings.

“Carole, there are dozens of men in this town who’d give their right arms for a second glance from you — men with good solid backgrounds, homes, big futures ahead of them.”

“You know how they’ve always bored me,” she said, as if she was barely listening.

Angelworth stood up and raised both arms in a gesture of exasperation. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’ve known this man for approximately one day, and I’ve just explained to you that he’s a dubious character. Why don’t you at least take the attitude I took with Dick Hamlin? Before you go overboard, find out what he’s like. For a start, does he feel the same way about you that you feel about him?”

“Yes, I think so,” Carole answered, with a kind of toneless impatience.

“Has he told you?”

“Not exactly, but I can tell.”

He scrutinised her then with an intensity that made her drop her gaze to the floor. “Have you already... become seriously involved with him?”

The connotation of the question was not lost on her.

“Yes,” she lied. “I’ll admit I threw myself at him. And I’ll die if I don’t see him again.”

Angelworth sighed and went back to his desk chair.

“Good heavens, the man’s just a little late getting home tonight. You can bet it isn’t the first time in his life, and it won’t be the last!”

“I know something’s happened to him,” she said flatly. “I just know it. He’s in trouble... and now that you’ve said what you’ve said about him, I’m more worried about him than ever.”

Without any warning, tears suddenly overflowed. She sank into the chair Richard Hamlin had vacated, let her arms and head rest on her father’s desk, and began to sob.

Hyram Angelworth had never seen her cry since her mother had died, and he was dismayed. Like many men who have risen to the top of the power game, he was unnerved by feminine emotion. And his devotion to Carole was the most utterly genuine and unselfish thing in his life.

“What can I do, Carole?” His own voice was unsteady. “What can I possibly do?”

“You can help me, Daddy.” She raised her head a little and looked at him with reddened, flooded eyes. “If I call the police they’ll just laugh at me. But you know everybody. They respect you. You’ve given I don’t know how much to police charities, and your committee... how could they turn you down on anything? Find out if they know anything about Simon trying to take on the Supremo. Or work with him.”

Her father did not want to risk bringing on another cloudburst with more discussion.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m afraid most personal friends of mine will be in bed by now.”

Carole stood up, dabbing her eyes.

“Thank you, Daddy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Just come tell me as soon as you hear anything, no matter what time it is.”

“Well, I hope we’re not going to have to sit up all night because of this,” Angelworth said, with a composure he did not feel.

As he watched her go, he was trying to adjust himself to the discovery that underneath the bright brittle front she presented to the world she had a secret half that he had never known or understood.

Carole passed through the living-room with hardly a glance at Richard Hamlin, who sat there turning the pages of a glossy magazine, and gave him a purely perfunctory “Good night.” But she felt certain in her own mind that a few seconds before he must have been listening at the study door.

Chapter 7

The Saint’s exiled consciousness made a slow and hobbling return. First he became vaguely aware that he was waking up, although at first he saw and heard nothing, and when he opened his eyes he was surprised, for just an instant, to see dusty, scuffed wood instead of the sheets of his bed. Then he felt the pain caused by some diabolical throbbing engine trying to drill up through the roof of his skull. That, after a moment’s puzzlement, brought back to his mind a sharp memory of the fight in the private office of The Pear Tree, and the blow that had knocked him out of action.

How long had he been unconscious? Now he remembered the one previous moment of awareness, when something had pricked his arm, and he realised that he must have been injected with some drug designed to keep him comatose for the convenience of his captors.

With the past gradually forming a pattern in his mind, the Saint began to take in more of his surroundings than just the dusty boards on which his cheek rested. He started to move, to pick himself up off the floor; and discovered that his wrists were tied behind him. His legs were also immobilised by ropes, as he could see when he gingerly pressed his chin towards his chest and looked down the length of his body. He felt as if his brain had come loose within his skull and had the weight of a cannon-ball; nevertheless he clenched his teeth together and endured the pain that resulted from the movements he had to make in order to see round the room.

It was not large, about the size of an ordinary living-room, but with a much higher ceiling, so that he guessed it was part of a big building, possibly an old warehouse. The walls as well as the floors were made of rough wood. Below the tin ceiling hung a single light-bulb. There were no windows. The only things in the room besides himself, other than an interested roach or two, were a few plywood packing crates. A door at the other end of the room was closed.

Simon lay back and listened. In the distance he heard the growl of a truck labouriously gearing up from a crawl to higher speeds. Then he heard a rattle at the door and quickly closed his eyes. His captors wouldn’t be so likely to give him another sleeping shot if he seemed to be still out.

He could hear the door open, and the footsteps of one man stepping inside the room, pausing, then retreating. Simon waited and at the last moment raised his eyelids just enough to get a glimpse of a broad-backed giant — standard-issue size of the Supremo’s army — retreating over the threshold. He closed his eyes completely again as the guard started to turn and lock the door behind him.

At almost the same moment Simon heard a new sound: the whistle of a tugboat shrilling its work-signals to another, which replied with a quick pair of toots. So he had to be somewhere down by a river or a harbour. The watery neighbourhood conjured up an unpleasant picture of Simon Templar clad in a cement suit, sinking swiftly to a muddy end in the company of old tires, slime-covered bottles, and abandoned bedsprings.

Being very fond of Simon Templar, Simon Templar wanted to do his best to save him from such an unglamourous fate. One possibility was to talk himself out of the situation. He was still, after all, the ostensible representative of that great power West Coast Kelly — unless he had since been identified as the Saint. But even that would not have automatically ruled out the possibility that he could be connected in some pragmatic way with West Coast Kelly. That is, if Kelly had not yet disclaimed any connection. Or even — such being the Machiavellian ways of gangland — if he had...

But what if nobody would listen? What if there was nobody to listen, except some pinheaded baboon blindly carrying out orders for completing the liquidation of his prisoner?

It seemed prudent not to depend entirely on diplomatic skills, but to start looking for a more direct way to get out of the mess. A man bound hand and foot does not have much bargaining power if the higher-ups have already consigned him to the disposal unit.

Simon, hoping that his luck would prevent the guard from coming back too soon, began to search for some way of freeing himself. His mind always worked fast, leaping fences on the mount of intuition while logical processes trotted obediently along in the rear. It was the packing cases that would save him. He began to roll and squirm across the floor towards the nearest of them, and already he could see the points of the nails which he had known must have been left protruding when the crates were pried open. Getting his wrists up against one of the nails, he could painstakingly pick away at the ropes, fibre by fibre, until he was free.

Then he saw that fortune had been even kinder than he had imagined: The nearest crate had been reinforced on the outside by binding it with straps of thin flexible metal, whose edges, along the open side of the box, where they had been cut through, stood clear of the wood. The strip of steel, or whatever it was, would not be as sharp as a knife blade by any means, but it could, given enough time, serve the same purpose.

The Saint’s sense of balance had not been helped by the thump he had taken on his head or the drug that had been administered to keep him asleep, but he managed to get himself into a sitting position with his back to the packing case. Then his fingers, numb for lack of circulation, sought the metal strip. The edge was disappointingly dull. He anxiously fumbled for some ragged spot which would speed up the work but found none. All he could do was move the binding of rope patiently up and down against the metal, rocking his body forward and back to increase the motion.

He could hear rather than feel his progress. After about five minutes his wrists were still as immobilised as ever, but his ears could detect the occasional snapping of a taut strand of rope fibre as it gave way to the friction of the metal. Another five minutes, same situation. How much progress had he made? He had no way of telling.

Then there were footsteps outside the door. He hurled himself away from the crate, rolled over so that his back and arms and the partially severed rope could not be seen from the entrance to the room. There was no time to get back to the spot where his captors had originally left him, which meant that he could not pretend to be still unconscious. Momentarily he experienced a sinking feeling of despair. He had come so close.

But the door did not open. The sound of shoes on wood moved away. Now there had to be another inchworm trip to the crate. Once more Simon got himself into a sitting position and resumed the scraping of his bonds against the strip of metal. Now he worked faster, his body pumping forward and back like an engine under a full head of steam. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eyes. Dust tickled his nose and forced him to struggle continually not to sneeze — a sound that might bring the guard hurrying to look in on him.

At last he felt a loosening of the pressure on his wrists. Ferociously he dragged the last strands of rope up and down against the metal until he felt them break completely.

His arms were free. Shaking the rope away, he worked his fingers to restore the warmth and feeling and strength to them. On his wrists were the white, bloodless indentations the bonds had made. In another minute he had untied the rope that had held his ankles together. It was like coming from a black and airless cave out into the light.

But he still had a long way to go. He tossed the wrist rope behind the packing case and got to his feet, testing his unsteady legs as he went back to the place where he had been lying when he regained consciousness. Should he lie down, loosely wrap the rope back round his ankles, and try to take the guard or guards by surprise when they came for him? Or should he wait by the door and launch an attack the instant it opened?

It would have taken him only a few seconds to make the decision; but in even less time than that, without any warning, the door abruptly opened and the huge guard walked into the room.

A direct quotation of what the guard said when he saw Simon Templar untied in the middle of the room is fortunately not essential to the substance of this history. Simon did not bother to reply. All his attention and energy were concentrated on getting to the guard before the guard’s beefy hand could get to the gun that hung in harness over his heart.

The Saint did manage that, but he had not reckoned with the stiffness of his legs after their long confinement, and his movements were comparatively slow and clumsy. The fist he threw at the guard’s Neanderthal jaw was parried by a tree-trunk arm, while the man’s other hand slammed out awkwardly at the Saint’s chest. If the gorilla had not himself been taken aback with startlement, it might have shaped into a counter-punch that could have put Simon out again, but instead of launching a counter-attack against him, Simon’s prognathous opponent was only trying to fend him off, shouting: “Hey, hold on! I come to let you loose!”

“You’re what?” Simon whooped.

“Yeah! I just come to let you loose!”

The big lug was making no effort to go for his gun. Backing off a little, with both hands out in front of him, he could have passed for a professional wrestling villain going through the melodramatics of pleading for mercy.

Simon relaxed just a little.

“You mean I can leave?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.”

“Under my own power? I can go where I want?”

The guard nodded. “You can go.”

They stood facing one another in silence.

“Well,” the guard said, “go on and go.”

“Would you mind going ahead of me?”

The guard backed out the door, and Simon followed him into — as he had suspected — the main area of a warehouse. It, like the smaller room, held nothing more interesting than empty crates.

“How did you get untied?” the guard asked.

“Tied?” Simon asked, wickedly. “I never was tied.”

A frown began at the guard’s crew-cut hairline and spread down over the rest of his wide face. “Whatta you mean you wasn’t tied? Sure you was tied.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

The guard pointed at him and said desperately: “Now look, you was tied, and don’t tell me you wasn’t tied.”

“Okay,” Simon said with a smile. “1 was just kidding. But I sure am grateful to whoever it was that untied me.”

The goon had started to relax, but now his face crinkled again, like the face of an extremely large baby about to erupt into squalls.

“You’re tellin’ me somebody untied you? Who do ya think—”

“I don’t know who he was,” Simon said nonchalantly. “Little guy.” He indicated with one palm very near the floor. “About so high. Two or three feet. Green pointed hat and a long white beard. Do you know him?”

“You’re pullin’ my leg,” the guard announced warily, after a moment’s consideration. “Nobody could have gotten in there anyways because I was right out here the whole time.”

“Whatever you say,” Simon murmured. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me why you’re letting me go.”

“They just come and tole me to let you go. They didn’t give no reason or nothin’ else.”

“Who come?” Simon queried, feeling like part of the cast of a Tarzan movie.

“Never mind who come,” the guard said belligerently. “Never mind anything. Just beat it!”

“I just wondered why anybody would go to all the trouble to give me a room for the night and then kick me out of it before morning. It is before morning, isn’t it? Somebody seems to have mislaid my wristwatch.”

“Probably that little green guy,” the guard said, and grinned with glee at his own wit. He looked at his wrist. “It’s one o’clock in the middle of the night. Now would you beat it so I can get home and get some sleep?”

“I don’t suppose I could have my gun back?” Simon asked.

“I ain’t got your gun or nothin’ else.”

Simon went to the door.

“Could you tell me where I am?” he enquired. “It might help me to get somewhere else.”

“You’re on the River, and you’re lucky you ain’t in it, so get goin’.”

“Well, thanks for the hospitality. Your floor’s very comfortable but your roaches need polishing.”

He glanced back and saw the guard picking up the discarded length of rope, from which he would try to unravel the mystery of the Saint’s escape.

Chapter 8

If the guard had something to be briefly puzzled about, the Saint had much more. As he walked out of the dark neighbour-hood of warehouses and loading ramps — noting that the place where he had been held was marked condemned — philadelphia fire department — his mind kept sifting the information he had so far, and getting nowhere. It didn’t make any sense at all that the group at The Pear Tree, who knew him as a man who had attacked a couple of their members the night before and burst into their communications centre demanding to see their Most High and Secret Leader, knew him as a potential if not a present danger, and had him in their clutches, would have tossed him casually back into the stream like a minnow not worth bothering about.

It was enough to wound a lesser man’s pride, but the Saint was already thinking of his next move. And that would be to backtrack and take up where he had left off a few hours before. Presumably he might be in an even better position now to negotiate as the representative of West Coast Kelly, or at least no worse. When he finally found a cab, he directed it straight back to The Pear Tree.

But even from the window of the taxi he could see that the place was dark.

“Do they usually shut down by one o’clock?” Simon asked the driver.

“Naw. More like four o’clock. Ain’t that a sign on the door?”

Simon got out, crossed the sidewalk, and looked at the card taped under the brass name plate.

He knocked on the door anyway, just in case somebody should still be round, but there was no response. When he got back to the New Sylvania, he phoned The Pear Tree’s number; there was no answer.

He walked to one of the windows of his room, looked out over the lights of the city, and pondered the enigma: closed for redecorating. Just like a prodded turtle drawing in its head and legs. And all because of one man? Had he been recognised as the Saint? Even if he had, it didn’t add up. Simon felt that somewhere he must have missed a pointer, a hint that would put some meaning into apparently senseless events. He felt that an embryonic answer was stirring somewhere in his subconscious, but he could not dredge it to the surface. He was too tired, still a little dopey from the drug. Tomorrow it would all be clearer.

He was checking the night latch on his door when his phone rang. Maybe this would be it, his mysterious opponent’s next move.

“Simon!” Carole cried. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. Are you all right? Didn’t you get my messages?”

“About five minutes ago, when I came in,” Simon said. “But I thought it was too late to call you. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Asleep?” Carole said incredulously. “How on earth could I sleep? What happened to you?”

Simon chose his words carefully.

“I was detained. Unavoidably detained. Circumstances beyond my control. I’m just sorry you got upset.”

“Upset isn’t the word for it. I even had Daddy calling the police about you. Did they find you?”

“No. I found myself. Wasn’t that a little alarmist? What did you think had happened to me? You’re the potential kidnap victim, remember. Nobody would pay any ransom for me.”

“I didn’t know what had happened, but I was going crazy. What was it ‘detained’ you?”

“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Now you can call off the constabulary and we can all get some sleep.”

Her voice dropped with disappointment.

“Can’t you come up and tell me now?”

“I don’t think your papa would approve. Not at this hour of the morning. And I’m not feeling too bright right now. Some of these business conferences leave you with a thick head.”

“You’re mad at me,” she sulked.

“No. I’ll meet you for lunch tomorrow. How about that?”

She had to agree. They made the arrangements, but she was reluctant to hang up.

Her lingering gave Simon a chance to ask a question that was suddenly hammering for release.

“Your father really called the police?”

“Yes; I begged him to do it. He has a lot of friends there. He’s done a lot for them.”

“Who was it he called?”

“I don’t know,” Carole said. “I wasn’t in the room. Does it matter?”

“No,” he answered softly. “It doesn’t matter. Good night now.”

“Good night,” she said. “I love you.”

Simon settled the telephone slowly into its cradle and sat for a long time without moving. In his stomach there was a sinking, almost sick feeling.

Nobody knew that he had been missing last night, except the back-room boys at The Pear Tree... and Carole Angelworth. Therefore, nobody outside the Angelworth household could have ordered, or induced the Supremo to order his release. Therefore the Supremo had to be actually in the Police Department, or...

Angelworth. Even the name was too good to be true, just like its charitable possessor. Simon had tended to assume until now that the Supremo was a secluded figure, personally remote from publicity, working through front men. But the Supremo could just as well be a man known in public life, a man whose popular image was in sharp contrast to the secret sources of his power... a man like Hyram Angelworth.

Man... Of course he was consciously, even forcibly, confining his speculations to the conventional gender. Beautiful young girls didn’t lead secret double lives as the rulers of criminal empires, except in the. most extravagant kinds of fiction.

A likelier possibility flickered across the screen of the Saint’s imagination: Richard Hamlin, as Angelworth’s confidential secretary or whatever he was, would be in a unique position to exploit and manipulate Angelworth’s financial power and political influence. This might be a case of a power behind the throne... unknown even to the occupant of the throne? And Hamlin already had a criminal record. A lot of writers would go for that.

And just as many would trail him round as a red herring.

Certainly Hamlin wouldn’t be blinded by any romantic infatuation like Carole’s. Could he have some complicated idea of trading on that infatuation to ingratiate himself? That would also be one for the books; but people sometimes had strange weaknesses.

All right — what purely practical motive could the Supremo have had for letting the Saint go?

The only explanation that Simon could come up with along that line was that the Supremo, overruling The Pear Tree quorum, had decided that West Coast Kelly’s supposed proposition should at least be given a hearing, and without the prejudicial factor of a maltreated ambassador. Which meant that West Coast Kelly had not yet disowned the Saint — or that the accreditation would take longer to obtain. Meanwhile the situation would be left in the suspended animation of “don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you.”

With a corollary that the Saint, unlike the Supremo, could only be the loser in that kind of waiting game.

But even the fascination of those mental jigsaw puzzles could not keep him from sleep much longer.

Chapter 9

When Simon Templar got out of bed a little later that morning, he had added one more theory to his entanglement of teasers. It was almost as bizarre as the others, and yet he found it the hardest to eliminate.

What his conscious mind had not been able to accept the night before, his subconscious had relentlessly and impersonally crystallised while he slept. His surface thinking had been blurred and distorted by what he wished to be true. It had trodden gingerly, picking its way like a mountain climber crossing a snowfield. But in the relaxed transition back to wakefulness he had felt the white glaze give way beneath his feet, and he had plunged into the crevasse.

It was a little before ten o’clock when he walked into Lieutenant Stacey’s office, after reaching one of the toughest decisions he had ever had to make, and his expression darkly reflected his feelings. He could easily have put a cheerful mask on his face, but candour served his purposes at this point.

Stacey reacted to the Saint’s appearance with something as close to alarm as his cool, almost scholarly face could manage. The freckles stood out more vividly in contrast to his pale skin. Some people have a problem with blushing; Lieutenant Stacey was embarrassed by the fact that he turned extremely white under pressure.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What’s wrong?” Simon said emotionally, and sat down. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I almost got killed last night.”

Without waiting for any more questions, he told the story of his visit to The Pear Tree, his captivity, and his release.

Stacey blinked.

“I’d say you were very lucky,” he managed. “I was afraid something like that would happen. What could one man do against a bunch like that? The only thing that beats me is that they let you go.”

“It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected either,” the Saint rejoined. “How do you explain it?”

Stacey held a freshly sharpened yellow pencil upright between his thumb and forefinger and stared at it.

“I don’t,” he admitted after a moment, and let the pencil fall over on to his desk top. “That organisation can swallow men up like quicksand. One foot in, and that’s the last you hear of them. How do you explain the special treatment?”

“My innocent boyish charm?” Simon suggested. “Or maybe they’d run out of bullets and couldn’t find a knife at that hour of the night. Whatever it is, I’m not giving them a second chance, I‘m out.”

He stood up abruptly. Stacey, in surprise, automatically rose from his own chair.

“I don’t get you,” he said. “What are you doing next?”

“Minding my own business,” said the Saint. “And staying alive if possible. If anybody asks about me, say I’m in Tahiti.”

“Is that what you want me to tell Brad Ryner?” Stacey asked. There was the faintest trace of accusation in his tone.

“You can tell Brad the truth,” Simon said. “Tell him I just can’t go on, now that I’ve got a good idea what I’m up against.”

And like a failure in battle who did not want to face his comrades, the Saint turned round and stalked out of the office.

He went straight back to the New Sylvania and began to pack. With that done, he would be able to leave immediately after lunch, and the last thing he wanted was to hang round under that roof. But having nothing else to hurry for before noon, his suitcase was still half empty on the bed when his telephone rang.

“This is Brad Ryner,” the voice on the line said. “Stacey told me what happened. I’ve gotta see you.”

“Is it really necessary? Didn’t you hear? I chickened out.”

The detective summed up in one elegant syllable what he thought of that.

“Yeah, it’s necessary,” he went on. “You can at least talk to me for five minutes can’t you?”

“If you say so. I’ll come over to the hospital—”

“I’ll come to your place,” Ryner interrupted. “I’m not at the hospital. I just snuck out the back way and I’m in a phone booth. I’ll be over there in a couple minutes.”

He did not give Simon a chance to protest. He had also conveniently underestimated the time it would take him to get to the hotel, no doubt to be sure Simon had no excuse for leaving. It was twenty minutes later when he knocked at the door.

When Simon turned the knob he was confronted by a mummy in a raincoat. Most of Brad Ryner’s face was still swathed in bandages. In one hand he carried a briefcase and with the other hand he supported himself against the doorjamb. Simon helped him into the room.

“Watch my ribs,” Ryner groaned. “I’ve got more fractures than San Francisco after the earthquake.”

“And you crawled out of that hospital bed and dragged yourself over here? You must have more cracks in your skull than you do in your ribs.”

“Never mind about me,” Ryner said as soon as he had been carefully deposited on one of the sofas. “What about you? What’s all this stuff about you being scared? You’ve never been scared in your life!”

“Everybody gets smart sometime,” Simon said grimly. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

“You can say more than that,” Ryner growled with painful effort. “You are not scared. I know that! You are not scared, and so there’s some other reason why you’re backing out. What is it?”

“The fortunetelling machine’s downstairs on the sidewalk,” Simon said. “I don’t answer questions when you put a penny in.”

“Then I’ll put a boot in, right where it hurts,” Ryner retorted angrily.

“For a man who can hardly stand up you’re talking mighty big,” Simon said with rigid control.

“Yeah, well I don’t mean that. I mean this.” Ryner beat his fingers against his closely held briefcase. “I think you found out something last night that made you back off. You wouldn’t go over to the other side. If somebody threatened you, it’d just make you madder. I know you’re after a fast buck, but you wouldn’t let nobody buy you off. So what is it? The way I figure it, it’s gotta be one of two things: You’re a businessman. Maybe you found out you could make a bigger killing if you took another route. And the other thing is, which I believe is the truth, the other thing is that you’re covering for somebody. Maybe somebody they can get at that you can’t protect. Or maybe you found out some friend of yours is mixed up with ‘em.”

“You’re very clever,” Simon said. “You should be a detective.”

“Not funny,” Ryner rasped. “If you got soft on that gang for some reason, it’s gotta be because you don’t realise what’s really going on. Open up this briefcase, woulda, and look at what’s inside. My hands ain’t working too good on zippers; they never do after somebody’s walked on my knuckles.”

Simon took the plastic case from the other man, who sank back exhausted against the sofa cushions.

“What am I going to look at?”

“Get ready to get sick,” Ryner said. “You’re gonna see just how the great Supremo operates.”

From the briefcase Simon took a thick set of eight-by-ten photographs, and what he saw as he went through them made even a man as hardened to violence as the Saint feel sickness gnawing and clawing at his insides.

“Not just a slug in some punk’s gut, huh?” Ryner said. “Not just a cop with a couple broken ribs. Look at it! Acid and knives. That’s what they like best. Especially the acid.”

Simon turned one of the photographs towards him.

“This girl,” he said. “She couldn’t be more than ten years old.”

“Nine,” Ryner affirmed. “She’s the daughter of a judge who wouldn’t play ball. She’ll never see out of that eye. I think the other young girl there was luckier. She didn’t make it. A girl’s not going to have much of a life if men can’t stand to look at her face.”

The butchery and mutilation shown in the police photographs had more of an effect on Simon than hours of argument could have done. He had been thinking, until now, in terms of inter-racket shakedowns, vice monopolies, crooked political manoeuvres, and real-estate hanky-panky. Now he was brought face to face, on the most brutal personal level, with the products of power combined with uninhibited ferocity.

“Do you want to hear about some of the other cute tricks they’ve pulled?” Ryner asked.

“No,” Simon said.

He put the pictures back into the briefcase. If the Supremo could have seen the Saint’s face or heard the sound of his voice there would have been considerable unease in the City of Brotherly Love at that moment.

“Are you still gonna back out?” Ryner insisted.

“No.”

“Well, so what are you gonna do?”

“Don’t push me,” said the Saint. “I never thought I’d have to make the toughest choice of my life twice in one day. Just let me know where I can contact you later, this afternoon. I’ve got a date to keep first.”

Simon no longer wanted to meet Carole for lunch but he knew that he had to. She threw her arms round him happily when she got out of her taxi at the William Penn Grill, where he was waiting for her, forcing the noontime river of surging protoplasm to wash round them on the sidewalk. The air was fresh and crisp after the recent rains. Brilliant sunshine brought dazzling highlights to Carole’s long blond hair, which was obviously fresh from the attentions of a beauty parlor. A heavy drizzling overcast and impenetrable fog would have been more suitable to the Saint’s mood, but now he put on the false face he had not worn in Lieutenant Stacey’s office. He had plenty of deception ahead of him, so he might just as well start now.

“Last night I wondered if I’d ever see you again,” Carole was chattering happily, squeezing his hand as they went in. “I really did. Now here we are. And I’m simply dying to hear your story about last night. It had better be good!”

It was impossible to put her off for longer than it took to order cocktails.

“I’m afraid it’s terribly dull,” he said. “But it makes me feel pretty stupid. I had to look up these... business connections, and I found they had rather riotous ideas about conferences. They had to show me the town as a warm-up. And I ended up losing track of the time. To put it bluntly, I was out cold for a while.”

“I would have thought,” she said meditatively, “that the Saint had a stronger head than that.”

He was able to keep his mask expressionless.

“What saint?”

“It’s no good,” she said, and her eyes were still twinkling. “I know who you are. You were mean not to tell me yourself.”

“Who did tell you?”

“My father. He thought he recognised the name, and he checked it up. Or Dick Hamlin did. They always worry about me.”

“But it didn’t worry you?”

“I was thrilled. So long as you weren’t getting murdered somewhere... Now, what did really happen last night?”

“Just what I’ve told you, skipping the gory details. On my honour,” he told her truthfully.

Her eyes would not shift from his face.

“Well, do you have to have any more of these conferences?”

He rubbed his brow ruefully.

“I should hope not. I’d rather retire in one piece, if I thought I could afford to.”

“You could afford to.” Her fingers lay on his wrist, only for a moment. “I see I’ll have to show you how to enjoy life.”

Somehow he got through the lunch. Carole’s thoughts were all on the future — tomorrow, next week, next month. She pictured herself and Simon together at the theatre, on rides, at parties, on country walks, sprawled in front of a fireplace in the evening. Simon’s thoughts were walled in by this single day, whose ending would form a stone barrier between him and Carole. He knew how she would really feel tomorrow, and it would not be as she now imagined.

But he smiled and laughed and asked questions, while evading answering any himself. He did caution her that his life wasn’t a long vacation... that he was going to have things to do and places to go in the weeks to come. Nothing so minor as that could squelch her exuberance. Life was just beginning. Give her a chance, and she could make anything possible.

When Carole fell she fell hard, and there was nothing the Saint could do now to cushion the crash at the bottom.

He wanted to end his own ordeal as quickly as possible. Her bright blue eyes, her soft expressive lips, were working at his defences like the summer sun on a block of ice. He could not look at her without a shattering impulse to take her in his arms and kiss her.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short,” he told her over coffee. “If I’m going to take a holiday, I’ve got some loose ends I must tidy up first.”

“You said you’d had enough of those conferences.”

“Of last night’s kind, yes. This one is a bit different.”

She took a gold cigarette-case from her purse, and a cigarette from it.

“Is it getting rid of that other woman?” she accused, less seriously.

“Not only her, but all the children,” he said glibly, and gave her a light from the match booklet on the table. “By the way, does your father know you’re out with me now?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And he didn’t object?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I see. But he’ll be pacing up and down till you get home safely.”

“They say that walking’s wonderful exercise for men of his age—”

She broke off as another man materialised seemingly from nowhere beside their table. From being perplexed, she became dumbfounded as he sat down quietly in the vacant chair opposite her and proffered an open wallet that displayed a badge and an identity card.

“Police Department.” He took the cigarette from her fingers and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “I believe this contains marijuana, and that you have others like it in your possession. You are under arrest, and will be formally charged at Headquarters.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Carole exploded. “Do you know who I am?”

“You bet I do, lady. We’ve been watching you for quite some time. Now will you come quietly, or will I beckon up some help and we can all get our pictures in the papers?”

“This has got to be a mistake,” Simon protested. “I didn’t smell any marijuana when I lit that cigarette — and I know the smell. She’s got a right to call a lawyer—”

The look that Lieutenant Stacey turned on him was as cold as if they had never met.

“After we’ve booked her, smarty. Or you can do it for her as soon as we’ve left. Unless you’d rather come along too, and be charged with aiding, abetting, conspiring, and anything else we might think up.”

Carole turned to stare at the Saint in blank desperation.

“Don’t get yourself in dutch, Simon,” she said huskily. “This has got to be a frame-up. Get in touch with my father. He’ll know what to do.”

“Okay,” the Saint promised stonily, knowing precisely what that acquiescence would mean.

Chapter 10

Hyram Angelworth lounged in an armchair in his living-room idly scanning The Wall Street Journal to the accompaniment of soft music from the record player. He did not hear a sound beyond the strains of Guy Lombardo until a firm, resonant voice almost at his elbow said, “Good evening, Hyram.”

For a split second it seemed to him that the voice must have come from the radio, since he was alone in the apartment. But as his hands jerked the newspaper with surprise, and he looked up, he saw that he was not alone. Simon Templar stood next to him, tall and grim, but as relaxed as if they had just met by chance in the street.

“What are you doing in here?” Angelworth spluttered. “How did you get into my apartment?”

“Generally I walk through walls, but in this case it was simpler: I borrowed your daughter’s key for a few minutes and had a duplicate made. She didn’t know it of course. She’s too fond of you for that, poor misguided girl.”

Angelworth dropped the paper to the floor as he stood up. His voice was unsteady.

“Where is Carole? Isn’t she here? She said she was going to lunch with you.”

Angelworth was looking round as if someone else must surely have entered the room with Simon.

“Your daughter’s social life isn’t what I’ve come to talk to you about,” said the Saint. “I’ll let you have it very straight: I know this is the Supremo’s address, and I’m here to talk to the Supremo.”

“Supremo?” Hyram Angelworth said in a soft incredulous voice. He looked as Santa Claus might look if accused of being Beelzebub in disguise. “You mean the gangster?”

“That’s right,” Simon replied. “King Sin himself. I can’t say I’ve been dying to meet him, but I nearly did. As you damn well know.”

Hyram Angelworth raised both hands piously and backed away, shaking his head. Simon recognised a fellow actor. Angelworth was having trouble deciding between laughing at the absurdity of the accusation and flying into a rage because of it.

“There’s just no point carrying this on any further,” he protested. “You’re talking to the wrong man.”

Simon allowed himself a few dramatics of his own. He leaned forward and brought his fist down fiercely on the back of the chair Angelworth had just vacated.

“Now, look,” he shouted. “I haven’t got time to waste on those games! You’re not talking to one of your bootlicking ward-heelers. Listen to what I’m telling you, Angelworth: I come from West Coast Kelly. He’s twice as big as you’ll ever be, and he’s going to be bigger soon because he’s going to merge you into his business. While you’ve been sitting round getting fat, he’s been taking up your slack and buying up some of your boys. In other words, he’s taking over your operation, and if you’re willing to talk turkey and come to terms you won’t do too badly. We’re not greedy. We just want some co-operation.”

“How can I co-operate when I don’t even know what you’re talking about?” Angelworth argued. “I’d suggest you get out of here before I call the police.”

He went over to a table and placed his hand on the telephone there.

“I’d suggest you don’t bother,” Simon told him. “I know I’m in the right place — never mind how. So if you could cut the phoney theatricals we could get down to business.”

Suddenly Angelworth’s right hand dipped into the drawer of the table and came out holding a pistol.

The Saint made no effort to stop him or counter the move. He smiled happily.

“I’m very glad you did that,” he said. “You just told me I’m right.”

“I should have let the boys finish you when they had you last night,” Angelworth said.

All the innocence had vanished from his face and all the honey from his voice.

“You’ve really let yourself in for it now,” he snarled. “Breaking into my apartment with a stolen key — who could blame me for shooting in self-defence? And if that West Coast Mick has any ideas about butting into my affairs, what happens to you should be a good warning to him!”

“I’m disappointed in you, Hyram,” Simon murmured. “Maybe Richard Hamlin really is the brains behind this outfit. It looks like you couldn’t think your way across the street in the rush hour.”

Angelworth’s hand tightened on the automatic.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve forgotten about Carole. That’s why I didn’t bring her back with me.”

The older man was visibly staggered. The colour drained from his face.

“Carole,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t hurt her...”

“Why not? It’d only be taking a page from your book. There was a certain judge’s daughter, for example. I don’t think a splash of vitriol would improve Carole’s complexion any.”

“Don’t you know it was only because of her you were turned loose last night?”

“I guessed that. And so I wouldn’t want to hurt her — so long as you play ball.”

Even to an enemy the expression on Angelworth’s face was harrowing. He suddenly looked years older. The hand that held the automatic was slowly lowered until his arm hung limply at his side.

Then a new voice was heard: “It’s okay, Mr. Angelworth. I’ve got him covered.”

They both turned to see Richard Hamlin, with a pistol of his own, coming into the living-room from another door. Hamlin looked very pleased with himself. He was obviously more at home juggling account books than guns, but he liked the role of man of action.

“I’m afraid it won’t do any good,” Angelworth said heavily. “They have Carole. I’ve got to do whatever they want.”

He turned back to Simon.

“So what is it you want... to set her free, without hurting her?”

“I told you,” Simon said. “Your co-operation. You can start by proving your good faith — handing over your records, giving us a run-down on all your, ah, enterprises. Then West Coast Kelly will tell you how much he wants. There must be some very special files. A hidden safe, maybe?”

“You can’t show him anything!” Hamlin said furiously. “If you do, Kelly could put us out and take everything!”

Hyram Angelworth turned desperately to Simon.

“Listen — you owe me your life. Give me mine in return, and leave Carole out of this!”

“I’m sorry,” said the Saint. “I’ve got my orders. And Carole won’t be hurt unless you force us to.”

Angelworth’s shoulders sagged as he let out a long deep breath.

“You leave me no choice.” He turned wearily. “Come into my study.”

“Wait a minute!” Hamlin barked, waving his gun. “There’s more people involved than just Carole. I can’t let you do it!”

“Can’t let me do it?” Angelworth said in a dangerously quiet voice. “I decide what’s done here. I pulled you out of jail and turned you from a convict into a rich man—”

“And he’ll turn you back into a convict if you don’t behave yourself,” Simon put in. “With your record you’ll make a perfect fall guy if the cops ever start suspecting your boss.”

“I have decided,” Angelworth said to Hamlin, “to combine forces with West Coast Kelly. Now get out of the way and let me settle this business.”

Hamlin hesitated a moment, but placed himself between Angelworth and the study.

“I won’t tolerate insubordination,” Angelworth snapped. “Get out of the way.”

“No!” Hamlin half screamed.

Angelworth shot first and sent Hamlin careening back against the wall, his gun flying from his hand and tumbling across the carpet. As Hamlin sagged to the floor, blood soaking the left side of his body, Simon had time to wonder if the secretary really would have pulled the trigger of his own pistol. He had certainly been destroyed by the hesitant mentality of an employee, while Angelworth had been quickened by the mentality of the leader.

“Nice shot,” said the Saint. “I see how you got to be the Supremo.”

He followed Angelworth past Hamlin, who was unconscious but still bleeding, into the book-lined study. In a moment Angelworth had swung one of the bookshelves away from the wall and was opening the door of a safe which had been hidden behind it.

“All the important records are here,” Angelworth said. “Take what you want and look at it.”

The Saint felt triumphant relief. He took the folders which Angelworth handed him and strolled out into the living-room looking through the papers. Angelworth’s eyes followed him anxiously.

Simon leaned against the wall near a window. Without taking his eyes from his reading, he pulled the curtain aside, waved his arm up and down three times, and let the curtain fall into place again. Angelworth’s body stiffened.

“What was that?”

“Signaling,” Simon said.

“Signaling what?”

“That everything’s okay.” His signal would have been received by a watcher on the roof of the building opposite, and relayed back to the floor below the New Sylvania’s penthouse. He looked up from the folders. “This is interesting stuff. You’re very creative with numbers. For Carole’s sake I wish you’d been a math professor instead of a crook.”

The door from the hallway burst open, and suddenly the room was invaded by three blue uniforms led by a man in a plain suit. Confronted with this police presence, Hyram Angelworth’s instincts told him to bolt for the rear exit, but intelligence told him to try a last desperate sound.

“Thank God you’ve come!” he cried, pointing a shaking finger at the Saint. “This man broke in here and—”

“Spare us,” said the Saint. “The law, for once, is with me.” He spoke to Lieutenant Stacey, who was leading the task force. “This fine-looking gent is the Supremo. He was obliging enough to hand over the evidence from the wall safe, and to plug his assistant there for trying to stop him. Brother Hamlin seems to be alive; he should make a very willing witness.”

“You’re working for the police?” Angelworth grated. “Then where’s Carole? What have you done with Carole?”

“She’s downtown, at Police Headquarters, protected by a charming detective lieutenant. She was picked up on a phoney charge to make certain she wouldn’t be in touch with you after lunch.”

“Did she know?” Angelworth asked almost piteously.

“No, she didn’t,” Simon answered.

With incredible swiftness Angelworth spun round and dashed back into the study. As the policemen raced after him, Simon shouted: “Watch out — he’s got a gun in there!”

But there was no sound of shots. A moment later, after scuffling noises, the police emerged into the living-room again with a handcuffed and crestfallen ex-Supremo in their charge.

“He was trying to kill himself,” one of them said. “We got the gun just when he was putting it to his head.”

“I’ll give him one thing,” Simon said thoughtfully. “He did love one person in the world more than himself.”

The atmosphere at the airport the next noon was clear, kerosene-perfumed, and — to the Saint — supercharged with his own eagerness to get away from Philadelphia. Brad Ryner sat in the police car with the door open, and Lieutenant Stacey stood beside the Saint as a porter carried Simon’s bag into the terminal.

“I want you to know how much we appreciate what you did,” Stacey said earnestly.

Simon shook his head, nodding, and turned to Ryner.

“Look,” Ryner said, “I feel mighty bad about this. When I used those pictures to get you to help out, I didn’t realise what it was gonna cost you. I mean about the girl. I didn’t know what a crummy mess it would put you in, not until she told you off at headquarters last night.”

The Saint’s mind was forced to leap back and relive that scene again. Carole had been released, with explanations, when her father was brought in, and had then had to cope alone with the shock of his arrest and the revelations that went with it, while Simon was indulging the authorities in their mania for paperwork. It had not been necessary for him to see her even after she had helped with summoning lawyers and fending off vulturine reporters. In fact, Stacey, who was well aware of her feelings by that time, had tried to avert the unpleasantries.

Sitting in his office that evening, he had said to Simon, while Brad Ryner listened: “She’s very upset, naturally. She’s not being rational. She’s got to blame somebody, and it’s easier for her to blame you than her father. I’d suggest that you don’t see her. At least not for some time, till she’s cooled down.”

“Yeah,” Ryner had joined in. “Just blow. What good can it do to let her chew you out?”

“If she wants to see me, I at least owe her that,” Simon had said. “Let her in.”

It had been worse than he had anticipated. When Carole entered Stacey’s office she had looked so haggard, her eyes so swollen and reddened with crying, that Simon could scarcely recognise her as the lively happy girl he had known so briefly. It was understandable. Before this she had not been able to imagine to herself that there was even a one per cent clay content in her paternal idol’s feet, and now he turned out to be ninety-nine per cent pure mud. And the man she had loved was the one who had shattered her world, doomed her father to prison, and condemned her at the very least to humiliation and a terrible time of readjustment.

“You pig!” she said, and for as long as he lived he would remember the corrosive bitterness of every syllable. “I can’t think of anything low enough to call you.”

“Now wait a minute,” Ryner had put in. “Don’t blame Simon for what your father did. He was only...”

Simon silenced the detective with a glance, but did not try to reply to Carole himself.

“You could have told me,” she said. “You knew I... I loved you. And all the time you were using me to get at my father!”

That was all she could say. A racking sob choked her so that no more words could get through. Simon had taken one step towards her, and then she had turned and run from the office.

Now, at the airport, Ryner was saying: “But since you did face her like that, why didn’t you at least explain why you had to do it? You didn’t have to let her think you’re a heel. You weren’t using her, the way she said.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Simon said. “But do you think she’d believe me? It would only have sounded as if I were trying to make her father look even worse. When you’ve just wrecked a girl’s life, all the logic in the world won’t convince her that you had to do it. And in the long run, it’ll be much better for her to go on hating me.”

With a final good-bye he strode from the police car to the door of the terminal.

“Well,” Stacey said, “maybe only a saint could have played it that way...”

And they watched him walk away into the lobby.