Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

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.