Leslie Charteris - The Saint in New York

"My name's Simon," said "the Saint. "Fay Edwards sent me."

The man inside shook his head.

"Fay ain't come in yet. Want to wait for her?"

"Maybe I can get a drink while I'm waiting," Simon shrugged.

His manner was without concern or eagerness — it struck exactly the right note of harmless nonchalance. If the Saint had been as innocent as he looked he could have done it no better; and the doorkeeper peered up and down the street and unlatched the door.

Simon went through and hooked his hat on a peg. Beyond the tiny hall was a spacious bar which seemed to occupy the remainder of the front part of the building. The tables were fairly well filled with young-old men of the smoothly blue-chinned type, tailored into the tight-fitting kind of coat which displays to such advantage the bulges of muscle on the biceps and the upper back. Their faces, as they glanced up in automatic silence at the Saint's entrance, had a uniform air of frozen impassivity, particularly about the eyes, like fish that have been in cold storage for many years. Scattered among their company was a sprinkling of the amply curved pudding-faced blondes who may be recognized anywhere as belonging to the genus known as "gangsters' molls" — it is a curious fact that few of the men who shoot their way through amazing wealth to sophistication in almost all their appetites ever acquire a sophisticated taste in femininity.

Simon gave the occupants no more than a casual first glance, absorbing the general background in one broad survey. He walked across to the bar and hitched himself onto a high stool. One of the white-coated bartenders set up a glass of ice water and waited.

"Make it a rye highball," said the Saint

By the time the drink had been prepared the mutter of conversation in the room had resumed its normal pitch. Simon took a sip from his glass and stopped the bartender before he could move away.

"Just a minute," said the Saint. "What's your name?"

The man had an oval, olive-hued, expressionless face, with beautifully lashed brown eyes and glossily waved black hair that made his age difficult to determine.

"My name is Toni," he stated.

"Congratulations," said the Saint. "My name is Simon. From Detroit."

The man nodded unemotionally, with his soft dark eyes fixed on the Saint's face.

"From Detroit," he repeated, as if memorizing a message.

"They call me Aces Simon," said the Saint evenly. The bartender's unwrinkled face responded as much as a wooden image might have done. "I'm told there are some players in this city who know what big money looks like."

"What do you want?"

"I thought I might get a game somewhere." Simon's blue gaze held the bartender's as steadily as the other was watching him. "I want to play with Morrie Ualino."

The man wiped his cloth slowly across the bar, drying off invisible specks of moisture.

"I don't know anything. I have to ask the boss."

He turned and went through a curtain at the back of the bar; and while he was gone Simon finished his drink. The bluff and the gamble went on. If anything went wrong at this stage it would be highly unfortunate — what might happen later on was another matter. But the Saint's nerves were like ice. After some minutes the man came back.

"Morrie Ualino don't play tonight. Papulos is playing. You want a game?"

Simon did not move a muscle. Through Papulos the trail went to Ualino, and he had never expected to get near Ualino in the first jump. But if Ualino were not playing that night — if he were engaged elsewhere — it was an added chance that the radio message which Fernack had received might supply a reason. The azure steel came and went in the Saint's eyes, but all the bartender saw was a disappointed shrug.

"I didn't come here to cut for pennies. Who is this guy Papulos?"

Toni's soft brown eyes held an imperceptible glint of contemptuous humour.

"If you want to play big, I think he will give you all you want. Afterwards you can meet Ualino. You want to go?"

"Well, it might give me some practice. I haven't anything else to do."

Toni emptied an ashtray and wiped it out. From a distance of a few yards he would have seemed simply to be filling up the time until another customer wanted him, without talking to anyone at all.

"They're at the Graylands Hotel — just up the street on the other side. Suite 1713. Tell them Charley Quain sent you."

"Okay." Simon stood up, spreading a bill on the counter. "And thanks."

"Good luck," said Toni and watched him go with eyes as gentle as a deer's.

The Graylands Hotel lay just off Seventh Avenue. It was one of those caravanserais which are always full and yet always seem to be deserted, with the few guests who were visible hustling furtively between the sanctity of their private rooms and the anonymity of the street. Business executives detained at the office might well have stayed there, but none of them would ever have given it as his address. It had an air of rather forlorn splendour, like a blowzy woman in gold brocade, and in spite of the emptiness of its public rooms there was a suppressed atmosphere of clandestine and irregular life teeming in the uncharted cubicles above.

The gilded elevator, operated by a pimply youth with a precociously salacious air of being privy to all the irregularities that had ever ridden in it, whisked Simon to the seventeenth floor and decanted him into a dimly lighted corridor. He found Suite 1713 and knocked. After a brief pause a key clicked over and the portal opened eight inches. A pair of cold dispassionate eyes surveyed him slowly.

"My name's Simon," said the Saint He began to feel that he was admitting a lot of undesirable people to an easy familiarity that evening, but the alias seemed as good as any, and certainly preferable to such a fictitious name as, for instance, Wigglesnoot. Charley Quain sent me around."

The eyes that studied him received the information as enthusiastically as two glass beads.

"Simon, eh? From Denver?"

"Detroit," said the Saint. "They call me Aces."

The guard's head dropped through a passionless half-inch which might have been taken for a nod. He allowed the door to open wider.

"Okay, Aces. We heard you were on your way. If you're lookin' for action I guess you can get it here."

The Saint smiled and sauntered through. He found himself in a rather large foyer, formally furnished. At the far end, two rooms gave off it on either side, and from the closed door on the right came the mutter of an occasional curt voice, the crisp clicking of chips, and the insidious rustle and lisp of cards. It appeared to Simon that he was definitely on his way. Somewhere beyond that door Mr. Papulos was in session, and the Saint figured it was high time he took a gander at this Mr. Papulos.

The guard threw open the second door, and Simon went on in. He saw that the place had originally been intended for a sitting room; but all the normal furniture had been pushed back against the walls, leaving plenty of space for the large round table covered with a green baize cloth which now occupied the centre of the floor. Fringing the circle of men seated around the board were a few hard, lean-faced gentry whose air of hawk-eyed detachment immediately removed any suspicion that they might be there to minister to the sick in case one of the players was taken sick. A single brilliant light fixture blazed overhead, flooding a cone of white luminance over the ring of players. As the Saint came in, every face turned towards him.

"Aces Simon, of Detroit," announced the guard. As a cynical afterthought he added: "He's lookin' for some action, gents."

The lean-faced watchers in the outer shadows relaxed and crossed their legs again; the players acknowledged the introduction with curt nods and returned immediately to their game.