Leslie Charteris - The Saint to the Rescue

Sholto glared at him.

“What did you do that for?”

“I think that’s plenty for a sample,” Simon answered, “I know you want to know what Mr Rood said, but I’ve got to leave myself something to sell, if you know what I mean.”

One of the lieutenants moved menacingly closer, and Simon looked him in the eye and ostentatiously took his hand off the machine.

“Don’t be hasty,” he said. “You’ve heard all I brought with me. The rest is on another tape, in a safe place.”

Sholto’s teeth clamped down on his cigar.

“How much?”

“It should be worth ten grand, easily.”

“To hear Rood tell this jerk to tell the Senator to go take a running jump at himself?” Sholto scoffed. “What kind of sucker d’you take me for?”

“I’m not telling you what he says. That’s the part you have to pay for.”

“And if all you’re selling is a false alarm, you know how sorry you’d be?”

“You won’t get it out of me that way, Dibs,” said the Saint with a thin smile. “But I’m taking the risk that you won’t think you were gypped when you’ve heard it.” He paused. “Besides, if we do business, I’m hoping to sell you something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I expect you’ll want to know where this Mrs Yarrow is. Confidential investigations are my business. I could help you find her — for a little extra, that is. But you won’t be disappointed. I guarantee I could locate her in less than four days, because of something you haven’t heard yet, if you know what I mean.”

The racketeer’s eyes stayed on him unblinking, expressionless beads of jet, for a long count of seconds, while his stubby fingers beat a mechanical tattoo on his knee. But behind that impenetrable stare Simon knew that an exceptionally shrewd brain was working, for even in the brutal jungles of Dibs Sholto’s world a man does not rise to eminence who is slow to grasp and react.

There was obviously no doubt in Sholto’s mind about the genuineness of the tape record. And Simon had not for a moment anticipated that there would be, for the friend in New York who had made it for him — after half an hour’s first-hand study of Mr Rood’s vocal mannerisms during an abortive discussion on a problem in willing a million-dollar estate — had in the heyday of radio been one of the most sought-after multi-voiced actors, and was now a professional mimic who made a fairly steady living in the secondary night-club circuit with an act in which he impersonated sundry celebrities. It was a poetic touch that the Saint could never have resisted, to hook Joe Sholto with a similar trick to one of those that Carlton Rood had used twelve years ago to get him off. And from that point Simon felt he could almost hear the turning of cog-wheels behind Sholto’s inscrutable scowl.

“I’ll have to think it over,” Sholto said at last. As Simon shrugged and stood up, he went on: “No, you can stick around. It’ll take a while, but not that long.” He jerked his cigar at his second lieutenant. “Take him in the dining room, Earl. Buy him a drink.”

Earl opened the door, and Simon followed him docilely across the hall into a room on the other side. There was an assortment of bottles on the sideboard, among which Simon noticed the label of Peter Dawson.

“Help yourself,” Earl said hospitably.

He raked together a pack of cards that were scattered over one end of the table, and riffled them thoughtfully.

“You play gin rummy?”

“Not very well,” said the Saint modestly.

Joe Sholto was already dialing Long Distance to give the number of one of his special representatives who worked out of Biloxi, and had the good luck to catch him at his office, which was a local pool room.

“Look for a Mrs Agnes Yarrow, who’s been living down there,” Sholto said. “Find out if she’s in town or where she’s gone — anything else you can pick up. Call me back right away.”

The next number he asked for was in New York, and presently it brought the sonorous tones of Carlton Rood over the wire.

“Good afternoon, Joseph.”

“Hiya, Carl.” Sholto’s voice had all the bluff bonhomie his abrasive disposition could put into it. “I hear you had burglars... Yeah, one of my boys saw it in the paper. Hope you didn’t lose anything important... Well, that’s too bad, but it could’ve been worse. Two hundred bucks you can put on the next sucker’s bill — but it better not be mine!”

So Rood’s office had indeed been broken, into — that much of the story checked. They talked for a while about diverse loose ends and lesser upshots of the recent trial, and the conversation had about run its natural course when Sholto casually tossed in his booby trap.

“By the way, Carl, you ever meet a guy named Simons?”

Mr Rood was startled enough not to answer instantly. He recalled his recent interviewer’s emphasis on anonymity, and the advantage it offered to his own vanity which he had not overlooked in thinking about the proposition since, and decided that some professional reserve was justified.

“Why on earth do you ask that, Joseph?” he inquired cautiously.

“He’s an attorney who’s been bothering a friend of mine about some broad he may have knocked up,” Sholto said. “I just thought you might know him.”

“Oh, no,” said Mr Rood, relieved that he was not to be faced with a problem. “I don’t believe I know anyone of that name.”

They signed off with the conventional cordialities, and Sholto slammed down the receiver and hurled his cigar stump savagely into the fireplace.

“The dirty, stinking, lying, double-crossing son of a bitch!”

His first lieutenant was already looking at him in full comprehension, but Sholto’s indignation had to have the first outlet of words.

“If he hadn’t told me before, that was his chance to say something. That’s when he had to say it, if he was ever going to be on the level. But no. ‘I don’t believe I know anyone of that name,’ he says. The bastard! I need to hear the rest of that tape like a hole in the head. I know what he must’ve said to Simons.”

He pulled the spool of tape off the recorder and glowered at it for a moment as if he were wondering what insensate violence to inflict on it. Then he took out another cigar, bit off the end, lighted it, and went back to his armchair. He sat in hard-mouthed grim-jawed silence which his lieutenant was too wise to interrupt, turning the spool over and over monotonously in one hand, and there was something even more terrifying in his impassive concentration than in his rage.

It was an hour and a half before the telephone rang again, and he heard the voice of his henchman in Biloxi.

“I think I got all you wanted, Dibs.”

“What is it?”

“The dame has a newsstand-shop here in town. Had it five years. She lives with a married sister. But right now she’s away. She went to California to have her eyes operated on, account of she’s blind. Seems someone met her in the shop and offered to pick up the tab, but nobody knows who he was. Nobody else saw him, and she couldn’t tell anything about him, account of being blind. A mystery man.”

“Do they know where she went in California?”

“Santa Barbara. I got the name of the doctor. I’ll spell it out for you—”

Sholto wrote it down, grunted his thanks, and hung up. He took out another cigar, and this time he carefully cut off the end.

“That’s all we need,” he said, and repeated what his correspondent had told him.

“Didn’t he get the address where she is?” asked the lieutenant.

“What’s that matter?” Sholto snarled. “If the doc clams up, we ask all the hospitals. There can’t be so many in Santa Barbara.” He was not to know that the Saint had already foreseen and forestalled this. “Get that crummy pee eye back here.”