“No, no! “ Connie gasped, but her tone was now more impatient than fearful. “I didn’t mean anything like that. I don’t want — anybody hurt.” She shook her head. “There must be something — something else you could do. You’re clever...”
Simon considered the tip of his cigarette a moment, the smoke trickling from his mouth.
“Does your father know you’re here?” he asked.
“Of course not!” The idea seemed to startle her. “I couldn’t tell him I’m trying to have the fight stopped — any more than I could tell Steve!”
“Steve is pretty good at his profession,” Simon remarked.
“Does he know how you feel about his chances against the Angel?”
“How could I tell him? I’ve tried to make him quit now — with the championship. It hasn’t done any good. He’s so sure, so confident! If he only had sense enough to be afraid, to realise!”
“Realise what?” Simon queried mildly.
“That it’s not — not worth risking his life—”
“He’s retiring after this next fight, according to the papers,” Patricia said.
“Yes, I know. He promised me... But it may be too late by then.”
Hoppy was shaking his head uncomprehendingly.
“You talk like he’s a cream puff,” he said. “He’s de Champ, ain’t he?”
“Connie,” said the Saint gently, holding her eyes, “is there any other reason why you think Steve won’t win? Something you haven’t told me yet?”
She drew back.
“No.” She turned away. “I’ve told you everything. I— Spangler used to be a doctor once,” she said quickly. “I mean a real doctor, I— Suppose he uses his hypnotism? I know how crazy that sounds, but something will happen to Steve! I know it will!”
None of this was particularly fresh grist for Simon’s cogitative mill. He sighed.
“If Steve gives his usual performance,” he reasoned, “I don’t see that Bilinski stands a prayer. As for Doc Spangler’s hypnotic powers — I wouldn’t worry too much about them if I were you, Connie.”
Her mouth trembled.
“I’m sorry. I might have known that you’d talk just like Steve does... You and that — trainer of his.”
Simon’s brows lifted.
“Trainer?”
“Whitey Mullins.”
Hoppy, reaching for the coffee-pot, turned eagerly.
“Ya mean Whitey’s trainin’ de Champ? Say!” He beamed with the fanged grimace of a delighted dinosaur. “Whitey’s a great guy.”
The green eyes flashed at him.
“Is he? What does Mullins care what happens to Steve? All he cares about is getting even with Spangler. He’s just using Steve for a cat’s-paw!”
Hoppy blinked, his mouth open.
“I didn’t know de Champ’s a southpaw, but everybody knows Whitey has it in for de Doc ever since Spangler finagles Bilinski’s contract away from him. Dat’s an old story.” He shook his head dazedly. “And all de time I t’ink Nelson is a right-hander! He fights like one.”
Pat suppressed a smile.
“There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with having a handler who’s so interested in seeing the Angel beaten.”
“But the Angel won’t be beaten,” Connie said hopelessly. “Steve’ll be killed! He hasn’t a chance!”
Simon studied her broodingly.
“You’re very sure of that,” he said, and reached into his pocket to bring something out. He went on without a change of tone, “Did you ever see this before?”
On the table between them he laid the revolver which last night’s visitor had left behind.
By no perceptible sign, the Saint sensed a sudden change in her, an inner freezing, her eyes coming in focus on the gun, her whole being gripped by that thanatoid stillness that stands on the threshold of panic.
“Where,” she said in a small, tight voice, “did you get — that?”
“It was left here last night as a sort of — calling card.”
Patricia was staring at him.
“Last night?”
“Some hopped-up heister crashes de joint,” Hoppy snorted. “He gets away before we can even see who it is. But we give him such a scare he forgets de rod.”
“You didn’t tell me!” Pat accused. “You finished that brawl at the Arena over here, didn’t you?” She searched Simon’s face narrowly, and sensed the truth with the swift certainty of an intuition ground to psychic fineness by the countless abrasions of past experience. “Someone followed you here and tried to kill you!”
The Saint bowed.
“Darling, you know our kind of friends too well.”
Connie Grady stood up. She gathered up her purse and gloves with unsteady hands. Her face was pale, the magnolia skin drawn and haggard. She tried to ignore the revolver on the table, but her eyes kept flitting back to it, under the spell of some kind of frightening fascination.
“I’m sorry I bothered you like this,” she said with nervous breathlessness. “It was silly, really. I—” She broke off, walking quickly to the door. “Good-bye.”
“No, wait!”
“Please.”
She almost ran out of the apartment, and the front door slammed behind her.
Patricia and Hoppy returned their blank stares to the Saint — Patricia’s tinged with irony.
“Too bad,” she said. “And you were just starting to make such an impression.”
“Chees,” Hoppy said between mouthfuls, resuming his assault on the food, “de Torpedo gettin’ killed last night kinda made her blow her top, huh, boss?”
“It was that gun,” Pat stated, “that upset her. Why?”
Simon picked up the revolver and turned it idly in his hands.
“My crystal ball doesn’t work like yours,” he said, and he smiled at her. “Rather an attractive little thing, isn’t she?”
“Oh, rather,” Pat agreed, her smile sweetly corrosive, “if you like them on the slightly hysterical side.”
Simon laughed, his fingernail tracing the small intertwined letters engraved on the metal just above the stock of the gun.
“Poor Melusina,” he sighed whimsically. “I’m afraid her dear old daddy is making her cry.”
“Melusina? What are you talking about? I thought her name was Connie.”
“So it is. The term was merely analogous. Melusina was a fairy. A French fairy.” Simon grinned provocatively. “If you ever delved into such matters in your youth, dear, you’ll remember the story.”
“I never was as good at fairy tales as you,” Pat said demurely.
“Melusina,” Simon continued imperturbably, “was no end attractive and quite easy to take — even if she was on the slightly hysterical side. However, she happened to suffer an injury from her father, for which, if memory serves, she had him imprisoned inside a mountain. She, in turn, was punished by being turned into a snake from the waist down every Saturday night.”
“She ought to have been able to wriggle out of that one,” Patricia said dryly. “But what has it got to do with Miss Grady, if anything?”
“Boss, don’t she t’ink Smith got killed by accident?” Hoppy demanded.
“Inasmuch as you raise the question,” Simon said, “I’ll give you an answer. No.”
“Obviously,” said Patricia. “But what do you think?”
“She’s quite right. It wasn’t an accident.”
Mr Uniatz absorbed half a cup of coffee at a gulp, scowling interestedly.
“Ya mean de Torpedo ain’t knocked off fair and square?”
The Saint nodded thoughtfully.
“Indubitably not — if instinct serves, and I think it does. At any rate, we’re going to look into the matter.”
“What are you going to do, Simon?”
The Saint smiled at her, and then at the gun lying on the palm of his hand.