“Yeah,” Hoppy corroborated. “De Angel stinks out loud! Why, dat bum can’t fight.”
“How can you say that,” Connie objected tensely, “when he just killed a man in the ring?”
“That was an accident.” Mullins waved away her fears with an impatient gesture of one thin hairy hand. “That crook Spangler will be eatin’ off’n his social security when we get through with him, huh, Champ? You’ll murder that big beef he stole from me!”
His hatchet face was venomous, as though distorted by an inward vision of vengeance.
“Whitey,” Connie said, “what did you do with that gun?”
Whitey’s rapt stare came back to earth and jerked in her direction.
“Gun?” he said blankly, and followed her glance at the table. “Oh, that.”
He looked quickly at Steve, at Simon, and Hoppy, and back to Connie again.
“Yes, that,” she said. “I told you to get rid of it.”
“I did,” Whitey said. “How did it get here?”
Hoppy grunted, “Some heister crashes de Saint’s flat last night. He leaves de rod.”
“Yeah? Who was it?”
“That,” said the Saint amiably, “is what I’d like to know. If you got rid of this gun, what did you do with it?”
Mullins snapped his fingers as if smitten by recollection.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” He reached into his coat, extracted a wallet, and selected a ten and a five. He offered the two bills to Connie. “Here. It’s your dough.”
“Mine?” She didn’t touch the money. “Why?”
“It’s the dough I got for it at th’ hock shop,” he explained. “Ten bucks on the rod — five bucks for the pawn ducat I sell for chips in a poker session the other night.”
She shook her head quickly.
“No. You keep it. For your trouble.”
Whitey unhesitatingly replaced the money in his wallet.
“Okay, if you say so.”
“Who did you sell the ticket to?” Simon inquired casually.
“Mushky Thompson,” Whitey said. “But it goes through his kick like a dose of salts. Pretty soon it’s movin’ from one pot to another like cash.”
“Yes, but who got it in the end?” Nelson asked.
“I quit at three in th’ morning. Who it winds up with, I couldn’t say.” Whitey glanced at his wrist watch. “’Bout time we was headin’ for the gym, Stevie.”
“Was Karl sitting in on the game?” Simon persisted.
Whitey blinked.
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s an expensive gun, Whitey,” Simon pursued mildly. “Is ten all you could get on it?”
Mullins spread his hands, expressively.
“No papers, no licence. Ten bucks and no questions asked is pretty good these days.”
“I haven’t been following the market lately,” Simon confessed. “Where did you hock it?”
The trainer lifted his derby and thoughtfully massaged the bald spot in his straw-coloured hair with two fingers of the same hand.
“It’s a place off Sixth Avenue, as I recall,” he said finally, dropping his chapeau back on its accustomed perch. “’Neath Forty-Fourth. The Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company.”
The Saint picked up the gun again.
“Thanks. I may need this a bit longer — if nobody minds.” He slipped it into his pocket and glanced at Nelson. He said inconsequentially, “I wouldn’t do any boxing until that hand heals, Steve.”
Whitey’s eyes flashed to the hand Steve Nelson had been carrying palm upwards to conceal the raw gash along its back. He swore softly as he examined it.
“It’s just a scratch,” Nelson scoffed. “I was going to take care of it before we left.”
“The next time our friend Karl visits you,” Simon advised him, “don’t give him a chance to touch you. That finger jewellery he wears is more dangerous than brass knuckles.”
“Karl!” Whitey turned with outraged incredulity. “He was here.”
“He had a little proposition,” Nelson said. “Wanted me to throw the fight for both ends of the gate.”
“The louse!” Mullins exploded. “The dirty no-good louse. I mighta known Spangler’d try sump’n like that. He knows that ham of his ain’t got a chance.”
Simon crushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray.
“I’d feel even more sure of that if I could drop in and watch you train, Steve,” he said. “In fact, I’d rather like to work out with you myself.”
“Any time,” Nelson said.
“Tomorrow morning,” said the Saint. “Come on, Hoppy — let’s keep on the trail of the roving roscoe.”
Chapter nine
The only connection that the Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company might possibly have had with the animal for which it was named, Simon decided as he entered the premises, was the arctic quality of its proprietor’s stare. This personality, however, was a far cry from the conventional bearded skull-capped shylock that was once practically a cliché in the public mind. He was, in fact, a pale, smooth-shaven young man with curly black hair, elegantly attired in a sports jacket and striped flannels, who scanned the Saint as he entered with eyes of a peculiar ebony hardness. He barely lifted a brow in recognition as he caught sight of Hoppy on Simon’s heels.
“Hi, Ruby,” Hoppy said. “I have a idea I remember dis jernt from way back. Long time no see, huh?”
To the Saint’s unsentimental blue eyes, Ruby slipped into a familiar niche like a nickel into a slot. Just as a jungle dweller knows at a glance the vulture from the eagle, the ruminant from the carnivore, so the Saint knew that in the stone jungles of the city this specimen was of a scavenger breed — with a touch of reptile, perhaps. And the fact that Mr Uniatz knew the place of old was almost enough to confirm the discredit of its agate-eyed proprietor.
Ruby flinched instinctively as Mike Grady’s revolver appeared in the Saint’s fist, held for an instant with its muzzle pointed at the pawnbroker’s midriff, before Simon laid it on the counter.
“This gun,” said the Saint, “was pawned here a few days ago. Remember?”
The pawnbroker studied it a moment. His delicately curved brows lifted slightly, the tailored shoulders accompanying them upwards in the mere soupçon of a shrug.
He looked at Simon with eyes that had the blank unfocused quality of the blind.
“Whitey Mullins hocks it,” Hoppy amplified. “Ya know Whitey.”
“However, he didn’t claim it himself,” Simon went on. “Someone else did — a few days ago. I want to know who.”
“Who are you?” Ruby asked in his flat monotone. “What gives?”
Hoppy grabbed his shoulder in a bone-crushing clutch and, with his other hand, pointed a calloused digit directly under Simon’s nose.
“Dis,” he explained unmistakably, “is de Saint. When de boss asks ya a question, ya don’t talk back.”
Ruby shook off Hoppy’s paw and flicked imaginary contamination from where it had been. He looked back to the Saint.
“So?” he said.
“This gun,” Simon continued pleasantly, “was redeemed. Who turned in the ticket? I promise there’s no trouble in it for you.”
The young man across the counter sighed and stared moodily at the gun.
“Okay, so you give me a promise. Can my wife cash it at the bank if I get knocked off for talkin’ too much?”
“No,” Simon conceded. “But your chances of living to a ripe and fruitless old age are far better, believe me, if you do give me the information I want.”
The pawnbroker’s eyes slid over him with stony opacity.
It began to be borne in upon Mr Uniatz that his old pal was being very slow to co-operate. His reaction to that realisation was a darkening scowl of disapproval. Backgrounded by the peculiar advantages of Hoppy’s normal face, this expression conveyed a warning about as subtle as the first smoke rising from an active volcano... Ruby caught a glimpse of it, and whatever cogitation was going on behind the curtain of his face reached an immediate conclusion.