“Why ask me?” he complained wearily. “I don’t ask his monicker. I ain’t interested. He’s a tall skinny jerk with a face like a horse. He bought a set of throwing knives from me once. That’s all I know.”
The Saint’s perspective roamed through a corridor of memory that Ruby’s description had faintly illuminated. A nebulous image formed somewhere in the vista, and tried to coalesce within recognisable outlines, but for the moment the shape still eluded him.
“Give you ten on the rod,” Ruby offered disinterestedly.
Simon picked up the revolver and slipped it back into his pocket.
“I’m afraid it isn’t mine,” he said truthfully, and a sardonic glimmer flickered in the young pawnbroker’s eyes for an instant.
“You don’t say.”
“As a matter of fact, it belongs to George Murphy, whose initials are ‘MG,’ spelled backwards,” Simon informed him solemnly, and sauntered from the shop with Hoppy in his wake.
It was perhaps the way the black sedan roared away from the curb at the end of the block that pressed an alarm button in the Saint’s reflexes. It forced itself into the stream of traffic with a suddenness that compelled the drivers behind to give way with screaming brakes. For one vivid instant, as if by the split-second illumination of a flash of lightning, Simon saw the driver, alone in the front seat, hunched over the wheel, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his face hidden in the shadow of the brim, a glimpse of stubbled jowl barely visible. He had an impression of two others crouched in the deeper shadow of the back seat, their faces obscured by handkerchiefs, the vague angle of their upraised arms pointing towards him... All this the Saint saw, absorbed, analysed, and acted upon in the microscopic fragment of time before he kicked Hoppy’s feet from under him so that they both dropped to the sidewalk together as the black sedan raced by, sending a fusillade of bullets cracking over them into the pawnshop window beyond.
Hoppy Uniatz, prone on his stomach, fumbled out his gun and fired a single shot just as the gunmen’s car cut in ahead of a truck and beat a red light.
“Hold it!” Simon ordered. “You’re more likely to hurt the wrong people.”
They scrambled up and dusted off their clothes. “You okay, boss?” Hoppy asked anxiously.
“Just a bit chilled from the draught of those bullets going by.”
Hoppy glared up the street at the corner where their assailants had vanished.
“De doity lowsers,” he rumbled. “Who wuz it, boss?” The Saint had no answer, but if he had, it would have been interrupted by the yelp of the curly-haired young man peering pallidly from behind the edge of the pawnshop doorframe.
“Get the hell away from here!” he bawled, with a shrill vibrato in his voice. “Get yourselves knocked off some other place.”
Hoppy turned on him redly, like a buffalo preparing to charge, but Simon grabbed one beefy bicep and yanked him back on his heels.
“Stop it, you damn fool!” he snapped. “Don’t take it out on him!”
He stepped to the doorway, drawing the knife strapped to his forearm.
From within the pawnshop Ruby’s voice, strident with fear, screeched, “Come in here and so help me God, I’ll blast ya!” Simon spotted him crouching behind a counter, goggling over the sights of a sawed-off shotgun. He thrust out a knee as a barrier to Hoppy’s impulsive acceptance of the challenge, and began working quickly.
He was aware of the scared faces starting to peer out of windows, of people moving out of doorways and peeping around corners. A crowd seemed to be converging from every direction, drawn by the shots and the wildfire smell of excitement. In a few seconds he cut out one of the bullets imbedded in the doorframe. He dropped the scarred slug in his pocket and moved away.
“Let’s get out of here,” said the Saint, taking Hoppy’s arm. “I still think it would be a social error to be arrested on Sixth Avenue, even if they have tried to change the name to ‘Avenue of the Americas.’ ”
Chapter ten
“Who done it?” Mr Uniatz asked once more, his neanderthaloid countenance still furrowed with the remnants of rage.
The Saint grinned as he swung the convertible around a corner.
“Never mind, Hoppy,” he said. “It helps to tone down the pattern... Anyway, all I saw was two gentlemen with handkerchiefs over their faces in a black sedan with no rear licence plate.”
Hoppy scowled.
“I seen dat too,” he grumbled. “What I wanna know is, who wuz dey?”
“Did you notice the outside hand of the fellow driving the car? It flashed in the sun.”
Mr Uniatz blinked.
“Huh?”
“He was wearing a lot of finger jewellery.”
“Finger jewellery?”
“Rings — large flashy rings.”
For a long moment Hoppy strove painfully to determine the relation of the driver’s digital ornamentation to his identity.
“Ya can’t never tell about pansies,” he concluded despondently.
The car swung east to Fifth Avenue and then south, moving leisurely with the traffic.
The Saint was in no hurry. He wanted a breathing spell to summarise the situation.
So far, two attempts had been made to murder him since the affair in the dressing-room the previous night. An emotional thug might have found the Saint’s insolence sufficiently provocative to inspire an urgent desire for his death; and certainly a blow in the solar plexus would be regarded in some circles as an act of war, and worthy of an act of reprisal. But somehow the Saint could not conceive of Dr Spangler, even with that kind of provocation, taking the risk of a murder charge. For Spangler was neither emotional nor reckless. He was an operator who had learned from experience to be thrifty of risks, to allow as much a margin of safety as possible to every enterprise. An attempt to bribe Nelson was in line with that, but the only motive Spangler was likely to consider strong enough to justify an attempt at murder would be the fear that the Saint’s interference might affect the Angel’s chance of taking the title.
Would Spangler, even with a guilty conscience, have taken alarm so precipitately? Would he be afraid, on such scanty evidence, that the Saint had discovered the secret of the Angel’s victories?... For that matter, was there any secret more sinister than common chicanery and corruption? So far, he could only conjecture.
“And that,” said the Saint, “leaves us just one more call to make.”
“Who we gonna see now, boss?” asked Mr Uniatz, settling philosophically into the social whirl.
“That depends on who’s home.”
Simon swung the car towards Gramercy Park, and presently slowed down as he turned into a secluded side street lined with grey stone houses as conservatively old-fashioned in their way as the Riverside Drive brownstones were in theirs, but with a polished elegance that bespoke substantially higher rents.
“What home, boss?” Hoppy insisted practically.
The Saint peered at the numbers of the houses slipping by.
“Doc Spangler’s.”
Hoppy’s eyes became almost as wide as shoe buttons.
“Ya mean it’s de Doc what tries to gun us?”
“It was more likely one of the bad boys he chums around with,” said the Saint. “But he probably knew about it. Bad companions, Hoppy, are apt to get a man into trouble. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.”
“No, boss,” said Mr Uniatz seriously.
The Saint was starting to pull in towards one of the grey stone houses when he saw the other car. The rear licence plate was on now, but there was no doubt about the genesis of the neat hole with its radiation of tiny cracks that perforated the rear window. Simon pointed it out to Hoppy, as he kept the convertible rolling and parked it some twenty yards farther down the block.