“Then I’ll put a boot in, right where it hurts,” Ryner retorted angrily.
“For a man who can hardly stand up you’re talking mighty big,” Simon said with rigid control.
“Yeah, well I don’t mean that. I mean this.” Ryner beat his fingers against his closely held briefcase. “I think you found out something last night that made you back off. You wouldn’t go over to the other side. If somebody threatened you, it’d just make you madder. I know you’re after a fast buck, but you wouldn’t let nobody buy you off. So what is it? The way I figure it, it’s gotta be one of two things: You’re a businessman. Maybe you found out you could make a bigger killing if you took another route. And the other thing is, which I believe is the truth, the other thing is that you’re covering for somebody. Maybe somebody they can get at that you can’t protect. Or maybe you found out some friend of yours is mixed up with ‘em.”
“You’re very clever,” Simon said. “You should be a detective.”
“Not funny,” Ryner rasped. “If you got soft on that gang for some reason, it’s gotta be because you don’t realise what’s really going on. Open up this briefcase, woulda, and look at what’s inside. My hands ain’t working too good on zippers; they never do after somebody’s walked on my knuckles.”
Simon took the plastic case from the other man, who sank back exhausted against the sofa cushions.
“What am I going to look at?”
“Get ready to get sick,” Ryner said. “You’re gonna see just how the great Supremo operates.”
From the briefcase Simon took a thick set of eight-by-ten photographs, and what he saw as he went through them made even a man as hardened to violence as the Saint feel sickness gnawing and clawing at his insides.
“Not just a slug in some punk’s gut, huh?” Ryner said. “Not just a cop with a couple broken ribs. Look at it! Acid and knives. That’s what they like best. Especially the acid.”
Simon turned one of the photographs towards him.
“This girl,” he said. “She couldn’t be more than ten years old.”
“Nine,” Ryner affirmed. “She’s the daughter of a judge who wouldn’t play ball. She’ll never see out of that eye. I think the other young girl there was luckier. She didn’t make it. A girl’s not going to have much of a life if men can’t stand to look at her face.”
The butchery and mutilation shown in the police photographs had more of an effect on Simon than hours of argument could have done. He had been thinking, until now, in terms of inter-racket shakedowns, vice monopolies, crooked political manoeuvres, and real-estate hanky-panky. Now he was brought face to face, on the most brutal personal level, with the products of power combined with uninhibited ferocity.
“Do you want to hear about some of the other cute tricks they’ve pulled?” Ryner asked.
“No,” Simon said.
He put the pictures back into the briefcase. If the Supremo could have seen the Saint’s face or heard the sound of his voice there would have been considerable unease in the City of Brotherly Love at that moment.
“Are you still gonna back out?” Ryner insisted.
“No.”
“Well, so what are you gonna do?”
“Don’t push me,” said the Saint. “I never thought I’d have to make the toughest choice of my life twice in one day. Just let me know where I can contact you later, this afternoon. I’ve got a date to keep first.”
Simon no longer wanted to meet Carole for lunch but he knew that he had to. She threw her arms round him happily when she got out of her taxi at the William Penn Grill, where he was waiting for her, forcing the noontime river of surging protoplasm to wash round them on the sidewalk. The air was fresh and crisp after the recent rains. Brilliant sunshine brought dazzling highlights to Carole’s long blond hair, which was obviously fresh from the attentions of a beauty parlor. A heavy drizzling overcast and impenetrable fog would have been more suitable to the Saint’s mood, but now he put on the false face he had not worn in Lieutenant Stacey’s office. He had plenty of deception ahead of him, so he might just as well start now.
“Last night I wondered if I’d ever see you again,” Carole was chattering happily, squeezing his hand as they went in. “I really did. Now here we are. And I’m simply dying to hear your story about last night. It had better be good!”
It was impossible to put her off for longer than it took to order cocktails.
“I’m afraid it’s terribly dull,” he said. “But it makes me feel pretty stupid. I had to look up these... business connections, and I found they had rather riotous ideas about conferences. They had to show me the town as a warm-up. And I ended up losing track of the time. To put it bluntly, I was out cold for a while.”
“I would have thought,” she said meditatively, “that the Saint had a stronger head than that.”
He was able to keep his mask expressionless.
“What saint?”
“It’s no good,” she said, and her eyes were still twinkling. “I know who you are. You were mean not to tell me yourself.”
“Who did tell you?”
“My father. He thought he recognised the name, and he checked it up. Or Dick Hamlin did. They always worry about me.”
“But it didn’t worry you?”
“I was thrilled. So long as you weren’t getting murdered somewhere... Now, what did really happen last night?”
“Just what I’ve told you, skipping the gory details. On my honour,” he told her truthfully.
Her eyes would not shift from his face.
“Well, do you have to have any more of these conferences?”
He rubbed his brow ruefully.
“I should hope not. I’d rather retire in one piece, if I thought I could afford to.”
“You could afford to.” Her fingers lay on his wrist, only for a moment. “I see I’ll have to show you how to enjoy life.”
Somehow he got through the lunch. Carole’s thoughts were all on the future — tomorrow, next week, next month. She pictured herself and Simon together at the theatre, on rides, at parties, on country walks, sprawled in front of a fireplace in the evening. Simon’s thoughts were walled in by this single day, whose ending would form a stone barrier between him and Carole. He knew how she would really feel tomorrow, and it would not be as she now imagined.
But he smiled and laughed and asked questions, while evading answering any himself. He did caution her that his life wasn’t a long vacation... that he was going to have things to do and places to go in the weeks to come. Nothing so minor as that could squelch her exuberance. Life was just beginning. Give her a chance, and she could make anything possible.
When Carole fell she fell hard, and there was nothing the Saint could do now to cushion the crash at the bottom.
He wanted to end his own ordeal as quickly as possible. Her bright blue eyes, her soft expressive lips, were working at his defences like the summer sun on a block of ice. He could not look at her without a shattering impulse to take her in his arms and kiss her.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short,” he told her over coffee. “If I’m going to take a holiday, I’ve got some loose ends I must tidy up first.”
“You said you’d had enough of those conferences.”
“Of last night’s kind, yes. This one is a bit different.”
She took a gold cigarette-case from her purse, and a cigarette from it.
“Is it getting rid of that other woman?” she accused, less seriously.
“Not only her, but all the children,” he said glibly, and gave her a light from the match booklet on the table. “By the way, does your father know you’re out with me now?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And he didn’t object?”