'We'll go places. I'd like to talk to you, and it's just possible you might like to talk to me. We'll go anywhere you like, bar Centre Street'
The granite lines of the detective's face twitched. There were limits to his capacity for boiling indignation, a point where the soaring curve of his wrath curled over and fell down a precipitous switchback—and the gay audacity of the man at his side had boosted him to that point in two terrific jumps. For a second the detective's temper seemed to teeter breathlessly on the pinnacle like a trolley stalling on a scenic railway; and then it slipped down the gradient on the other side. . . .
'We'll try the park,' Fernack said.
A heavy blucher tramped on the starter, and the gears meshed. They turned out of Tenth Street and swung north up Seventh Avenue. Simon leaned comfortably back and used the lighter on the dashboard for his cigar; nothing more was said until they were threading the tangle of traffic at Times Square.
'You know,' said the Saint calmly, 'I'm getting a bit tired of throwing this gun around. Couldn't we dispense with it and call this conference off the record?'
'Okay by me,' rumbled Fernack, without taking his eyes from the road.
Simon dropped the automatic into the side pocket of his coat and relaxed into the whole-hearted enjoyment of his smoke. There was no disturbing doubt in his mind that he could rely absolutely on the truce. They rode on under the blazing lights and turned into Central Park by the wide entrance at Columbus Circle.
A few hundred yards on, Fernack pulled in to the side of the road and killed the engine. He switched on his shortwave radio receiver and lighted his cigar deliberately before he turned. The glow of the tip as he inhaled revealed his rugged face set in a contour of phlegmatic inquiry.
'Well,' he said, 'what's the game?' Simon shrugged.
'The same as yours, more or less. You work within the law, and I work without it. We're travelling different roads, but they both go the same way. On the whole, my road seems to get places quicker than yours—as witness the late Mr. Irboll.'
Fernack stared ahead over his dimmed lights.
'That's why I'm here, Saint. I told the commissioner this morning that I could love any man who rubbed out that rat. But you can't get away with it.'
'I've been getting away with it pretty handsomely for a number of years,' answered the Saint coolly.
'It's my job to take you in, sweat a confession out of you, and send you up for a session in the hot squat. Tomorrow I may be doing it. You're slick. I'll hand it to you. You're the only man who ever took me for a ride twice in one hour, and made me like it. But to me you're a crook—a killer. The underworld has a big enough edge in this town, without giving it any more. Officially, it's my job to put you away. That's how the cards are stacked.'
'Fair enough. You couldn't come any cleaner with me than that. But I've got my own job, Fernack. I came here to do a bit of cleaning up in this town of yours, and you know how it needs it. But it's your business to see that I don't get anywhere. You're hired to see that all the thugs and racketeers in this town put on their goloshes when it rains, and tuck them up in their mufflers and make sure they don't catch cold. The citizens of New York pay you to make sure that the only killing is done by the guys with political connections—'
'So what?'
'So maybe, off the record, you'd answer a couple of questions while there isn't an audience.'
Fernack chewed the cigar round to the other corner of his mouth, took it out, and spat expertly over the side of the car. He put the cigar back and watched a traffic light turn from green to red.
'Keep on asking.'
'What is this Big Fellow?'
The tip of Fernack's cigar reddened and died down, and he put one elbow on the wheel.
'I should like to know. Ordinarily, it's just a name that some of these big-time racketeers get called. They called Al Capone 'the Big Fellow.' All these rats have got egos a mile wide. 'The Big Boy'—'the Big Shot'—it's the same thing. It used to make 'em feel more important to have a handle like that tacked onto 'em, and it gave the small rats something to flatter 'em with.'
