15 The Saint in New York

'Well, it might give me some practice. I haven't anything else to do.'

Toni emptied an ashtray and wiped it out. From a distance of a few yards he would have seemed simply to be filling up the time until another customer wanted him, without talking to anyone at all.

'They're at the Graylands Hotel—just up the street on the other side. Suite 1713. Tell them Charley Quain sent you.'

'Okay.' Simon stood up, spreading a bill on the counter. 'And thanks.'

'Good luck,' said Toni and watched him go with eyes as gentle as a deer's.

The Graylands Hotel lay just off Seventh Avenue. It was one of those caravanserais which are always full and yet always seem to be deserted, with the few guests who were visible hustling furtively between the sanctity of their private rooms and the anonymity of the street. Business executives detained at the office might well have stayed there, but none of them would ever have given it as his address. It had an air of rather forlorn splendour, like a blowzy woman in gold brocade, and in spite of the emptiness of its public rooms there was a sup­pressed atmosphere of clandestine and irregular life teeming in the uncharted cubicles above.

The gilded elevator, operated by a pimply youth with a precociously salacious air of being privy to all the irregulari­ties that had ever ridden in it, whisked Simon to the seven­teenth floor and decanted him into a dimly lighted corridor. He found Suite 1713 and knocked. After a brief pause a key clicked over and the portal opened eight inches. A pair of cold dispassionate eyes surveyed him slowly.

'My name's Simon,' said the Saint He began to feel that he was admitting a lot of undesirable people to an easy familiar­ity that evening, but the alias seemed as good as any, and cer­tainly preferable to such a fictitious name as, for instance, Wigglesnoot. Charley Quain sent me around.'

The eyes that studied him received the information as en­thusiastically as two glass beads.

'Simon, eh? From Denver?'

'Detroit,' said the Saint. 'They call me Aces.'

The guard's head dropped through a passionless half-inch which might have been taken for a nod. He allowed the door to open wider.

'Okay, Aces. We heard you were on your way. If you're lookin' for action I guess you can get it here.'

The Saint smiled and sauntered through. He found himself in a rather large foyer, formally furnished. At the far end, two rooms gave off it on either side, and from the closed door on the right came the mutter of an occasional curt voice, the crisp clicking of chips, and the insidious rustle and lisp of cards. It appeared to Simon that he was definitely on his way. Some­where beyond that door Mr. Papulos was in session, and the Saint figured it was high time he took a gander at this Mr. Papulos.

*    *    *

The guard threw open the second door, and Simon went on in. He saw that the place had originally been intended for a sitting room; but all the normal furniture had been pushed back against the walls, leaving plenty of space for the large round table covered with a green baize cloth which now occu­pied the centre of the floor. Fringing the circle of men seated around the board were a few hard, lean-faced gentry whose air of hawk-eyed detachment immediately removed any suspicion that they might be there to minister to the sick in case one of the players was taken sick. A single brilliant light fix­ture blazed overhead, flooding a cone of white luminance over the ring of players. As the Saint came in, every face turned towards him.

'Aces Simon, of Detroit,' announced the guard. As a cynical afterthought he added: 'He's lookin' for some action, gents.'

The lean-faced watchers in the outer shadows relaxed and crossed their legs again; the players acknowledged the intro­duction with curt nods and returned immediately to their game.

Simon strolled across to the table and pulled out a vacant chair opposite the dealer. One casual glance around the board was enough to show him that the guard had had reason to be cynical—the play was sufficiently high to clean out any small­time gambler in one deal. He lighted a cigarette and studied the faces of the players. They were a variegated crew, ranging from the elite of the