15 The Saint in New York

true, he will do it. He'll do just what I'd of done—just what I'd like to do. An' the papers'll scream it all over the sky, and make cracks about us being such bum policemen that we have to let some free-lance vigilante do a job for us that we haven't got the brains or the guts to do. An' then my job'll be to hunt that Saint guy down—take him into the back room of a station house and sweat a confession outa him with a base­ball bat—put him in court an' work like hell to send him to the chair—the guy who only did what you or me would of done if we weren't such lousy, white-livered four-flushers we think more about holding down a paycheck than getting on with the work we're paid to do!'

The commissioner raised his eyes.

'You'd do your duty, Fernack—that's all,' he said. 'What happens to the case afterwards—that case or any other—isn't your fault.'

'Yeah—I'd do my duty,' Fernack jeered bitterly. 'I'd do it like I've always done it—like we've all been doing it for years. I'd sweep the floor clean again, an' hand the pan right back to the slobs who're waitin' to throw all the dirt back again—and some more with it.'

Quistrom picked up the sheaf of papers and stared at them. There was a silence, in which Fernack's last words seemed to hum and strain through the room, building them­selves up like echo heaped on re-echo, till the air throbbed and thundered with their inaudible power. Fernack pulled out a handkerchief suddenly and wiped his face. He looked out of the window, out at the drab flat facade of the Police Academy and the grey haze that veiled the skyscrapers of upper New York. The pulse of the city beat into the room as he looked out, seeming to add itself to the deadened re­verberations of the savage denunciation that had hammered him out of his habitual restraint. The pulse of traffic ticking its way from block to block, the march of twelve million feet, the whirr of wheels and the mighty rhythm of pistons, the titter of lives being made and broken, the struggle and the majesty and the meanness and the splendour and the cor­ruption in which he had his place. . . .

Quistrom cleared his throat. The sound was slight, muted down to a tone that was neither reproof nor concurrence; but it broke the tension as cleanly as a phrased speech. Quistrom spoke a moment afterwards:

'You haven't found Templar yet?'

'No.' Fernack's voice was level, rough, prosaic in re­sponse as it had been before; only the wintry shift of bis eyes recalled the things he had been saying. 'Kestry and Bonacci have been lookin' for him. They tried most of the big hotels yesterday.'

Quistrom nodded.

'Come and see me the minute you get any information.'

Fernack went out, down the long bare stone corridor to his own office. At three-thirty that afternoon they fetched him to the courthouse to see how Jack Irboll died.

The Saint had arrived.

Chapter 1

How Simon Templar Cleaned His Gun, and Wallis Nather Perspired

The nun let herself into the tower suite of the Waldorf Astoria with a key which she produced from under the folds of her black robe—which even to the most kindly and broad-minded eye would have seemed somewhat odd. As she closed the door behind her she began to whistle—which even to the most kindly and broad-minded eye would have seemed still odder. And as she went into the sitting room she caught her toe in a rug, stumbled, and said 'God damn!' in a distinctly masculine baritone, and laughed cheerfully an instant afterwards—which would doubtless have moved even the most kindly and broad-minded eye to blink rapidly and open itself wide.

But there was no such inquiring and impressionable eye to perform these acrobatics. There was only a square-chinned white-haired man in rimless spectacles, sitting in an easy chair with a book on his lap, who looked up with a nod and a quiet smile as the nun came in.

He closed his book, marking the place methodically, and stood up—a spare, vigorous figure in grey homespun,

'All right?' he queried.

'Fine,' said the nun.

She pushed her veil back from a sleek black head, unbuttoned things and unhitched things, and threw off the long, stuffy draperies with a sigh of relief. She was revealed as a tall, wide-shouldered man in a blue silk shirt and the trousers of a light fresco suit—a man with gay blue eyes in a brown, piratical face, whose smile flashed a row of ivory teeth as he slapped his audience blithely on the back and sprawled into an armchair with a swing of lean athletic