15 The Saint in New York

endeavour to prove to the bloke the error of his ways. Whereupon he will burst into tears and beg my forgiveness, and we shall take up the trail again together.'

'What trail?'

Simon frowned.

'Why bring that up,' he protested. 'I'm blowed if I know. But it occurs to me, Bill, that we shall have to be a bit careful about the taking off of some of these other birds on our list— if they all went out like Pappy there wouldn't be anyone left who could lead us to the Big Fellow, and he's a guy I should very much like to meet. But if Papulos was talking turkey there may be a line to something in the further prospective tribulations of Zeke Inselheim; and that's why I came home.'

Valcross brought a filled glass over to him.

'Does that supply the need?' he asked humorously.

The Saint smiled.

'It certainly supplies one of them, Bill. The other is rather bigger. I think you told me once that the expenses of this jaunt were on you.'

The other looked at him for a moment, and then took out a checkbook and a fountain pen.

'How much do you want?'

'Not money. I want a car. A nice, dark, ordinary-looking car with a bit of speed in hand. A roadster will do, and a fairly new second-hand one at that. But I'll let you go out and buy it, for the reason you mentioned yourself—things may be happening pretty fast around the Chateau Inselheim, and I'd rather like to be there.'

He had no very definite plan in mind; but the penultimate revelation of the late Mr. Papulos was impressed deeply on his memory. He thought it over through the afternoon, till the day faded and New York donned her electric jewels and came to life.

The only decision he came to was that if anything was go­ing to happen during the next twenty-four hours it would be likely to happen at night; and it was well after dark when he set out in the long underslung roadster that Valcross had provided. After the day had gone, and the worker had re­turned to his fireside, Broadway came into its own: the under­world and its allies, to whom the sunset was the dawn, and who had a very lukewarm appreciation of firesides, came forth from their hiding places to play and plot new ventures; and if Mr. Ezekiel Inselheim and his seed were still the target, they would be likely to waste no time.

It was, as a matter of fact, one of those soft and balmy nights on which a fireside has a purely symbolical appeal. Overhead, a full moon tossed her beams extravagantly over an unapprecia­tive city. A cool breeze swept across the Hudson, whipping the heat from the granite of the mighty metropolis. Over in Brooklyn, a certain Mr. Theodore Bungstatter was so moved by the magic of the night that he proposed marriage to his cook, and swooned when he was accepted; and the Saint sent his car roaring through the twinkling canyons of New York with a sublime faith that this evening could not be less produc­tive of entertainment than any which had gone before.

As a matter of fact, the expedition was not embarked on quite so blindly as it might have appeared. The information supplied by the late Mr. Papulos had started a train of thought, and the more Simon followed it the more he became convinced that it ought dutifully to lead somewhere. Any such racket as Papulos had described depended for its effec­tiveness almost entirely upon fear—an almost superstitious fear of the omnipotence and infallibility of the menacing party. By the failure of the previous night's kidnapping that atmosphere had suffered a distinct setback, and only a prompt and decisive counter-attack would restore the damage. On an expert and comprehensive estimate, the odds seemed about two hundred to one that the tribulations of Mr. Insel­heim were only just beginning; but it must be confessed that Simon Templar was not expecting quite such a rapid vindica­tion of his arithmetic as he received.

As he turned into Sutton Place he saw an expensive lim­ousine standing outside the building where Mr. Inselheim's apartment was. He marked it down mechanically, along with the burly lounger who was energetically idling in the vicinity. Simon flicked his gear lever into neutral and coasted slowly along, contemplating the geography of the locale and weigh­ing up strategic sites for his own encampment; and he had scarcely settled on a spot when a dark plump figure emerged from the building and paused for a moment beside the burly lounger on the sidewalk.

The roadster stopped abruptly, and the Saint's keen eyes strained through the night. He saw that the dark plump figure carried a bulky brown-paper package under its arm; and as the brief conversation with the lounger concluded, the figure turned towards the limousine and the rays of a street lamp fell full across the pronounced and unforgettable fea­tures of Mr. Ezekiel Inselheim.