15 The Saint in New York

the menace which was tearing his self-respect into shreds.

'I've paid up!' he gasped hysterically. 'What do you want? I've paid! Why don't you leave me alone——'

The Saint swung his other leg into the room and hitched himself nonchalantly off the sill.

'Oh, no, you haven't,' he said gravely. 'You haven't paid up at all, brother.'

'But I have paid!' The broker's voice was wild, the words tumbling over each other in the ghastly incoherence of panic. 'Something must have gone wrong. I paid—I paid tonight, just as you told me to. There must be some mistake. It isn't my fault. I paid  ——'

Simon's hands went to his pockets. From the breast pocket of his coat, the side pockets, the pockets of his trousers, he produced bundle after bundle of neatly stacked fifty-dollar bills, tossing them one by one onto the desk in an apparently inexhaustible succession, like a conjuror producing rabbits out of a hat.

'There's your money, Zeke,' he remarked cheerfully. 'Ninety thousand bucks, if you want to count it. I allotted myself a small reward of ten thousand, which I'm sure you'll agree is a very modest commission. So you see you haven't paid up at all.'

Inselheim gaped at the heaps of money on the desk with a thrill of horror. He made no attempt to touch it. Instead, he stared at the Saint, and there was a numbness of stark terror in his eyes.

'Where—where did you get this?'

'You dropped it, I think,' explained the Saint easily. 'For­tunately I was behind you. I picked it up. You mustn't mind my blowing in by the fire escape—I'm just fond of a little variety now and again. Luckily for you,' said the Saint vir­tuously, 'I am an honest man, and money never tempts me —much. But I'm afraid you must have a lot more dough than is good for you, Zeke, if the only way you can think of to get rid of it is to go chucking scads of it around the scenery like that.'

Inselheim swallowed hard. His face had gone chalk white.

'You mean you—you picked this up where I dropped it?'

Simon nodded.

'That was the impression I meant to convey. Perhaps I didn't make myself very clear. When I saw you heaving buckets of potatoes over the horizon in that absent-minded sort of way——'

'You fool!' Inselheim said, with quivering lips. 'You've killed me—that's what you've done. You've killed my daugh­ter!' His voice rose in a hoarse tightening of dread. 'If they don't get this money—they'll kill!'

Simon raised his eyebrows. He sat on the arm of a chair.

'Really?' he asked, with faint interest.

'My God!' groaned the man. 'Why did you have to inter­fere? What's this to you, anyway? Who are you?'

The Saint smiled.

'I'm the little dicky bird,' he said, 'who brought your daughter back last time.'

Inselheim sat bolt upright

'The Saint!'

Simon bowed his acknowledgment. He stretched out a long arm, pulled open the drawer of the desk in which long ex­perience had taught him that cigars were most often to be found, and helped himself.

'You hit it, Zeke. The bell rings, and great strength returns the penny. This is quite an occasion, isn't it?' He pierced the rounded end of the cigar with a deftly wielded matchstick, reversed the match, and scraped fire from it with his thumb­nail, ignoring the reactions of his astounded host. 'In the cir­cumstances, it may begin to dawn on you presently why I have that eccentric partiality to fire escapes.' He blew smoke towards the ceiling and smiled again. 'I guess you owe me quite a lot, Zeke; and if you've got a spot of good Bourbon to go with this I