15 The Saint in New York

wouldn't mind writing it off your account.'

Inselheim stared at him for a long moment in silence. The cumulative shocks which had struck him seemed to have dead­ened and irised down the entrances of his mind, so that the thoughts that seethed in the anterooms of consciousness could only pass through one by one. But one idea came through more strongly and persistently than any other.

'I know,' he said, with a dull effort. 'I'm sorry. I—I guess I owe you—plenty. I won't forget it. But—you don't under­stand. If you want to help me, you must get out. I've got to think. You can't stay here. If they found you were here— they'd kill us both.'

'Not both,' said the Saint mildly.

He looked at Inselheim steadily, with a faintly humorous interest, like a hardened dramatic critic watching with ap­proval the presentation of a melodrama, yet realizing with a trace of self-mockery that he had seen it all before. But it was the candid appraisement in his gaze which stabbed mercilessly into some lacerated nerve that was throbbing painfully away down in the depths of the Jew's crushed and battered fibre— a swelling nerve of contempt for his own weakness and in­adequacy, the same nerve whose mute and inarticulate reactions had been clenching his soft hands into those piti­fully helpless fists before the Saint came. The clear blue light of those reckless bantering eyes seemed to illumine the profundi­ties of Inselheim's very soul; but the light was too sudden and strong, and his own vision was still too blurred, for him to be able to see plainly what the light showed.

'What did you come here for?' Inselheim asked; and Simon blew one smoke ring and put another through the centre of it.

'To return your potatoes—as you see. To have a cigar, and that drink which you're so very inhospitably hesitating, to provide. And to see if you might be able to help me.'

'How could I help you? If it's money you want——'

'I could have helped myself.' The Saint glanced at the stacks of money on the desk with one eyebrow cocked and a glimmer of pure enjoyment in his eye. 'I seem to be getting a lot of chances like that these days. Thanks all the same, but I've got one millionaire grubstaking me already, and his bank hasn't failed yet. No—what I might be able to use from you, Zeke, is a few heart-to-heart confidences.'

Inselheim shook his head slowly, a movement that seemed to be a more of an automatic than a deliberate refusal.

'I can't tell you anything.'

Simon glanced at his wrist watch.

'A rather hasty decision,' he murmured. 'Not to say flatter­ing. For all you know, I may be ploughing through life in a state of abysmal ignorance. However, you've got plenty of time to change your mind. . . .'

The Saint rose lazily from his chair and stood looking downwards at his host, without a variation in the genial lei­sureliness of his movements or the cool suaveness of his voice; but it was a lazy leisureliness, a cool geniality, that was more impressive than any noisy dominance.

'You know, Zeke,' he rambled on affably, 'to change one's mind is the mark of a liberal man. It indicates that one has assimilated wisdom and experience. It indicates that one is free from stubbornness and pride and pimples and other deadly sins. Even scientists aren't dogmatic any more— they're always ready to admit they were wrong and start all over again. A splendid attitude, Zeke—splendid. . . .'

He was standing at his full height, carelessly dynamic like a cat stretching itself; but he had made no threatening move­ment, said nothing menacing . . . nothing.

'I'm sure you see the point, Zeke,' he said; and for some reason that had no outward physical manifestation, Inselheim knew that the gangsters whom he feared and hated could never be more ruthless than this mild-mannered young man with the mocking blue eyes who had clambered through his window such a short while ago.

'What could I tell you?' Inselheim asked tremulously.

Simon sat on the edge of the desk. There was neither triumph nor self-satisfaction in his air—nothing to indicate that he had ever even contemplated any other ultimate re­sponse. His gentleness was almost that of a psycho-analyst extracting confessions from a nervous patient; and once again Inselheim felt that queer light illuminating hidden cor­ners of himself which he had not asked to see.

'Tell me all, Zeke,' said the Saint