15 The Saint in New York

'What is there you don't know?' Inselheim protested weakly. 'They kidnapped Viola because I refused to pay the protection money——'

'The protection money,' Simon repeated idly. 'Yes, I knew about that. But at least we've got started. Carry on, Uncle.'

'We've all got to pay for protection. There's no way out. You brought Viola back, but that hasn't saved her. If I don't pay now—they'll kill. You know that. I told you. What else is there——'

'Who are they?' asked the Saint.

'I don't know.'

Simon regarded him quizzically.

'Possibly not.' Under the patient survey of those unillu­sioned eyes, the light in Inselheim's subconsciousness was very bright. 'But you must have some ideas. At some time or another, there must have been some kind of contact. A voice didn't speak out of the ceiling and tell you to pay. And even a bloke with as many potatoes as you have doesn't go scattering a hundred grand across the countryside just because some maniac he's never heard of calls up on the phone and tells him to. That's only one of the things I'm trying to get at. I take it that you don't want to go on paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to this unknown voice till the next new moon. I take it that you don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering from day to day what the next demand is going to be—and wondering what they'll do to your daughter to enforce it. I take it that you want a little peace and quiet— and that even beyond that you might like to see some things in this city changed. I take it that you have some manhood that goes deeper than merely wearing trousers, and I'm asking you to give it a chance.'

Inselheim swallowed hard. The light within him was blind­ing, hurting his eyes. It terrified him. He rose as if in sheer nervousness and paced the room.

Simon watched him curiously. He knew the struggle that went on inside the man, and after a fashion he sympathized. . . . And then, as Inselheim reached the far wall, his hand shot out and pressed a button. He turned and faced the Saint defiantly.

'Now,' he said, with a strange thickness in his voice, 'get out! That bell calls one of my guards. I don't wish you any harm—I owe you everything—for a while. But I can't—I can't sign my own death warrant—or Viola's. . . .'

'No,' said the Saint softly. 'Of course not.'

He hitched himself unhurriedly off the desk and walked to the window. There, he threw a long leg across the sill; and his unchanged azure eyes turned back to fix themselves on Inselheim.

'Perhaps,' he said quietly, 'you'll tell me the rest another day.'

The broker shook his head violently.

'Never,' he gabbled. 'Never. I don't want to die. I won't tell anything. You can't make me. You can't!'

A heavy footstep sounded outside in the hall. Inselheim stood staring, his chest heaving breathlessly, his mouth half open as if aghast at the meaning of his own words, his hands twitching. The light in his mind had suddenly burst. He looked for contempt, braced himself for a retort that would shrivel the last of his pride, and instead saw nothing in the Saint's calm eyes but a sincere and infinite compassion that was worse than the bitterest derision. Inselheim gasped; and his stomach was suddenly empty as he realized that he had thrown everything away.

But the Saint looked at him and smiled.

'I'll see you again,' he said; and then, as a knock came on the door and the guard's voice demanded an answer, he low­ered himself briskly to the fire-escape landing and went on his way.

The profit from his visit had been precisely nil—in fact, a mercenary estimate might have assessed it as a dead loss of ninety thousand dollars—but that was his own fault. As he slid nimbly down the iron ladders he cursed himself gently for that moment's unwariness which had permitted Inselheim to put a finger on the bell. And yet, without the shock of seeing that last denial actually accomplished, without that final flurry of insensate panic, the broker's awakening might never have been completed. And Simon had a premonition that if Inselheim's chance came again the result would be a little different.

Oddly enough, in his preoccupation with that angle on the task in hand, the Saint had forgotten that there