15 The Saint in New York

so he didn't get any sympathy.'

'I doubt it,' Yeald said. 'Once he was in court it would be difficult to stop him talking. I wouldn't dare to hold the trial in camera; and all the reporters would be wanting inter­views. You couldn't keep them away.'

'Well, I think we oughta make an example. How would it be if . . .'

The rumbling and the rustling went on, and the Saint smoked his cigarette with no outward signs of concern. But not for a moment had he ceased to be aware that the old gen­tleman with the scythe, of whom he had undertaken to make an ally, was very close to him that night. Yet his smile was undimmed, and his eyes had the stillness of frozen sea water as he idly watched the whispering men who were debating how the processes of justice could best be turned to meet their own ends. And within him was a colder, deadlier contempt than anything he had felt since the beginning of that adventure.

In the room before him were more than a dozen men whose lives were dedicated to plunder and killing, mercenaries of the most amazing legion of crime that modern civilization had ever known; but it was not against their that he felt the dead­liest chill of that cold anger. It was against the men who made their looting possible—the men who held positions of trust, whom a blind public had permitted to seize office, whose wages were paid over and over again out of the pockets of ordinary honest citizens, whose cooperation allowed robbery and murder to go unpunished and even commended. The law meant nothing; except when it was an expedient instru­ment to remove an obstacle to further pillage.

Outside, beyond that room, lay a great city, a monument in brick arid granite to the ingenuity of man; and in that city seven million people paid tribute to a lawless handful. The Saint had never been given to glorifying himself into any kind of knightly hero; in the end he was a mercenary himself, hired by Valcross to do an outlaw's work; but if he had had any doubts of the justice of his cause, they would have been swept away that night. Whether he acknowledged it or not, whether they knew it or not, he was the champion of seven million, facing sentence in that hushed room for a thing that perhaps none of the seven million could have put into words; and it had never seemed more vital that he should come out alive to carry the battle on. . . .

And then, as if in answer, Orcread's voice rammed itself into his consciousness again and brought him out of his reverie.

'You've heard all we've got to say, Saint. There's only two ways out for you—mine or yours. You can think again if you like.'

'I've done all the thinking I can,' said the Saint evenly.

'Okay. You've had your chance.'

He got up heavily and stood staring at Simon with the same worried perplexity; he was not satisfied yet that he had heard the truth—it was beyond his comprehension that a menace which had attacked the roots of his domination could be so simple—but the consensus of opinion had gone against him. Marcus Yeald twiddled the locks of his briefcase, stood up, and fidgeted with his gloves. He glanced at the door speculatively, in his peering petulant way, and one of the men opened it.

Orcread hitched himself round reluctantly and nodded to Kuhlmann.

'Okay, Dutch,' he said and went out, followed by Yeald. The door was dosed and locked again, and a ripple of released suppression went over the room. The conference, as a con­ference, was over. . . .

'Come here, Saint,' said Kuhlmann gutturally.

After that single scuffle of movement which followed Orcread's exit an electric tension had settled on the room— a tension that was subtly different from that which had just been broken. Kuhlmann's unemotional accents did not relieve it. Rather, they seemed to key on the tautness another notch; but the Saint did not appear to feel it. Cool, relaxed, serene as if he had been in a gathering of intimate friends, he saun­tered forward a couple of steps and stood in front of the rack­eteer.

He knew that there was nothing he could do there. The odds were impossible. But he stood smiling quietly while Kuhlmann looked up into his face.

'You're a goot boy,' Kuhlmann said. 'You give us a liddle bit of trouble, und that is bad. But we cannot finish our talk here. So I think'—he swallowed a lump in his throat, and his voice broke—'I think you go outside und vait for us for a minute.'

Quick hands grabbed the Saint's wrists and twisted him round, but he did not struggle. He was led to the door; and as he went out, Kuhlmann nodded, blinking, to two of the men who stood along the wall.