15 The Saint in New York

'I have no ... friends,' she said; and again he was dis­turbed by that queer haunting music in her voice. 'I'll take you there. He'll just about be tired of waiting for Joe and Maxie by the time we arrive. You'll see him as he comes out.'

Simon looked at the lighted panel of instruments on the dash. He didn't see them, but they were something to which he could turn his eyes. If they went back to find Dutch Kuhl­mann, her challenge to himself would be in abeyance for a while longer. He might still escape. And his work remained: he had made a promise, and he had never yet failed to keep his word. He was certain that she was not leading him into a trap—it would have been fantastic to imagine any such com­plicated plan, when nothing could have been simpler than to allow Maxie to complete the job he had begun so well. On the other hand, she had offered the Saint no explanation of why she should help him, had asked him to give no reasons for his own grim mission. He felt that she would have had no interest in reasons. Hate, jealousy, revenge, a wager, even justice—any reasons that logic or ingenuity might devise would be only words to her. She was waiting, with her hand on the starting switch, for anything he cared to say.

The Saint bowed bis head slowly.

'I meant to go back to Charley's Place,' he said.

A little more than one hour later Dutch Kuhlmann gulped down the dregs of his last drink, up-ended his glass, pulled out his large old-fashioned gold watch, yawned with Teutonic thoroughness, and shoved his high stool back from the bar.

'I'm goin' home,' he said. 'Hey, Toni—when Joe an' Maxie get here, you tell them to come und see me at my apartment'

The barman nodded, mechanically wiping invisible stains from the spotless mahogany.

'Very good, Mr. Kuhlmann.'

Kuhlmann stood up and glanced towards the two sleek sphinx-faced young men who sat patiently at a strategic table. They finished their drinks hurriedly and rose to follow him like well-trained dogs as he waddled towards the door, exchang­ing gruff good-nights with friends and acquaintances as he went. In the foyer he waited for them to catch up with him. They passed him and stood between him and the door while it was opened. Also they went out first and inspected the street carefully before they nodded to him to follow. Kuhlmann came out and stood between them on the sidewalk—he was as thorough and methodical in his personal precautions as he was in everything else, which was one reason why his czardom had survived so long. He relighted his cigar and flicked the match sportively at one of his equerries.

'Go und start der car, Fritzie,' he said.

One of the sphinz-faced young men detached himself from the little group and went and climbed into the driving seat of Kuhlmann's Packard, which was parked a little distance up the road. He was paid handsomely for his special duty, but the post was no sinecure. His predecessor in office, as a matter of fact, had lasted only three weeks—until a bomb planted un­der the scuttle by some malicious citizen had exploded when the turning of the ignition key had completed the necessary electrical circuit.

Kuhlmann's benign but restless eyes roved over the scene while the engine was being warmed up for him, and so he was the first to recognize the black sedan which swept down the street from the west. He nudged the escort who had remained with him.

'Chust in time, here is Joe and Maxie comin' back.'

He went forward towards the approaching car as it drew closer to the curb. He was less than two yards from it when he saw the ghost—too late for him to turn back or even cry out. He saw the face of the man whom he had sent away to execu­tion, a pale ghost with stony lips and blue eyes cold and hard like burnished sapphires, and knew in that instant that the sands had run out at last. The sharp crack of a single shot crashed down the echoing channel of the street, and the black sedan was roaring away to the east before his body touched the pavement.

*    *    *

The police sirens were still moaning around like forlorn banshees in the distances of the surrounding night when Fay Edwards stopped the car again in Central Park. Simon had a sudden vivid memory of the night when he had sat in exactly the same spot, in another car, with Inspector Fernack; it was considerably less than thirty-six hours ago, and yet so much had happened that it might as well have been thirty-six years. He wondered what had happened to Fernack, and what that grim-visaged, massive-boned detective was thinking about the vol­cano of panic and killing which had flamed out in