'Of course. Morrie sent back to the Big Fellow and said he could do that sort of thing himself, without anybody telling him. The Big Fellow's answer was, 'Why didn't you?' At the same time he ordered another man to be snatched off, at the same price. Morrie did it. There was just as much information as before, the plan was just as perfect, there wasn't a hitch anywhere. Youssine having been killed was a warning, and this time the ransom was paid.'
'I see.' Simon was fascinated. 'And then he worked on Kuhlmann with the same line——'
'More or less. Then he linked him up with Ualino. Naturally it wasn't all done at once, but it was moving all the time. The Big Fellow never made a mistake. After Youssine was killed, nobody else refused until Inselheim hung out the other day. The mobs began to think that the Big Fellow must be a god—a devil—their mascot—anything. But he brought in the money, and that was good enough. He was smarter than any of them had ever been, and they weren't too dumb to see it.'
It was so simple that the Saint could have gasped. It had the perfection of all simple things. It was utterly and comprehensively satisfactory, given the initial genius and the capable mouthpiece; it was so obvious that he could have kicked him self for ever allowing the problem to swell to such proportions in his mind, although he knew that nothing is so mysterious and elusive as the simple and obvious. It was like the thimble in the old parlour game—one came on it after an intensive search with a shock of surprise, to find that it had been staring everyone in the face from the beginning.
The development of which Papulos had spoken followed easily. Once a sufficient terrorism had been established, the crude mechanics of kidnapping could be dispensed with. The threat of it alone was enough, with the threat of sudden death to follow if the first warning were ignored. He felt a little less contemptuous of Zeke Inselheim than he had been: the broker had at least made his lone feeble effort to resist, to challenge the terror which enslaved a thousand others of his kind.
'And it's been like that ever since?' Simon suggested.
'Not quite,' said the girl. 'That was only the beginning. As soon as the racket was established, the Big Fellow organized it properly. There was nothing new about it—it's been done for years, here and there—but it had never been done so thoroughly or so well. The Big Fellow made an industry of it. He couldn't go on hiring Ualino and Kuhlmann to do isolated jobs at so much a time. Their demands would have gone up automatically—they might have tried to do other jobs on their own, and one or two failures would have spoiled the market. All the Big Fellow's victims were handpicked—he was clever there, too. None of them were big public figures, none of them would make terrific newspaper stories, like Lindbergh, none of them would get a lot of public sympathy, none of them had a political hook-up which might have made the cops take special interest, none of them would be likely to turn into fighters; but they were all rich. The Big Fellow wanted things to go on exactly as he had started them. He organized the industry, and the other big shots came in on a profit-sharing basis.'
'How was that worked?'
'All the profits were paid into one bank, and all the big shots had a drawing account on it limited to so much per week. The Big Fellow had exactly the same as the rest of them —I handled it all for him. The rest of the profits were to accumulate. It was agreed that the racket should run for three years exactly, and at the end of that time they should divide the surplus equally and organize again if they wanted to. Since you've been here,' she added dispassionately, 'there aren't many of them left to divide the pool. That means a lot of money for somebody, because last month there were seventeen million dollars in the account.'
Her cool announcement of the sum took Simon Templar's breath away. Even though he vaguely remembered having heard astronomical statistics of the billions of dollars which make up America's annual account of crime, it staggered him. He wondered how many men were still waiting to split up that immense fortune, now that Dutch Kuhlmann and Morrie Ualino were gone. There could not be many; but the girl's eyes were turned on him again with quiet amusement
'Is there anything else you want to know?'
'Several things,' he said and looked at her. 'You can tell me—who is the Big Fellow?'
She shook her head.
'I can't.'
'But you said you could find him for me.'
'I think I can. But when we began, I
