15 The Saint in New York

suppose it wasn't meant to hap­pen—this time.'

He could not speak.

'Kiss me again, Simon,' she said quietly.

He kissed her. Why had she seemed unapproachable? She was himself. It was his own lawless scorn of life and death which had conquered her, which had brought her twice to save his life and taken her own life in the end. If the whole world had condemned her, he could not have cast a stone. He did not care. They moved in the same places, the wide sierras of outlawry where there were no laws.

She slipped back, gazing into his face as if she were trying to remember every line of it for a hundred years. She was smiling, and there was a light in her darkening amber eyes which he would never understand. He could see her take breath to speak.

'Au revoir, Simon,' she said; and as she had lived with death, so she died.

He let her go gently and turned away. Strange tears were stinging his eyes so that he could not see. The taxi lurched round a corner with its engine growling. The noises of the city ebbed and swelled like the beat of a tidal sea.

He became aware that Valcross was tugging at his arm, whining in a horrible mouthy incoherence of terror. The yammering words came dully through into his brain:

'Can't you do something? I don't want to die. I've been good to you. I didn't mean to cheat you out of your million dollars. I'll do anything you say. I don't want to die. You shot me. You've got to take me to a doctor. I've got money. You can have anything you like. I've got millions. You can have all of them. I don't want them. Take what you want——'

'Be quiet,' said the Saint in a dreadful voice.

'Millions of dollars—in the bank—they're all yours——'

Simon struck him on the mouth.

'You fool,' he said. 'All the money in the world couldn't pay for what you've done.'

The man shrank away from him, and his babbling rose to a scream.

'What is it you want with me, then? I can give you any­thing. If it isn't money, what do you want? Damn you, what is your racket?'

Then the Saint turned towards him, and even Valcross was silent when he saw the look on the Saint's face. His mouth worked mutely, but the words would not leave his throat. His trembling hands went up as if to shield himself from the stare of those devilish blue eyes.

'Death,' said the Saint, in a voice of terrible softness. 'Death is my racket.'

They turned into Washington Square from the south. Simon had never noticed what route they took to shake off pursuit, but the wail of sirens had ceased. The muttering thunder of the city had swallowed it up. The taxi was slowing down to a more normal pace. Buses rumbled ponderously by; the endless stream of cars and vans and taxis flowed along, as it would flow day and night while the city stood, one of a myriad impersonal rivers on which human activities took their brief bustling voyages, coming and going without trace. A newsboy ran down the sidewalk, bawling his ephemeral sensation. In a microscopic corner of one infinitesimal speck of dust floating through the black abysses of infinity, inconsiderable atoms of human life hurried and fumed and fretted and were broken and triumphant in the trivial affairs of their brief instant in eternity. Lives began and lives ended, but the primordial ac­cident of life went on.

The cab stopped, and the driver looked round.

'Dis is it,' he announced. 'What next?'

'Wait here a minute,' said the Saint; and then he saw Fernack standing on the steps of his house.

He got out and walked slowly towards the detective, and Fernack stood and watched him come. The strong, square-jawed face did not relax; only the flinty grey eyes under the shaggy brows had any expression.

Simon drew out the pearl-handled gun, reversed it, and held it out as if he were surrendering a sword.

'I've kept my word,' he said. 'That's the end of my parole.'

Fernack took the revolver and slid it into his hip pocket.