'Tell him it's about Marty O'Connor,' said the Saint gently. 'And tell him he doesn't know how lucky he is.'
The man looked at him for a moment longer and then closed the door suddenly. Simon lighted a cigarette and waited patiently. The door opened again.
'Come in.'
Simon went in. The man who had let him in stayed behind him, with his back to the door. Another man of similarly taciturn habits and lack of facial expression sat on the arm of a chair by the window, with one hand in his coat pocket, thoughtfully picking his teeth with the other. Luckner sat on the settee, in his shirt sleeves, with his feet on a low table. He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at the Saint reflectively.
Simon came to a halt in front of him and touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a lazy and ironical salute. He smiled, with a faint twinkle in his blue eyes, and Luckner glowered at him uncertainly.
'Well--what is it?'
The Saint put his cigarette to his lips.
'I just dropped in,' he said. 'I wondered if you looked quite as nasty in the flesh as the stories I've read about you made you out to be. Also because I heard you'd be interested in any news about Marty O'Connor.'
'Where is he?'
Simon's smile widened by a vague seraphic fraction.
'That's my secret.'
Luckner took his feet off the table and got up slowly until he faced the Saint. He was six inches shorter than Simon but he thrust his lumpy red face up as close as he could under the Saint's nose.
'Where is he?'
'It's just possible,' said the Saint in his slow soft voice, without a shift of his eyes, 'that you've got some mistaken ideas about what I am and what I've come here for. If you had an idea, for instance, that your ugly mug was so terrifying that I'd fold up as soon as I saw it, or that I'd tell you anything until I was ready to tell it--well, we'd better go back to the beginning and start again.'
Luckner glared at him silently for a second, and then he said in a very level tone: 'Who the hell are you?'
'I am the Saint.'
The man on the arm of the chair took the toothpick out of his mouth and forgot to close his mouth behind it. The man by the door sucked in his breath with a sharp hiss like a squirt of escaping steam. Only Luckner made no active expression of emotion, but his face went a shade lighter in color and froze into wooden restraint.
Simon allowed the announcement to sink into the brains of his audience at its own good leisure, while he let the smoke of his cigarette trickle through his lips to curl in a faintly mocking feather before Luck-ner's stony eyes. There was something so serene, something so strong and quietly dangerous about him which coupled with his almost apologetic self-introduction was like the revelation of an unsheathed sword, that none of the men made any move towards him. He looked at Luckner unruffledly with those very clear and faintly bantering blue eyes.
'I am the Saint,' he said. 'You should know the name. I know where to find Marty O'Connor. The only question you have to answer is--how much is he worth to you?'
Luckner's knees bent until he reached the level of the settee. He put the cigar back in his mouth.
'Sit down,' he said. 'Let's talk this over.'
The Saint shook his head.
'Why spend the time, Joe? You ought to know how much Marty's worth. I hear he used to keep your accounts once, and he could make a great squeal if they got him on the stand. It 'd put three new lives into the prosecution. Not that I'd lose any sleep if they were going to send you to the chair; but I suppose we can't put everything right at once. You'll get what's coming to you. Sooner or later. But just for the moment, this is more important.' Simon studied his fingernails. 'I owe Marty something, but I can't give it to him myself-- that's one of the disadvantages of the wave of virtue which seems to have come over this great country. But I don't see why you shouldn't give him what he deserves.' The Saint's eyes lifted again suddenly to Luckner's face with a cold and laconic directness. 'I don't care what you do about Marty so long as I get what I think he's worth.'
'And what's that?'
'That is just one hundred grand.'
Luckner stiffened as if a spear had been rammed up his backbone from his sacrum to his scalp.
'How much?'
'One hundred thousand dollars,' said the Saint calmly. 'And cheap at the price. After all, that's less than a third of what you offered the Revenue to get this income-tax case dropped altogether. . . . You will pay it in twenty-dollar bills, and I shall want it by ten o'clock tonight.'
The dilated incredulity of Luckner's eyes remained set for a moment, and then they narrowed back to their normal size and remained fixed on the Saint's face like glittering beads. It was symptomatic of Luckner's psychology that he made no further attempt to argue. The Saint didn't have the air of a man who was prepared to devote any time to bargaining, and Luckner knew it. It didn't even occur to him to question the fundamental fact of whether Simon Templar was really in a position to carry out his share of the transaction. The Saint's name, and the reputation which Luckner still remembered, was a sufficient guarantee of that. There was only one flimsy quibble that Luckner could see at all, and he had a premonition that even this was hopeless before he tried it.
'Suppose we kept you here without any hundred grand and just saw what we could do about persuading you to tell us where Marty is?'
The Saint smiled rather wearily.
'Of course I'd never have thought of that. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have somebody waiting outside here who'd start back for New York if I didn't come out of this room safe and sound in'--he looked at his watch--'just under another three minutes. And I wouldn't have thought of telling this guy that if he had to beat it back to the city without me he was to get Marty and take him straight along to the D.A.'s office. . . . You're taking an awful lot for granted, Joe, but if you think you can make me talk in two and a half minutes go ahead and try.'
Luckner chewed his cigar deliberately across from one side of his mouth to the other. He was in a corner, and he was capable of facing the fact.
'Where do we make the trade ?'
'You can send a couple of guys with the money down the Bronx River Parkway tonight. I'll be waiting in a car one mile south of a sign on the right which says City of Yonkers. If the dough is okay I'll tell them where to find Marty, and they can have him in five minutes. What they do when they see him is none of my business.' The Saint's blue eyes rested on Luckner again with the same quiet and deadly implication. 'Is that all quite clear?'
Luckner's head remained poised for a moment before it jerked briefly downwards.
'The dough will be okay,' he said, and the Saint smiled again.
'They didn't know how lucky you were going to be when they gave you your nickname, Joe,' he said.
For some time after he had gone, Luckner sat in the same position, with his hands on his spread knees, chewing his cigar and staring impassively in front of him. The man with the toothpick continued his endless foraging. The man who had guarded the door lighted a cigarette and gazed vacantly out of the window.
The situation was perfectly clear, and Luckner had enough cold-blooded detachment to review it with his eyes open. After a while he spoke.
'You better go, Luigi,' he said. 'You and Karlatta. Take a coupla typewriters, and don't waste any time.'
Toscelli nodded phlegmatically and garaged his toothpick in his vest pocket.
'Do we take the dough?'
'You're damn right you take the dough. You heard what he said? You give him the dough an' he tells you where to find Marty. I'll write some checks and you can go to New York this afternoon and collect it. An' don't kid yourselves. If there are any tricks, that son of a bitch has thought of them all. You know how he took off Morrie Ualino an' Dutch Kuhlmann?'
'It's a lot of dough, Lucky,' said Mr Toscelli gloomily.
Joe Luckner's jaw hardened.
'A life on Alcatraz is a lot of years,' he said stolidly. 'Never mind the dough. Just see that Marty keeps his mouth shut. Maybe we can do something about the dough afterwards.'
