Call for the Saint

'Thanks. I may need this a bit longer-if nobody minds.' He slipped it into his pocket and glanced at Nelson. He said inconsequentially: 'I wouldn't do any boxing until that hand heals, Steve.'

Whitey's eyes flashed to the hand Steve Nelson had been carrying palm upwards to conceal the raw gash along its back. He swore softly as he examined it.

'It's just a scratch,' Nelson scoffed. 'I was going to take care of it before we left.'

'The next time our friend Karl visits you,' Simon advised him, 'don't give him a chance to touch you. That finger jewelry he wears is more dangerous than brass knuckles.'

'Karl!' Whitey turned with outraged incredulity. 'He was here?'

'He had a little proposition,' Nelson said. 'Wanted me to throw the fight for both ends of the gate.'

'The louse!' Mullins exploded. 'The dirty no-good louse. I mighta known Spangler'd try sump'n like that. He knows that ham of his ain't got a chance.'

Simon crushed out his cigarette in the ash tray.

'I'd feel even more sure of that if I could drop in and watch you train, Steve,' he said. 'In fact, I'd rather like to work out with you myself.'

'Any time,' Nelson said.

'Tomorrow morning,' said the Saint. 'Come on, Hoppy- let's keep on the trail of the roving roscoe.'

CHAPTER NINE

The only connection that the Polar Bear Trading and Loan Company might possibly have had with the animal for which it was named, Simon decided as he entered the premises, was the arctic quality of its proprietor's stare. This personality, however, was a far cry from the conventional bearded skull-capped shylock that was once practically a cliche in the public mind. He was, in fact, a pale smooth-shaven young man with curly black hair, elegantly attired in a sports jacket and striped flannels, who scanned the Saint as he entered with eyes of a peculiar ebony hardness. He barely lifted a brow in recognition as he caught sight of Hoppy on Simon's heels.

'Hi, Ruby,' Hoppy said. 'I have a idea I remember dis jernt from 'way back. Long time no see, huh?'

To the Saint's unsentimental blue eyes, Ruby slipped into a familiar niche like a nickel into a slot. Just as a jungle dweller knows at a glance the vulture from the eagle, the ruminant from the carnivore, so the Saint knew that in the stone jungles of the city this specimen was of a scavenger breed-with a touch of reptile, perhaps. And the fact that Mr. Uniatz knew the place of old was almost enough to confirm the discredit of its stony-eyed proprietor.

Ruby flinched instinctively as Mike Grady's revolver ap­peared in the Saint's fist, held for an instant with its muzzle pointed at the pawnbroker's midriff, before Simon laid it on the counter.

'This gun,' said the Saint, 'was pawned here a few days ago. Remember?'

The pawnbroker studied it a moment. His delicately curved brows lifted slightly, the tailored shoulders accompanying them upwards in the mere soupcon of a shrug.

'I see lots of guns,' he said tonelessly. 'Every day.'

He looked at Simon with eyes that had the blank unfocused quality of the blind.

'Whitey Mullins hocks it,' Hoppy amplified. 'Ya know Whitey.'

'However, he didn't claim it himself,' Simon went on. 'Someone else did-a few days ago. I want to know who.'

'Who are you?' Ruby asked in his flat monotone. 'What gives?'

Hoppy grabbed his shoulder in a bone-crushing clutch and, with his other hand, pointed a calloused digit directly under Simon's nose.

'Dis,' he explained unmistakably, 'is de Saint. When de boss asks ya a question, ya don't talk back.'

Ruby shook off Hoppy's paw and flicked imaginary contami­nation from where it had been. He looked back to the Saint.

'So?' he said.

'This gun,' Simon continued pleasantly, 'was redeemed. Who turned in the ticket? I promise there's no trouble in it for you.'

The young man across the counter sighed and stared moodily at the gun.

'Okay, so you give me a promise. Can my wife cash it at the bank if I get knocked off for talkin' too much?'

'No,' Simon conceded. 'But your chances of living to a ripe and fruitless old age are far better, believe me, if you do give me the information I want.'

The pawnbroker's eyes slid over him with obsidian opacity.

It began to be borne in upon Mr. Uniatz that his old pal was being very slow to co-operate. His reaction to that realiza­tion was a darkening scowl of disapproval. Backgrounded by the peculiar advantages of Hoppy's normal face, this expres­sion conveyed a warning about as subtle as the first smoke ris­ing from an active volcano. . . . Ruby caught a glimpse of it; and whatever cogitation was going on behind the curtain of his face reached an immediate conclusion.

'Why ask me?' he complained wearily. 'I don't ask his monicker. I ain't interested. He's a tall skinny jerk with a face like a horse. He bought a set of throwing knives from me once. That's all I know.'

The Saint's perspective roamed through a corridor of memory that Ruby's description had faintly illuminated. A nebulous image formed somewhere in the vista, and tried to coalesce within recognizable outlines; but for the moment the shape still eluded him.

'Give you ten on the rod,' Ruby offered disinterestedly.

Simon picked up the revolver and slipped it back into his pocket.

'I'm afraid it isn't mine,' he said truthfully; and a sardonic glimmer flickered in the young pawnbroker's eyes for an instant.

'You don't say.'

'As a matter of fact, it belongs to George Murphy, whose initials are M G, spelled backwards,' Simon informed him solemnly, and sauntered from the shop with Hoppy in his wake.

It was perhaps the way the black sedan roared away from the curb at the end of the block that pressed an alarm button in the Saint's reflexes. It forced itself into the stream of traffic with a suddenness that compelled the drivers behind to give way with screaming brakes. For one vivid instant, as if by the split-second illumination of a flash of lightning, Simon saw the driver, alone in the front seat, hunched over the wheel, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his face hidden in the shadow of the brim, a glimpse of stubbled jowl barely visible. He had an impression of two others crouched in the deeper shadow of the back seat, their faces obscured by handkerchiefs, the vague angle of their upraised arms pointing towards him. . . . All this the Saint saw, absorbed, analyzed, and acted upon in the microscopic fragment of time before he kicked Hoppy's feet from under him so that they both dropped to the sidewalk together as the black sedan raced by, sending a fusillade of bullets cracking over them into the pawnshop window beyond.

Hoppy Uniatz, prone on his stomach, fumbled out his gun and fired a single shot just as the gunmen's car cut in ahead of a truck and beat a red light.

'Hold it! Simon ordered. 'You're more likely to hurt the wrong people.'

They scrambled up and dusted off their clothes.

'You okay, boss?' Hoppy asked anxiously.

'Just a bit chilled from the draft of those bullets going by.'

Hoppy glared up the street at the corner where their assail­ants had vanished.

'De doity bastards,' he rumbled. 'Who wuz it, boss?'

The Saint had no answer; but if he had had, it would have been interrupted by the yelp of the curly-haired young man peering pallidly from behind the edge of the pawnshop door­frame.

'Get the hell away from here!' he bawled, with a shrill vibrato in his voice. 'Get yourselves knocked off some other place!'

Hoppy turned on him redly, like a buffalo preparing to charge; but Simon grabbed one beefy bicep and yanked him back on his heels.

'Stop it, you damn fool!' he snapped. 'Don't take it out on him!'

He stepped to the doorway, drawing the knife strapped to his forearm.

From within the pawnshop Ruby's voice, strident with fear, screeched: 'Come in here and so help me God, I'll