the way you work in the racket-bump a guy before he bumps you. But I never double-crossed a pal, and I never carried a gun for vice. I ain't pullin' any reformation act. I guess I'll go on the same way- till I get mine.'
She took a scented cigarette from a lacquer case and stared straight ahead.
'I'm not such a schoolgirl myself,' she said quietly. 'I've been around. I don't like killing-any of those things you do. I don't like knowing I'll have to sit around and wait till someone does the same thing to you. I didn't think I could ever face it. Now it seems different, somehow. I've got no choice. I just want you to be good to me.'
'I'm on the level, kid. I never been mushy in my life, so I can't say any of those pretty things you'd like to hear. But I'll play square with you.'
'Always?'
'Say, if I ever give you the runaround, you can put me on the spot with my own gun.'
It was at that moment that Tex Goldman's head was hit.
The blow didn't stun him. It wasn't intended to. But he felt the sickening sharp crash of a gun butt at the base of his hair, and it seemed to rock the brain inside his skull so that for a second or two his sight was blotted out in a dizzy sea of blackness filled with whirling red sparks. He pitched forward, throwing out his hands, and saved himself on the table. He heard the girl beside him cry out, and then a hand snatched at his hip pocket before his wits could struggle back to coherent functioning. When his own hand reached the pocket his gun was gone.
He turned slowly and saw the weapon being juggled gently round the forefinger of a tall man in grey.
'Hullo, Tex.'
Goldman drew himself up rockily under the rake of the tall man's smile.
'What the hell --'
'No bad language, Tex,' said the Saint. 'I'm sorry I had to dot you a small one, but I thought it'd be safer. You're the kind of guy who wouldn't be stuck up very easily, and if you tried to shoot it out with me the birds in the other apartments might have heart failure.'
Goldman's eyes creased up till only the pupils showed, gleaming like frozen chips of jet.
'Mr. Simon Templar?'
'Yeah. And breaking up your racket. This country can get along without your kind of crime. Maybe America can show us lots of things, but you've come over with one kind of thing we don't want to be shown. It upsets all the dear old ladies who make our laws.' The Saint was not smiling. 'Too many men have been killed since you set up shop. I came here to kill you, Tex.'
The girl clutched at Tex Goldman's hand, staring at the Saint with wide pitiful eyes.
'You can't!' she sobbed. 'You can't! We were only married to-day --'
Not a muscle of the Saint's face moved.
'I'm taking the girl, too,' he said. 'For another reason. You get it together.'
She shrank against Tex Goldman's shoulder, with horror added to the tragedy of her eyes.
'Why d'you want to kill me?' she whispered. 'I've done nothing. I've never killed anyone. . . . But I don't care. I don't care! I love him! Go on, you coward'
'Never mind that.' Tex Goldman's voice cut very quietly and tremorlessly through hers. 'Never mind what you think she's done, Templar. I guess you're wrong about her. She's on the level. You can't burn down a woman. You got me all right. Give me what's coming to me. But let the kid get the hell out of here first. I can take it for both of us.'
He looked at the Saint without flinching. That was the racket. You took it when your turn came, without whining. You didn't show yellow.
And then he saw that the Saint was smiling.
'Thanks, Tex,' said the Saint. 'You've got the guts. I guess that lets you out.'
CHAPTER VIII GOLDMAN didn't understand.
'I told you I came here to kill you,' said the Saint. 'That's about true-anyway, it's one reason. Then I heard your conversation. I just wondered. The girl told me you were married today. I put up the rest of it just to prove to myself whether you were really on the level, and it seems as if you are. It breaks my heart, but I suppose we'll have to go home now without killing you. Even I can't spoil a honeymoon. . . . It's rather a charming thought, Tex-that after all you may be a white-haired old daddy one day, sitting by the fire with a dozen kiddies perched on your knee, telling them fairy stories about the Little Red Riding Hood, and Goldmanlocks and the Three Bears, and Wicked Uncle Al.'
Goldman drew a deep breath, but he did not speak. The cold winds of death had blown too close to him, and when that clammy breath is still in a man's throat he has very little to say.
'But the part about breaking up your racket has got to stand,' said the Saint, and his blue eyes were steady steel again as he spoke. 'We don't like it-it makes life just a little too strenuous. I've emptied your safe already this afternoon, and I expect you'll find that rather discouraging.'
He indicated the open door of the bedroom through which he had come. Smiling momentarily, he dipped into a side pocket and dug out half a dozen large notes which he dropped onto the settee.
'I'll give you these back as a wedding present. You wouldn't want to arrive back in St. Louis broke.'
Goldman moistened his lips.
'Still hijacking, huh?'
'Still hijacking. All this is to be divided up among the poor devils who got shot in the course of your campaign, except what I keep myself. I take a rather larger share, because I was getting shot at all the time. You won't see it
