Both men’s eyes jerked to the open doorway.
Simon Templar stood there, the automatic in his hand held with deceptive negligence.
“The Saint!” Spangler got out.
An unhealthy flush suffused his florid face and his hands dropped to his lap behind the desk.
“Yes, gentlemen,” Simon Templar smiled. “However, you’ll notice this little gadget I’m holding is not a harp. Hands on the desk, please, Doc.”
Spangler obeyed slowly, the habitual good humour on his face distorted into a parody of itself.
Grady found his voice.
“What’s this?” he rasped cholerically. “Are you following me around?”
“Rather fortunately for you, I am,” said the Saint. “I overheard just enough of your conversation to settle a lot of early doubts about your honesty. Which only leaves your intelligence more in doubt than ever.”
Spangler suddenly yelled, “Karl! Help!”
Simon shook his head regretfully.
“Don’t strain your larynx, Doctor. It won’t do you any good. We met Brother Mancini’s successor at the door. My friend Mr Uniatz is watching over him in the hall to see that no one disturbs his slumber.” The Saint glanced at the knuckles of his left hand affectionately. “If this happens much more often I’m afraid the Butler’s Union will put you on the black list.”
Grady climbed to his feet, an angry glint in his eye.
“Now look here—” he began.
There was a sudden scurry of footfalls in the hall, and the outer door slammed open just ahead of a wrathful howl from Hoppy.
The Saint sighed, “I guess Karl is on his way to report to you now. I was hoping he’d sleep longer than that.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Grady spluttered.
“Yes,” Spangler said, all pretence at good humour blotted out by the venomous hatred that simmered behind the onyx sheen of his eyes, “what do you want?”
“Your signature,” said the Saint easily. He walked up to Spangler’s desk, fishing two cheques from his pocket. He laid them before Spangler. “You’ll notice that both of these are for the same amount. The amount, you can verify, is the total of the winner’s shares of all the purses that your masked moron has won through practices that are extremely illegal.”
Spangler looked up at him sharply, his hands slipping off the desk.
“You’re stark raving crazy!” he blared.
“Do keep your hands on top of the desk, Doctor,” Simon reminded him pleasantly. “That’s better... Both of these cheques, you’ll observe, are payable to the Simon Templar Foundation for the Relief of Distressed Pugilists.”
“What?” Spangler squealed incredulously.
“What kind of racket is this?” Grady demanded.
A ghost of a smile touched the Saint’s face. He stepped to one side and glanced at the door as Hoppy’s heavy footsteps pounded back through the outer door, into the hallway, and clomped to a halt in the doorway of the room.
Mr Uniatz stood there a moment, catching his breath.
“He got away,” he announced with dark disgust. “When I wasn’t lookin’.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Simon said. “We’ll put an ad in the paper.” He turned to Spangler, who had risen to his feet behind the desk as the massive frame of Mr Uniatz filled the doorway. “As you see, Doc, I’ve already signed one of those cheques. Now you are going to sign the other.”
Spangler turned sharply to Grady.
“You’re a witness, Mike. It’s blackmail, extortion!”
“Hardly that,” Simon corrected him. “Those are simply the stakes in our bet, Doctor. I’m betting that Barrelhouse Bilinski is knocked out tomorrow night.”
For a long narrow-lidded moment Doc Spangler gaped at the Saint. And then a slow glistening grin began to spread over his face.
“And that,” he queried softly, “is what you want me to sign?”
The Saint nodded amiably.
“Exactly. If you don’t I’m afraid our friend Inspector Fernack will have to drop in and ask you some awkward questions...”
A deep chuckle seemed to boil up deeply from within the fat man’s rotund belly. The chuckle broke into a laugh that shook his chins.
“My dear Mr Templar!” he said deprecatingly, waving a pudgy hand. “Put away that gun.” He wiped his eyes with his cuff as though overcome by some secret joke, and looked down at his desk, still chuckling. “Where’s my pen?” He found it and pulled the cheque toward him, leaning over the desk. He looked up. “Mike Grady will hold these cheques, of course?”
“That’s okay with me.”
“Now wait.” Grady frowned, plagued by a vague troubled puzzlement. “I don’t want no part—”
“Of course you do,” the Saint insisted persuasively. “I assure you this is on the up-and-up, Mike.”
“At least,” Spangler agreed genially, “I know I can trust you.”
He bent over and signed the other cheque with a flourish and held them both out to Grady. “If you please, Mike.”
Grady took them reluctantly.
“Nothing would please me more,” Spangler gurgled, “than to have your cheque bounce, Mr Templar. I should enjoy sending you to jail for something like that. It would certainly look well in the newspapers.” He licked his lips as if already tasting the Saint’s ignominy. “ ‘Famous Adventurer Sentenced to a Year and a Day in County Hoosegow!’ ”
“That wouldn’t be nearly so embarrassing,” the Saint said imperturbably, “as twenty years in Sing Sing for second-degree murder. I don’t think you really wanted to kill Torpedo Smith. But nevertheless he died on account of you.”
Spangler’s jaw fell open. He started to speak.
“Now look here,” Grady tried again. “I don’t like this a bit, Saint. I just don’t want to be mixed up in any—”
“Just the same, you’re going to hold those bets,” said the Saint. “And you want me to drive you back to your office — now. Come along.”
“I warn you,” Spangler said bleakly, “that I shall hold both of you to the exact terms of that bet. If you try to welsh on it, the Betting Commissioner—”
“Your fadder’s moustache!” Mr Uniatz quoted delicately.
He spread a large horny hand over Spangler’s beefy face, and pushed with the force of a locomotive piston. Doc Spangler crashed backwards against his chair and toppled thunderously to the floor, chair and all. He was still lying there as Simon and Hoppy conducted Grady firmly out of the room and out of the house.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am,” the Saint said as they drove northward up Fifth Avenue, “to know that you’re not in cahoots with Spangler, Mike. That was the thing that bothered me most of all.”
“Thanks for the bill of health,” Grady responded caustically. “It’s that relieved I am.” He scowled. “But I can’t say I go for the high-handed way you have of ordering me about at the point of a gun!”
“Forgive me,” the Saint apologised, “but I couldn’t take any chances of being deprived of your company for lunch.”
“I got too many things to do, Saint. No time for lunch. Just get me back to the Arena as quick as you can.”
“It won’t take much time,” Simon smiled dreamily. “I’ve got a table at the Brevoort...”
Grady frowned. “Well — I’ll see if I can make it.”
They parked in front of the Arena and Simon accompanied Grady inside to his office.
The girl at the switchboard called out as they entered Mike’s office, “There’s been several calls from your daughter, Mr Grady, and from Mr Mullins...”
“Okay,” Grady grunted, and picked up the stack of letters and messages piled upon his desk. “Wonder what Whitey Mullins wants,” he muttered, thumbing through the sheaf. “According to this pile of call notes, he’s phoned about six times.”