The butler's knuckles touched the door again.
"Inspector Fernack, sir."
Simon waved the judge on, and Nather crossed the room slowly. Every foot of the distance he was conscious of the concealed automatic that was aiming into his back. He snapped the key over in the lock and opened the door; and Inspector Fernack shouldered his brawny bulk across the threshold.
* * *
"Why the locked door, Judge?" Fernack inquired sourly. "Getting nervous?"
Nather closed the door without answering, and Simon decided to oblige.
"I did it," he explained. Fernack, who had not noticed him, whirled round in surprise; and Simon went on: "Would you mind locking it again, Judge—just as I told you?"
Nather hesitated for a second and then obeyed. Fernack stared blankly at the figure lounging in the armchair and then turned with puzzled eyes to the judge. He pushed back his battered fedora and pulled reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
"What the hell is this?" he demanded; and Nather shrugged.
"A nut," he said tersely.
Simon ignored the insult, studying the man who had come in. On the whole, Fernack conformed closely enough to the pattern in his mind of what a New York police inspector was likely to be; but the reality went a little beyond that. Simon liked the belligerent honesty of the frosted grey eyes, the strength and courage of the iron jaw. He realized that, whatever else Fernack might be, a good or bad detective, he fell straight and clean-cut into the narrow outline of that rarest thing in a country of corrupted law—a square dick. There were qualities in that mountain of toughened flesh that Simon Templar could have appreciated at any time; and he smiled at the man with an unaffected friendliness which he never expected to see returned.
"What ho, Inspector," he murmured affably. "You disappoint me. I was hoping to be recognized."
Fernack's eyes hardened in perplexity as he studied the Saint's tanned features. He shook his head.
"I seem to know your face, but I'm damned if I can place you."
"Maybe it was a bad photograph," conceded the Saint regretfully. "Those photographs usually are. All the same, seeing it was only this afternoon that you were handing out copies of it to the reporters ——"
Illumination hit Fernack like a blow.
His eyes flamed wide, and his jaw closed with a snap as he took three long strides across the room.
"By God—it's the Saint!"
"Himself. I didn't know you were a pal of Algernon's, but since you arrived I thought I might as well stay."
Fernack's shoulders were hunched, his pugnacious chin. jutting dangerously. In that instant shock of surprise, he had not paused to wonder why the Saint should be offering himself like an eager victim.
"I want you, young fellow," he grated.
He lunged forward, with his hand diving for his hip.
And then he pulled up short, a yard from the chair. His hand was poised in the air, barely two inches from the butt of his gun, but it made no attempt to travel further. The Saint did not seem to have moved, and his free foot was still swinging gently back and forth; but somehow the blue-black shape of an automatic had come into his right hand, and the round black snout of it was aimed accurately into the detective's breastbone.
"I'm sorry," said the Saint; and he meant it. "I hate being arrested, as you should have gathered from my biography. It's just one of those things that doesn't happen. My dear chap, you didn't really think I stayed on so you could take me home with you as a souvenir!"
Fernack glared at the gun speechlessly for a moment and shifted his gaze back to the Saint For a moment Simon was afraid—with a chin like that, it was an even chance that the detective might not be stopped; and Simon would have hated to shoot. But Fernack was not foolhardy. He had been bred and reared in a world where foolhardiness went down under an elemental law of the survival of the wisest; and Fernack faced facts. At that range the Saint could not miss, and the honour of the New York police would gain a purely temporary glow from the heroic suicide of an inspector.
Fernack grunted and straightened up with a shrug.
"What the hell is this?" he repeated.
"Just a social evening. Sit down and get the spirit of the party. Maybe you know some smoke-room stories, too."
Fernack pulled out a chair and sat down facing the Saint. After the first stupefaction of surprise was gone he accepted the situation with homely matter-of-factness. Since the initiative had been temporarily taken out of his hands, he could do no harm by listening.
"What are you doing here?" he asked; and there was the beginning of a grim respect in his voice.
Simon swung his gun around towards Nather and waved the judge back to his swivel chair.
"I might ask the same question," he remarked.
Fernack glanced at the judge thoughtfully; and Simon's quick eyes caught the distaste in his gaze, and realized that Nather saw it, too.
"You do your own asking," Fernack said dryly.
Simon surveyed the two men humorously.
"The two arms of the law," he commented reverently. "The guardian of the peace and the dispenser of justice. You could pose for a tableau. The pea-green incorruptibles."
Fernack frowned, and the judge squirmed slightly in his chair. There was a strained silence in the room, broken by the inspector's rough voice:
"Know any more fairy tales?"
"Plenty," said the Saint. "Once upon a time there was a great city, the richest city in the world. Its towers went up through the clouds, and its streets were paved with golden-backed Treasury notes, which were just as good as the old-fashioned fairy-tale paving stones and much easier to carry around. And all the people in it should have been very happy, what with Macy's Basement and Grover Whalen and a cathedral called Minsky's. But under the city there was a greedy octopus whose tentacles reached from the highest to the lowest places—and even outside the city, to the village greens of Canarsie and North Hoosick and a place called Far Rockaway where the Scottish citizens lived. And this octopus prospered and grew fat on a diet of blood and gold and the honour of men."
Fernack's bitter voice broke in on the recitation:
"That's too true to be funny."
"It wasn't meant to be—particularly. Fernack, you know why I'm here. I did a job for you this afternoon—one of those little jobs that Brother Nather is supposed to do and never seems to get around to. Ionetzki was quite a friend of yours, wasn't he?"
"You know a lot" The detective's fists knotted at his sides. "What next?"
"And Nather seems to have been quite a friend of Jack Irboll's. I'm doing your thinking for you. On account of this orgy of devotion, I blew along to see Nather; and I haven't been here half an hour before you blow in yourself. Well, a little while back I asked you why you were here, and I wasn't changing the subject"
Fernack's mouth tightened. His eyes swerved around to the judge; but Nather's blotchy face was as inexpressive as a slab of lard, except for the high-lights of perspiration on his flushed cheekbones. Fernack looked at the Saint again.
"You want a lot of questions answered for you," he stated flatly.
"I'll try another." Simon drew on his cigarette and looked at the detective through a haze of outgoing smoke. "Maybe you can translate something for me. Translate it into words of one syllable—and try to make me understand."
"What?"
"The Big Fellow says you'd better stay home tonight. He may want you!"
Simon flipped the quotation back hopefully enough, without a pause. It leapt across the air like the twang of a broken fiddle string, without giving the audience a half-second's grace in which to brace themselves or rehearse their reactions. But not even in his moments of most malicious optimism had the Saint expected the results which rewarded him.