* * *
The guard threw open the second door, and Simon went on in. He saw that the place had originally been intended for a sitting room; but all the normal furniture had been pushed back against the walls, leaving plenty of space for the large round table covered with a green baize cloth which now occupied the centre of the floor. Fringing the circle of men seated around the board were a few hard, lean-faced gentry whose air of hawk-eyed detachment immediately removed any suspicion that they might be there to minister to the sick in case one of the players was taken sick. A single brilliant light fixture blazed overhead, flooding a cone of white luminance over the ring of players. As the Saint came in, every face turned towards him.
"Aces Simon, of Detroit," announced the guard. As a cynical afterthought he added: "He's lookin' for some action, gents."
The lean-faced watchers in the outer shadows relaxed and crossed their legs again; the players acknowledged the introduction with curt nods and returned immediately to their game.
Simon strolled across to the table and pulled out a vacant chair opposite the dealer. One casual glance around the board was enough to show him that the guard had had reason to be cynical—the play was sufficiently high to clean out any smalltime gambler in one deal. He lighted a cigarette and studied the faces of the players. They were a variegated crew, ranging from the elite of the underworld to the tawdrier satellites of the upper. On his right was a stout gentleman whose faded eyes held the unmistakable buccaneering gleam of a prominent rotarian from Grand Rapids out on a tear in the big city.
The stout gentleman leaned over confidentially, exhaling a powerful aroma of young Bourbon.
"Lookin' for action, eh?" he wheezed. "Well, this is the place for it Eh? Eh?"
"Eh?" asked the Saint, momentarily infected by the spirit of the thing.
"I said, this is the place for action, isn't it, eh?" repeated the devotee of rotation with laborious good will; and a thin little smile edged the Saint's mouth.
"Brother," he assented with conviction, "you don't know the half of it."
His eyes were fixed on the dealer, who, from the stacks of chips and neat wads of bills before him, appeared to be also the organizer of the game; and as the seconds went by it became plainer and plainer to the Saint that there was at least one man at that table who would never be asked to pose for the central nymph in a picture to be entitled Came the Dawn. The swarthy pockmarked face seemed to have been developed from the bald side of a roughly cubical head. Two small black eyes, affectionately close together, nested high up under the eaves of a pair of prominent frontal bones; and the nose between them had lost any pretensions to classic symmetry which it might once have had in some ancient argument with a beer bottle. A thick neck creased with rolls of fat linked this pellucid window of the soul with a gross bulk of body which apparently completed the wodge of mortal clay known to the world as Papulos. It was not an aesthetic spectacle by any standards; but the Saint had come there to take a gander at Mr. Papulos, and he was taking it. And while he looked, the black beady eyes switched up to meet his gaze.
"Well, Mr. Simon, how much is it to be? The whites are Cs, the reds are finifs, and the blues are G.'s."
The voice was harshly nasal, with a habitual sneer lurking in it. It was the kind of voice which no healthy outlaw could have heard without being moved to pleasant thoughts of murder; but the Saint smiled and blew a smoke ring.
"I'll take twenty grand—and you can keep it in the blues."
There was a sudden quiet in the room. The other players hitched up closer in their chairs; and the lean-faced watchers in the outer shadows eased their right hips instinctively away from obstructing objects. Without the twitch of an eyebrow Papulos counted out two stacks of chips and spilled them in the centre of the table.
"Twenty grand," he said laconically. "Let's see your dough." His eyes levelled opaquely across the table. "Or is it on the cuff?"
"No," answered the Saint coolly. "It's in the pants."
"Let's see it."
The rotarian from Grand Rapids took a gulp at the drink beside him and stared owlishly at the table; and the Saint reached into his trouser pocket. He felt the roll of bills there; felt something else—the crumpled slip of paper that had originally accompanied them. Securing this telltale bit of evidence with his little finger, he pulled the bills from his pocket and counted them out onto the board.
It was an admirable performance, as the Saint's little cameos of legerdemain always were. Under the Greek's watchful eyes he was measuring out twenty thousand dollars, and the scrap of paper had apparently slipped in somewhere among the notes. Halfway through the count it fell out, face upwards. Simon stopped counting; then he made a very clumsy grab for it. The grab was so slow and clumsy that it was easy for Papulos to catch his wrist.
"Wait a minute." The Greek's voice was a sudden rasp of menace in the stillness.
He flicked the scrap of paper towards him with one finger and stared at it for a moment. Then he shifted his gaze to the banknotes. He looked up slowly, with two spots of colour flaming in his swarthy cheeks.
"Where did you get that money?"
He was still holding the Saint's right wrist, and his grip had tightened rather than relaxed. Simon glowered at him guiltily.
"What's the matter with it?" he flung back. "It ought to be good—you passed it out yourself."
"I know," said Papulos coldly. "But not to you."
He made an infinitesimal motion with his head; and Simon knew, without looking round, that two of the hard-faced watchers had closed in behind his chair. Nobody else moved; and the heavy breathing of the rotarian from Grand Rapids who was seeing Life was the loudest sound in the room.
Papulos got to his feet.
"Get up," he said. "I want to speak to you in the other room."
A hand fastened on Simon's shoulder and jerked him up, but he had no idea of protesting at that stage—quite apart from the fact that any protest would have been futile. He turned obediently between the two guards and followed the broad back of Papulos out of the room.
They crossed the hall and entered the bedroom of the suite, and the door was closed and locked behind them. Simon was roughly searched and then backed up against a wall. Papulos confronted him, while the two gorillas ranged themselves on either side. The Greek's beady eyes were narrowed to black pin points.
"Where did you get that twenty grand?"
The Saint glared at him sullenly.
"It's none of your damned business."
With a movement surprisingly fast and accurate for one of his fleshy bulk, Papulos drew back one hand and whipped hard knuckles across the Saint's mouth.
"Where did you get that twenty grand?"
For an instant the Saint's muscles leapt as if a flame had touched them; but he held himself in check. It was all part of the game he was playing, and the score against Papulos could wait for some future date. When he lunged back at the Greek's jaw it was with a wild amateurish swing that never had a hope of reaching its mark; and he came up short with two heavy automatics grinding into his ribs.
Papulos sneered.
"Either you're a fool, punk, or you're nuts! Once more I'm asking you—decent and civil—where did you get that twenty G?"
"I found it," said the Saint, "growing on a gooseberry bush."
"He's nuts," decided one of the guards.
Papulos raised his hand again and then let it go with a twisted grin.