"I wouldn't lie to you," Papulos was babbling hoarsely. "This is on the level. I got nothin' to gain. You don't have to promise me nothin'. You gotta believe me."
"Why?" asked the Saint callously.
Papulos swung the car round Columbus Circle and headed blindly to the east. His face was haggard with utter despair.
"You think this is a stall—you don't believe I'm on the level?"
"Yes," said the Saint, "and no."
"What d'ya mean?"
"Yes, brother," said the Saint explicitly, "I do think it's a stall. No, brother, I don't believe you're on the level. ... By the way, Pappy, which cemetery are you heading for? It'd save a lot of expense if we did the job right on the premises. You can take your own choice, of course, but I've always thought the Gates of Heaven Cemetery, Valhalla, N. Y., was the best address of its kind I ever heard."
Papulos looked into the implacable blue eyes and felt closer to death than he had ever been.
"You gotta listen," he said, almost in a whisper. "I'm shootin' the works. I'll talk first, an' you can decide whether I'm tellin' the truth afterwards. Just gimme a break, Saint.. I'm shootin' square with you."
Simon shrugged.
"There's lots of time between here and Valhalla," he pointed out affably. "Shoot away."
Papulos caught at the breath that would not seem to fill the void in his lungs. The sweat was running down his sides like a trickle of icicles, and his mouth had stiffened so that he had to labour over the formation of each individual word.
"This is straight," he said. "Puttin' the snatch on that kid was an accident. That ain't the racket any more—it's too risky, an' there ain't any need for it. Protection's the racket, see? You say to a guy like Inselheim: 'You pay us so much dough, or it'll be too bad about your kid, see?' Well, Inselheim stuck in his toes over the last payment. He said he wouldn't pay any more; so we put the arm on the kid. You didn't do him no good, takin' her back."
"You don't tell me," said the Saint lightly; but his voice was grim and watchful.
Papulos babbled on. He had spent long enough getting a hearing; now that he had it, the words came in a flood like a breaking dam. In a matter of mere minutes, it might be too late.
"You didn't do no good. Inselheim got his daughter back, but he's still gotta pay. We won't be snatching her again. Next time, she gets the works. We phoned him first thing this morning: 'Pay us that dough, or you won't have no daughter for the Saint to rescue.' Even a guy like you can't bring a kid back when she's dead."
"Very interesting," observed the Saint, "not to say bloodthirsty. But I can't somehow see that even a story like that, Pappy, is going to keep you out of the Gates of Heaven. You'll have to talk much faster than this if we're going to fall on each other's shoulders and let bygones be bygones."
The Greek's hands clenched on the wheel.
"I'll tell you anything you want to know!" he gabbled wildly. "Ask me anything you like—I'll tell you. Just gimme a break——"
"You could only tell me one thing that might be worth a trade for your unsavoury life, you horrible specimen," said the Saint coldly. "And that is—who is the Big Fellow?"
Papulos turned, white-faced, staring.
"You can't ask me to tell you that——"
"Really?"
"It ain't possible! I'd tell you if I could—but I can't. There ain't nobody in the mob could tell you that, except the Big Fellow himself, Ualino didn't know. Kuhlmann don't know. There's only one way we talk to him, an' that's by telephone. An' only one guy has the number."
Simon drew the last puff from his cigarette and pitched it through the window.
"Then it seems just too bad if you aren't the guy, Pappy," he said sympathetically; and Papulos shrank away into the farthest corner of the seat at the ruthless quietness of his voice.
"But I can tell you who it is, Saint! I'm coming clean. Wait a minute—you gotta let me talk——"
His voice rose suddenly into a shrill scream—a scream whose sheer crazed terror made the Saint's head whip round with narrowed eyes stung to a knife-edged alertness. .
In one split second he saw what Papulos had seen.
A car had drawn abreast of them on the outside—a big, powerful sedan that had crept up without either of them noticing it, that had manoeuvred into position with deadly skill. There were three men in it. The windows were open, and through them protruded the gleaming black barrels of submachine-guns. Simon grasped the scene in one vivid flash and flung himself down into the body of the car. In another instant the staccato stammer of the guns was rattling in his ears, and the steel was drumming round him like a storm of death.
* * *
The window on his right shattered in the blast and spilled fragments of glass over him; but he was unhurt. He was aware that the car was swerving dizzily; and a moment later there was a terrific crashing impact that flung him into a bruised heap under the dashboard, with his head singing as if a dozen vicious mosquitoes were imprisoned inside his skull. And after that there was silence.
Some seconds passed before other sounds reached him as if they came out of a fog. He heard the rumble of invisible traffic and the screeching of brakes, the shrilling of a police whistle and the scream of a woman close by. It took another second or two for his battered brain to grasp the fundamental reason for that strange impression of stillness: the ear-splitting crackle of the machine guns had stopped. It was as if a tropical squall had struck a small boat, smashed it in one savage instant, and whirled on.
The Saint struggled up. The car was listing over to starboard, and he saw that the front of it was inextricably entangled with a lamppost at the edge of the sidewalk. A crowd was already beginning to gather; and the woman who had screamed before screamed again when she saw him move. The car which had attacked them had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
He looked for Papulos. After that one abruptly strangled shriek the man had not made a sound. In another moment Simon understood why. The impact had hurled the Greek halfway through the windscreen: he lay sprawled over the scuttle with one arm limply spread out, but it was quite clear that he had been dead long before that happened. And the Saint gazed at him for an instant in silence.
"I was wrong, my lad," he said softly. "Maybe they were after you."
There was scarcely room for any further apologies to the deceased. In the far distance Simon could see a blue-clad figure lumbering towards him, blowing its whistle as it ran; and the crowd was swelling. They were on 57th Street, near the corner of Fifth Avenue, and there was plenty of material around to develop an audience far larger than the Saint would have desired. A rapid departure from those regions struck him as being one of the most immediate requirements of the day.
He got the nearest door open and stepped out. The crowd hesitated: most of them had been reading newspapers long enough to gather that standing in the way of escaping gunmen is a pastime that is severely frowned upon by the majority of insurance companies: and the Saint dropped a hand to his coat pocket in the hope of reminding them of the fact. The gesture had its desired effect. The crowd melted away before him; and he raced round the corner and sprinted southwards down Fifth Avenue without a soul attempting to hinder him.
A cruising taxi went by, and he leapt onto the running board and opened the door before the driver could accelerate. In another second the partition behind the driver was open, and the unmistakable cold circle of a gun-muzzle pressed gently into the back of the man's neck.
"Keep right on your way, Sebastian," advised the Saint, coolly reading the chauffeur's name off the license card inside, "and nothing will happen to you."
The driver kept right on his way. He had been driving taxis in New York for a considerable number of years and had developed a fatalistic philosophy.