Inselheim stared at him for a long moment in silence. The cumulative shocks which had struck him seemed to have deadened and irised down the entrances of his mind, so that the thoughts that seethed in the anterooms of consciousness could only pass through one by one. But one idea came through more strongly and persistently than any other.
"I know," he said, with a dull effort. "I'm sorry. I—I guess I owe you—plenty. I won't forget it. But—you don't understand. If you want to help me, you must get out. I've got to think. You can't stay here. If they found you were here— they'd kill us both."
"Not both," said the Saint mildly.
He looked at Inselheim steadily, with a faintly humorous interest, like a hardened dramatic critic watching with approval the presentation of a melodrama, yet realizing with a trace of self-mockery that he had seen it all before. But it was the candid appraisement in his gaze which stabbed mercilessly into some lacerated nerve that was throbbing painfully away down in the depths of the Jew's crushed and battered fibre— a swelling nerve of contempt for his own weakness and inadequacy, the same nerve whose mute and inarticulate reactions had been clenching his soft hands into those pitifully helpless fists before the Saint came. The clear blue light of those reckless bantering eyes seemed to illumine the profundities of Inselheim's very soul; but the light was too sudden and strong, and his own vision was still too blurred, for him to be able to see plainly what the light showed.
"What did you come here for?" Inselheim asked; and Simon blew one smoke ring and put another through the centre of it.
"To return your potatoes—as you see. To have a cigar, and that drink which you're so very inhospitably hesitating, to provide. And to see if you might be able to help me."
"How could I help you? If it's money you want——"
"I could have helped myself." The Saint glanced at the stacks of money on the desk with one eyebrow cocked and a glimmer of pure enjoyment in his eye. "I seem to be getting a lot of chances like that these days. Thanks all the same, but I've got one millionaire grubstaking me already, and his bank hasn't failed yet. No—what I might be able to use from you, Zeke, is a few heart-to-heart confidences."
Inselheim shook his head slowly, a movement that seemed to be a more of an automatic than a deliberate refusal.
"I can't tell you anything."
Simon glanced at his wrist watch.
"A rather hasty decision," he murmured. "Not to say flattering. For all you know, I may be ploughing through life in a state of abysmal ignorance. However, you've got plenty of time to change your mind. . . ."
The Saint rose lazily from his chair and stood looking downwards at his host, without a variation in the genial leisureliness of his movements or the cool suaveness of his voice; but it was a lazy leisureliness, a cool geniality, that was more impressive than any noisy dominance.
"You know, Zeke," he rambled on affably, "to change one's mind is the mark of a liberal man. It indicates that one has assimilated wisdom and experience. It indicates that one is free from stubbornness and pride and pimples and other deadly sins. Even scientists aren't dogmatic any more— they're always ready to admit they were wrong and start all over again. A splendid attitude, Zeke—splendid. . . ."
He was standing at his full height, carelessly dynamic like a cat stretching itself; but he had made no threatening movement, said nothing menacing . . . nothing.
"I'm sure you see the point, Zeke," he said; and for some reason that had no outward physical manifestation, Inselheim knew that the gangsters whom he feared and hated could never be more ruthless than this mild-mannered young man with the mocking blue eyes who had clambered through his window such a short while ago.
"What could I tell you?" Inselheim asked tremulously.
Simon sat on the edge of the desk. There was neither triumph nor self-satisfaction in his air—nothing to indicate that he had ever even contemplated any other ultimate response. His gentleness was almost that of a psycho-analyst extracting confessions from a nervous patient; and once again Inselheim felt that queer light illuminating hidden corners of himself which he had not asked to see.
"Tell me all, Zeke," said the Saint
"What is there you don't know?" Inselheim protested weakly. "They kidnapped Viola because I refused to pay the protection money——"
"The protection money," Simon repeated idly. "Yes, I knew about that. But at least we've got started. Carry on, Uncle."
"We've all got to pay for protection. There's no way out. You brought Viola back, but that hasn't saved her. If I don't pay now—they'll kill. You know that. I told you. What else is there——"
"Who are they?" asked the Saint.
"I don't know."
Simon regarded him quizzically.
"Possibly not." Under the patient survey of those unillusioned eyes, the light in Inselheim's subconsciousness was very bright. "But you must have some ideas. At some time or another, there must have been some kind of contact. A voice didn't speak out of the ceiling and tell you to pay. And even a bloke with as many potatoes as you have doesn't go scattering a hundred grand across the countryside just because some maniac he's never heard of calls up on the phone and tells him to. That's only one of the things I'm trying to get at. I take it that you don't want to go on paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to this unknown voice till the next new moon. I take it that you don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering from day to day what the next demand is going to be—and wondering what they'll do to your daughter to enforce it. I take it that you want a little peace and quiet— and that even beyond that you might like to see some things in this city changed. I take it that you have some manhood that goes deeper than merely wearing trousers, and I'm asking you to give it a chance."
Inselheim swallowed hard. The light within him was blinding, hurting his eyes. It terrified him. He rose as if in sheer nervousness and paced the room.
Simon watched him curiously. He knew the struggle that went on inside the man, and after a fashion he sympathized. . . . And then, as Inselheim reached the far wall, his hand shot out and pressed a button. He turned and faced the Saint defiantly.
"Now," he said, with a strange thickness in his voice, "get out! That bell calls one of my guards. I don't wish you any harm—I owe you everything—for a while. But I can't—I can't sign my own death warrant—or Viola's. . . ."
"No," said the Saint softly. "Of course not."
He hitched himself unhurriedly off the desk and walked to the window. There, he threw a long leg across the sill; and his unchanged azure eyes turned back to fix themselves on Inselheim.
"Perhaps," he said quietly, "you'll tell me the rest another day."
The broker shook his head violently.
"Never," he gabbled. "Never. I don't want to die. I won't tell anything. You can't make me. You can't!"
A heavy footstep sounded outside in the hall. Inselheim stood staring, his chest heaving breathlessly, his mouth half open as if aghast at the meaning of his own words, his hands twitching. The light in his mind had suddenly burst. He looked for contempt, braced himself for a retort that would shrivel the last of his pride, and instead saw nothing in the Saint's calm eyes but a sincere and infinite compassion that was worse than the bitterest derision. Inselheim gasped; and his stomach was suddenly empty as he realized that he had thrown everything away.
But the Saint looked at him and smiled.
"I'll see you again," he said; and then, as a knock came on the door and the guard's voice demanded an answer, he lowered himself briskly to the fire-escape landing and went on his way.
The profit from his visit had been precisely nil—in fact, a mercenary estimate might have assessed it as a dead loss of ninety thousand dollars—but that was his own fault. As he slid nimbly down the iron ladders he cursed himself gently for that moment's unwariness which had permitted Inselheim to put a finger on the bell. And yet, without the shock of seeing that last denial actually accomplished, without that final flurry of insensate panic, the broker's awakening might never have been completed. And Simon had a premonition that if Inselheim's chance came again the result would be a little different.