From the fragments of conversation that reached him from the table, he gathered that altruistic efforts were being made to solve his problem for him. The booming voice of Honest Bob Orcread, even when lowered to what its owner believed to be an airy whisper, was penetrating enough to carry the general theme of the discussion to the Saint's ears.
"How do we know it ain't a stall?" he could be heard reiterating. "A guy couldn't do all that by himself."
The district attorney pursed his lips, and his answer rustled dustily like dry leaves.
"Personally, I believe he is telling the truth. I was watching him all the time. And nobody has seen anybody else with him."
"Dot's right," Kuhlmann agreed. "It's chust von man mit a lot of luck, taking everybody by surprise. I can look after him."
Orcread was worried, in a heavy and struggling way.
"I hope you're right. But that don't settle anything. We gotta do something that'll satisfy the public. If you make a martyr of him it'll only make things worse. Now, if we could get him in court an' make a monkey out of him, we could say: "Well, we done our duty. We caught the guy that was making all the trouble. And now look at him. We could fix things so he didn't get any sympathy."
"I doubt it," Yeald said. "Once he was in court it would be difficult to stop him talking. I wouldn't dare to hold the trial in camera; and all the reporters would be wanting interviews. You couldn't keep them away."
"Well, I think we oughta make an example. How would it be if . . ."
The rumbling and the rustling went on, and the Saint smoked his cigarette with no outward signs of concern. But not for a moment had he ceased to be aware that the old gentleman with the scythe, of whom he had undertaken to make an ally, was very close to him that night. Yet his smile was undimmed, and his eyes had the stillness of frozen sea water as he idly watched the whispering men who were debating how the processes of justice could best be turned to meet their own ends. And within him was a colder, deadlier contempt than anything he had felt since the beginning of that adventure.
In the room before him were more than a dozen men whose lives were dedicated to plunder and killing, mercenaries of the most amazing legion of crime that modern civilization had ever known; but it was not against their that he felt the deadliest chill of that cold anger. It was against the men who made their looting possible—the men who held positions of trust, whom a blind public had permitted to seize office, whose wages were paid over and over again out of the pockets of ordinary honest citizens, whose cooperation allowed robbery and murder to go unpunished and even commended. The law meant nothing; except when it was an expedient instrument to remove an obstacle to further pillage.
Outside, beyond that room, lay a great city, a monument in brick arid granite to the ingenuity of man; and in that city seven million people paid tribute to a lawless handful. The Saint had never been given to glorifying himself into any kind of knightly hero; in the end he was a mercenary himself, hired by Valcross to do an outlaw's work; but if he had had any doubts of the justice of his cause, they would have been swept away that night. Whether he acknowledged it or not, whether they knew it or not, he was the champion of seven million, facing sentence in that hushed room for a thing that perhaps none of the seven million could have put into words; and it had never seemed more vital that he should come out alive to carry the battle on. . . .
And then, as if in answer, Orcread's voice rammed itself into his consciousness again and brought him out of his reverie.
"You've heard all we've got to say, Saint. There's only two ways out for you—mine or yours. You can think again if you like."
"I've done all the thinking I can," said the Saint evenly.
"Okay. You've had your chance."
He got up heavily and stood staring at Simon with the same worried perplexity; he was not satisfied yet that he had heard the truth—it was beyond his comprehension that a menace which had attacked the roots of his domination could be so simple—but the consensus of opinion had gone against him. Marcus Yeald twiddled the locks of his briefcase, stood up, and fidgeted with his gloves. He glanced at the door speculatively, in his peering petulant way, and one of the men opened it.
Orcread hitched himself round reluctantly and nodded to Kuhlmann.
"Okay, Dutch," he said and went out, followed by Yeald. The door was dosed and locked again, and a ripple of released suppression went over the room. The conference, as a conference, was over. . . .
"Come here, Saint," said Kuhlmann gutturally.
After that single scuffle of movement which followed Orcread's exit an electric tension had settled on the room— a tension that was subtly different from that which had just been broken. Kuhlmann's unemotional accents did not relieve it. Rather, they seemed to key on the tautness another notch; but the Saint did not appear to feel it. Cool, relaxed, serene as if he had been in a gathering of intimate friends, he sauntered forward a couple of steps and stood in front of the racketeer.
He knew that there was nothing he could do there. The odds were impossible. But he stood smiling quietly while Kuhlmann looked up into his face.
"You're a goot boy," Kuhlmann said. "You give us a liddle bit of trouble, und that is bad. But we cannot finish our talk here. So I think"—he swallowed a lump in his throat, and his voice broke—"I think you go outside und vait for us for a minute."
Quick hands grabbed the Saint's wrists and twisted him round, but he did not struggle. He was led to the door; and as he went out, Kuhlmann nodded, blinking, to two of the men who stood along the wall.
"You, Joe, und you, Maxie—give him der business. Und meet me here again aftervards."
Without a flicker of expression the two men detached themselves from the wall and followed the Saint out, their hands automatically feeling in their pockets. The door closed behind the cortege, and for a moment nobody moved.
And then Dutch Kuhlmann dragged out his large white handkerchief and dabbed with it at his eyes. A distinct sob sounded in the room; and the remaining gunmen glanced at each other with almost sheepish grins. Dutch Kuhlmann was crying.
* * *
The moon which had shed its light over the earlier hours of the evening, and which had germinated the romance of Mr. Bungstatter of Brooklyn, had disappeared. Clouds hung low between the earth and the stars, and the night nestled blackly over the city. A single booming note from the Metropolitan Tower announced the passing of an hour after midnight.
On the fringe of the town, sleep claimed honest men. In the Bronx and the nearest portions of Long Island, in Hoboken, Peekskill, and Poughkeepsie, families slept peacefully. In Brooklyn, Mr. Theodore Bungstatter slept in ecstatic bliss— and, it must be confessed, snored. And with the hard nozzle of Maxie's automatic grinding deep into his ribs Simon Templar was hurried across the pavement outside Charley's Place and into a waiting car.