Simon lighted a fresh cigarette to steady his nerves—he was surprised to find how much they had been shaken. He went out and listened again.
"Simon? This is Fay."
The Saint's heart leaped, and his hand tightened on the receiver; he was pressing it hard against his ear as if he were afraid of missing a word. She had no need to tell him who it was—the cadences of her voice would ring in his memory for the rest of his life.
"Yes," he said. "What's the news?"
"I haven't been able to get him yet. I've tried all the usual channels. I'm still trying. He doesn't seem to be around. He may get one of my messages at any time, or try to get through to me on his own. I don't know. I'll keep on all night if I have to. Where will you be?"
"I'll stay here," said the Saint
"Can't you get some rest?" she asked—and he knew that he would never, never again hear such soft magic in a voice.
"If we don't find him before morning," he said gently, "I shall have all the time in the world to rest."
He went back slowly into the kitchen. Chris took one look at his face and stood up.
"There's a bed upstairs for you, Simon. Why don't you lie down for a bit?"
Simon spread out his hands.
"Who'll answer the telephone?"
"I'll hear it," Chris assured him convincingly. "The least little thing wakes me up. Don't worry. Directly that telephone rings, I'll call you."
The Saint hesitated. He was terribly tired, and there was no point in squandering his waning reserve of strength. There was nothing that he himself could do until the vital message came through from Fay Edwards. His helplessness, the futile inaction of it, maddened him; but there was no answer to the fact. The rest might clear his mind, restore part of his body, freshen his brain and nerves so that he would not bungle his last chance as he had bungled so much of late. Everything, in the end, would hang on his own quickness and judgment; he knew that if he failed he would have to go back to Fernack, squaring the account by the same code which had given him this one fighting break. ...
Before he had mustered the unwilling instinct to protest, he had been shepherded upstairs, his coat taken from him, his tie loosened. Once on the bed, sleep came astoundingly. His weariness had reached the point where even the dizzy whirligig of his mind could not stave off the healing fogs of unconsciousness any longer.
When he woke up there was a brilliant New York morning in the translucent sky, and Chris was standing beside his bed.
"Your call's just come, Simon."
The Saint nodded and looked at his watch. It was just before eight o'clock. He rolled out of bed and pushed back his disordered hair, and as he did so felt the burning temperature of his forehead. His shoulder was stiffened and aching. Yet he felt better and stronger than he had been before his sleep.
"There'll be some coffee and breakfast for you as soon as you're ready," Chris told him.
Simon smiled and stumbled downstairs to the telephone.
"I'm glad you've had a rest," said the girl's voice.
The Saint's heart was beating in a rhythmic palpitation which he could feel against his ribs. His mouth was dry and hot, and the emptiness was trying to struggle back into his stomach.
"It's done me good," he said. "Give me anything to fight, and I'll lick it. What do you know, Fay?"
"Can you be at the Vandrick National Bank on Fifth Avenue at nine? I think you'll find what you want."
His heart seemed to stand still for a second.
"I'll be there," he said.
"I had to park the car," she went on. "There were too many cops looking for it after last night Can you fix something else?"
"I'll see what I can do."
"Au revoir, Simon," she whispered; and he hung up the receiver and went through into the kitchen to a new day.
There was the good rich smell of breakfast in the air. A pot of coffee bubbled on the table, and Chris was frying eggs and bacon at the big range. The door to the backyard stood open, and through it floated the crisp invigorating tang of the Atlantic, sweeping away the last mustiness of stale smoke and wine. Simon felt magnificently hungry.
He shaved with Chris's razor, clumsily left-handed, and washed at the sink. The impact of cold water freshened him, swept away the trailing cobwebs of fatigue and heaviness. He wasn't dead yet. Inevitably, yet gradually because of the frightful hammering it had sustained, his system was working towards recovery; the resilience of his superb physique and dynamic health was turning the slow balance against misfortune. The slight feeling of hollowness in his head, the consequence of over-tiredness and fever, was no more than a minor discomfort. He ate hugely, thinking over the problem of securing the car which Fay Edwards had asked for; and suddenly a name and number flashed up from the dim hinterlands of reminiscence—the name and number of the garrulous taxi driver who had driven him away from the scene of Mr. Papulos's Waterloo. He got up and went to the telephone, and admitted himself lucky to find the man at breakfast
"This is the Saint, Sebastian," he said. "Didn't you say I could call you if I had any use for you?"
He heard the driver's gasp of amazement, and then the eager response.
"Sure! Anyt'ing ya like, pal. What's it woit?"
"Twice as much as you're asking," replied the Saint succinctly. "Meet me on the corner of Lexington and 44th in fifteen minutes."
He hung up and returned to his coffee and a cigarette. He knew that he was taking a risk—the possibility of the chauffeur having had a share in the betrayal of his hide-out at the Waldorf Astoria was not completely disposed of, and the prospect of a substantial reward might be a temptation to treachery in any case—but it was the only solution Simon could think of.
Nevertheless the Saint's mouth was set in a grim line when he said good-bye to Chris and walked along 45th Street to Lexington Avenue. He walked slowly and kept his left hand in his pocket with the fingers fastened round the comforting butt of Fernack's revolver. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his appearance, no reason for anybody to notice him—-he was still betting on the inadequacy of newspaper photographs and the blindness of the average unobservant man, the only two advantages which had been faultlessly loyal to him from the beginning. And if there was a hint of fever in the brightness of the steel-blue eyes that raked the sidewalks watchfully as he sauntered down the block to the rendezvous at 44th Street, it subtracted nothing from their unswerving vigilance.
But he saw nothing that he should not have seen—no signs of a collection of large men lounging against lampposts or kicking their heels in shop doorways, no suspiciously crawling cars. The morning life of Lexington Avenue flowed normally on and was not concerned with him. Thus far the breaks were with him. Then a familiar voice hailed him, and he stopped in his tracks.
"Hi-yah, pal!"
The Saint looked round and saw the cab he had ordered parked at the corner. And in the broad grin of the driver were no grounds for a solid belief that he was a police stool pigeon or a scout of the Big Fellow's.
"Better get inside quick, before anyone sees ya, pal," he advised hoarsely; and the Saint nodded and stepped in. The chauffeur twisted round to continue the conversation through the communicating window. "Where ja wanna go dis time?"
"The Vandrick National Bank on Fifth Avenue," said the Saint.
The driver started up his engine and hauled the cab out into the stream of traffic.
"Chees!" he said in some awe, at the first crosstown traffic light "Ya don't t'ink we can take dat joint wit' only two guns?"
"I hadn't thought about it," Simon confessed mildly.
The driver seemed disappointed in spite of his initial skepticism.
"I figgered dat might be okay for a guy like you, wit' me helpin' ya," he said. "Still, maybe ya ain't feelin' quite yourself yet. I hoid ja got taken for a ride last night—I was t'inkin' I shouldn't be seein' ya for a long while."