"I'm on my way," he announced; and Chris's face fell.
"What, so soon?"
Simon nodded. He dropped a bill on the sideboard.
"You still broil the best steaks in the world, Chris," he said with a smile. "I'll be back for another."
He went down the hall, humming a little tune. On his way he stopped by the telephone and picked up the directory. His finger ran down a long column of N's and came to rest below the name in the newspaper story that had held so much interest for him. He made a mental note of the address, patted the side pocket of his coat for the reassuring bulge of his automatic, and strolled on into the street
The clock in the ornate tower of the old Jefferson Market Court was striking nine when his cab deposited him on the corner of Tenth Street and Greenwich. He stood at the curb and watched the taxi disappear round the next corner; and then he settled his hat and walked a few steps west on Tenth Street to pick up the number of the nearest house.
His destination was farther on. Still humming the same gentle breath of a tune, he continued his westward stroll with his hands in his pockets and a cigarette slanting up between his lips, with the same lithe, easy stride as he had gone down Lexington Avenue to his dinner — and with precisely the same philosophy. Only on this journey his feeling of pleasant exhilaration had quickened itself by the exact voltage of the difference between a gesture of bravado and a definite mission. He had no plan of action, but neither had the Saint any reverence for plans. He went forth, as he had done so often in the past, with nothing but a sublime faith that the gods of all good buccaneers would provide. And there was the loaded automatic in his pocket, and the ivory-hilted throwing knife strapped to his left forearm under his sleeve, ready to his hand in case the gods should overdo their generosity. . . .
In a few minutes he had found the number he wanted. The house was of the Dutch colonial type, with its roots planted firmly in the late Victorian age. Its broad flat façade of red brick trimmed in white was unassuming enough; but it had a smug solidity reminiscent of the ancient Dutch burghers who had first shown their business acumen in the New World by purchasing the island from the Indians for twenty-four dollars and a jug of corn whisky — Simon had sometimes wondered how the local apostles of Temperance had ever brought themselves to inhabit a city that was tainted from its earliest conception with the Devil's Brew. It was an interesting metaphysical speculation which had nothing whatsoever to do with the point of his presence there, and he abandoned it reluctantly in favour of the appealing potentialities of a narrow alley which he spotted on one side of the building.
His leisurely stroll past the house had given him plenty of time to assimilate a few other important details. Lights showed from the heavily curtained windows on the second floor, and the gloom at the far end of the alley was broken by a haze of diffused light. Knowing something about the particular style of architecture in question, Simon felt reason-ably sure that the last-mentioned light came from the library of the house. The illuminations indicated that someone was at home; and from the black sedan parked at the curb, with a low number on its license plate and the official city seal affixed above it, the Saint was entitled to deduce that the home lover was the gentleman with whom he was seeking earnest converse.
He turned back from the corner and retraced his tracks; and although to a casual eye his gait would have seemed just as lazy and nonchalant as before, there was a more elastic spring to his tread, a fettered swiftness to his movements, a razor-edged awareness in the blue eyes that scanned the sidewalks, which had not been there when he first set out.
The legend painted in neat white letters at the opening of the alley proclaimed it the Trade Entrance; but Simon felt democratic. He turned into it without hesitation. The passage was barely three feet wide, bounded at one side by the wall of the building and at the other by a high board fence. As the Saint advanced, the light from the rear became brighter. He pressed himself dose to the darker shadows along the wall of the house and went on.
A blacker oblong of shadow in the wall ahead of him indicated a doorway. He passed it in one long stride and pulled up short at the end of the alley against an ornamental picket fence. For a moment he paused there, silent and motionless as a statue. His muscles were relaxed and calm; but every nerve was alert, linked up in an uncanny half-animal coordination of his senses which seemed to bend every faculty of his being to the aid of the one he was using. To his listening ears came the purling of water; and as a faint breeze stirred the foliage ahead of him it wafted to his arched nostrils the faint, delicate odour of lilacs.
A garden beyond, deduced the Saint. The dim light which he had seen from the street came from directly above him now, shining out of a tier of windows at the rear of the house. He watched the irregular rectangles of light printed on the grass beyond and saw them move, shifting their pattern with every breath of thin air. "Draperies at open windows," he added to his deductions and smiled invisibly in the darkness.
He swung a long, immaculately trousered leg over the picket fence, and a second later planted its mate beside it. His eyes had long since accustomed themselves to the gloom like a cat's, and the light from the windows above was more than sufficient to give him his bearings. In one swift survey he took in the enclosed garden plot, made out the fountain and arbour at the far end, and saw that the high board fence, after encircling the yard, terminated flush against the far side of the house. The geography couldn't have suited him better if it had been laid out to his own specifications.
He listened again, for one brief second, glanced at the casement above him, and padded across the garden to the far fence wall. The top was innocent of broken glass or other similar discouragements for the amateur housebreaker. Flexing the muscles of his thighs, Simon leaped upwards, and with a masterly blend of the techniques of a second-story man and a tight-rope walker gained the top of the fence.
From this precarious perch he surveyed the situation. again and found no fault with it. Its simplicity was almost puerile. The open windows through which the light shone were long French casements reaching down to within a foot of the fence level; and from where he stood it was an easy step across to the nearest sill. Simon took the step with blithe agility and an unclouded conscience.
* * *
It is possible that even in these disillusioned days there may survive a sprinkling of guileless souls whose visions of the private life of a Tammany judge have not been tainted by the cynicism of their time—a few virginal, unsullied minds that would have pictured the dispenser of their justice at this hour poring dutifully over one of the legal tomes that lined the walls of his library, or, possibly, in lighter mood, gambolling affectionately on the floor with his small curly-headed son.
Simon Templar, it must be confessed, was not one of these. The pristine luminance of his childhood faith had suffered too many shocks since the last day when he believed that the problems of overpopulation could be solved by a scientific extermination of storks. But it must also be admitted that he had never in his most optimistic hours expected to wedge himself straight into an orchestra stall for a scene of domestic recreation like the one which confronted him.
Barely two yards away from him, Judge Wallis Nather, in the by no means meagre flesh, was engaged in thumbing over a voluptuous roll of golden-backed bills whose dimension made even Simon Templar stare.
The tally evidently proving satisfactory, His Honour placed the pile of bills on the glass-topped desk before him and patted it lovingly into a thick, orderly oblong. Then he retrieved a sheet of paper from beneath a jade paperweight and glanced over the few lines written on it. With an exhalation of breath that could almost be described as a snort, he crumpled the slip of paper into a ball and dropped it into the wastebasket beside him; and then he picked up the pile of bills again and ruffled the edges with his thumb, watching them as if their crisp rustle transmuted itself in his ears into the strains of some supernal symphony.