"You did pass a bum check, didn't you?" Simon mentioned.
"Yeah, but only because I had to, because Blatt didn't come through with my dough and I was broke. I wouldn't have squawked just for that, though. I've taken raps before. I've stood for a lot of things in my time, but I don't want any part of this." Vaschetti puffed at his cigarette shakily, and moved about the room with short jerky strides. "Not murder. No, sir. I don't want to sit in the hot seat, or dance on the end of a rope, or whatever they do to you in this state."
Simon kindled a cigarette for himself, and propped himself on the window sill.
"Why should anyone do things like that to you? Or were you one of the three fire-bugs?"
"No, sir. But that Kinglake might find out any time that I'd seen Blatt and been asking for him at the Blue Goose, and what chance would I have then? I don't want Blatt gunning for me either, and I guess he might be if he thought I might put the finger on him. I'd rather squeal first, and then if they know it's too late to shut my mouth maybe they won't bother with me."
"I see your point," said the Saint thoughtfully. "Suppose you sit down and tell me about your life as a courier."
Vaschetti attempted a laugh that didn't come off, licked his lips nervously, and sat down on a creaky chair.
"I met Fritz Kuhn when I was doing time in Dannernora. We got on pretty well, and he said if I wanted to make some money when I got out I should see him. Well, I did. I got this job carrying packages from place to place."
"How did that work?"
"Well, for instance, I'd have a package to deliver to Mr Smith at the Station Hotel in Baltimore. I'd go there and ask for him. Maybe he'd be out of town. I'd hang around until he showed up — sometimes I'd have to wait for a week and more. Then I'd give Smith the package; and he'd pay me my dough and my expenses, and maybe give me another package to take to Mr Robinson at Macfarland's Grill in Miami. Any time there wasn't anything more for me, I'd go back to Jersey and start again."
"These Smiths and Robinsons weren't anything to do with the joints you met them in?"
"Mostly not. I'd just ask a bartender if he knew Mr Smith, and he'd point out Mr Smith. Or sometimes I'd be hanging around and Mr Robinson would come in and say he was Robinson and had anyone been asking for him."
"How much did you get for this?"
"Seventy-five a week and all my expenses."
"You got paid by the Smiths and Robinsons as you went 'along."
"Yeah."
"You knew that this was obviously connected with something illegal."
Vaschetti licked his lips again and nodded.
"Sure, sure. It had to be things they didn't want to send through the mail, or they didn't want to chance having opened by the wrong person."
"You knew it was more than that. You knew it was for the Bund, and so it was probably no good for this country."
"What the hell? I'm an Italian, and I got brothers in Italy. And I never did like the goddam British. This was before the war got here. So what?"
"So you still went on after Pearl Harbor."
Vaschetti swallowed, and his eyes took another of those fluttering whirls around the room.
"Yeah, I went on. I was in it then, and it didn't seem to make much difference. Not at first. Besides, I still thought Roosevelt and the Jews were getting us in. I was scared, too. I was scared what the Axis people here might do to me if I tried to quit. But I got a lot more curious."
"So I started opening these packages. I was taking one to Schenectady at the time. I steamed it open, and inside there was four smaller envelopes addressed to people in Schenectady. But they had wax seals on them with swastikas and things, and I was afraid it might show if I tried to open them. So I put them back in the big envelope and delivered it like I was told to. Sometimes I had big parcels to carry, but I didn't dare monkey with them. I still had to eat, and I didn't want no trouble either… But then I got more scared of the FBI and what'd happen to me if I got caught. Now there's this murder, and I'm through. I been a crook all my life, but I don't want no federal raps and I don't want to go to the chair."
Simon's sapphire blue eyes studied him dispassionately through a slowly rising veil of smoke. There was nothing much to question or decipher about the psychology of Signor Vaschetti — or not about those facets which held any interest for the Saint. It was really nothing but a microcosmic outline of Signor Mussolini. He was just a small-time goon who had climbed on to a promising bandwagon, and now that the ride ahead looked bumpy he was anxious to climb off.
There could hardly be any doubt that he was telling the truth — he was too plainly preoccupied with the integrity of his own skin to have had much energy to spare on embroidery or invention.
"It's a fine story," said the Saint lackadaisically. "But where does it get us with Matson?"
"Like you wrote in the paper, he must have been paid to do some sabotage. He didn't do it, but he kept the money and took a powder. But you can't run out on that outfit. That's why I'm talking to you. They traced him here and gave him the business."
"That is about how I doped it out," Simon said with thistledown satire. "But what are you adding besides the applause?"
"I'm telling you, I took one of those letters to Matson in St Louis. That proves he was being paid by the Germans, and that proves you're right and Kinglake is a horse's—"
"But you made this delivery in St Louis. Why are you here in Galveston now?"
Vaschetti sucked on the stub of his cigarette, and dropped it on the floor and trod on it.
"That's on account of Blatt. I came here from El Paso two weeks ago with a package to give to Blatt at the Blue Goose. I didn't know Matson was coming here. I didn't know anything about Matson, except he told me he was working for Quenco. Blatt only paid me up to date and kept me hanging around waiting for some letters he said he'd be sending out. I ran up a pretty big bill at the hotel, and Blatt never came around and I couldn't reach him. That's why I flew the kite."
"Did you meet any of my other friends?"
"I met Weinbach. He's a fat kraut with a red face and red hair and the palest eyes you ever saw."
Simon placed the word-picture alongside the description that Port Arthur Jones had given him of the stranger who had been inquiring about him at the Alamo House, and it matched very well. So that was Weinbach.
And that left Maris, whom nobody seemed to have seen at all.
The Saint went on staring at the twitching representative of the Roman Empire.
"You could have told Kinglake this," he said.
"Yeah. And I'd be here as an accessory to murder, if that sourpussed bastard didn't try to make out I was all three murderers in one. No, sir. It's yours now. Gimme a break, and I'll write it down and sign it. I'm not going to give any of these dumb cops a free promotion. I'd rather you showed 'em up instead. Then I'll feel better about the spot I'm in."
Simon spun out his smoke in a few moments' motionless contemplation.
"If it was some time ago that you met Matson in St Louis," he said, "how come you connected all this up?"
"I remembered." The other's eyes shifted craftily. "And I got notes. I didn't dare play with those inside envelopes, but I been writing down the names of people. And the places I went to in different' cities. A fellow never knows when some things will come in handy. You can have that list too, if you take care of me, and I don't care what you do with it. None of those bastards tried to do anything for me when I got in this jam, so the hell with them."
The Saint barely showed polite interest; yet he felt so close to one of the real things that he had come to Galveston for that he was conscious of rationing his own breathing.