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measure of Kestry's defeat, and the value of its future repercussions, were
plain in the heavy viciousness with which he turned back to his captives.
"Let's get 'em out of here, Dan," he said.
He grasped Varetti's arm in a ham-like fist and yanked him off the couch,
while his partner performed a similar service for Walsh. Cokey let out a yelp
as the steel bracelets cut into his wrists.
"Shut up, you," growled Bonacci. "That ain't nothing to what you're gonna
get."
He shoved the two men roughly towards the door.
Kestry took a last pointless look around, and followed. How-evcr, he turned
to favor the Saint with one lingering farewell glower.
"It still don't seem right to be goin' out of here without you," he said; and
the Saint smiled at him sweetly.
"You must drop in again," he murmured, "and get used to it."
He waited until the door had slammed after the departing populace, and then
he picked up the telephone and called Centre Street.
Inspector Fernack must have gabbled his evidence and rushed back to his
office like a broker returning from lunch during a boom, for he was on the
wire as soon as Simon asked for him.
"This is the Voice of Experience, Henry," he said. "Your beef trust has just
oozed out, taking Cokey and Ricco with them. I think they'll make noises
eventually, so you can take your boots off and get ready to hear them
vocalise. Now while you and the boys are getting cosy with them, I've got one
final little job to do. So if you'll excuse me . . ."
"Hey, wait a minute!" The anguish in Fernack's voice was almost frantic. "If
you've got any further information, you ought to "
"My dear Henry, if I waited around to do all the things I ought to, I'd be
wasting as much energy as you spend on your setting-up exercises."
"I don't do any setting-up exercises!"
"Then you certainly ought to. That fine manly figure of yours must be
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preserved. Now I really must get busy, because you've got plenty on your hands
as it is, and I don't want you to have another murder to worry about."
"You let me worry about my own worrying," Fernack said grimly. "All I want to
know is what else you know now."
"You didn't get the significance of the lock?"
"What lock?"
"Never mind," said the Saint. "It will dawn on you one of these days. Now I
really must be going."
"Butwhere?" wailed the detective.
The Saint smiled, and blew a slender smoke-ring through a teasing pause.
"I'll leave a note for you at the desk here. You climb on to your little
bicycle and come and pick it up."
"Why not give it to me now?"
"Because I want to be there first. Because I want a little time to set the
stage. And because cops rush in where Saints are smart enough to wait. Be
patient, Henry. Everything will be under control ... I hope. I'm just trying
to make it easy for you. And please, when you get there, do me the favor of
listening for a minute before you thunder in. I don't want to be interrupted
in the middle of a tender passage. . . . Goodbye now."
He hung up in time to disconnect a jolt of verbal heat and explosion that
might have threatened the New York Telephone Company with a general fusing of
wires between the Murray Hill and Spring exchanges, scribbled rapidly on a
sheet of paper, and sealed it into an envelope and wrote Fernack's name on it
while he waited for the service elevator.
"Get this to the desk, will you?" he said to the operator as they rode down.
"To be called for."
The timekeeper let him out, and he emerged from the side door on to
Fortyfourth Street, walking east. In a few strides he turned into the Seymour
Hotel, and walked quickly up the corridor towards the lobby. There he stopped
for a minute, waiting to see if anyone entered after him. It was always
possible that Kestry might have brooded enough to wait for him, or even that
the ungodly themselves might have another representative lurking around. But
no one followed him in within a reasonable time; and that part of the chase
was won. For the Seymour ran cleat through the block, and he went out on to
Fortyfifth Street and stepped into a passing taxi with reasonable assurance
that he was alone.
The clock in his head ran with sidereal detachment and precision, and on that
spidery tightrope of timing his brain balanced as lightly as a shadow.
He had had to put everything together very quickly and coldly; and yet it
seemed to him now that he had always known just where each person who mattered
would be, from instant to instant, as though they had been linked to him by
threads of extrasensory perception. But he had to be right. He had to be right
now, or else he had thrown away all the completeness of what he had tried to
do.
And with that sharp sting of awareness in his mind he walked into the lobby
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of the hotel where he had left Barbara Sinclair.
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