Book one

The king of the beggars

Chapter one

“Sins of commission,” said Simon Templar darkly, “are very bad for the victim. But sins of omission are usually worse for the criminal.”

The only perceptible response was a faint ping as a BB shot ricochetted from an imitation Sèvres vase which had been thoughtfully placed in a corner. Hoppy Uniatz shrugged shoulders that would not have disgraced a gorilla, popped another BB in his mouth, and expelled it in the wake of its predecessor, with better aim. This time the ping was followed by a faint rattle.

“Bull’s-eye,” he announced proudly. “I’m getting better.”

“That,” said the Saint, “depends on what field of endeavour you’re talking about.”

Mr Uniatz felt no offence. His speed and accuracy on the draw might be highly regarded in some circles, but he had never claimed to compete in tournaments of subtlety. Anything the Saint said was okay with him.

He had not yet even wondered why they had stayed in Chicago for three days without any disclosed objective. In the dim abyss of what must perfunctorily be called Hoppy’s mind was some vague idea that they were hiding out, though he could not quite understand why. Murder, arson, and burglary had not figured in the Saint’s recent activities, which in itself was an unusual circumstance.

However, Mr Uniatz had spent some time in Chicago before, and he still found it difficult to walk along State Street without instinctively ducking whenever he saw brass buttons. If Simon Templar chose to remain in this hotel suite, there were probably reasons. Hoppy’s only objection was that he would have liked to kill time at the burlesque show three blocks south, but since this didn’t seem to be in the cards, he had bought himself a bagful of BB shot and was taking a simple childlike pleasure in practising oral marksmanship.

Meanwhile the Saint sat by the window with a pair of high-powered binoculars in his hand, staring from time to time through the lenses at the street below. Mr Uniatz did not understand this either, but he had no wish to seem uncooperative on that account.

“Boss,” he said, “maybe I should take a toin wit’ de peepers.”

Simon lowered the glasses again.

“And just what would you look for?” he inquired interestedly.

“I dunno, boss,” confessed Mr Uniatz. “But I could look.”

“You’re such a help to me,” said the Saint.

Strange emotions chased themselves across Hoppy’s unprepossessing face, not unlike those of a man who has been butted in the midriff by an invisible goat. His mouth hung open, and his small eyes had a stricken expression.

The Saint had a momentary qualm of conscience. Perhaps his sarcasm had been unduly harsh. He hastened to soften the affront to an unprecedented sensitivity.

“No kidding,” he said. “I’m going to have plenty for you to do, soon enough.”

“Boss,” Mr Uniatz said anxiously, “I think I swallered a BB.”

Simon sighed.

“I don’t think it’ll hurt you. Anyone who’s eaten as much canned heat as you have shouldn’t worry about the ingestion of a tiny globule of lead.”

“Yeah,” Hoppy said blankly. “Well, watch me make another bull’s-eye.”

Reassured, he popped another BB in his mouth and expelled it at the vase.

Simon picked up the binoculars again. Outside, the traffic hummed past dimly, ten stories below. From the distance came the muted roar of the Elevated. For several seconds he focused on the street intently.

Then he said, “You might as well keep up with the play. We were talking about sins of omission, and have you noticed that woman across the street, near the alley?”

“De witch? Chees, what a bag,” Mr Uniatz said. “Sure I seen her. I drop a coin in her cup every time I go by.” He grimaced. “When I get dat old, I hope I drop dead foist.”

“So she’s a professional beggar. But she’s only been there two days. There was a blind man on that corner before. What do you think happened to him?”

“Maybe he ain’t so blind, at dat. He gets a load of her and beats it.”

The Saint shook his head.

“She’s been committing sins, Hoppy.”

“At her age?”

“Sins of omission. She’s never on her corner at night. And she wasn’t there Saturday afternoon.”

“Okay. Maybe she gets tired.”

“Beggars don’t get tired at the most profitable homes,” Simon said. “It’s the theatre crowds that pay off. I’m wondering why she’s never around when she’d have a chance to get some real moola.”

Hoppy had a flash of perspicacity.

“Is dat why we been hanging around her?”

“I’ve been waiting for something. I don’t know what, but... I think this is it!”

The Saint was suddenly standing up, dropping the binoculars into a chair which seemed to have ejected him with a spontaneous convulsion of its springs. He was out of the apartment before Hoppy could decide what to do with the BB in his mouth.

This problem, proved far too difficult for snap judgment. Hoppy was still rolling the shot on his tongue when he joined the Saint at the elevator.

“This is the first time I’ve regretted being ten stories up,” Simon said, leaning heavily on the button. His eyes were no longer lazy; they were blue flames. “Hoppy, I’m going to walk down. You take the elevator. If you win the race, find out why that beggar woman just went up the alley with a man who looked exactly as if he had a gun in her back.”

“But—” Mr Uniatz began, and closed his mouth as the Saint whipped out of sight through a door marked “STAIRWAY.” He made sure that his Betsy was with him, in Betsy’s comfortable leather nest under his coat. But he still kept the last BB on his tongue. A guy never knew when he might need ammunition.

Chapter two

Simon Templar turned into the alley and was instantly alone in improbable isolation. Two blocks away, on Michigan Boulevard, sleek cars were tooling along their traffic lanes, and people were strolling on the sidewalks, safe and secure, because dozens of casual eyes were flicking past them. But as he turned the corner that world dropped into another dimension, forcing remembrance of itself only by the roar of traffic coming in from behind him and before him, yet at the same time made even more remote by the knowledge that the sound of a shot would probably go unheard in Chicago’s noisy morning song. And in the backwater where he had landed there was nothing but the old woman, the gunman, and himself.

The man was backed up against a wall, rubbing his eyes furiously with his left hand, while his right waved a heavy automatic jerkily before him. The beggar woman was holding a gun, too, but her finger was not on the trigger. She seemed to be trying to get close enough to grab the automatic from the man’s grip. Her rags flapped grotesquely as she jigged about with surprising agility for a woman who had previously seemed to be crippled by a combination of rheumatism, arthritis, and senility.

A whiff of something sharp and acrid stung the Saint’s nostrils. He recognised ammonia, and instantly realised why the gunman was scrubbing so frantically at his eyes. But the advantage of an ammonia gun is to disarm the enemy through surprise. The cursing gentleman with the automatic was not yet disarmed, and at any moment he was just as likely to start shooting at random.

The Saint stopped running, side-stepped silently, and came on again on his toes. He took two quick steps forward and brought the edge of his hand down sharply on the gunman’s wrist, and the automatic clattered to the ground. The Saint’s swooping movement was almost continuous, and when he straightened he had the butt of the automatic cuddled into his palm. He listened for a moment.

“What language!” he remarked reprovingly. “You’re liable to bite your tongue, Junior.”

He batted the gunman lightly on the chin with his automatic, and the resultant inarticulate mouthings seemed to prove that the Saint’s warning had been justified.

The beggar woman looked like a puppet whose strings had stopped moving. Her dirt-rimmed eyes glared at the Saint in indecision, and her puffy features twisted unpleasantly. And yet as the Saint gazed at her he felt the stirring of a preposterous intuition.

“What’s eatin’ de old witch?” Mr Uniatz demanded from somewhere in the background. “No ya don’t!” He deftly intercepted the woman as she made a dart for safety. “Not wit’out ya broomstick ya don’t make no getaway. Gimme dat rod.”

The Saint finished frisking the gunman. Then he stepped back a pace and regarded the beggar woman again, with a small crinkle forming between his brows.

Hoppy said, “Hey, what kind of a heater is dis?”

“It squirts ammonia,” Simon said. “Junior here got a whiff of it in his eyes. I wonder—” He glanced along the alley. “Perhaps at this point we should adjourn. This alley would be perfect for a quiet murder, but it isn’t private enough for a confessional, and I want Junior to open his heart to me.”

Junior profanely denied any intention of making Simon Templar his confidant. The Saint rapped him across the head again and said, “Quiet. We’ll be bosom pals before you know it.” He turned his clear blue gaze on the beggar woman, who had subsided into sullen quiet. “My hotel’s across the street,” he said. “Shall we have an audition there?”

For an instant her eyes flashed across his, startlingly bright and alert. The thing Simon had already sensed — the incongruous vitality under those shapeless rags and puffy features — was unmistakable for that fleeting moment before the mask dropped again.

“I dunno what this is all about, mister. I don’t know nothing. I got my own troubles...”

Simon said, “You’ll be back in time for the performance.”

Her eyes searched his face. When she spoke, her voice had changed. It was deeper, more resonant.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll take a chance.”

“The service elevator is indicated, I think. Hoppy, if you’ll escort the lady, I’ll follow with Junior.”

“Okay, boss.”

Simon Templar captured the gunman’s arm and bent it deftly upward.

“You’re going to be a good boy and come quietly, aren’t you?”

“Like hell,” Junior said.

Simon applied a little more torque.

“I’m not an unreasonable man,” he remarked. “I’ll give you a choice. Either stop wriggling and keep your mouth shut, or let me break your arm and give you something to yell about. I should warn you that I have a weakness for compound fractures. But don’t feel that I’m trying to influence you. You’re perfectly free to take your pick.”

Chapter three

Junior, by request, sat cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, his unclean hands in his lap.

“Should we tie him up?” Hoppy asked.

The Saint had a better idea. He wound a piece of wire several times around Junior’s thumbs and twisted the ends tight.

“There,” he said, stepping back and beaming down at Junior. “He’s safe as houses. Besides, we may need the rope later to hang him.”

The captive remained silent, his thin, pinched face sulkily intent on the carpet. Aside from the fact that he rather strikingly resembled a rat, he had few distinguishing characteristics.

“All right,” the Saint said. “Keep an eye on him, Hoppy. Kick his protruding teeth in if he tries to get up.”

He moved to a side table and did things lovingly with ice and bourbon. But his eyes kept returning to the beggar woman.

She had come alive. There was no other word for it. Even under the patched and threadbare dress her body had shed thirty years. And her eyes were no longer dull.

She said, “You’re the Saint, aren’t you?”

Simon said, “You’re one up on me. I don’t know your name... yet.”

“I recognised you. That’s why I came along.”

“What will you have?”

She nodded at the glass he was holding and Simon moved across the room and gave her the drink. Then he knew that he had been right. His fingers touched hers, and what he felt was proof enough. Her hand was firm and yet soft, the skin like satin.

She had done a beautiful job of make-up. The Saint could appreciate it. Quite frankly, he stared. And through the muddy blotched surface and cunningly drawn wrinkles her real face began to come into view, the clear, clean sculpture that even disfiguring rolls of wax padding in mouth and nostrils could not entirely hide.

She looked away.

The Saint did not. Presently he murmured,

“Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retired;

Bid her come forth—”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Simon Templar’s low voice went on,

“Suffer herself to be desired.

And not blush so to be admired.”

Hoppy said, “Huh?”

It was a young woman’s laughter that sounded then. And it was not the cracked voice of the beggar woman that said, “Mr Templar, I’m beginning to understand the reasons for your reputation. How did you know I was an actress? You didn’t recognise me?”

The Saint replaced his drink, gave Hoppy a bottle to himself, and sat down, stretching his long legs.

“I just realised why you were never at your corner during theatre hours. A real beggar would have been. That’s when the money flows fastest. Saturday afternoon you weren’t there either — a matinée, I suppose? But I didn’t recognise you, no.”

She said, “I’m Monica Varing.”

The Saint raised his brows. Varing was one of the great names, as well-known in theatrical circles as he was himself in his own peculiar field. Drew, Barrymore, Terry, Varing — they were all names that had blazed across the marquees of the world’s capitals. For ten years Monica Varing had been that rare thing, an actress — not merely a star, but a follower of the tradition that has come down through the London Globe from the Greek amphitheatres. More than that, if he remembered other pictures of her, she was the most unchanged beauty of the modern stage. She nodded towards the man squatting on the rug and said, “I don’t know whether I should say any more in front of him.”

“In case he gets away — or talks, you mean?” Simon suggested, his blue eyes faintly amused. “You needn’t worry about that. Junior’s not going to talk indiscriminately from now on. We can manage that, can’t we, Hoppy?”

Hoppy said broodingly, “I never hoid nobody talk after dey was dropped in de lake wit’ deir feet in a sack of cement.”

“Listen!” Junior yelped. “You can’t do this to me!”

“Why not?” the Saint asked, and in the face of that logical query Junior was silent.

Monica Varing said, “I never thought this would happen. I set a trap, with myself as the bait—”

“Start at the beginning,” Simon interrupted. “With your predecessor, say. What happened to him?”

Monica said, “John Irvine. He was blind. He was a stage manager in vaudeville — where a lot of us started. He was blinded ten years ago, and got a begging permit. Whenever I played Chicago, I’d look him up and put something in his cup. It was a — well, a libation, in the classic sense. But it wasn’t only that. No matter how long it would be between runs, John would always recognise my footsteps. He’d say hello and wish me luck. On opening night I always gave him a hundred dollars. I wasn’t the only one, either. Plenty of other troupers were big enough to remember.”

“Last Wednesday,” Simon went on for her, “a bum named John Irvine was found shot to death in that alley where we met. He’d been beaten up first... He left a widow and children, didn’t he?”

“Three children,” Monica said.

The Saint looked at Junior, and his face was not friendly.

“Quite a few beggars have been beaten up in Chicago in the last few weeks. The ones who were able to talk said the same thing. Something about a mysterious character called the King of the Beggars.”

“The beggars have to pay off a percentage of their earnings to His Majesty,” Monica said bitterly. “Or else they’re beaten up.

The gang made an example of Irvine. To frighten the others. It just happened to be him; it might have been any beggar. The police — well, why should they make a big thing of it?”

“Why should you?” Simon asked.

She met his impersonal gaze no less directly.

“You may think I’m crazy, but it meant something to me. I knew the cops should have taken care of it, but I knew just as well they wouldn’t. There weren’t any headlines in it, and no civic committees were going to raise hell if they let it drop... I’m a damned good actress and I know make-up — the kind that’ll even get by in daylight. I thought I might get a lead on something. I’d rather catch that King of the Beggars than star in another hit on Broadway.”

“Me too,” said the Saint. “Not that anyone ever offered me Broadway.”

But there it was — the Robin Hood touch that would undoubtedly be the death of him some day... but literally. The whisper of a new racket which couldn’t help reaching his hypersensitive ears, tuned as they were to every fresh stirring in the endless ferment of ungodliness. Something big and ugly, but preying on small and helpless people... A penny-ante racket, until there were enough pennies... So you wanna be a beggar, pal? Okay, but you gotta pay off, pal. You gotta have protection, pal. We can make sure you don’t have no competition on your beat, see? But you gotta join the Protective Association, pal. You gotta kick in your dues. Otherwise you dunno what might happen. You might get run off the streets; you might even get hurt bad, pal. We’re all for you, but you gotta play ball...

... And somewhere at the top, as always, some smooth and bloated spider grew fat on the leechings from the little uncoordinated jerks who paid their tax to Fear.

The Saint said, “That’s why I’ve been sitting in this joint for days. That’s why I watched you, until Junior hustled you into the alley. I’m just trying to move a step up the ladder.”

Monica Varing said, “I’m going to find out—”

“You’ve got courage,” Simon told her. “We know that. But this job needs more than that. Let’s say — a certain skill in unusual fields. For example, the trick of getting people to confide in you.” He turned to his silent guest. “Who’s the King, Junior?”

Junior said rude things.

“You see?” said the Saint. “The atmosphere isn’t right. But just wait till I have a heart-to-heart talk with him. I’ll even bribe him, if necessary. I’ll introduce him to a good dentist. I know he can’t enjoy being mistaken for a rat every time he passes an exterminator service. Besides, I’m sure he can’t chew his food properly. Bad digestion probably soured his temper in youth and led him into a life of crime. We can fix that. We take him to a dentist, and just ask him whether he’ll have it with or without Novocaine. Now if you call me tomorrow—”

Monica Varing, to her astonishment, found that she was at the door.

“Wait a minute!” she protested. “I started this—”

“And a nice job you did,” said the Saint sincerely. “But Junior’s vocabulary may shock you when we really go to work on him. And I promised you wouldn’t be late for your curtain. But I’ll report progress — do you get up for lunch?”

He closed the door after her, and came back to stand thoughtfully over Junior.

“Chees,” said Hoppy, giving voice to a profound conclusion. “Who’d ever tink dat old sack was an actress?”

“She may surprise you next time you see her,” said the Saint, “even if she doesn’t use fans in her act... She’s given me an idea, too. Hoppy, I feel Thespian urges.”

Mr Uniatz appeared shocked. Luckily, before he could speak, Simon set his mind at ease.

“I’m going to be an actor. I’m going to play the role of a beggar. After all, I can be bait just as well as Monica Varing... First, though, we’d better put Junior on ice.”

“Dat’s gonna be tough, boss,” Hoppy said dubiously. “Won’t de cement stores be shut?”

“Then we’ll have to try something else,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Do you know where we can park Junior till they open? A warm, cosy oubliette?”

Hoppy considered.

“Lemme see. I useta know a guy called Sammy de Leg.”

“Then by all means pick up the phone and call Samuel. Ask him if he’d like to have a house guest.”

“Listen!” the latter burst out. “I don’t know nothing about this beggar racket! That dame chased me up the alley—”

“With your gun in her back,” Simon agreed. “I saw it. You need protection. If beggar women keep chasing you up alleys, you won’t be safe till you’re locked up where they can’t get at you. Hoppy and I feel we must take care of you.”

He finished his drink contentedly while Mr Uniatz completed a cryptic conversation.

“It’s all set, boss,” Hoppy announced finally. “We can go dere right now.”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere!” Junior cried desperately.

“How you do talk,” said the Saint.

Chapter four

Two miles north of Wheaton, Simon Templar turned his car, at Hoppy’s direction, into a driveway bordered by high hedges.

Even the Saint’s fortitude was slightly shaken by the rambling lunatic monstrosity of a house that squatted like Tom o’ Bedlam in the midst of well-kept lawns. Simon was no great authority on architecture, but he felt that the man who had designed this excrescence should have been shot, preferably in the cradle. It had once been a mansion; there was a carriage house, converted into a garage, and servants’ quarters hung precariously on the structure’s grey scaling back, like a laggard extra hump on a camel. Gambrels, cupolas, balconies, railings, warts, wens, and minor scrofulous scraps were all over the house. It was a fine example of the corniest period in unfunctional design.

“Dis is it,” Hoppy said proudly. “De classiest jernt in de county, when Capone had it.”

Simon brought the car to a halt, and smiled encouragingly upon the troubled passenger beside him.

“Don’t let the rococo touch scare you, Junior,” he said. “I’ve seen mortuaries that looked like night clubs, too — Unpack him, Hoppy.”

Mr Uniatz, the other half of the sandwich whose ham was Junior, had already emerged. He jerked the rug from Junior’s knees and deftly unbuckled the strap that had immobilised the gunman’s ankles.

“C’mon,” he said. “I seen lotsa better guys dan you walk in here, even if dey was carried out.”

The rickety front porch creaked under them. Hoppy rang the bell, and almost instantly something resembling a beer barrel covered with a thick pelt of black fur rolled out and began beating Hoppy violently about the ears. Simon watched in amazement. Yells, curses, and jovial threats curdled the air. Mr Uniatz, a horrible grin splitting his anthropoid face, locked in a death struggle with his opponent, and in this manner they revolved across the threshold and vanished into the house. A muffled bellowing leaked out behind them.

“Don’t leave us,” the Saint said, reaching out to collar Junior. “You wouldn’t get anywhere.”

He lugged his burden through the doorway, where he found that the brawl had broken up, and Hoppy and the beer barrel were lumbering around each other, cursing furiously.

“Is this Queensberry rules, or would anyone like a knife?” Simon asked interestedly.

A voice boomed from the beer barrel.

“I be Gat-damned,” it said. “So you’re this here Saint character? What kinda mob you runnin’ round with now, Uniatz? Hey, mitt me, bud. Any friend o’ Hoppy’s a pal o’ mine, chum.”

“Meet Sammy de Leg,” Hoppy said unnecessarily.

“What a grip,” Sammy yelled, extricating his paw from Simon’s palm and shaking it vigorously. “Come on in. Have a beer.”

With shouts and cries he fell upon Mr Uniatz and bore him beyond a beaded portière. The Saint followed at a discreet distance, propelling his Junior ahead of him.

There was a huge white refrigerator set up in one corner of an old-fashioned living-room, and Sammy the Leg was already extracting bottles and handing them around. He paused before Junior.

“This is the guy you want put away?” he asked. “Well, he don’t get none. Siddown an’ shaddup.”

He thrust Junior violently into the depths of a chair and made faces at him.

The Saint relaxed and drank beer. Its cold, catnip flavour tingled pleasantly at the back of his throat. He felt agreeably at home. Simon Templar had a feeling that he was going to like Sammy the Leg very much indeed. The man had a certain directness that was refreshing, once you decided to sidetrack Emily Post.

“For a pal,” Sammy said, waving his bottle, “anything in the whole wide world, as far south as Indianapolis. You don’t need to say a word. Since I bought this here place, I’m my own boss. Nobody bothers me. I can keep a guy under wraps here, but indefinitely.”

The Saint leaned back more comfortably. He nodded towards his prisoner.

“Ever seen Junior before?”

Sammy’s small eyes dug tiny holes in the specimen. “Uh-uh. He’s imported. Not one of the Chi boys. Though I could be wrong, at that, I guess. Where’d you blow from, bub?

“You go to hell,” Junior said unoriginally, but his voice cracked.

Sammy the Leg bellowed with laughter. “Tells me to go to hell! What a joker. Ja hear him?”

“A character,” the Saint said. “I’ve an idea he’s working for another character. Somebody called the King of the Beggars.”

“Look, pal,” Sammy said cautiously, “I don’t know from nothin’. I just rent rooms. Now I’m gonna take a walk. When you want me, ring that bell over there by you, Saint. Then I’ll put your chum under wraps for you. There’s more beer in the icebox.”

He grinned, and waddled out.

Simon listened to the tinkling of the beaded portière as it fell back into place. It jingled again as Sammy the Leg thrust his face back through it.

“Get that there electric broiler down from that shelf an’ stick his feet in it,” he advised. “It works well.”

He vanished; and the Saint gazed speculatively at the indicated shelf.

“Not a bad idea,” he drawled. “Hoppy, what goes with Sammy?”

“Huh?” Hoppy said. “He went out.”

“Yes, I noticed. What I want to know is whether you’re sure Sammy the Leg is levelling with us.”

“Lissen,” Hoppy said, almost indignantly, “Sammy an’ me was in Joliet togedder.”

He made this statement more devastatingly than any Harvard graduate identifying a brother alumnus, and in the face of such credentials Simon relaxed.

“In that case,” he said, “go ahead and plug in the broiler.”

Junior jumped out of his chair. The Saint did not rise. His foot shot forward, and Junior sat down again abruptly.

“My God,” Junior gasped. “You wouldn’t d... do...”

Simon’s eyebrows were an angelic arch.

“Why not? Prosthetic devices are being improved all the time. You should be able to get along beautifully with an artificial leg. Maybe you’ll only need a foot, though. It’ll depend on how soon you start talking.”

Junior said frantically, “I’m talking right now. Keep that damn thing away from me. I’m talking, see? For God’s sake ask me some questions.”

“Hold it, Hoppy,” the Saint said. “You might leave the broiler plugged in, though. Our friend can look at it to cover awkward lulls in the conversation. There’s only one question you need to answer, though, Junior. Who’s the King?”

“Believe me,” Junior said earnestly, “I wish to God I knew. I’d spill it. After that I’d start travelling. For my health. But I never seen the King.”

He was telling the truth. Simon knew that; he was a connoisseur in such matters. Junior was obviously afraid of the King’s power, but he was more afraid of the Saint. After all, Simon Templar was only a few feet from him, and the King of the Beggars was not — at the moment.

Simon said, “I’d have been surprised if you’d said anything different, this early in the story. Still, there must be a few precious pearls of information nestling in your head. I’d love to hear them. Start where you first heard of the King.”

Junior was talking before the Saint had finished. He was, it seemed, a native of San Francisco. Travelling for his health a few months ago, he had landed in Chicago and naturally gravitated to the lower depths. There he had been approached by one of the King’s ambassadors, who had been intrigued by Junior’s obviously criminal appearance.

“But I never seen the King,” Junior repeated. “Frankie’s my contact.”

“Frankie who?”

“Frankie Weiss. I’m just a collector, that’s all. I make the rounds and collect the percentage off the beggars. I hand the dough over to Frankie an’ he pays me off. That’s all I got to do with it.”

“A beautiful, literate, well-motivated story,” the Saint said. “Except one point. You forgot to say why you took Miss Varing up an alley.”

“She was a new one. She hadn’t joined our... She told me to go to hell. People what don’t want to kick in, we sorta convince ’em.” Junior’s voice trailed off weakly.

“A beating usually does the trick, I imagine,” Simon said very lightly. “Did you by any chance help to convince a beggar named John Irvine?”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with that. Honest to God!”

“Then who did?”

Junior swallowed.

“It could have been Frankie.”

There was an almost inaudible ping, and Junior clapped a hand to his cheek with a startled expression, as if he had been sharply stung by some unsuspected insect.

“It should have been in de eye,” Hoppy Uniatz said enigmatically. “Ya lousy stool-pigeon.”

“Don’t discourage him yet,” said the Saint. “Tell me, Junior, what happens when a beggar does agree to kick in?”

“Well, then he joins the Society.”

“Society?”

“The Metropolitan Benevolent Society... Then I take him to Frankie. But that’s all I got to do with it. Frankie’s waiting somewhere in his car and drives off with the guy. It ain’t my business after that. I don’t ask questions.”

“Where do you meet Frankie?”

“It’s different all the time. I was to see him next Wednesday night, at eight o’clock — corner of State and Adams.”

“I hope he won’t be too disappointed when you don’t show up,” said the Saint gently.

Junior gulped.

“Now lissen,” he pleaded. “I told you everything. I run off at the mouth—”

“You certainly do,” Simon conceded. “What worries me is that it may be a habit with you. And I certainly don’t want you going to the King, or Frankie Weiss, and running off some more about this little tête-à-tête of ours. So while we decide whether we’re going to kill you, we’ll just have to keep you out of circulation... Can you get Samuel back, Hoppy?”

Mr Uniatz solved this problem by exposing his tonsils in a stentorian bellow which made the chandelier vibrate. In a few seconds Sammy the Leg came in, beaming hospitably.

“All through?” he shouted softly. “Oh — I forgot. This is Fingers Schultz. You remember Fingers, Hoppy?”

“Sure,” Hoppy said. “Where is he?”

Sammy stepped aside, revealing a small, colourless man who blinked blankly at the Saint. Hoppy said, “Hi, Fingers.”

Mr Schultz nodded and kept on blinking.

Sammy the Leg said, “Can’t run a joint like this alone. Fingers gives me a hand.” He looked startled. “Hey. I made a joke. Fingers — hand. It ain’t bad.”

Nobody laughed. Simon said, “Will you keep Junior on ice for a few days?”

“It’ll be a pleasure,” Sammy said. “At twenty-five a day, that’ll be one seventy-five. I always get a week in advance.” He kept his palm extended. “Board and room,” he explained. “Cut rate to you, though.”

Simon opened his wallet and laid several bills on the waiting paw.

“Thanks,” Sammy said. “If you want to stop keeping him, lemme know, an’ maybe we can take care of that, too.”

“I’ll let you know,” Simon assured him gravely. “Come along, Hoppy.”

He had a last glimpse of Junior’s white, staring face as they went out.

Chapter five

He met her for lunch at the Pump Room, and almost failed to recognise her as the head-waiter ushered her to his booth. Half-remembered pictures of her were too posed and static, and the last time he had seen her across the footlights was a year or more ago, in a costume piece with powdered wig and baroque skirt.

In the flesh, and modern dress, she was not less beautiful but different. And certainly a thousand times different again from the character part in which he had first met her.

She crossed the room towards him with splendid assurance in every motion. Someone had spent a great deal of loving thought upon the cut of her Scotch tweed suit, which managed deftly to emphasise breath-taking lines beneath the tweed. The Saint permitted himself to dwell admiringly upon the exquisite long curve that swept from waist to knee with every long, sure step, and on other unmasculine curves beneath the tailored jacket. The time-honoured banalities of greeting seemed more than ordinarily empty as he rose to let her slide into the seat beside him.

He ordered cocktails for them both, and then there was a little silence while Monica Varing looked at him, and Simon leaned back and allowed himself the ordinarily quite expansive pleasure of gazing his fill upon Monica Varing. That wonderful mutable face was never twice quite the same, and the warm vitality that radiated from it gave her a transcendent vividness which critics had hymned and artists tried in vain to capture. Three generations of actresses named Varing had carried that inner illumination, the Saint thought; it must have come down from mother to daughter like a burning flame handed along the unbroken line.

She looked world-weary today — and eager as a schoolgirl beneath the weariness. She was exciting to look at and exciting to inhale; the perfume that floated across the table was just elusive enough to tempt Simon to edge closer and closer to identify it.

“Well, Mr Templar,” she said at last, her voice pitched so low that it ran a velvety finger along Simon’s nerves and made them tingle, “do you always stare like that?”

“Always, when there’s anything like you to stare at,” he said shamelessly.

She made a face that still didn’t reject the obvious compliment entirely.

“Give me a cigarette,” she said, “and tell me what I really want to hear.”

As he offered his pack and a light he thought it all out again.

He knew quite well that the old, wise course would have been to avoid Monica Varing entirely. Monica was used to a starring role. She had been the centre of her own stage long enough to feel the limelight was hers by right, and her essay at detection in beggar garb proved her resourceful and determined, if not strictly sensible. She was unlikely to sit quiet and let the Saint take over her part without wanting to share in the fun — and the King played for keeps. There would be no coming out for smiling bows after the curtains fell on a performance before the King of the Beggars.

The Saint’s logic told him all this. But the impatience to see her again, and without disguise, had been stronger than any logic. And now that she was here, and all her real loveliness within inches of him, logic became almost meaningless.

“There really isn’t much to tell.” he tried to hedge.

“What happened last night?” Monica demanded, leaning forward distractingly and clasping long coral-tipped fingers on the table, “Remember, this was my party before you crashed it.”

“I had the impression it was open to the public,” he said. “I just asked myself in to help an old woman. I was watching before that, and I’m going to have to watch some more. I want to see what men are on the board. The King’s got himself protected very thoroughly. Getting close to him is liable to be dangerous.”

“You can’t leave me out. I want to do something, Saint. I had a reason for getting into this business, if you haven’t forgotten.”

“You’ll have your chance. I don’t know yet where I’m going to need you most.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her and his eyes brightened with an interestingly irrelevant tangent to that idea, but Monica was not to be diverted.

“Keep that wicked look out of your eyes,” she said, “and stick to the subject. What did you find out from Junior?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid.”

He told her just what he had learned; holding back nothing but Sammy the Leg’s address. There was nothing much else to withhold.

“I think Junior came clean — as clean as he could,” he concluded. “The King wouldn’t last long if any little jerk like Junior could put the finger on him. The only thing Junior may have weaselled on is how much he really had to do with the Irvine killing. We might burn that out of him, but it wouldn’t stand up in court. So maybe we’ll have to kill him anyway, just to make sure.”

His tone was casually serious enough to make her shiver.

“Then we might get further if I went out and played beggar again,” she said, but the Saint shook his head.

“I hate to criticise your performance, but I think the part is going to have to be played another way. And that’s a way I wouldn’t let you risk.”

It took three days. For Frankie Weiss did not appear at his rendezvous with Junior on Wednesday night, and, after the Saint had waited for an hour, he began to feel a familiar tingling sensation at the roots of his hair. The move had been taken away from him. The best he could hope was that Junior’s disappearance from his usual haunts had been reported without making Frankie suspect anything more than that Junior had skipped town — with some of the take.

But there had to be other agents than Junior, and they would still be operating, and that was what Simon’s plan was based on.

In the evenings he became a beggar. It took an elaborate make-up to disguise the fact that Monica Varing would have needed to beg for anything, but for him it was easier. A few skilful lines to put ten years on his face, a slack vacancy of expression, a pair of dark glasses, and he was half-dressed for the part. An old suit, picked up at a Halstead Street pawnshop, a white cane, a battered hat, a tin cup and a sheaf of pencils, and a few smears of grime artfully applied to his face — for a blind man cannot use a mirror — and he was ready to pass any scrutiny. Hoppy lounged by at intervals to check with him, and continued his practice in the art of spitting BBs. He found it more satisfactory now to work with living targets, as he strolled along the streets, and his aim was improving prodigiously.

And then there were lunches with Monica Varing, and superbly wasted afternoons, and late suppers after the theatre; and quite naturally and in no time at all it became accepted that it must be lunch again tomorrow and supper again that night, and the same again the day after tomorrow and the day after that.

So three days went by much faster than they sound, too fast, it seemed, sometimes; and while they talked a lot about the King of Beggars, a very different community of interest began to supersede him as the principal link between them.

It was Mrs Laura Wingate who brought the Saint luck. Or perhaps it was Stephen Elliott, though the grey-haired philanthropist was not the one who dropped a coin in Simon’s cup.

“You poor dear man,” a treacly voice said sympathetically. “I always feel so sorry for the blind. Here.”

She was a woman out of a Mary Petty drawing, protruding fore and aft, with several powdered chins and a look of determined charity. The man was a nonentity beside her, spare and white-haired and silent, his gaze fixed abstractedly on the far distances and his fingers fumbling with the watch-chain stretched across his vest.

“Thank you,” the Saint mumbled. “God bless you, ma’am.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” the treacly voice said, and, startlingly, giggled. “I always feel I must give to the poor unfortunates.”

“What?” The man let go of his watch chain. “Laura, we’ll be late.”

“Oh, dear. Of course—”

She went on, her ridiculously high heels clicking busily and helping to exaggerate the undulant protrusion of her behind.

Hoppy Uniatz, coming by on one of his visits just then, leaned against the wall by the Saint and craned to peer into the cup.

“A lousy dime,” he observed disgustedly. “An’ I could get ten grand right around de corner for dem rocks she’s wearin’.”

“It’s the spirit that counts,” said the Saint. “Didn’t you recognise her?”

“She ain’t anudder of dem actresses, is she?”

“No. But she doesn’t do all her charity with dimes. That’s Mrs Laura Wingate. I’ve seen her in the papers lately. She’s been backing Stephen Elliott — the abstracted gentleman you just saw.”

“What’s his racket?”

“Founding missions and homes for the poor. Philanthropy... Take a walk, Hoppy,” the Saint said abruptly, in the same low tone, and Mr Uniatz’s eyelids flickered. But he did not look around. With a grunt he reached for a coin, dropped it into the tin cup, and moved away.

“God bless you,” the Saint said, more loudly now. Another man stood in front of him. He was tall, bitter faced, sharply dressed. Pale blond hair showed under an expensive hat. A hairline moustache accentuated the thin lines of the down-curved mouth.

Simon intoned, “Help a poor blind man... Buy a pencil?”

The man said, “I want to talk to you.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

Simon nodded.

“Yes, sir. A friend told me this was a good corner — and the man who had it died just lately—”

“That’s right,” the clipped, harsh voice said. “He died, sure enough. Know why he died?”

“No, sir.”

“He wasn’t smart. That’s why he died. Maybe you’re smarter. Think so?”

“I... don’t quite understand.”

“I’m telling you. Ever hear of the Metropolitan Benevolent Society?”

Simon moved his head slowly, with the helpless searching motion of the blind.

“I’m new in town,” he whined. “Nobody told—”

“The head guy is the King of the Beggars.” It sounded unreal in the mechanical hubbub of the Chicago street. It belonged in the time of François Villon, or in the lands of the Arabian Nights. Yet the fantastic title came easily from the thin, twisted lips of the blond man, but without even the superficial glamour of those periods. In terms of today it was as coldly sinister as a levelled gun-barrel. Simon had a moment’s fastidious, cat-like withdrawal from that momentary evil, but it was purely an inward motion. To all appearances he was still the same — a blind beggar, a little frightened now, and very unsure of himself.

Even his voice was high-pitched and hesitant.

“I’ve... heard of him. Yes, sir. I’ve heard of him.”

The blond man said, “Well, the King sent me especially to invite you to join the Society.”

“But suppose I don’t—”

“Suit yourself. The guy who had this corner before you didn’t want to join, either. So?”

The Saint said nothing. Presently, very slowly, he nodded.

“Smart boy,” the blond man said. “I’ll pick you up at ten tonight, right here.”

“Yes, sir,” Simon Templar whispered.

The blond man went away.

Chapter six

“Dat was Frankie,” Mr Uniatz announced a few minutes later. “He ain’t changed much.”

“Frankie himself, eh?” Simon smiled. “Well, we’re moving at last. Frankie is going to initiate me into the Metropolitan Benevolent Society, and it’s just possible that I might get an introduction to the King.”

“An’ den we give him de woiks, huh?”

“You know, Hoppy, I’ve never committed regicide.” For a brief second the blind-beggar face showed the same lawless grin that had heralded the end of more than one particularly obnoxious career. “It might be a new sensation... But it’s not going to be so easy.”

“If I get next to him wit’ my Betsy—”

“The trouble is, you weren’t invited. And it might look strange if I showed up with an escort. This time, anyway, your job is going to be to Lurk.”

He gave more detailed instructions.