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.