Free Saint in New York by Leslie Charteris

Valcross waited patiently for the exposition
that had to come, humouring the Saint with the air of flabbergasted perplexity
that was expected of him. Simon carried his drink to an armchair,
relaxed into it, lighted a cigarette, and inhaled luxuriously, all in a
theatrical silence.
    “Thank God the humble Players’ can be
bought here for twenty cents,” he remarked at length. “Your
American concoctions are a sin against nicotine, Bill. I always thought the Spaniards
smoked the worst cigarettes in the world; but I had to come here to find
out that tobacco could be toasted, boiled, fried, impregnated with menthol,
ground into a loose powder, enclosed in a tube of blotting paper, and
still unloaded on an unsuspecting public.”
    Valcross smiled.
    “If that’s all you mean to tell me, I’ll
go back to my book,” he said; and Simon relented.
    “I was thinking it over on my way
home,” he concluded, at the end of his story, “and I’m coming to
the conclusion that there must be something in this riding business. In fact,
I’m going to be taken for a ride myself.”
    Valcross shook his head.
    “I shouldn’t advise it,” he said.
“The experience is often fatal.”
    “Not to me,” said the Saint.
“I shall tell you more about that presently, Bill—the more I think
about it, the more it seems like the most promising avenue at this moment. But while
you’re pouring me out another drink, I wish you’d think of a reason why anyone
should be so heartless as to kidnap a child who was already suffering more
than her share of the world’s woes with a name like Viola Inselheim.”
    Valcross picked up a telephone directory and
scratched his head over it.
    “Sutton Place, you said?” He looked
through the book, found aplace, and deposited the open volume on
Simon’s knee. Simon glanced over the Inselheims and located a certain Ezekiel of
that tribe whose address was in Sutton Place. “I wondered if that
would be the man,” Valcross said.
    The name meant nothing in Simon Templar’s
hierarchy.
    “Who is he?”
    “Zeke Inselheim? He’s one of the richest
brokers in New York City.”
    Simon closed the book.
    “So that’s why Nather is staying home
tonight!”
    He took the glass that Valcross refilled for
him, and smoked in silence. The reason for the all-car call, and
Fernack’s pertur bation, became plainer. And the idea of carrying on the
night in the same spirit as he had begun it appealed to him with increasing
voluptuousness. Presently he finished his drink and stood up.
    “Would you like to order me some coffee?
I think I’ll be going out again soon.”
    Valcross looked at him steadily.
    “You’ve done a lot today. Couldn’t you
take a rest?”
    “Would you have taken a rest if you were Zeke
Inselheim?” Simon asked. “I’d
rather like to be taken for that ride tonight.”
    He was back in the living room in ten minutes,
fresh and spruce from a cold shower, with his dark hair smoothly brushed and
his gay blue eyes as bright and clear as a summer morning. His shirt
was open at the neck as he had slipped it on when he emerged from the bathroom,
and the left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow. He was adjusting the straps of
a curious kind of sheath that lay snugly along his left forearm: the
exquisitely carved ivory hilt of the knife it carried lay close to his wrist,
where his sleeve would just cover it when it was rolled down.
    Valcross poured the coffee and watched him.
There was a dynamic power in that sinewy frame, a sense of
magnificent recklessness and vital pride, that was flamboyantly inspiring.
    “If I were twenty years younger,”
Valcross said quietly, “I’d be going with you.”
    Simon laughed.
    “If there were four more of you, it
wouldn’t make any dif ference.” He turned his arm over,
displaying the sheathed knife for a moment before he rolled down his
sleeve. “Belle and I will do all that has to be done on this
journey.”
    In ten minutes more he was in a taxi, riding
westwards