Free Saint in New York by Leslie Charteris Page B

this city who know
what big money looks like.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I thought I might get a game
somewhere.” Simon’s blue gaze held the bartender’s as steadily as the
other was watching him. “I want to play with Morrie Ualino.”
    The man wiped his cloth slowly across the
bar, drying off invisible
specks of moisture.
    “I don’t know anything. I have to ask the
boss.”
    He turned and went through a curtain at the
back of the bar; and while he was gone Simon finished his drink. The bluff and
the gamble went on. If anything went wrong at this stage it would be
highly unfortunate—what might happen later on was another matter. But the
Saint’s nerves were like ice. After some minutes the man came back.
    “Morrie Ualino don’t play tonight.
Papulos is playing. You want a game?”
    Simon did not move a muscle. Through Papulos
the trail went to Ualino, and he had never expected to get near
Ualino in the first jump. But if Ualino were not playing that night— if he were
engaged elsewhere—it was an added chance that the radio message
which Fernack had received might supply a reason. The azure
steel came and went in the Saint’s eyes, but all the bartender saw
was a disappointed shrug.
    “I didn’t come here to cut for pennies.
Who is this guy Papulos?”
    Toni’s soft brown eyes held an imperceptible
glint of con temptuous humour.
    “If you want to play big, I think he
will give you all you want. Afterwards you can meet Ualino. You want to go?”
    “Well, it might give me some practice. I
haven’t anything else
to do.”
    Toni emptied an ashtray and wiped it out. From
a distance of a few yards he would have seemed simply to be filling up the time
until another customer wanted him, without talking to anyone at all.
    “They’re at the Graylands Hotel—just up
the street on the other side. Suite 1713. Tell them Charley Quain sent
you.”
    “Okay.” Simon stood up, spreading a
bill on the counter. “And thanks.”
    “Good luck,” said Toni and watched
him go with eyes as gentle
as a deer’s.
    The Graylands Hotel lay just off Seventh
Avenue. It was one of those caravanserais which are always full and yet
always seem to be deserted, with the few guests who were visible hustling
furtively between the sanctity of their private rooms and the anonymity of the
street. Business executives detained at the office might well have stayed
there, but none of them would ever have given it as his address. It
had an air of rather forlorn splendour, like a blowzy woman in gold brocade, and in spite of the emptiness of its public rooms
there was a sup pressed atmosphere of
clandestine and irregular life teeming in
the uncharted cubicles above.
    The gilded elevator, operated by a pimply youth with a
precociously salacious air of being privy to all the irregularities that had
ever ridden in it, whisked Simon to the seven teenth
floor and decanted him into a dimly lighted corridor. He found Suite 1713 and knocked. After a brief
pause a key clicked over and the
portal opened eight inches. A pair of cold dispassionate eyes surveyed him slowly.
    “My name’s Simon,” said the Saint
He began to feel that he was admitting a lot of undesirable people to an easy
familiarity that evening, but the alias seemed as good as any, and certainly
preferable to such a fictitious name as, for instance, Wigglesnoot. Charley
Quain sent me around.”
    The eyes that studied him received the information as en thusiastically as two glass beads.
    “Simon, eh? From Denver?”
    “Detroit,” said the Saint.
“They call me Aces.”
    The guard’s head dropped through a
passionless half-inch which might have been taken for a nod. He
allowed the door to open wider.
    “Okay, Aces. We heard you were on your way. If you’re lookin’ for action I guess you can get it
here.”
    The Saint smiled and sauntered through. He found himself in a rather large foyer, formally furnished. At
the far end, two rooms gave off it on either side, and from