For a long moment Hoppy strove painfully to determine the relation of the driver’s digital ornamentation to his identity.
“Ya can’t never tell about pansies,” he concluded despondently.
The car swung east to Fifth Avenue and then south, moving leisurely with the traffic.
The Saint was in no hurry. He wanted a breathing spell to summarise the situation.
So far, two attempts had been made to murder him since the affair in the dressing-room the previous night. An emotional thug might have found the Saint’s insolence sufficiently provocative to inspire an urgent desire for his death; and certainly a blow in the solar plexus would be regarded in some circles as an act of war, and worthy of an act of reprisal. But somehow the Saint could not conceive of Dr Spangler, even with that kind of provocation, taking the risk of a murder charge. For Spangler was neither emotional nor reckless. He was an operator who had learned from experience to be thrifty of risks, to allow as much a margin of safety as possible to every enterprise. An attempt to bribe Nelson was in line with that, but the only motive Spangler was likely to consider strong enough to justify an attempt at murder would be the fear that the Saint’s interference might affect the Angel’s chance of taking the title.
Would Spangler, even with a guilty conscience, have taken alarm so precipitately? Would he be afraid, on such scanty evidence, that the Saint had discovered the secret of the Angel’s victories?... For that matter, was there any secret more sinister than common chicanery and corruption? So far, he could only conjecture.
“And that,” said the Saint, “leaves us just one more call to make.”
“Who we gonna see now, boss?” asked Mr Uniatz, settling philosophically into the social whirl.
“That depends on who’s home.”
Simon swung the car towards Gramercy Park, and presently slowed down as he turned into a secluded side street lined with grey stone houses as conservatively old-fashioned in their way as the Riverside Drive brownstones were in theirs, but with a polished elegance that bespoke substantially higher rents.