"Good God! — you haven't heard from him?"
Max Kemmler was surprised, to say the least of it.
"Yeah — he phoned me," he replied guardedly. "What's the matter with you? Is he the wheels in this city?"
The croupier acknowledged, in his own idiom, that Simon Templar was the wheels. He was a tall, hard-faced man, with iron-grey hair, bushy grey eyebrows and moustache, and the curried complexion of a rather decayed retired major; and he knew much more about the Saint that a law-abiding member of the community should have known. He gave Max Kemmler all the information he wanted, but Max was not greatly impressed.
"What you mean is he's a kind of hijacker, is he? Hard-boiled, huh? I didn't know you'd got any racket like that over here. And he figures I ought to pay him for 'protection.' That's funny!" Max Kemmler was grimly amused. "Well, I'd like to see him try it."
"He's tried a lot of things like that and got away with them, Mr. Kemmler," said the croupier awkwardly.
Max turned down one corner of his mouth.
"Yeah? So have I. I guess I'm pretty tough myself, what I mean."
He had a reminder of the conversation the next morning, when a plump and sleepy-looking man called and introduced himself as Chief Inspector Teal.
"I hear you've had a warning from the Saint, Kemmler — one of our men heard you talking about it last night."