"I don't mean what you're thinkin'," Fernack said heavily. "Luckner is goin' to be taken care of. Even if he only gets a life term on Alcatraz it'll be somethin'. I know you did a few things for us a coupla years back that we couldn't do ourselves on account of the way all the politicians were holding onto us. But that's all changed now. We got a different setup. Luckner isn't goin' to the chair now because the politicians of a coupla years back let him loose; but anybody who tries to pull any of that stuff now isn't goin' to find it so easy to get away with. That goes for you too. Just stick around and have a good time, and you won t be interfered with. Go back to your old line, and you and me will be fightin' again. With this difference — that you won't have the excuse that you had the last time."
The Saint grinned lazily.
"Okay," he murmured, "I'll remember it."
His tone was so innocent and docile that Fernack glared at him for a moment suspiciously; but the Saint laughed at him and took him out to lunch and talked to him so engagingly about the most harmless topics that that momentary flash of uneasiness had faded from the detective's mind by the time they parted. Which was exactly what the Saint meant it to do. The Saint never asked for superfluous trouble — quite enough of it came his way in the normal course of events without encouraging him to invite extra donations without good reason.
As a matter of fact, the luck of Lucky Joe Luckner might well have slipped away into the background of his memory and remained there permanently. He had really come back to America for a holiday, with no thoughts of crime in his head. For a few days, at least, the bright lights of Broadway would provide all the excitement he needed; and after that he would move on somewhere else.
He had thought no more about it a couple of days later when he saw a face that he remembered coming out of a travel agency on Fifth Avenue. The girl was so intent on hurrying through the crowd that she might not have noticed him, but he caught her armas she went by and turned her round.
"Hello, Cora," he drawled.
She looked at him with a queer mixture of fear and defiance that surprised him. The look had vanished a moment after she recognized him, but it remained in his memory with the beginning of a question mark after it. He kept his hand on her arm.
"Why — hello, Saint!"
He smiled.