"You know the game," said the Saint appreciatively, and for the first time she looked him full in the eyes.
"I have to," she said. "The G-men have been combing the town for Marty for the last three months."
Simon raised his eyebrows without emotion.
"What did he do? Did he take up kidnapping, or is he another of these income-tax defaulters?"
She looked at him queerly for a moment, and when she laughed there was a sharp note of strain in the sound.
"The trouble is he knows too much about income tax. He'd be the star witness against Luckner if they could get his evidence."
"And he doesn't want to give it?"
"He doesn't want to die," said the girl brutally.
Simon put his feet up on the spare scat opposite him and smoked placidly. Coincidence was a queer thing, but he had ceased to marvel at its complexities. Once again, through that chance encounter, lie found the subject of Lucky Joe Luckner thrust into his mind, and the repetition gave it enough weight to make it stay there. But he was wise enough not to press the girl for any more details during the drive. In due course of time he would know all that he wanted to know; and he was prepared to wait. He would see Marty himself.
The cab stopped outside a dingy brick house between Ninth and Tenth avenues. A half-dozen grimy guttersnipes were playing raucous baseball in the street. The windows in the front of the house were clouded with the accumulated dirt of ages. Inside the front door, the dark hall was paved with a strip of threadbare linoleum, and Simon felt the slithery gloss of thick dust under his finger tips when he put his hand on the banister as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. His nose wrinkled in response to a faint pervasive odour of ancient cooking. And a slight frown creased itself into his forehead. He was still a long way from having all his questions answered. To find Marty O'Connor in a place like this, even as a hideout, was a mystery in itself — Marty who had always been such a swell dresser with a highly developed taste for spring mattresses and Turkey carpets and flashy decoration.