Featuring the Saint Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodded.
    “I’ve been landed with the samples,” he said. “And I’ll bet Mr. Lemuel’s locked his door. He never forgets to do that, however drunk he is. And we’d have to knock the place down to wake him up now-and I’d lose my job if we did.”
    “I’ve got a master key, sir,” said the landlord helpfully. “You could slip in with that and change the bags, and he wouldn’t know anything about it.”
    Simon stared.
    “You’re a blinkin’ marvel, George,” he murmured. “You are, really.”
    With the host’s assistance he entered Mr. Lemuel’s room, and emerged with the key of the door in his pocket and one of Lemuel’s bags in his hand. Mr. Lemuel snored rhythmically through it all.
    “Thanks, George,” said the Saint, returning the master key. “Breakfast at ten, and in bed, I think… .”
    Then he took the bag into his own room, and opened it without much difficulty.
    Its weight, when he had lifted it out of the aëroplane, had told him not to expect it to contain clothes; but the most superficially interesting thing about it was that Mr. Lemuel had not possessed it when he left England, and it was simply as a result of intensive pondering over that fact that the Saint had arrived at the scheme that he was then carrying out. And, in view of his hypothesis, and Mr. Lemuel’s reaction to the magic word “Croydon,” it cannot be said that the Saint was wildly surprised when he found what the bag actually held. But he was very, very interested, nevertheless.
    There were rows and rows of neatly packed square tins, plain and unlabelled. Fishing one out, the Saint gently detached the strip of adhesive tape which sealed it, and prised off the lid. He came to a white, crystalline powder … but that had been in his mind when he opened the tin. Almost perfunctorily, he took a tiny pinch of the powder between his finger and thumb, and laid it on his tongue; and the Saintly smile tightened a little.
    Then he sat back on his heels, lighted a cigarette, and regarded his catch thoughtfully.
    “You’re a clever boy, Francis,” he murmured.
    He meditated for some time, humming under his breath, apparently quite unmoved. But actually his brain was seething.
    It would have been quite easy to dispose of the contents of the bag. It would have been equally easy to dispose of Mr. Lemuel. For a while the Saint toyed with the second idea. A strong solution of the contents of one of the tins, for instance, administered with the hypodermic syringe which Simon had in his valise … Then he shook his head.
    “Try to remember, Old Man,” he apostrophized himself, “that you are a business organization. And you’re not at all sure that Uncle Francis has left you anything in his will.”
    The scheme which he ultimately decided upon was simplicity itself-so far as it went. It depended solely upon the state of the village baker’s stock.
    Simon left the Blue Dragon stealthily, and returned an hour later considerably laden.
    He was busy for some hours after that, but he replaced Lemuel’s grip looking as if it had not been touched, opening the door with Lemuel’s own key.
    It is quite easy to lock a door from the outside and leave the key in the lock on the inside-if you know the trick. You tie a string to the end of a pencil, slip the pencil through the hole in the key, and pass the string underneath the door. A pull on the string turns the key; and the pencil drops out, and can be pulled away under the door.
    And after that the Saint slithered into his pajamas and rolled into bed as the first grayness of dawn lightened the sky outside his bedroom window, and slept like a child.
    In the morning they flew on to Hanworth, where Lemuel’s car waited to take them back to London.
    The Saint was dropped at Piccadilly Circus; and he walked without hesitation into the Piccadilly Hotel. Settling himself at a table within, he drew a sheet of the hotel’s notepaper towards him, and devoted himself with loving care to the