Follow the Saint Read Online Free PDF

you had in your pocket this afternoon. I threw it into the car with
your other things when I picked you up, but we forgot it when
you got out. I’ve just found it. Guaranteed to cure indigestion, colic,
flatulence, constipa tion, venomous bile, spots before the eyes … I didn’t know you had so
many troubles, Claud.”
    “I
haven’t!” Teal roared defiantly. His stomach promptly performed
two complicated and unprecedented evolutions and made a liar of
him. He winced, and floundered. “I—I just happened to hear it
advertised on the radio, and then I saw another advertisement
in a shop window on the way home, so I thought I’d try some. I—I haven’t
been feeling very fit lately—— ”
    “Then
I certainly think you ought to try something,” said the Saint charitably.
“I’ll beetle over with your poison right away; and if I can
help out with a spot of massage, you only have to say the
word.”
    Mr Teal closed his eyes. Of all
the things he could think of which might
aggravate his miseries, a visit from the Saint at that time was the worst.
    “Thanks,”
he said with frantic earnestness, “but all I want now is to get some
sleep. Bring it over some other time, Saint.”
    Simon
reached thoughtfully for a cigarette.
    “Just
as you like, Claud. Shall we say the May Fair to morrow, at four
o’clock ?”
    “You
could send it round,” Teal said desperately. “Or just throw it away.
I can get some more. If it’s any bother.”
    “No
bother at all, dear old collywobble. Let’s call it a date. Tomorrow at
four—and we’ll have a cup of tea together….”
    The Saint laid the telephone
gently back on its bracket and replaced it on
the table beside him. His thumb flicked over the wheel of his lighter; and the tip of his cigarette kindled to a glow that matched the brightening gleam of
certainty in his blue eyes.
    He had
obtained all the information he wanted without pressing a single
conspicuous question. Mr Teal had bought his Miracle Tea on the way home—and Simon
knew that Mr Teal’s way home, across
Parliament Square and up Victoria Street,
was so rigidly established by years of unconscious habit that a blind man could almost have followed
it by tracing the groove which the
detective’s regulation boots must by
that time have worn along the pavement. Even if there were more than one chemist’s along that short trail with a
Miracle Tea advertisement in the window, the process of elimination could not take long… .
    Patricia
was watching him.
    She said:
“So what?”
    “So
we were right,” said the Saint; and his voice was lilting with
incorrigible magic. “Claud doesn’t give a damn about his tea. It doesn’t
mean a thing in his young life. He doesn’t care if he never sees it again. He
just bought it by a fluke,
and he doesn’t even know what sort of a fluke it was.”
    “Are
you sure?” asked Patricia cautiously. “If he just doesn’t
want you to suspect anything—— ”
    The Saint
shook his head.
    “I
know all Claud’s voices much too well. If he’d tried to get away with anything like
that, I should have heard it. And why should
he try ? I offered to bring it round at once, and he could have just said nothing and let me bring
it. Why should he take any risk at all
of something going wrong when he could
have had the package back in half an hour. Teal may look dumb sometimes,
but you can’t see him being so dumb as that.” Simon stood up, and his
smile was irresist ibly expectant.
“Come out into the wide world with me, darling, and let’s look for this shop where they sell miracles!”
    His energy
carried her off like a tide race; the deep purr of the Hirondel as he
drove it at fantastic speed to Parliament Square was in tune
with his mood. Why it should have happened again, like this, he didn’t
know; but it might as well have been this way as any other.
Whatever the way, it had been bound to happen. Destiny could never
leave him alone for long, and it must have been at least