Follow the Saint Read Online Free PDF Page B

a week since anything
exciting had happened to him. But now that would be all put right, and
there would be trouble and adventure and mystery again, and with a little
luck some boodle at the end; that was all that mattered. Somewhere in
this delirious business of Miracle Tea and Bank of England notes there must be
crime and dark conspiracies and all manner of mis chief—he couldn’t
surmise yet what kind of racket could subsist on trading handfuls of bank notes
for half-crowns, but it was even harder to imagine anything like that in a
line of legitimate business, so some racket or other it must be, and new
rackets could never be altogether dull. He parked the car illegally on
the corner of Victoria Street, and got out.
    “Let’s
walk,” he said.
    He took
Patricia’s arm and strolled with her up the street; and as they went he
burbled exuberantly.
    “Maybe
it’s an eccentric millionaire who suffered from acute dyspepsia all his life, and in his
will he directed that all his fortune was to
be distributed among other sufferers, because
he knew that there really wasn’t any cure at all, but at least the money would
be some consolation. So without any publicity his executors had the dough
wrapped up in packets labelled as an indigestion cure, feeling pretty sure that nobody who didn’t have indigestion would buy
it, and thereby saving themselves the trouble of sorting through a lot of applicants with bogus belly-aches. … Or
maybe it’s some guy who has made all
the money in the world out of defrauding the poor nitwitted public with various
patent medicines, whose conscience
has pricked him in his old age so that
he is trying to fix himself up for the Hereafter by making restitution, and the most appropriate way he
can think of to do that is to
distribute the geetus in the shape of another
patent medicine, figuring that that is the way it’s most likely to fall
into the same hands that it originally came from….
Or maybe—— ”
    “Or maybe,” said
Patricia, “this is the place you’re looking for.”
    Simon
stopped walking and looked at it.
    There was
a showcard in the centre of the window—the same card, as a
matter of fact, which Mr Teal had seen. But the Saint was taking no chances.
    “Let’s
make sure,” he said.
    He led her
the rest of the way up the street for a block beyond the turning
where Mr Teal would have branched off on the most direct route to his
lodgings, and back down the opposite side; but no other drug-store window
revealed a similar sign.
    Simon stood on the other side
of the road again, and gazed across at the
brightly lighted window which they had first looked at. He read the name ‘HENRY OSBETT & CO.’ across the front of the shop.
    He let go
Patricia’s arm.
    “Toddle
over, darling,” he said, “and buy me a packet of Miracle Tea.”
    “What
happens if I get shot?” she asked suspiciously.
    “I
shall hear the bang,” he said, “and phone for an ambulance.”
    Two
minutes later she rejoined him with a small neat parcel in her hand.
He fell in beside her as she came across the road, and turned
in the direction of the lower end of the street, where he had left the car.
    “How
was Comrade Osbett?” he murmured. “Still keep ing up with
the world?”
    “He looked all right, if
he was the fellow who served me.” She
passed him the packet she was carrying. “Now do you mind telling me what good this is supposed to do
?”
    “We
must listen to one of their broadcasts and find out. According to the
wrapper, it disperses bile—— ”
    She
reached across to his hip pocket, and he laughed.
    “Okay,
darling. Don’t waste any bullets—we may need them. I just wanted
to find out if there were any curious features about buying Miracle Tea, and I
didn’t want to go in myself because I’m liable to want to go in again
without being noticed too much.”
    “I
didn’t see anything curious,” she said. “I just asked for it, and he
wrapped it up and gave it to