Saint and the Fiction Makers Read Online Free PDF

Saint said. ‘But you have a rather extreme way of protecting yourself. I’m beginning to think you may really have your boy Klein locked up in a hen coop somewhere. What does he think about this?’
    ‘The arrangement suits him fine. He has no desire for publicity. I couldn’t keep him away from the world if he wanted to be known, obviously.’
    The Saint surveyed the wreckage of the desk and shook his head.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘If this is the way publishers are competing with one another these days, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear they were holding writers prisoner.’
    ‘If they are publishers,’ Hugoson said mysteriously.
    Simon gave him a hard look.
    ‘You mean the competition? The ones who’re so anxious to find Klein?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, if it’s not a publisher, who is it?’
    ‘I can’t think,’ muttered Hugoson.
    ‘Now listen,’ the Saint said a little irritably, ‘apparently you had some notion of getting me to help you, so what’s the point of playing ring around the rosy?’
    ‘I was going to try to hire you to protect Klein … and his identity.’
    ‘You’d have failed,’ Simon replied. ‘I don’t hire myself out. As a matter of fact, if I didn’t have a personal interest in this situation, in the form of an aching skull, I’d walk out in indignation.’
    Hugoson brightened. ‘You mean you will help?’
    ‘I’ve no intention of letting anybody cosh me and get away with it. If in the process of my personal vendetta I incidentally happen to help keep your coffers full, that’s all right with me. So tell me everything you know, and I’ll call your doctor and be on my way.’
    ‘On your way where?’
    ‘To get to Amos Klein before your competitors get there.’
    4
    It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Amos Klein worked and did a good deal of his living in a cottage at Burnham, only about forty-five minutes’ drive from the centre of London. Simon had envisioned himself pursuing adventure and vengeance into the jungles of Borneo or up the peaks of the Andes. The chimerical Mr. Klein’s residence in England was a convenience which the Saint not only appreciated but took immediate advantage of. With only as much delay as it took to accept Hugoson’s offer of a restorative drink, he got back in his car and was soon driving along the M4 motorway in the direction of Slough.
    But while he was grateful for Klein’s proximity, he could not see much more in the affair to his advantage. Aside from the astonishing revelation of the length to which modern publishing competition seemed prepared to go, with burglary and mayhem a merely routine step towards finding and propositioning a popular but elusive author, it did not promise any of the exhilarating twists of a typical Saintly crusade against some particularly vile species of injustice. Of course, there had now been created an obligation to find the perpetrator of the clout he had received and repay the blow with interest; but that was hardly an electrifying inspiration.
    As Simon had said to Hugoson as they parted:
    ‘To think that I gave up Carol Henley’s company for some slope-shouldered little twerp with ink on his nose.’
    Hugoson, who had seemed about to say something else, smiled wanly through the drawn grimace of his headache.
    ‘You’ll live to eat that description, anyway,’ the publisher said. ‘And who knows? You might even fall for him.’
    ‘One of those, eh?’ said the Saint. ‘Well, thanks for the warning.’
    ‘Ring me up! I wish I felt up to going with you. And give … Amos my regards.’
    Disappointingly, when the Saint had left the M4 and found his way through dark country roads to the proper cottage, according to Hugoson’s directions, it seemed as if he might not be able to give Amos Klein regards or anything else that night. The cottage, set alone in a densely wooded patch at the end of a lane, was completely dark.
    Simon’s first thought was that the group who had