Saint Goes West Read Online Free PDF Page A

were exactly like the others- the screens latched and intact.
    Lissa still sat up in the bed, the covers huddled up under her chin, staring now and again at the knife driven into the matнtress, as if it were a snake that somebody was trying to frighten her with and she wasn’t going to be frightened. Simon turned back and sat down beside her. He also looked at the knife.
    “It looks like a kitchen knife,” he remarked.
    “I wouldn’t let anyone touch it,” she said, “on account of fingerprints.”
    Simon nodded and smiled, and took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe. Using the cloth for insulation, he pulled the knife out and held it delicately while he inspected it. It was a kitchen knife-a cheap piece of steel with a riveted wooden handle, but sharp and pointed enough to have done all the lethal work of the most expensive blade.
    “Probably there aren’t any prints on it,” he said, “but it doesn’t cost anything to try. Even most amateurs have heard about fingerprints these days, and they all wear gloves. Still, well see if we have any luck.”
    He wrapped the knife carefully in the handkerchief and laid in on a Carter Dickson mystery on the bedside table.
    “You’re going to get tired of telling the story,” he said, “but I haven’t heard it yet. Would you like to tell me what hapнpened?”
    “I don’t really know,” she said. “I’d been asleep. And then suddenly for no reason at all I woke up. At least I thought I woke up, but maybe I didn’t, anyway it was just like a nightнmare. But I just knew there was somebody in my room, and I went cold all over, it was just as if a lot of spiders were crawling all over me, and I didn’t feel as if I could move or scream or anything, and I just lay there hardly breathing and my heart was thumping away till I thought it would burst.”
    “Does that always happen when somebody comes into your room?” Ginny asked interestedly.
    “Shut up,” said the Saint.
    “I was trying to listen,” Lissa said, “to see if I couldn’t hear something, I mean if he was really moving or if I’d just woken up with the frights and imagined it, and my ears were humнming so that it didn’t seem as if I could hear anything. But I did hear him. I could hear him breathing.”
    “Was that when you screamed?”
    “No. Well, I don’t know. It all happened at once. But suddenly I knew he was awful close, right beside the bed, and then I knew I was wide awake and it wasn’t just a bad dream, and then I screamed the first time and tried to wriggle out of bed on the other side from where he was, to get away from him, and he actually touched my shoulder, and then there was a sort of thump right beside me-that must have been the knife-and then he ran away and I heard him rush through one of the doors, and I lay there and screamed again beнcause I thought that would bring you or somebody, and beнsides if I made enough noise it would help to scare him and make him so busy trying to get away that he wouldn’t wait to have another try at me.”
    “So you never actually saw him at all?” She shook her head.
    “I had the shades drawn, so it was quite dark. I couldn’t see anything. That’s what made it more like a nightmare. It was like being blind.”
    “But when he opened one of these doors to rush out- there might have been a little dim light on the other side-“
    “Well, I could just barely see something, but it was so quick, it was just a blurred shadow and then he was gone. I don’t think I’ve even got the vaguest idea how big he was.”
    “But you call him ‘he’,” said the Saint easily, “so you saw that much, anyway.”
    She stared at him with big round blue eyes. “I didn’t,” she said blankly. “No, I didn’t. I just naturally thought it was ‘he’. Of course it was ‘he’. It had to be.” She swallowed, and added almost pleadingly: “didn’t it?”
    “I don’t know,” said the Saint, flatly and dispassionately.
    “Now wait