Saint Goes West Read Online Free PDF

a minute,” said Freddie Pellman, breaking one of the longest periods of plain listening that Simon had yet known him to maintain. “What is this?”
    The Saint took a cigarette from a package on the bedside table and lighted it with care and deliberation. He knew that their eyes were all riveted on him now, but he figured that a few seconds’ suspense would do them no harm.
    “I’ve walked around outside,” he said, “and I didn’t see anyone making a getaway. That wasn’t conclusive, of course, but it was an interesting start. Since then I’ve been through the whole house. I’ve checked every door and window in the place. Angelo did it first, but I did it again to make sure. Nothнing’s been touched. There isn’t an opening anywhere where even a cat could have got in and got out again. And I looked in all the closets and under the beds too, and I didn’t find any strangers hiding around.”
    “But somebody was here!” Freddie protested. “There’s the knife. You can see it with your own eyes. That proves that Lissa wasn’t dreaming.”
    Simon nodded, and his blue eyes were crisp and sardonic.
    “Sure it does,” he agreed conversationally. “So it’s a comнfort to know that we don’t have to pick a prospective murderer out of a hundred and thirty million people outside. We know that this is strictly a family affair, and you’re going to be killed by somebody who’s living here now.”
    4
IT WAS nearly nine o’clock when the Saint woke up again, and the sun, which had been bleaching the sky before he got back to bed, was slicing brilliantly through the Venetian blinds. He felt a lot better than he had expected to. In fact, he decided, after a few minutes of lazy rolling and stretching, he felt surprisingly good. He got up, sluiced himself under a cold shower, brushed his hair, pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and a bath robe, and went out in search of breakfast.
    Through the trench windows of the living-room he saw Ginny sitting alone at the long table in the patio beside the barbecue. He went out and stood over her.
    “Hullo,” she said.
    “Hullo,” he agreed. “You don’t mind if I join you?”
    “Not a bit,” she said. “Why should I?”
    “We could step right into a Van Druten play,” he observed.
    She looked at him rather vaguely. He sat down, and in a moment Angelo was at his elbow, immaculate and impassive now in a white jacket and a black bow tie.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “Tomato juice,” said the Saint. “With Worcestershire sauce. Scrambled eggs, and ham. And coffee.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The Filipino departed; and Simon lighted a cigarette and slipped the robe off his shoulders.
    “Isn’t this early for you to be up?”
    “I didn’t sleep so well.” She pouted. “Esther does snore. You’ll find out.”
    Before the part broke up for the second time, there had been some complex but uninhibited arguments about how the rest of the night should be organized with a view to mutual protection, which Simon did not want revived at that hour.
    “I’ll have to thank her,” he said tactfully. “She’s saved me from having to eat breakfast alone. Maybe she’ll do it for us again.”
    “You could wake me up yourself just as well,” said Ginny.
    The Saint kept his face noncommittal and tried again.
    “Aren’t you eating?”
    She was playing with a glass of orange juice as if it were a medicine that she didn’t want to take.
    “I don’t know. I sort of don’t have any appetite.”
    “Why?”
    “Well… you are sure that it was someone in the house last night, aren’t you?”
    “Quite sure.”
    “I meanннone of us. Or the servants, or somebody.”
    “Yes.”
    “So why couldn’t we just as well be poisoned?”
    He thought for a moment, and chuckled.
    “Poison isn’t so easy. In the first place, you have to buy it. And there are problems about that. Then, you have to put it in something. And there aren’t so many people handling food that you can do that just like