Saint Goes West Read Online Free PDF Page B

blowing out a match. It’s an awfully dangerous way of killing people. I think probably more poisoners get caught than any other kind of murderer. And any smart killer knows it.”
    “How do you know this one is smart?”
    “It follows. You don’t send warnings to your victims unless you think you’re pretty smart—ннyou have to be quite an egotist and a show-off to get that far—ннand anyone who thinks he’s really smart usually has at least enough smartness to be able to kid himself. Besides, nobody threatened to kill you.”
    “Nobody threatened to kill Lissa.”
    “Nobody did kill her.”
    “But they tried.”
    “I don’t think we know that they were trying for Lissa.”
    “Then if they were so halfway smart, how did they get in the wrong room?”
    “They might have thought Freddie would be with her.”
    “Yeah?” she scoffed. “If they knew anything, they’d know he’d be in his own room. He doesn’t visit. He has visitors.”
    Simon felt that he was at some disadvantage. He said with a grin: “You can tie me up, Ginny, but that doesn’t alter anything. Freddie is the guy that the beef is about. The inнtended murderer has very kindly told us the motive. And that automatically establishes that there’s no motive for killing anyone else. I’ll admit that the attack on Lissa last night is pretty confusing, and I just haven’t got any theories about it yet that I’d want to bet on; but I still know damn well that nobody except Freddie is going to be in much danger unless they accidentally find out who the murderer is, and personally I’m not going to starve myself until that happens.”
    He proved it by taking a healthy sip from the glass of tomato juice which Angelo set in front of him, and a couple of minutes later he was carving into his ham and eggs with healthy enthusiasm.
    The girl watched him moodily.
    “Anyway,” she said, “I never can eat anything much for breakfast. I have to watch my figure.”
    “It looks very nice to me,” he said, and was able to say it without the slightest effort.
    “Yes, but it has to stay that way. There’s always competiнtion.”
    Simon could appreciate that. He was curious. He had been very casual all the time about the whole organisation and mechanics of the mщnage, as casual as Pellman himself, but there just wasn’t any way to stop wondering about the details of a set-up like that. The Saint put it in the scientific category of post-graduate education. Or he was trying to.
    He said, leading her on with a touch so light and apparently disinterested that it could have been broken with a breath: “It must be quite a life.”
    “It is.”
    “If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it was really possible.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s just something out of this world.”
    “Sheiks and sultans do it.”
    “I know,” he said delicately. “But their women are brought up differently. They’re brought up to look forward to a place in a harem as a perfectly normal life. American girls aren’t.”
    One of her eyebrows went up a little in a tired way.
    “They are where I came from. And probably most everyнwhere else, if you only knew. Nearly every man is a wanderнing wolf at heart, and if he’s got enough money there isn’t much to stop him. Nearly every woman knows it. Only they don’t admit it. So what? You wouldn’t think there was anyнthing freakish about it if Freddie kept us all in different apartнments and visited around. What’s the difference if he keeps us all together?”
    The Saint shrugged.
    “Nothing much,” he conceded. “Except, I suppose, a cerнtain amount of conventional illusion.”
    “Phooey,” she said. “What can you do with an illusion?”
    He couldn’t think of an answer to that.
    “Well,” he said, “it might save a certain amount of domesнtic strife.”
    “Oh, sure,” she said. “We bicker and squabble a bit.”
    “I’ve heard you.”
    “But it doesn’t often get too