Saint in New York Read Online Free PDF Page A

purchasing the island from the
Indians for twenty-four dollars and a jug of corn whisky — Simon had sometimes
wondered how the local apostles of Temperance had ever brought themselves to
inhabit a city that was tainted from its earliest conception with the Devil’s
Brew. It was an interesting metaphysical speculation which had nothing
whatsoever to do with the point of his presence there, and he
abandoned it reluctantly in favour of the appealing potentialities of a narrow
alley which he spotted on one side of the building.
    His leisurely stroll past the house had given
him plenty of time to assimilate a few other important details.
Lights showed from the heavily curtained windows on the second floor, and
the gloom at the far end of the alley was broken by a haze of diffused
light. Knowing something about the particular style of architecture in
question, Simon felt reason- ably sure that the last-mentioned light came
from the library of the house. The illuminations indicated that someone
was at home; and from the black sedan parked at the curb, with a low number
on its license plate and the official city seal af fixed above it, the
Saint was entitled to deduce that the home lover was the
gentleman with whom he was seeking earnest converse.
    He turned back from the corner and retraced
his tracks; and although to a casual eye his gait would have seemed
just as lazy and nonchalant as before, there was a more elastic spring to
his tread, a fettered swiftness to his movements, a razor-edged awareness in
the blue eyes that scanned the side walks, which had not been there when
he first set out.
    The legend painted in neat white letters at
the opening of the alley proclaimed it the Trade Entrance; but Simon
felt democratic. He turned into it without hesitation. The passage was barely
three feet wide, bounded at one side by the wall of the building and
at the other by a high board fence. As the Saint advanced, the
light from the rear became brighter. He pressed himself dose to the darker
shadows along the wall of the house and went on.
    A blacker oblong of shadow in the wall ahead
of him in dicated a doorway. He passed it in one long stride and
pulled up short at the end of the alley against an ornamental picket fence. For
a moment he paused there, silent and motionless as a statue. His muscles were
relaxed and calm; but every nerve was alert, linked up in an uncanny
half-animal coordination of his senses which seemed to bend every faculty of
his being to the aid of the one he was using. To his listening ears came
the purling of water; and as a faint breeze stirred the foliage ahead of
him it wafted to his arched nostrils the faint, delicate odour
of lilacs.
    A garden beyond, deduced the Saint. The dim
light which he had seen from the street came from directly above him now,
shining out of a tier of windows at the rear of the house. He watched
the irregular rectangles of light printed on the grass beyond and saw
them move, shifting their pattern with every breath of thin
air. “Draperies at open windows,” he added to his
deductions and smiled invisibly in the darkness.
    He swung a long, immaculately trousered leg
over the picket fence, and a second later planted its mate beside
it. His eyes had long since accustomed themselves to the gloom like a cat’s,
and the light from the windows above was more than sufficient to
give him his bearings. In one swift survey he took in the
enclosed garden plot, made out the fountain and arbour at the far
end, and saw that the high board fence, after encircling the
yard, terminated flush against the far side of the house. The
geography couldn’t have suited him better if it had been laid out to his own
specifications.
    He listened again, for one brief second,
glanced at the case ment above him, and padded across the garden to the far fence wall.
The top was innocent of broken glass or other similar
discouragements for the amateur housebreaker. Flex ing the muscles of his
thighs, Simon leaped