Saint in New York Read Online Free PDF

upwards, and with a masterly blend of the techniques
of a second-story man and a tight-rope walker gained the top of the fence.
    From this precarious perch he surveyed the
situation. again and found no fault with it. Its simplicity was almost
puerile. The open windows through which the light shone were long French
casements reaching down to within a foot of the fence level; and from where
he stood it was an easy step across to the nearest sill.
Simon took the step with blithe agility and an unclouded
conscience.
    *    *    *
    It is possible that even in these
disillusioned days there may survive a sprinkling of guileless souls
whose visions of the private life of a Tammany judge have not been tainted by the cynicism of their time—a few virginal, unsullied minds that would
have pictured the dispenser of their justice at this hour poring dutifully
over one of the legal tomes that lined the walls of his
library, or, possibly, in lighter mood, gambol ling affectionately on
the floor with his small curly-headed son.
    Simon Templar, it must be confessed, was not
one of these. The pristine luminance of his childhood faith had suffered too many shocks since the last day when he believed that the
problems of overpopulation could be solved by a scientific extermination of
storks. But it must also be admitted that he had never in his most
optimistic hours expected to wedge himself straight into an orchestra stall
for a scene of domestic recreation like the one which confronted him.
    Barely two yards away from him, Judge Wallis
Nather, in the by no means meagre flesh, was engaged in thumbing over a voluptuous roll of golden-backed bills whose dimension made even
Simon Templar stare.
    The tally evidently proving satisfactory, His
Honour placed the pile of bills on the glass-topped desk before him and patted it
lovingly into a thick, orderly oblong. Then he re trieved a sheet of
paper from beneath a jade paperweight and glanced over the few lines written
on it. With an ex halation of breath that could almost be described as a
snort, he crumpled the slip of paper into a ball and dropped it into the
wastebasket beside him; and then he picked up the pile of bills again
and ruffled the edges with his thumb, watching them as if their
crisp rustle transmuted itself in his ears into the strains of some
supernal symphony.
    Taken by and large, it was a performance to
which Simon Templar raised his hat. It had the tremendous simplicity
of true greatness. In a deceitful, hypocritical world, where all the active
population was scrambling frantically for all the dough it could get its
hands on, and at the same time smugly proclaiming that money could not buy happiness,
it burned like a bright candle of sincerity. Not for Wallis Nather
were any of those pettifogging affectations. He had his dough; and if he
believed that it could not buy happiness, he faced his melancholy destiny
with dauntless courage.
    Simon was almost apologetic about butting in.
Nothing but stern necessity could have forced him to intrude the anti climax of
his presence into such a moment. But since he had to intrude, he saw no reason
why the conventions should not be observed.
    “Good-evening, Judge,” he murmured
politely.
    He would always maintain that he did
everything in his power to soften the blow—that he could not have
introduced himself with any softer sympathy. And he could only sigh when he
perceived that all his good intentions had misfired.
    Nather did three things simultaneously. He
dropped the sheaf of bills, spun round in his swivel chair as if it’s
axle had suddenly got tangled up in a high-speed power belt, and
made a tentative pass for a side drawer of the desk. It was the last of these
movements which never came to completion. He found himself staring
into the levelled menace of a blue steel automatic, gaping into
a pair of the most mocking blue eyes that he had ever seen. They were eyes that
made something cringe at the back of his brain, eyes with a