The Saint and the Happy Highwayman Read Online Free PDF Page A

it.”
    “He said he’d be there.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why you’ve done all this for us, Saint, and I don’t know how you did it—but why did you want me to do that?”
    The Saint smiled invisibly in the dark.
    “Because I made an appointment for him and I wanted to be sure he’d keep it. Some friends of his will be there to meet him. I have to work in these devious ways these days because Inspector Fernack warned me to keep out of trouble. Don’t lose any sleep over it, kid. Be good.”
    He kissed her, and held the door while they got into the car. From somewhere far to the north the faint rattle of machine guns came down the wind.
    II THE SMART DETECTIVE
    Lieutenant corrio was on the carpet. This was a unique experience for him, for he had a rather distinguished record on the New York Detective Bureau. Since the time when he was admitted to it, he had achieved a series of successes which had earned him more than ordinarily rapid promotion without winning him any of the affection of his colleagues and superiors. While he had made comparatively few sensational arrests, he had acquired an outstanding reputation in the field of tracing stolen property, and incidentally in pursuit of this specialty had earned a large number of insurance company rewards which might have encouraged the kindhearted observer to list a very human jealousy among the chief causes of his unpopularity. But apart from this plausible explanation there were even more human reasons why Lieutenant Corrio had so conspicuously failed to make himself the darling of Centre Street—he was a very smug man about his successes, and he had other vanities which were even less calculated to endear him to the other detectives whom his inspired brilliance had more than once put in the shade.
    None of these things, however, were sufficient to justify his immediate superiors in administering the official flattening which they had long been yearning to bestow; and it was with some pardonable glow of satisfaction that Inspector John Fernack, who was as human as anyone else if not more so, had at last found the adequate excuse for which his soul had been pining wistfully for many moons.
    For at last Lieutenant Corrio’s smug zeal had overreached itself. He had made an entirely gratuitous, uncalled for and unauthorized statement to a reporter on the New York Daily Mail, which had been featured under two-column headlines and decorated with Lieutenant Corrio’s favourite photograph of himself on the first inside sheet of that enterprising tabloid.
    This copy of the paper lay on Inspector Fernack’s desk while he spoke his mind to his subordinate, and he referred to it several times for the best quotations which he had marked off in blue pencil in preparation for the interview.
    One of these read: “If you ask me why this man Simon Templar was ever allowed to come back to New York, I can’t tell you. I don’t believe in idealistic crooks any more than I believe in reformed crooks, and the Police Department has got enough work to do without having any more hoodlums of that kind spilled onto us.
    But I can tell you this. There have been a lot of changes in the Detective Bureau since Templar was last here, and he won’t find it so easy to get away with his racket as he did before.”
    There was another one: “If this cheap gunman that they call the Saint doesn’t believe me, he’s only got to start something. I’m taking care of him myself, and if he pulls so much as a traffic violation while he’s in the city I’ll get him put away where he won’t give anyone any more trouble.”
    Fernack read out these extracts in his most scorching voice, which was a very scorching voice when he put his heart into it.
    “I hadn’t heard the news about your bein’ appointed Police Commissioner,” Fernack said heavily, “but I’d like to be the first to congratulate you. Of course a guy with your looks will find it a pretty soft job.”
    Lieutenant Corrio