The Saint and the Happy Highwayman Read Online Free PDF

shrugged his shoulders sullenly. He was a dark and rather flashily good-looking man, who obviously had no illusions about the latter quality, with a wispy moustache and the slimmest figure consistent with the physical requirements of the force.
    “I was just having a friendly chat with a guy,” he said. “How was I to know he was going to print what I said? I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it in the paper myself.”
    Fernack turned to page eleven and read out from another of his blue-pencilled panels: “Lieutenant Corrio is the exact reverse of the popular conception of a detective. He is a slender, well-dressed man who looks rather like Clark Gable and might easily be mistaken for an idol of the silver screen.”
    “You didn’t know that he’d say that either, did you ?” Fernack inquired in tones of acid that would have seared the skin of a rhinoceros.
    Corrio glowered and said nothing; and Fernack passed on to what was to his mind the brightest and juiciest feature of the Daily Mail reporter’s story. He read it out:
    “After I left Lieutenant Corrio, it occurred to me to find out what Simon Templar thought about the subject.
    “I found him without any difficulty in his suite at the Waldorf. The Robin Hood of the modern underworld, who was once the favourite target of gangsters and police alike on account of his ruthless free-lance campaign against the criminals whom the law could not or would not touch, listened with his laziest smile while I read over Lieutenant Corrio’s statements to him.
    “I asked him if he had any answer to make.
    “The Saint uncoiled his six feet two of steel-and-leathery length from the armchair where he had been sitting, and his clear blue eyes twinkled maliciously as he showed me to the door.
    ” ‘I think Lieutenant Corrio will put Clark Gable out of business one of these days,’ he said.”
    If there was anything that could have been guaranteed to increase Inspector Fernack’s long-established secret sympathy for the Saint, it was this climax of a quotation. It is true that he would have preferred to have originated it himself, but the other compensations far outweighed this minor disadvantage.
    Lieutenant Corrio’s face reddened. He was particularly proud of his presidency of the Merrick Maskers, and he had never been able to see anything humorous in his confirmed conviction that his destined home was in Hollywood and that his true vocation was that of the dashing hero of a box-office-shattering series of romantic melodramas.
    Having dealt comprehensively with these lighter points Fernack opened his shoulders and proceeded to the meatier business of the conference in a series of well-chosen sentences. He went on to summarize his opinion of Lieutenant Corrio’s ancestry, past life, present value, future prospects, looks, clothes, morals, intelligence and assorted shortcomings, taking a point of view which made up in positiveness and vigour for anything which it may have lacked in absolute impartiality.
    “An’ get this,” he concluded. “The Saint hasn’t come here to get into any trouble. I know him an’ he knows me, an’ he knows me too damn well to try to pull anything while I’m still gettin’ around on my own feet. An’ what’s more, if anybody’s got to take care of him I can do it. He’s a man-sized proposition, an’ it takes a man-sized cop to look after him. An’ if any statements have to be made to the papers about it, I’ll make ‘em.”
    Gorrio waited for the storm to pass its height, which took some time longer.
    “I’m sure you know best, sir—especially after the way he helped you on that Valcross case,” he said humbly, while Fernack glared at him speechlessly. “But I have a theory about the Saint.”
    “You have a what?” repeated Fernack as if Corrio had uttered an indecent word.
    “A theory, sir. I think the mistake that’s been made all along is in trying to get something on the Saint after he’s done a job. What