The Saint and the People Importers Read Online Free PDF Page A

ship.” He stationed himself by a table nearby, refusing to sit down until he was properly greeted. “Mind,” he added with a guilty glance over his shoulder as if for the Thought Police of the Egalitarian State, “I’ve nothing against them as such, but we hardly need more people, do we?”
    “We need less of some and more of others,” the Saint responded. He motioned indicatively with his glass. “If you want to stake a claim on that table I’ll be your witness.”
    The other man lost some of his stiffness, gave a single-shot snorting laugh, and sat down.
    “I mean, dammit, I can’t believe they’ve got a personnel problem. I should think there’d be eight men for every job. That’s what it’s coming to anyway, isn’t it? People breeding like rabbits everywhere. Be living ten to a room and eating nothing but seaweed in fifty years, won’t we?”
    “I won’t,” said Simon, “but you have a point.”
    “Well, I won’t either. I had my day, back when we still ruled the waves, or a good many of them. It’s the next generation that’s going to choke on these policies. I’ve spent some time out in India, and it’s damned obvious why those chaps want to get out and come here, especially since we turned tail and ran. It’s not so damned obvious why the Government welcomes ‘em here with open arms. But then it’s not obvious why the Government does anything, unless it’s to appease all the loud mouths and empty pockets in the United Nations.”
    “That’s as good a guess as I’ve heard,” Simon agreed. “But you sound even more bitter than most of us.”
    “I’ve got reason to be. I was professional Navy; did what I could around Malta and Cyprus and a few other holiday spots during the war. And now …”
    He shrugged.
    “Caught in the cutbacks?” Simon asked.
    “Cutbacks isn’t the word for it,” the red-faced man said. “Massacre, I’d call it. If you want to drive a ship and you’re good at it, you’ve still got just a one in four chance of moving up, and after that it’s four-to-one against you again.” He sat back and expelled air through puffed cheeks. “So, I’m a pensioner. Fifteen quid a week for the rest of my life.” He said it like a prisoner sharing the details of his sentence. “Nothing much to look forward to but sitting out my old age in Hove with a lot of other cast-offs while the country sinks under sheer weight of foreigners and the Government distributes largesse to everybody who can work up enough steam to reproduce.” He suddenly looked at Simon. “Have you been to India?”
    “Yes, but only as a private citizen.”
    “Like it?”
    “I like the food,” Simon said temperately. “And it seems as if you do, too.”
    “Right. Burns the soot out of the system. I’ve seen men half dead of dysentery cured with a good hot curry.” He peered around the unstafied room with renewed irritation. “Looks as if we’ll be half dead with starvation before we get any.” He looked back at Simon. “What do you think of this immigration business?”
    The Saint pondered the question for a few seconds, but it was a question destined to fade unanswered into nothingness along with the last dying luminescence of the evening on the walls of the buildings opposite.
    In the back room of the restaurant, a man screamed.
    4
    The Saint came to his feet, while his neighbour sat frozen bolt upright in his chair, staring towards the passageway that led past the bar. His once garrulous lips were petrified and pale, and he did not even break his sphynx-like pose when Simon strode away towards the rear of the dining room. Just after he reached the narrow hall beside the bar his way was blocked by Abdul Haroon, who came tottering in from the kitchen area with a handkerchief pressed to the side of his face.
    “No reason for alarm or upset, ladies and gentlemen!” he burbled hysterically towards a mythical audience in the dining room. “A small accident in the kitchen. Everything will