The Saint and the People Importers Read Online Free PDF

be immediately all right!”
    The long agonised shriek that had reached the Saint’s ears had been no result of a finger sliced along with the onions or a cheek spattered with hot fat.
    “I’ll have a look,” he told Abdul. “I’ve got a Boy Scout badge in domestic first aid.”
    Abdul continued to interpose his bulk between Simon and the mysteries of the scullery, where a hurried scuffling of feet implied that the fun and games were not completely over yet.
    “Sorry, Mr. Haroon, but I’m afraid I’ll have to violate the regulations. You’re not hurt, are you?”
    “No,” Abdul said dazedly.
    “Then I’d better go and see who is hurt. Pardon me.”
    Simon grasped Abdul’s round shoulders firmly and simply moved him aside. As he hurried down the short passage he heard the proprietor lumbering ponderously to catch up with him.
    The kitchen of the Golden Crescent was amazingly small and cramped, reminiscent of the interior of an early-model U-boat. There was no sign of a boiler explosion or the collapse of a stove. One panic-stricken cook had propped himself cataleptically against the greasy refrigerator and was staring at the open door of the storage pantry. The other cook and a waiter whose name Simon did not know were in that doorway ineffectually moving forward and backwards like two particles trapped in a fluctuating magnetic field.
    Beyond their legs the Saint could see someone writhing on the floor of the storage pantry. Reaching the two frightened and hesitant men who were blocking the way, Simon saw over their shoulders that the party on the floor was Mahmud, who had waited on him. Mahmud lay moaning, his eyes squeezed shut, his knees drawn up, his left hand clutching his right arm. As he twisted in pain his white jacket was blotched and smeared with grime from the wooden floor. There was no sign of blood.
    The Saint took in the details of the scene in one second, scarcely pausing behind the men who were already there.
    As he shoved his way past them they gibbered at one another and at him in an incomprehensible amalgam of English and their native dialects.
    “What happened and who did it?” Simon snapped.
    All he could make out from the ensuing linguistic detonation were the words, “Arm broken!”
    He did not stop beside Mahmud any longer than he had stopped behind the other two men.
    “Call a doctor!” he threw over his shoulder.
    If he had waited to inspect Mahmud or question the incoherent witnesses, anybody who had made the assault and fled could be putting half the West End between himself and the scene of his crime. There were only two doors to the Golden Crescent, the front and the back, and nobody had left through the front. Simon hurried on through the narrow room, rich with the smells of the condiments on its shelves, and out of the back door into the alley where he had seen the van parked not long before. There was no van and nobody in the semi-darkness of the alley now, no Indian Gulliver with Lilliputian helper.
    The Saint paused for an instant, looking both ways to be doubly sure the alley was free of any possible danger, and then he ran to the corner and the sidewalk where he had passed on his way to the restaurant. He was sure that he saw the van which conveyed the purveyors of Indian foodstuffs losing itself in the traffic almost a block away. A recollection of the giant delivery man glowed to brief vividness in his mind; but knowing that he had no chance of identifying the mayhem merchant, whoever he was and whether he was in the van or not, Simon retraced his steps to the back door of the restaurant.
    In the small storeroom Mahmud still lay on the floor, but Abdul Haroon and the uninjured waiter were kneeling beside him. Mahmud’s eyes were open now, and though his face was tense with pain he was completely conscious.
    He turned his head fearfully to see who had come in the door, but tended to relax again when he saw that it was the Saint. Abdul looked more confused than his