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

prostrate employee.
    “Where did you go?” he asked Simon.
    “To see if I could catch whoever did whatever’s been done,” said the Saint matter-of-factly. “I didn’t.”
    He was standing beside Abdul now.
    “His arm is broken,” the owner of the Golden Crescent told him.
    Mahmud looked up at the Saint almost pleadingly.
    “It was an accident,” he said.
    Simon narrowed his eyes with disbelief.
    “An accident?” he asked. “I’m sorry to have to take an ironic attitude in a time of personal tragedy for you, my friend, but what did you do-catch your arm in an egg-beater?”
    “He slipped,” the other waiter said vaguely.
    “A box fell,” added one of the cooks from the doorway for good measure.
    The Saint knelt next to Abdul and Mahmud.
    “I’d have been more likely to conclude that one of your competitors was trying to do you out of your waiters the hard way,” he averred.
    He reached to touch Mahmud’s limp arm, but the injured man winced in agony as Simon put pressure on it, and tried to shrink away.
    Haroon told one of the cooks to call for a taxi to pull into the alley, and the man scuttled out.
    “We will take him to a doctor,” Haroon explained to Simon. “We know one near here.”
    “At the rate you’re going, you might as well hire one to stay in residence,” the Saint said. He stood up suddenly, stepped back, and faced the whole group. “Now let’s try to bring a little realism to this Never-Never Land. As far as I can tell through all the polite fog, you’ve got every intention of sitting tight while the bad guys walk all over you with king-sized boots. There’s not much point in being discreet if you end up like Mahmud here.”
    There was an embarrassed and very deep silence. Abdul finally spoke.
    “It would be worse to end up like Ali,” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
    The mere fact that he had found the courage to refer to Ali gave Simon hope.
    “I don’t expect anybody to sign a complaint,” he said, “but I’m not the police so there’s no need to sign anything. I think Mr. Haroon at least has an idea of how I work. Just give me a hint-or get in touch with me later if you won’t talk in front of other people.”
    He stopped and waited, feeling slightly ridiculous as another long silence followed. Abdul got to his feet next to Simon and avoided looking at him.
    “But it was only an accident,” he muttered.
    Simon looked around at his otherwise mute audience in exasperation. Before he could think of anything appropriately galvanising to say, the cook who had taken off came running back in.
    “Taxi here!” he announced.
    Behind him, through the open door, Simon could see the lights of the black taxi in the alley.
    “Help me,” Mahmud groaned.
    They lifted him carefully to his feet, and he was able to walk very slowly out to the car, supported by Abdul and one of the cooks. Abdul told his last operational waiter and his second cook to get back on the job before his reputation was so besmirched that he would be reduced in this, his intolerable old age, to hawking chestnuts in Piccadilly Circus.
    Simon saw Mahmud safely into the taxi. The cook looked questioningly at Abdul.
    “Yes, go with him, go with him!” the restaurant-owner cried in despair, flapping the cook into the automobile with the backs of both hands. “I am already destroyed. What does it matter-one cook, two cooks, no cook? I am utterly and completely undone!”
    His whole body sagged as the cook scrambled into the taxi with the injured man and the cab pulled away. With a Lear-like expression of total despair he faced the Saint for an instant and then walked slowly towards the open door of the Golden Crescent. Simon reached out and closed it before Abdul could step inside. The sky was almost completely dark now, and there were no artificial lights in the alley itself. Abdul’s eyes, as they met the Saint’s at close range, were large with fear, reflecting the moving illuminations of