The Saint Around the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

impossible.”
    “A playboy like that never got his picture taken?”
    “Photographers don’t go popping flash bulbs all over the place in England like they do in America, or at least in American films. They’d have to ask his permission, and if he didn’t want any pictures he could get out of it.”
    Simon scowled thoughtfully.
    “And yet he didn’t care how many people saw him making an exhibition of himself—he did everything to attract attention. Damn it, it doesn’t make sense … Wait a minute, though. Maybe it does. It means he wasn’t afraid of anyone in England recognizing him; but a news photo might go anywhere in the world.”
    “Another clue?”
    “Could be. But you must have a description of him.”
    She screwed up her eyes a little, concentrating.
    “Ordinary height—about five feet ten. Medium build, but quite muscular. The girl with the twins said he was in very fine shape for his age—and please don’t say whatever that vulgar expression is getting ready for, Simon, I think I’ve already heard every possible j6ke on that subject. He told her he was fiftythree. But a lot of people thought he looked older, because he was half bald, and the fringe of hair that he had left was very gray, and so was his beard–-“
    “Oh, no,” groaned the Saint. “Not a beaver, too?”
    “Not a royal growth. The kind that just carries the sideburns on down around the jawbone until they meet and make a tuft on the chin.”
    “Which can be grown in two weeks and change the outline of a face completely. And I was just going to ask you what type of face he had.”
    “And I was going to tell you it was round. But I see what you mean. Everyone says he was always smiling—the Jolly Roger business, of course—and that would help his face to look round, too.”
    “Mouth?”
    “Biggish—the smile would help that, I know, don’t tell me. And of course he had a mustache.”
    “Of course. He would. Teeth?”
    “Good.”
    “Nose?”
    She moved her hands helplessly.
    “Did you ever try to make the average person describe a nose? It wasn’t a great beak and it wasn’t an Irish pug and it wasn’t broken. It was just a nose.”
    “Eyes?”
    “Brown. Two.”
    Simon Templar unrolled and came up on his feet in an ultimate surge of exasperation.
    “God burn and blast it,” he erupted, “do you realize that that adds up to practically nothing at all? A middling-sized guy with strictly conventional features—the greatest physical assets any crook could start with. Everything else could be grown or glued on and shaped and/or dyed or worn as an expression, on this foundation you still haven’t described. We don’t even have a clear picture of his age, except that I’ll bet that it’s less than fiftythree. If you want to do a good job of faking, it’s a lot easier to pretend to be older than younger—as I shouldn’t have to tell a woman. But as for all the spinach on this act …”
    He groped around for an illustration, and his gaze lit on a framed photograph on the mantelpiece. He targeted it with a dynamically outthrust forefinger.
    “Why,” he said, “I could pin the same shrubbery on that guy, and he’d fit your description.”
    “That guy,” she said, out of an icy stillness, “happens to be my husband.”
    The Saint stood transfixed, his eyes almost glazed with the fascination of the frabjous idea that his runaway train of thought had gone hurtling into. But she never noticed that teetering instant of thunderstruck rigidity, for within the same full second the telephone began to ring.
    She started towards it with a tensely even step, but reached it in a rush.
    Simon was beside her as she picked it up. With an arm lightly around her, he pressed his ear to the other side of the receiver.
    “Hullo,” she said.
    He was inappropriately aware of her hair brushing his cheek and her faint perfume in his nostrils, while he listened to the voice which he could hear thinly but quite clearly through the