The Saint in Europe Read Online Free PDF

change stashed away in a New York bank. He made a will leaving it equally between them. A rather unique kind of will. It was engraved in microscopic letters on the backs of two St. Christopher medals, one of which he gave to each of the children. Miss North’s medal has already been deciphered. Here’s a copy of the inscripнtion.”
    He gave Olivant the scrap of paper, and tasted his drink again while the man read it.
    The girl’s knee touched his, inadvertently, under the crowded table, and he felt it tremble. He tried to quiet her with a comforting pressure of his own.
    He had to admit that Olivant was good. The man’s face did not change color, and the dilation of his eyes could be explained on perfectly legitimate grounds.
    “Eet is amazing!” Olivant ejaculated. “Eet must be, as you say, unique … So, of course, poor Charles was killed to steal ‘is copy!”
    “You’d make a good detective yourself.”
    “But eet still does not say, by “oo!”
    “I’ve got ideas of my own on that score.”
    Olivant’s eyebrows rose in arches towards his well-oiled hair.
    “What ees zat?”
    “I’ve been talking to a fellow I met who used to be a big shot in the underground. We’ve got a hunch that there’s some connection with somebody that Rosepierre trusted, who went wrong and went the Nazi way-who may even have betrayed Rosepierre to the Gestapo. But if they torнtured him, he must have died before he’d write them a check on that New York bank!”
    For the first time Simon saw the crawl of fear beneath Olivant’s sleek surface. It was no more than an infinitesimal twitch, instantly smothered; but it was all that he needed.
    “Eet is too ‘orrible to sink about,” Olivant said. He turned to the girl. “Your fahzer was such a wonderful man. Everyнone love ‘im.”
    “You can’t think of anyone who might have turned on him?” she managed to ask.
    “I could not think of anyone ‘oo would be so bad!”
    “My Resistance friend thinks he can,” said the Saint. “Anyway, he’s making inquiries.”
    Olivant picked up his glass and drained it, and wiped his mouth.
    “I ‘ope wiz all my ‘eart zat ‘e succeed,” he said. “But we make Miss North upset again wiz zis talk. I see it. Instead to remind ‘er of ‘er poor fahzer and ‘er poor brozzer, we should try to make ‘er forget a leetle … Now, I ‘ave ze idea. I ‘ave my car. Tonight it would be nice to drive out to St. Cloud, to my ‘ouse, where we ‘ave a nice dinner, and per’aps ‘elp ourselves to feel better.”
    Valerie looked at the Saint desperately, but Olivant might have been anticipating the glance.
    “Of course,” he said, “if Mr Tombs is not engage, I am most ‘appy if ‘e come also.”
    It was precisely what the Saint would have predicted, and the sheer cosmic inevitability of it gave him the same feeling of olympian omnipotence that a master dramatist must exнperience as he sees the last loose ends of his play falling into place with flawless accuracy in the third act.
    “I think that’s a swell idea,” he said.
    He was afraid even then that Valerie would rebel, but terror seemed to have built up in her until she was gripped in a kind of trance that left her without volition.
    They drove with Olivant at the wheel of a glistening new car, all three of them pressed together in the front seat, so that Simon could feel the rigidity of her body against him shaken by an occasional shiver, and knew that Olivant must have felt it too, though the man chattered incessantly about nothing and Simon did his best to help keep the empty conversational ball rolling.
    Once, while they were still passing through the Bois de Boulogne, Olivant broke off in the middle of a sentence and said: “Are you nervous, Miss North? Believe me, I drive most careful.”
    “I guess I’m just over-tired,” she said. “Or else I’m catchнing a chill.”
    “I know, you ‘ave ‘ad a shocking day.”
    She turned to the Saint, leaning closer