The Saint in Persuit Read Online Free PDF

have something pretty fancy in it.”
    “Do you know where this place is?” Vicky Kinian asked.
    “I thought I knew every antique shop in Lisbon, but that’s a new one on me. I can lead you to the spot with no trouble, though. Let’s go have a look-see.”
    The goateed man had listened to the parting close of the door, placed his hearing-aid in his jacket pocket, and made a few notes on a small pad. Then he had hauled in his cane, slipped off its contrivance of angled mirrors, telescoped it back to its normal length, put on his hat, and set out for a bit of sightseeing in the vicinity of Rua De Ouro and Viseli.
    4
    Vicky Kinian and Freda Oliveiros stepped out of their taxi on to a sidewalk bordering a broad uncrowded intersection. During the ride from the hotel they had chattered about everything under the sun except the riddle they were on their way to solve, and now that they were brought face-to-face with the question mark they seemed to have nothing to say at all. Standing in the cool shadow of a large tree they let their eyes survey the complete three hundred and sixty degrees of the panorama. To the left was a cafe— round wrought-iron tables in the open air beneath a blue and yellow awning. Opposite where they stood was an apartment house, and then an office building of some kind. To their right was a bank. Behind them was a park.
    “Something must be wrong,” Vicky said. “Are you sure this is the right corner?”
    “Check your letter again.”
    Vicky confirmed the address: Seguranca’s Antique Shop on Rua De Ouro at the corner of Viseli.
    “Well, there’s the corner, but there isn’t any antique shop,” Freda said. “Maybe it went out of business, unless it’s in a back room somewhere. Or maybe …”
    “Wait a minute,” Vicky broke in. “Look at the name on that bank.”
    In large letters carved into the stone pediment above the bank’s columned entrance were the words, BANCO ANTIGO DE SEGURANCA.
    “Seguranga” Vicky read carefully. “It’s the same word.”
    “And antigo,” Freda carried on. “There’s your ‘antique’ shop all right. Seguranga means something like ‘security’.”
    Vicky was frowning as she glanced from the letter to the marble portico of the bank.
    “But if it’s the bank why didn’t he just say so? Now that we’ve seen what he meant, it sounds like something out of a mystery story.”
    “Well, at least we’ve solved the first clue,” Freda said cheerfully.
    “We just followed his directions, but I’d hardly say we’d found any answers,” Vicky rejoined. “Why be so cryptic about a perfectly respectable-looking bank?”
    “Search me, Vicky. But let’s face it—nothing about this whole deal is exactly on the up-and-up, or your father would just have left you a nice traditional will to his estates and acres, not to mention his millions.”
    They were walking almost cautiously towards the bank as they talked. Vicky felt a strange reluctance to get too near the place. Somehow its marble massiveness reminded her of a mausoleum.
    “He never had acres or millions,” she said. “He hardly even had thousands.”
    “Well,” said Freda, “if you’ll excuse my delicacy, let’s be charitable and assume dear old dad handled things this way because he was in the cloak-and-dagger business and not because he was some kind of a nut. How does that letter go on?”
    “They will remember me. Ask for the little box I paid a deposit on.”
    They were at the foot of the wide stone stairway leading into the bank. Simultaneously they both stopped and exchanged looks of sudden realization.
    “A safe deposit box!” they said almost simultaneously.
    “Things are looking up, girl!” continued Freda. “Let’s go.”
    They climbed the steps quickly and walked into the bank’s ornate cavernous main floor. Vicky questioned a woman at the first barred window. She was asked, in hesitant English, to wait. A few moments later an old man with rimless round spectacles