The Saint in the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

a time as you can stand it.”
    “I’ll make myself a little more presentable,” said the Saint, “and pick you up at eight.”
    When he returned he was very presentable indeed, by conventional standards, having changed into a double-breasted dinner jacket of impeccably inconspicuous style and blackness, and she looked him over with visible surprise.
    “Don’t think I’m overdoing it,” he said. “This just happens to be the most anonymous costume I know, in a place like this, for stick-ups and such jobs. With an old nylon stocking over the head, it gives nobody anything worth a damn to describe.”
    “You needn’t have told me that,” she retorted. “You almost had me believing that there could be some basis for the legend of the gentleman crook.”
    Otherwise they spent quite a civilized and sometimes even amusing two and a half hours, and nothing so crude as crime was mentioned again even when the Saint returned her to her sitting-room, played one hand of Bézique with her, and then asked with deliberate expressionlessness if he might call it a night.
    “I shall be up for a long time yet,” she said flatly. “Probably playing Patience, since you won’t finish this game.”
    Simon took shameless advantage of this when he returned to his own room some time after midnight and found the unfriendly inspector of the Police Judiciaire already ensconced proprietorially in the most comfortable armchair, and polluting the atmosphere with a cigar which some countries would have classified as a secret weapon.
    “Alors, Monsieur Templar. Let us continue. There is a holdup reported from Cap d’Antibes. The man is tall, slender but well-built, his features disguised with a stocking, but wearing a smoking like yourself-“
    “And like a few thousand other dopes who’ve settled for the idea that women must change their styles every season, but men have now achieved the ultimate costume which they must expect to wear from here to eternity, or until civilization comes to its glorious radioactive end.”
    “I am not here to discuss the philosophy of clothing,” said the inspector. “I would like to finish this business and go to bed.”
    He was a small dark man with beady eyes and an impatient manner, as if he was perpetually exasperated by people who gratuitously wasted his time by pretending to be innocent.
    “I understand your eagerness,” said the Saint mildly. “But isn’t it stretching things a bit for you to be waiting here even before I get home from this alleged caper?”
    “That is very easy to explain. Your victims would not have waited two seconds to report the robbery. The gendarmerie at Cap d’Antibes immediately notified me, as is their duty. And electricity travels on telephone wires much faster than you could drive here, especially at this time of the season. While I only had three blocks to walk.”
    “Okay,” said the Saint. “I’ll try to finish this even faster. If you’ll permit me …”
    He picked up the telephone and asked for Mrs Noversham’s suite by number. She answered so promptly that she might have been waiting for the call.
    “This is Simon Templar,” he said. “Would you be amused to hear that I’ve already got a policeman in my room accusing me of a stick-up out at Cap d’Antibes?”
    “Does he have any evidence?”
    “None that I know of. But it’s the same character who gave me such a bad time this morning. I think he’s just decided to blame me for everything that happens around here, on general principles.”
    “How ridiculous,” she said. “Have you told him that you only left me a few minutes ago, after playing Bézique with me all evening?”
    “I was wondering if you’d mind telling him yourself.”
    She arrived in a few minutes, an overwhelming figure in her war-paint and jangling jewels, and gave Simon an alibi that was a classic of unblushing perjury, even adorning it with details of some of the hands they had played and waving a piece of paper which