The Saint vs Scotland Yard Read Online Free PDF

collector of extortions —may his teeth fall
out and his legs putrefy! I’ll stand the odd sevenpence out of my
own pocket.”
    “And what do you think you’re going to do with the man himself?”
    The Saint smiled.
    “That’s a little difficult to say,” he murmured.
“Accidents sort of—er—happen, don’t they? I mean, I don’t want you
to start getting back any of your naughty old ideas about me, but—— ”
    Teal nodded; then he met the Saint’s mocking eyes seriously.
    “They’d
have the coat off my back if it ever got round,” he said, “but between you and me and these four
walls, I’ll make a deal—if you’ll
make one too.”
    Simon settled on the edge of the table, his cigarette slanting quizzically
upwards between his lips, and one whimsically sardonic eyebrow arched.
    “What is it?”
    “Save the Scorpion for me, and I won’t ask how you paid your
income tax.”
    For a few moments the Saint’s noncommittal gaze rested on the detective’s round red face;
then it wandered back to the impaled
memorandum above the mantelpiece. And then the Saint looked Teal in the eyes and smiled again.
    “O.K.,” he drawled. “That’s O.K. with me, Claud.”
    “It’s a deal?”
    “It
is. There’s a murder charge against the Scorpion, and I don’t see why the hangman shouldn’t earn his fiver. I guess it’s time you had a break, Claud Eustace. Yes—you can
have the Scorpion. Any advance on
fourpence?”
    Teal
nodded, and held out his hand.
    “Fourpence halfpenny—I’ll buy you a glass of beer at any pub inside the three-mile
radius on the day you bring him in,” he
said.
    Chapter V
     
     
    Patricia Holm came in shortly after four-thirty. Simon Templar
had lunched at what he always referred to as “the pub round the corner”—the
Berkeley—and had ambled elegantly about the purlieus of Piccadilly for an hour
thereafter; for he had scarcely learned to
walk two consecutive steps when his
dear old grandmother had taken him on her knee and enjoined him to “eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday”.
    He was
writing when she arrived, but he put down his pen and surveyed her solemnly.
    “Oh, there you are,” he remarked. “I thought you were
dead, but Teal said he thought you might only have taken a trip to
Vladivostok.”
    “I’ve been helping Eilen Wiltham—her wedding’s only five days away.
Haven’t you any more interest in her?”
    “None,” said the Saint callously. “The thought of the ap proaching
crime makes my mind feel unbinged—unhinged. I’ve already refused
three times to assist Charles to select pyjamas for the bridal chamber. I told
him that when he’d been married as often as I have—— ”
    “That’ll do,” said Patricia.
    “It will, very nearly,” said the Saint.
    He cast an eye over the mail that she had brought in with her from
the letter-box.
    “Those two enevelopes with halfpenny stamps you may exter minate
forthwith. On the third, in spite of the deceptive three- halfpenny Briefmarke, Irecognise the clerkly hand of Ander son and Sheppard. Add
it to the holocaust. Item four”—he picked up a small
brown-paper package and weighed it calculatingly in his hand—“is much too
light to contain high explo sive. It’s probably the new gold-mounted
sock-suspenders I ordered from Asprey’s. Open it, darling, and tell me what
you think of them. And I will read you some more of the Hideous History of
Charles.”
    He took up his manuscript.
     
    “With what a zest did he prepare For the first meeting (open-air)! With what a glee he fastened on
His bevor and his morion, His
greaves, his ventail, every tace,
His pauldrons and his rerebrace!
He sallied forth with martial eye, Prepared to do, prepared to die, But not prepared — by
Bayard! not
For the reception that he got.
Over that chapter of the tale It would be kind to draw a veil: Let it suffice that in disdain, Some hecklers threw him in a drain, And plodding home——
     
    “Excuse