Vendetta for the Saint. Read Online Free PDF

happily.
“How did you find me
in all this crowd?”
    The helicopter pilot and a single airport
atten dant—the only
audience—watched appreciatively, waiting
for the reverse view when the vision would retreat and in so doing display the remainder
of her delectable
curves. She ignored the Saint’s plea santry and merely gestured towards the parking space.
    Since
the roads on Capri are barely wide enough for two beamy baby-buggies to brush past each other, only the smallest
cars are used and even the buses are minuscule. Therefore he was not expect ing another Cadillac; but the little
cream-colored Alfa-Romeo which he boarded, with
its sensationally displayed chauffeuse, was a worthy substitute.
    So was her driving style, which shot it off like a compact bomb
and forced it to claw its way around the
turns that wound up the face of the mountain with an abandon which made the Saint hope de voutly that she knew
what she was doing. He stole several dubious
glances at her; but her lips were heavily
painted and unmoving, while the upper part of her face was so hidden by
immense flower- wreathed sunglasses that her
eyes and any ex pression around them were completely concealed. Her
attention seemed to concentrate entirely on the road; and Simon felt too
gentlemanly at the time to force his
attentions on her. Particularly since they were skirting the edge of
vertical drops so high that the boats below
looked like toys in a pond.
    Fortunately for his nervous stamina, there was
quite a short limit to the maximum mileage at her disposal on the island, and she had not even reached third gear when they arrived at their desti nation, a villa overlooking the beaches and coves
of Marina Piccola.
    His alertness involuntarily tautened again as
he strolled up the flagged path. Now he had helped
to deliver himself unresistingly exactly
where Destamio wanted him, it would
not be much long er before he was shown just how foolhardy he had been. He was not even ashamed to be relieved when
the Vision with the legs rang the door-bell herself, thus sparing him any
concern over the per ils of the bell
mechanism. More than once in the past it had been demonstrated to him how
lethal such commonplace fixtures
could be made. But this time the
button activated no poisoned needles, sprays
of gas, hidden guns, or bombs; if anything, the opening of the door was quite anticlimactic. Instead of unleashing
mayhem, it projected only the prominent belly of Signore Destamio, dressed in a cerise shirt and purple shorts which
did con siderably less for his
pear-shaped figure than the fancy
tailoring in which Simon had first seen him.
    “Well, Mr. Templar! Nice of you to
come,” the remembered
voice rasped. Destamio put out his hand and drew Simon into the house. “I been wanting to talk to you, and I figured this
spot was as good as any,
better than most. Right?”
    “It
could be,” said the Saint guardedly.
    He was observing all the corners and
interesting angles of the
interior without appearing to do so. But there were no other thugs in sight, and the sit uation looked transparently innocuous so far.
    “Come on and let’s sit out on the
balcony, nice and cool with
a great view, and Lily is gonna bring us some drinks and then she’ll get lost.”
    If Lily took offense at this rude dismissal she gave no sign of it. As soon as Destamio and the Saint were settled on either side of a glass and wrought-iron table she wheeled up a bar wagon and left. Simon heard a door close deep inside
the house.
    “Help yourself,” Destamio said. “And pour me a brandy and ginger ale while you’re there.”
    As Simon selected two clean glasses and a
bottle, he admired the
neat and tactful way in which anxie ty about a possibly-doctored drink had been eliminated. Nevertheless, he took the extra
precau tion of pouring
both drinks from the same bottle. The cognac was Jules Robin, he noted approving ly, though he would not normally have chosen
to drink it before lunch.
    “You