Detective and mystery stories; Private investigators -- England -- Fiction; Saint (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
She had found the switch in the hall, and she turned on the light to
see his face better, but he was not joking.
“Lock your door, and put the key under the pillow. Don’t open to
anybody—not even your aunt. I don’t really think anything’ll happen so
soon, but Tigers can hustle. Will you?”
She nodded.
“You’re very alarming,” she said.
“I’m full of ideas to-night,” he said. “I’ve had a taste of the
Tiger’s speed, and nobody ever stung the Saint in the same way twice.
Don’t believe any messages except they’re brought by Orace. Don’t
trust anybody but me, Orace, or old Carn at a pinch. I know it’s a
tall order, but there are one or two rough days—not to mention rough
nights—in store for the old brigade. You’ve been perfectly marvellous
so far. Can you keep it up?”
“I’ll try,” she said.
He took her hand.
“God bless you, Pat, old pal.”
“Saint——”
He was going when she stopped him. It was odd to hear that nickname
fall from her lips—the name wherewith the Saint had been christened in
strange and ugly places, by hard and godless men. He had grown so used
to it that he had come to accept it without question, but now the
sound of it brought a flood of memories. Once again he stood in the
Bosun’s smoky bar at the back of Mexico City, looking from the huddled
corpse of Senhor Miguel Grasiento to the girl called Cherry, and heard
the _rurales_ pounding on the door. He had got her away, on an English
tramp bound for Liverpool. “‘Saint,’” she had said—“that was a true
word spoken in jest.” And he had never heard the name uttered in the
same tone since until that moment. . . .
“Saint, did you really go to Bloem’s?”
“I did not,” he answered. “That was a frame-up. But Mynheer Bloem is
certainly one of the Tiger Cubs. Watch him! I’ll tell you the whole
yarn to-morrow. Bye-bye, kid.”
The Saint found Orace in the lane, curled up under the hedge,
philosophically smoking his pipe.
“We’ll work inland round the village,” said Simon, “I’m hoping the
Tiger’s had enough for one night, but you never know. Nobody’s got any
proof that Bloem was lying about that hold-up merchant, except me, and
a fairy tale like that cuts both ways. If our bodies were found in a
field in the morning, the whole thing’d fit in beautifully.”
Nevertheless, they were not molested on the way back—a fact which
might well have been due to the Saint’s foresight. It took an hour of
the Saint’s killing pace to do the journey which would have lasted
only fifteen minutes by the obvious route, and even then Simon was not
satisfied.
When the outline of the Pill Box loomed dimly up against the dark sky,
he stopped.
“Booby traps have caught mugs before now,” he murmured. “Just park
yourself in the nettles here, Orace, while I snoop round.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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