Catch the Saint by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page A

how I
could reach a Mr Fawkes who’s involved in
the Official Secrets Act?”
    “I’ve never heard of
any such person, but of course …”
    “Sorry to have
troubled you. Best of luck with your factories.”
    Simon hung up and faced
Julie, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Mr Fawkes in room 405 is
not even remotely con nected with official
secrets, and I doubt that your brother is either. It looks as if comrade Pargit suffers from repressed longings
to be a member of the Civil Service, and spends his lunch hours playing bureaucrat. He borrowed Fawkes’s
office just long enough to talk to
you and scare you into keeping quiet.”
    Julie was suddenly on her feet, her hands
clenched. “Then where is Adrian, if he isn’t really under arrest? Why
couldn’t it be the other way round?”
    “You mean, could the
Leonardo Galleries be a front for some Secret Service
operation? I hardly think so. If they were, they wouldn’t want a whiff of scandal about them. And if ‘Pargit’ were an undercover name for Fawkes, he wouldn’t be
swindling elderly widows as a side
line. No—I’m sure how that your ‘Special Branch’ visitors were phonies. Why
Pargit is going to these lengths is quite another puzzle.”
    “Then what’s happened
to my brother?”
    Julie’s voice was rising
to a dangerous pitch, so Simon put an arm round her
shoulder and made her sit down beside him on the
sofa.
    “Take it easy,”
he said quietly. “Your brother has probably been
kidnapped by Pargit and his pals for some reason we don’t know yet.
The purpose of all the dramatic impersonations was to throw you off the track and—more than anything else—keep you from spreading word round that your brother
had disap peared.”
    Now the girl’s voice
became more angry than hysterical.
    “I’m a complete
idiot! I believed the whole thing! And Adrian’s probably dead or something!”
    She started crying.
    “Don’t be so
pessimistic,” Simon said, trying to counter her despair
with reassurance. “If anyone had killed your brother it wouldn’t have served much purpose to use four men—men you might identify later—just to sell you on a fake version of
where he’d be for the next few days or weeks. I certainly
don’t think he’s dead. Assuming he’s taken an
involuntary leave of absence, whoever’s got him must plan to keep him for some
time—other wise why go to so much trouble to stop
you reporting him as missing? So I don’t
imagine he’s in any immediate danger.”
    “But why would
anybody want to kidnap him?” Julie argued. “Nobody
in our family is rich.”
    “Maybe you can help
answer that,” said the Saint. “Any ideas?”
    “No. I can’t imagine Adrian doing anything
except painting. He never had an ordinary
job.”
    “Any strong
political views?”
    “No political views
at all. He never joined anything.”
    “What about trips
abroad?”
    “He couldn’t afford them. I suppose he’s
been doing better lately than he used to,
but he certainly wouldn’t have much spare cash for foreign holidays.”
    “It hardly sounds
like the traditional picture of an artist’s life. What
about friends? Girlfriends?”
    “He never mentioned
any girls. He must have friends, but I don’t
know who they are. Adrian’s very quiet.”
    Simon got to his feet.
    “May I see his
studio?”
    Julie took him back
through the hall to the room at the rear of the flat where her brother’s
sketches, paintings, and working paraphernalia filled most
of the floor space.
    “This is just the
way he left it,” she said.
    For a long time Simon did
not say anything. He moved about the studio, stopping for
a while in front of each of Adrian Norcombe’s creations, occasionally going back to one, comparing it with another. When he
had made a complete circuit of the room, he went back to the large
half-finished painting in the middle of the
studio, and then turned to Julie.
    “Is everything here
his work?” he asked.
    “I think so,”
she