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

else besides Teal and Patricia and himself could have known about.
    He could
see how the mind of Mr Osbett would have worked on it. Mr
Osbett would already know that someone had interrupted the
attempt to recover the package of tea from Chief Inspector Teal on his way
home, that that someone had arrived in a car, and that he had presumably
driven Teal the rest of the way after the rescue. If someone was phoning Teal later about a
packet of tea, the remainder of the sequence
of accidents would only have taken a moment to reconstruct… . And when the Saint thought about it, he. would have given a fair percentage of his fifteen
hundred pounds for a glimpse of Mr
Osbett’s face when he learned into
what new hands the packet of tea had fallen.
    He still
looked at Red McGuire.
    “How
would you like to split this packet of tea with me?” he asked
casually.
    McGuire
blinked at him.
    “Blimey,
guv’nor, wot would I do wiv arf a packet of tea?”
    Simon did
not try to enlighten him. The answer was enough to consolidate the conclusion he
had already reached. Red McGuire really
didn’t know what it was all about—that was also becoming credible. After all,
any intelligent em ployer would know
that Red McGuire was not a man who could be safely led into temptation.
    The Saint
had something else to think about. His own brief introductory
anonymity was over, and henceforward all the attentions of the ungodly would
be lavished on him self—while he was still without one single solid target
to shoot back at.
    He sank
into a chair and blew the rest of his cigarette into a meditative chain of
smoke rings; and then he crushed the butt into an ashtray and looked at McGuire
again.
    “What
happens to your fifty-quid-a-week job if you go back to stir,
Red?” he inquired deliberately.
    The thug
chewed his teeth.
    “I
s’pose it’s all over with, guv’nor.”
    “How
would you like to phone your boss now—for me?”
    Fear
swelled in McGuire’s eyes again as the Saint’s mean ing wore its way
relentlessly into his understanding. His mouth opened once or twice without
producing any sound.
    “Yer
carn’t arsk me to do that!” he got out at last. “If he knew I’d
double-crorst ‘im—he said—— ”
    Simon rose
with a shrug.

“Just
as you like,” he said carelessly. “But one of us is going to use the
telephone, and I don’t care which it is. If I ring up Vine Street
and tell ‘em to come over and fetch you away, I should think
you’d get about ten years, with a record like yours. Still,
they say it’s a healthy life, with no worries
    “Wait
a minute,” McGuire said chokily. “What do you do if I make
this call?”
    “I’ll
give you a hundred quid in cash; and I’ll guarantee that when I’m through
with your boss he won’t be able to do any of those things he promised.”
    McGuire was
no mathematician, but he could do simple arithmetic. He gulped
something out of his throat.
    “Okay,”
he grunted. “It’s a bet.”
    Simon
summed him up for a moment longer, and then hauled his chair over
to within reach of the table where the telephone stood. He picked up the
microphone and prodded his forefinger into the first perforation of
the dial.
    “All
you’re going to do,” he said, as he went on spelling out BER
3100, “is tell the big bearded chief that you’ve been through
this place with a fine comb, and the only tea-leaf in it is yourself. Do you
get it ? No Saint, no tea—no soap…. And I don’t want to
frighten you or anything like that, Red, but I just want you
to remember that if you try to say any more than that, I’ve
still got you here, and we can easily warm up the curling-tongs again.”
    “Don’t
yer think I know wot’s good for me?” retorted the other sourly.
    The Saint
nodded warily, and heard the ring of the call in the receiver. It was
answered almost at once, in a sharp cultured voice with a slight foreign
intonation.
    “Yes?
Who is that?”
    Simon put
the mouthpiece to McGuire’s