Saint on Guard by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online

vie boheme.
    He rode up to the floor where he had found her name listed in the hall, and rang the bell. After a reasonable pause, he rang it again. There was still no answer; and he proceeded to inspect the lock with professional penetration. It was the usual Yale type, but the way it was set in the door promised very little opposition to a man whom the master cracksmen of two continents had been heard to mention with respect. He took a thin strip of flexible metal from a special compartment in the back of his wallet, and went to work with unhurried confidence.
    It took him less than a minute, and he went into a living-room which could have served as a model of relaxing and fussless cosiness to any lady who wanted her gentleman friends to feel much better than at home.
    He took three steps into the room, and a syrupy voice said: “The hands up and clasped behind the back of the neck, please, Mr Templar.”
    5 Simon did as he was told, while he turned to locate the welcoming committee. He realised that he had been quite con-spicuously careless: because there had been no answer to the bell, he had assumed that there was nobody home. Which seemed to have been an egregiously rash assumption.
    He found himself considering two separately unreliable trigger fingers.
    One of them, which had appeared from behind the door, belonged to the thin blue-chinned specimen who had had such an unfortunate collision with a slab of functional timber the night before. He wore a broad patch of adhesive tape across his brow as a souvenir of the occasion, and if there was any spirit of Christian forgiveness and loving-kindness in his secret soul it had. not yet had time to dig its way out into his sunken eyes.
    The other man, who must have been the owner of the grenadine voice, stood in the doorway of the bedroom. A glimpse of the room behind him formed a sudden sensuous woodcut of black painted floor and white snow leopard rugs, black marble fireplace and white leather paneled walls, ebony and white corduroy furniture—the sort of room from which a man like that would most naturally seem to emerge. For aside from the plated automatic in his hand, he was outwardly a very boudoir type. In contrast with the hapless butter of doors, whose clothes hung on his skinny frame like washing on a line, this exhibit was tailored to the point of being almost zoot-suited. He had glossy black hair with three beautiful regular waves in it, and the adenoidal type of Latin countenance which belongs with the male half of a ballroom dance team. He smiled steadily, showing teeth that were very white and slightly buck.
    “So you walked into the parlor, Mr Templar,” he said.
    “You have the advantage of me,” Simon said genially. “Would you like to introduce yourself, or are you the man of mystery?”
    The wavy head bowed.
    “Ricco Varetti—at your service. And on your left is Cokey Walsh, who will now proceed to search you.”
    Simon nodded.
    “We nearly met last night, only something came between us. I suppose you were the guy who rescued him?”
    “I had that pleasure. By the way, it’s a little surprising to see you. We really expected that the police would detain you much longer than this. How were you able to get away so soon?”
    “I told them I had an appointment with the hairdresser for a new permanent, so of course they had to let me go. You’d understand.”
    The scrawny warrior stepped back from his search with malevolence in the thin gash of his mouth.
    “So this is the guy, is it?” he said.
    “This is the guy, Cokey,” Varetti agreed.
    “The guy who gave me this crack on the head.”
    “Yes, Cokey.”
    “Lemme have him, Ricco. All to myself.”
    “Not yet, Cokey.”
    “The sonofabitch bust my head open,” Cokey argued. “Lemme get a piece of rope and put him out of my misery.”
    “Not yet, Cokey.”
    The Saint’s expression was interested and sympathetic.
    “After all, we do have to make up our minds about me,” he murmured