Saint on Guard by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

and maneuvering for position with the oblique innocence of a cat encircling a pair of sparrows.
    “Before this gets too unpleasant,” he said, “couldn’t we talk it over?”
    “You talk,” said Varetti, with his teeth gleaming. “I’ll listen.”
    Simon hesitated a moment; and then with the most natural gesture of decision he put his cigarette down in the ashtray and moved around towards Varetti, while Cokey came around to follow him.
    Varetti said: “Not too close, Mr Templar. You can talk from there.”
    Simon stopped a step further on. Varetti’s gun, trained steadily on his midsection, was about four feet away. Cokey was to his right and a little further off, but he had put his gun away to have both hands free for the length of cord he had found.
    “Look,” said the Saint. “All this business–-“
    It was at that point that the cigarette he had left in the ashtray went bam! like a small firecracker, which in fact it was.
    Varetti would probably have been too smart to fall for any ordinary stall, but he would have been less than animate if he eould have heard that noise with no reaction. His head and eyes switched away together; and that was all Simon really needed. The fact that this involuntary movement also happened to angle one side of Varetti’s jaw into an ideal position for receiving a left hook was actually only a bonus.
    The Saint took one long step forward, and the impetus of his stride added itself to the impact of a fist that must have made Mr Varetti think for one split second that he had received a direct hit from a block-buster bomb. After that immeasurable instant he did no more thinking at all: he slid down the door frame like sloppy plaster down a wall, and Simon picked the shiny automatic out of his unresisting fingers as he dropped.
    Cokey Walsh backed away with a wild attempt to get his own automatic out again, but he was too tangled up with the gar-roting cord which he had been twisting around his hands for a good purchase. Without even bothering to reverse the gun that he had taken from Varetti, Simon bonged him firmly on his already tender brow, and once again Mr Walsh passed into slumber-land… .
    The Saint lighted himself another and less stimulating cigarette, and paused for a bare moment’s thought. His mind was still gyrating with questions that he had still had no chance to ask, and which now seemed condemned to further postponement on account of the magnificent lethargy of the potential respondents. On the other hand, after such a promising introduction, Miss Sinclair’s interesting and unusual apartment should be at least worth a little more detailed survey. But there was no telling how soon some other interruption might crop up in such an unconventional menage; and whatever form it might take, it seemed fair to assume that the presence of a pair of unconscious bodies on the living-room floor would do nothing to facilitate coping with it.
    In order to dispose of that difficulty first, he took the two bodies by the collar, one in each hand, and dragged them into the bedroom; in which process he nearly tripped headlong over a rawhide suitcase which someone had thoughtfully left out in the middle of the floor. He was still rubbing an anguished shin when he heard the rattle of a key in the front door lock and went back hopefully into the living-room.
    “Hullo, Barbara,” he said blandly. “I was afraid I’d missed you.”
    6 In her street clothes, she looked just as exotic and exciting as she had the night before. Her tailored suit had obviously been conceived by a Scottish sheep, born on a hand loom north of the Tweed, and lovingly reared by a couturier with a proper admiration for the seductive curves of her figure. The inevitable hatbox which is the badge and banner of the New York model dangled from one gloved hand; but you would still have een her as a model without it, if only because such a sheer physical-perfection as hers simply demanded to be pictured. Simon