Send for the Saint by Leslie Charteris, Peter Bloxsom Read Free Book Online Page B

him?”
    “No, sir. I just work here.”
    Simon lounged on the bed and reflected.
    “I should think it’s quite a problem for a valet, sometimes — keeping track of his employer’s changing moods, or tastes.”
    “I don’t quite follow you, sir.”
    “Well, for example,” Simon explained, “just at the moment I’m going through what you might call a discreet-necktie phase. Next month I shall probably get fed up with so much sobriety and break out in jazzed-up jobs that look like chintz chair covers.”
    Bainter turned from the wardrobe.
    “Funny you should say that, sir. Colours, now — well, Mr Patroclos usually wears whatever I lay out for him. A very conservative dresser. But just recently, he brought home some shirts in what I would call quite startling stripes…” Bainter tailed off, as if he felt he had been indiscreet.
    “Not at all the sort of thing you would approve, Bainter?”
    “Well,” the valet conceded reluctantly, “I expect I’m a bit oldfashioned. But I think it must have been only a momentary aberration on his part, if I may use the expression. At any rate, the next time he came back from Athens, and I laid out one of those new shirts, he was quite shocked, and asked me where I’d found it.”
    “He’d forgotten that he bought it himself?”
    “It was hardly a shirt that one would forget so quickly.”
    “Perhaps he was regretting his — aberration — and was trying to save face.”
    “Possibly, sir. Although Mr Patroclos wouldn’t normally be bothered to make that sort of pretence.”
    Simon could scarcely have hoped for more from the obliging Bainter, who had now finished the unpacking.
    “There we are, sir. I trust we haven’t forgotten anything.”
    “Not a thing. We’re very efficient, Bainter.”
    “Thank you, sir … I won’t keep you, sir. I expect you’ll be wanting to get some sleep.”
    In the doorway the valet turned and added:
“Just one thing, sir. If you should wish to open the window — six inches is the limit, sir. Wider than that, and the alarms start to ring.”
    “Oh, they do, do they?” said the Saint to himself after Bainter had gone. “We’ll see about that.”
    He undressed and brushed his teeth, but did not change into pyjamas. He lay awake skimming through books from the bedside shelf until three o’clock, when he felt absolutely sure that everyone else in the house would be asleep. Then he got up and dressed again, this time in a sports shirt and slacks, but nothing more. Barefoot, he switched off the light and slipped silently out into the corridor.
    It has been easy enough, in the most innocent and casual way, when Bainter was showing him to his room, to learn the exact location of Patroclos’ master suite. A pencil flashlight, its bulb masked with the piece of black insulating tape pierced only with a small hole, provided a needle beam of illumination that was all the Saint needed to show him his way.
    Patroclos’ door was not locked. Simon would have been astonished if it had been, even though he could have easily coped with it — such defensiveness, in the man’s own home, would have been almost a symptom of paranoia. And whatever their failings, neither Patroclos had ever impressed him as a neurotic type.
    In fact, the millionaire — or his impersonator — was snoring with a steady and assertive resonance which proclaimed with every rhythmic decibel the total relaxation and self-confidence of its source.
    The Saint moved in like a wraith, guarding even the reduced ray of his torch from directly touching the huddled shape under the bedclothes. He allowed only enough of a glow to escape from it under his cupped hand to give him bearings, and show him the evening clothes draped over a hanger stand at the foot of the bed; the gold fountain pen, loose change, cigar-clipper, wallet, and diary spread out on the bedside table; and the bunch of keys carelessly dumped among them.
    To abstract a bunch of keys from within a yard of the ear