The Saint Around the World by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page A

dock.
    “In a few minutes,” he said. “I have to make a phone call first.”
    She walked speechlessly beside him up to the house. But now she realized that he was enjoying himself, and she would not give him the satisfaction of making her protest again.
    While he was dialing a number, he said: “To give you something to go on with—does anything ring a bell with you about a man who’s excessively selfconscious about names?”
    Without a word, she turned and went over to the bar cupboard.
    He said to the telephone: “Mr. Van Hessen, please. This is Mr. Templar.”
    He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: “Another thing. Weren’t you surprised that a character like our boy, who was so anxious that you shouldn’t talk to anyone, would leave such a melodramatic warning with anyone who answered the phone, like your caretaker?”
    The only reply was a heavily restrained clinking of glassware.
    He said to the phone: “Oh, Dick. Glad I caught you. Have you gotten to know anyone in the police higher up than a traffic cop? … Good. And do you have one of the Company boats there? … Better still. Will you please call this Inspector, and persuade him to let you pick him up and bring him out to Parker’s island right away—you know, where the Daynes are staying I mean as quickly as you can get here, I can’t call him myself, because if I gave my name he’d think someone was pulling his leg … No, I don’t want to say any more on the phone, but this is the most serious thing I ever asked you … Okay, feller. Thanks.” He hung up.
    Lona Dayne was standing beside him with a glass in her hand.
    “A nice drop of sherry before lunch?” she suggested sweetly. He took it. “Is it poisoned?”
    “If it was, no jury would convict me.”
    He moved to the end of one of the davenports, studied it for a couple of seconds in relation to the doors into the room, and slid a blue-black automatic out of his hip pocket and behind a cushion.
    “Tell me one thing,” he said. “If I’m quoting you correctly, you were talking to this caretaker, and his boss had just told him to try and rent the place. But how did you happen to meet him and be talking to him in the first place?”
    She raised a glass of her own to her lips, holding it with a tense care that just failed to be completely casual.
    “I’ve been waiting for that,” she said. “This house must have something to do with it, of course.” “How did you meet Bob?”
    “He came to see us at the hotel, the same day our story came out in the papers. He said that he once worked for a Mr. Rogers here, who threw a lot of wild parties, which he couldn’t forget—you’ve seen what a strait-laced type he is. With that coincidence of names, he wondered if it could be the man we were looking for. But his description didn’t fit anywhere—his Mr. Rogers was very tall and thin with a big hooked nose. Then it was after we’d ruled that out that he went on talking about his house and the island … Please,” she said, with her voice suddenly rising a sharp third, “don’t say how half-witted you’re thinking we must have been–-“
    He was at the telephone again, and did not even seem to have heard her.
    “Did you ever see this trick?” he inquired.
    He took off the handset, and dialed four numbers, and put the handset back again. Immediately, the telephone began to ring. He let it ring a few times, and then picked up the handset again.
    “If you know the right combination, you can make any telephone ring like an incoming call,” he said. “But do you know where all the extensions are in this house? It could be done from any of them.”
    He hung the instrument up and turned away. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was an attorney in Toronto named Robert Parker Illet. He was born and educated in England, but taken to Canada after his parents died in a flu epidemic and raised there by a maternal uncle. Seven years ago he was hardly middle-aged, but he’d