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

built an inspiring reputation. It was so good, in fact, that he had a wide-open chance to embezzle five million dollars, with no more trouble than writing a few checks. I told you I was looking for him when we first met, but I don’t think you took me seriously.”
    She stared at him with her chin dropping and her mouth and eyes equally open, temporarily stunned out of any vestige of poise.
    “Plenty of lawyers have had chances like that,” he went on, “but this one grabbed it. He packed the loot in a couple of suitcases, in cash and bearer bonds, and vanished into the blue. When I heard about the case a few months ago, I decided to go after him like I’d go on a treasure hunt. First, because he’d been gone so long without being caught, I figured he must have gone further than the United States. But where could he go without a passport? Spies have forged passports; big-time international crooks can get ‘em; but a previously respectable attorney wouldn’t have any idea where to buy one. That narrowed it down to Central America and the West Indies. I found out that he didn’t speak any Spanish, and I decided that that might have made him leerier of the Latin countries. Most people—even policemen—automatically think of the banana republics as the perfect place for a crook to hide, but I can tell you that there’s nothing so conspicuous down there as an obvious gringo. However, that still left plenty of British islands. But then I found out that Illet had spent a couple of vacations here, and it was the only one he seemed to have visited. I bet on another hunch that this man might be most likely to head for a place that he knew a little about, where he could melt as quickly as possible into the local scene, rather -than a place that’d be totally strange to him; and I decided to start sniffing around here first.”
    “But if he’d been here even as a tourist, there’d be people who might remember him!”
    “Not in the identity he was going to create. He had another lawyer’s trait: patience. With five million bucks sowed away, he didn’t have to rush out and start splurging. Even if he laid low for ten years, it’d be like earning half a million a year, tax free, which was a lot better than he could’ve done legitimately. My guess is that he originally planned to hibernate at least until the statute of limitations ran out, when he’d be absolutely in the clear. In a nice house like this, with his books and his records, it shouldn’t have been too hard to take. Of course he couldn’t have much social life, but some men don’t mind that. I expect he went to church regularly, though. An innocent unsuspecting minister would be the easiest person for him to cultivate who’d be qualified to endorse a passport application after knowing him for several years—and he had to get a passport eventually, to go to places like London and’ Paris where he could make the playboy splash that he’d always secretly dreamed of.”
    Simon had moved over to the corner of the chesterfield again. He put his half-empty glass down in precarious balance on the back, and lighted a cigarette.
    “Unfor’tunately,” he said, “our boy’s good resolutions weren’t quite equal to the strain. He stood it for several years; but counting over all that spinach that he couldn’t spend, and thinking about the rip-roaring times he could have with it, his patience finally ran out before the statute of limitations would iave let him thumb his nose at the law. He had to break down and treat himself to one preliminary fling, and in the r61e and disguise of Roger Ivalot he thought he could get away with it. He did, too. But then, like dopes who experiment with dope, he found it was habit-forming. Six months later he had to go back for more. And before that encore was over, he found himself threatened with a lawsuit which he knew damn well could make all his castles in the air end up like iron balloons. That was the reason he couldn’t