The Saint Goes On by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

Oceanic tomorrow. Will you ring up the insurance company and make the usual arrangements?”
    While she was at the telephone, he broke open the parcel from his overcoat pocket and spilled a small handful of diamonds on to his blotter. He looked at them for a moment, and then turned to the safe behind his desk. It was a comparatively new one of the very latest design, a huge gleaming hulk of steel which would have seemed more at home in a bank Vault than in that dingy room. He set the two combinations, turned a key in the lock, and swung back the massive door. There was nothing on the shelves but a couple of cheap cardboard boxes. He took them out and tipped their contents on to the blotter also, submerging the first sprinkle of diamonds which he had put down. A solid heaped cone of glittering wealth, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies, iridescent with all the colours of the rainbow, winked up at him.
    “That will be all right, Mr. Enderby,” said his secretary. “They’re sending a man round right away.”
    Mr. Enderby nodded, and dragged his eyes away from the pile of jewels to glance at the cheap tin clock on the mantelpiece. He was not, as we have seen, very interested in food; but for more years than he could remember he had had a passionate interest in drink. And the hour had not yet struck when such satanic temptations are officially removed from a nation which would otherwise be certain to spend all its afternoons in drunken debauchery.
    “I must leave you to pack them up and attend to the formalities, Miss Weagle,” he said. “I have-er-another appointment.”
    Miss Weagle’s stoat-like face did not move a single, impolite muscle, although she had listened to a similar ritual every working day for the past five years, and knew perfectly well where Mr. Enderby’s appointment would be kept. She was not even surprised that he should leave such a collection of gems in her care, for the casualness with which diamond traders handle huge fortunes in stones is only incredible to the layman.
    “Very well, Mr. Enderby. What is the value of the shipment?”
    “Twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds,” replied Mr. Enderby, after an almost imperceptible deliberation; and he knew his business so well that the most expert and laborious valuation could not have disputed his snap assessment by more than a five-pound note.
    He put on his bowler hat and overcoat again, and paddled thirstily out to the streets, mumbling an apology to the red-faced walrus-moustached man whom he had to squeeze past at the top of the narrow stairs; and the walrus-moustached man gazed after him with thoughtful blue eyes which would have seemed incongruously keen and clear if Mr. Enderby had noticed them.
    The Saint went back across the landing as Mr. Enderby’s footsteps died away, and knocked on the door of the office.
    “I’m from the insurance company,” he said, when Miss Weagle had let him in.
    “About the jewels?”
    “Yes.”
    With his walrus moustache and air of disillusioned melancholy, he reminded Miss Weagle of her mother.
    “You’ve been quick,” she said, making conversation when she ought to have been making love.
    “I was out on a job, and I had to ring up the office from just round the corner, so they told me to come along,” Simon explained, wiping his whiskers on his sleeve. He had spent three hours putting on that ragged growth, and every hair was so carefully planted that its falsehood could not have been detected at much closer quarters than he was ever likely to get to with Miss Weagle. He glanced at the little heap of gems, which Miss Weagle had been packing into another cardboard box lined with cotton-wool. “Are these them?” he asked.
    Miss Weagle admitted coyly that those were them. Simon surveyed them disinterestedly, scratching his chin.
    “If you’ll just finish packing them up, miss,” he said, “I’ll take ‘em along now.”
    “Take them along?” she repeated in