The Saint in Europe by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online

the heels of that psychic chill came a warm pervasive glow of utter beatitude that crowned his recent feast more perfectly than the coffee and Napoleon brandy which he had not yet touched would ever do. His interest was no longer polite or even perfunctory. It had the vast receptive serenity of a cathedral.
    For just as a musician would be electrified by a cadence of divine harmonies, so could the Saint respond to the tones of new and fabulous adventure. And about this one, he knew, there could be nothing commonplace. Suddenly he was humbly grateful for his ambiguous reputation, for the little difficulty at the hotel, for the resultant gossip, for the extravagant bonus which it had brought him. Because in a few simple unmistakable words the prosaic Mr and Mrs Upwater had placed in his hands the string to a kite of such superlatively crooked design that its flight, wherever it led, could bring only joy to his perversely artistic soul-a swinнdle of such originality and impudence that he contemplated it with an emotion bordering upon awe.
    “That,” said the Saint at length, with transcendent underнstatement after so long a pause, “is a lulu.”
    “I can’t get used to it yet,” Mr Upwater said dazedly. “He stood there, Mr Jonkheer did, looking straight at me just like I’m looking at you, only as if he thought I was a lunatic, and said he’d never set eyes en me before in his life. He almost had me believing I’d gone out of my mind. Only I knew I hadn’t.”
    “It’s just like that story,” Mrs Upwater said. “You must know the one. About the girl and her mother who go to a hotel in Paris, and the mother’s sick, so the daughter goes out to get her some medicine, and when she gets back everybody in the hotel says they’ve never seen her before, or her mother, and when she goes to the room where she left her mother it’s a different room, and there’s nobody there.”
    Simon nodded, almost in a trance himself.
    “I know the story,” he said. “It turns out that the mother had the plague, or something, doesn’t it? And they got rid of her and tried to cover it up because they didn’t want to scare away the tourists … But this is a new twist!”
    “That it is,” said Mr Upwater gloomily. “Only diamonds don’t get any disease. But they’re worth a lot of money.”
    At last the Saint was able to control the palpitating gremнlins inside him enough to reach for a cigarette.
    “You’re sure you went to the right place?” he asked.
    “I couldn’t go wrong. The name’s on the door.”
    “And you’re sure it was Jonkheer you saw?”
    “Of course I’m sure. It was the same man both times. The police knew him, too.”
    “You’ve been to the police already?”
    “Of course I have. First thing I did, when I saw I wasn’t getting anywhere with Jonkheer. They went with me to the shop. But it was his word against mine, and they preferred his. Said he was a well-known respectable citizen, but they didn’t know the same about me. I almost got locked up myself. They as good as said I was either off my nut or trying to blackmail him.”
    “Didn’t anyone else see you give him the stone?”
    “No. It was just him and me. I didn’t take Mrs Upwater with me yesterday-she wanted to stay at the hotel and do our unpacking.”
    “But if you say you gave it to him, Tom,” said Mrs Upwater loyally, “I know you did.”
    Simon picked up his balloon glass and rolled the golden liquid around in it.
    “Didn’t you get a receipt or anything?”
    “Indeed I did. But this Dutchman swears it isn’t even in his writing.”
    “Could someone else have disguised himself as Jonkнheer?”
    “If you saw him, Mr Templar, you’d know that couldn’t be done, except in a story.”
    “How about a black-sheep twin brother?”
    “I thought of that, too,” Mr Upwater said dourly. “I’m not a fool, and I’ve read books. He just doesn’t have one. The police vouch for that.”
    The Saint sipped his cognac