The Saint in Persuit by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online

safer side and slid over against the door.
    “That’s what you think, buster!” she snapped. “Now get out of here pronto or you’ll see plenty of trouble! Driver—”
    Her uninvited fellow traveller moved so swiftly that she was not sure whether the knife had been whipped from his pocket or whether it had been in his hand all the time. In any case, it was one of those very large switch knives whose butcher-shop blade stays concealed in its weighty handle until a button is pressed. The sharp silvery point flashed out at her like the head of a snake and stopped just short of her ribs.
    “Do not waste your voice,” the little man said. “The driver weel only pay attention to me. I am suggest that you should pay attention to this that I am holding in my hand.”
    He nuzzled the point of the blade almost affectionately against the thin material of her dress just below her breast.
    “I’ll scream my head off,” she threatened with less assurance.
    “And I would cut your head off and you would not scream any more.”
    The man seemed to think his rejoinder was humorous, but the sharp tip of his knife pressed harder against her and assured Freda that his basic intentions were entirely serious. She was really terrified for the first time. The driver —the back view of his head reminded her grotesquely of a carved coconut with a cap on—swung his taxi around several corners and headed away from the center of the city. The neighbourhoods they passed through began to deteriorate into jumbles of warehouses, dingy-looking bars, and grubby housing.
    “What do you want?” Freda asked tensely. “Where do you think you’re taking me?”
    “You weel know quick,” was the answer. “Do not make trouble.”
    The cab pulled into a narrow cobbled street of two-storey houses whose walls and window shutters seemed to be nearing the end of an ancient contest to decide which could flake off the most paint or plaster. Freda was so terrified by now that she took in only the vaguest impression of her surroundings. The man with the knife muttered his instructions as the driver opened the door on her side of the automobile.
    “You weel get out, please, and go into that house— weethout no fuss!”
    The switchblade reinforced his order, and the girl obeyed, clutching her purse tightly against her body almost as if she hoped it was all the men were really after. The car was parked within three paces of a doorway which the driver, in a parody of politeness, held open for her. He was an imbecilic-looking lout with a battered nose and cavernous bushy-browed eye sockets, one of the ugliest mortals she had ever laid eyes on. Even so, she thought she preferred him to the sinister little cutthroat behind her. As she entered the house she looked longingly back over her shoulder past the knifeman’s broad-brimmed hat at the sunlight on the wall opposite—and the last thing she saw was the long taxi, black and shining like a well-kept hearse.
    The man with the knife locked the door when they were all three inside, and it took several seconds for Freda’s eyes to accustom themselves to the dimness of the room. The two windows were shuttered and the driver jerked dusty draperies across them, cutting off the light that would have filtered in through the crevices. The room itself was depress-ingly shabby and underfurnished, like part of a rental house that had been used by family after family for years until finally it had been closed for months because no one would have it.
    “Seet at the table, senhorita.”
    Freda summoned every volt of her courage in a final effort to intimidate her chief captor with sheer defiance.
    “You can’t get away with this—whatever you think you want! I’m an American citizen, and …”
    The moustached man’s hatchet-chop of a laugh showed just how singularly unimpressed he was by her national prestige and her threats.
    “Seet down!” he ordered. “What we want ees so easy, senhorita, as you weel see. Do not