The Saint in Persuit by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

then life almost always ignored the scripts men prepared for it anyway. The important things at the moment were that Vicky Kinian was in her room and could not get out without him knowing it, and that with her—unless the blonde had a more active role than he imagined—was a fascinating epistle from her departed dad. Whether it was the same letter she had been given in Iowa or a new one that had somehow come into her hands in Lisbon did not make much difference now; in either case it was just the sort of light reading the Saint craved to while away a few minutes of his tax-supported holiday in Portugal. And from that objective he could not let himself for the moment be detoured.
    He had gone directly from the American Embassy to the Tagus Hotel after his briefing on the case of the errant Major Kinian, who had somehow neglected to report to his superiors for the past quarter of a century. And as he entered the modest foyer, which was a pleasant but nevertheless gently jolting contrast to those of the chain-store caravanserais to which he had latterly become accustomed, the Saint had been musing on the stupendous changes that had subvened in the two-and-a-half decades since the missing major had last been heard from. That most popular puppet of the newspaper cartoonist, the black octopus with the swastika on its head, had long since withdrawn its tentacles from the borderlands of the abdicated British Empire and disappeared even from children’s nightmares. Former heroic allies had become sour antagonists, and one of those which had most cynically played both ends against the middle had spread its web over the world on a scale that made the reach of the black octopus seem puny in comparison.
    And yet, through it all, certain denizens of the Pentagon, part of a species which could easily misplace whole shiploads of bulldozer axles and misdirect trainloads of snow-boots to Equatorial Africa, had managed to keep a sharp eye out for Major Kinian—and not only that, but also to know when his daughter decided to take her summer holiday. Such atypical cases of bureaucratic alertness were enough to arouse the curiosity of the most skeptical buccaneer—or even of a Saint.
    “There is a young American lady staying here whom I would like very much to meet,” Simon had said to the desk clerk in clear Portuguese as he took up the pen to sign the register. “Her name is Victoria Kinian.”
    “Ah, si,” the clerk said promptly. “She has just arrived this morning.”
    “Bern. But please say nothing to her. There is always a tactful way to arrange these things.”
    The clerk smiled understandingly, and then came to sudden attention.
    “Senhor!” he whispered, scarcely moving his lips. “You have good fortune. There comes the lady now. The dark-haired one. The blonde one does not stay here.”
    At a single glance the Saint had discovered at least one superficial reason why the men of American Intelligence need not have been excessively pitied for the close watch they had kept on Major Kinian’s daughter. Unconsciously beautiful in a modest white-and-yellow summer dress, she made her bare-shouldered flashier companion look like the late night shift at a hamburger stand. For just a moment she had met his gaze with interest but without encouragement, and then had turned her head and gone on up the stairs.
    “A most lovely young lady,” the desk clerk said discreetly.
    “Most lovely,” Simon agreed. “Have she and her friend been out long?”
    “No, senhor. Less than two hours.”
    The Saint thanked him, and followed the bellhop who came to carry his bags. There was no elevator in the building, and they used the same broad stairway which the girls had just climbed.
    “Desculpe-me, faca o favor!” puffed a voice just behind them, and a small bald roundish man in Vandyke whiskers chugged between Simon and his burdened porter with such urgent speed that he knocked one of the suitcases against the railing. “Pardon!” he