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

and drawled: “I hope that’s a compliment.”
    The ginger-haired Wilbert had finally accomplished his assignment, which had kept him out of this exchange, and now as if he had not heard any of it he pulled a notebook and a ballpoint pen from his pocket and leaned towards the Saint like a college-magazine reporter.
    “What hotel are you staying at, Mr Thomas?”
    “I’m staying in a friend’s apartment. He lent it to me while he’s away.”
    “Would you give me the address? And the telephone number, if there is one?”
    The Saint was mildly surprised.
    “What ever for?”
    “Sir Jasper will expect me to know,” Wilbert said. “If he wanted to get in touch with you again for any reason, and I didn’t know where to find you, he’d skin me alive.”
    With his jug-handle ears and slightly protruding eyes and teeth, and the complexion that looked as if it had been sandpapered, he was so pathetically earnest, like a boy scout trying for a badge, that Simon didn’t have the heart to be evasive with that information. But in return he asked where Undine was staying.
    “He has a villa for the season-Les Cigales,” Wilbert told him. “You take the Avenue Foch out of the town, and it’s three or four kilometers out, on your left, right on the water. Sir Jasper has had signs posted along the road with his initials, so you won’t have any trouble finding it if he invites you there.”
    “Thanks,” murmured the Saint. “But I hardly think we’ve struck up that kind of friendship.”
    Carozza was still scrutinizing him with unalleviated curiosity; and to head off any further interrogation, Simon deliberately took the lead in another direction.
    “What is this epic you’re working on?” he asked.
    “Messalina,” Carozza said curtly. He was plainly irritated at being forced off at a tangent from the subject that intrigued him.
    “Based on the dear old Roman mama of the same name?”
    “Yes.”
    “I can see why it would be difficult to build up another female part and make it as important as hers.”
    “With any historical truth or dramatic integrity, yes. But those are never Sir Jasper’s first considerations.”
    “His first being the box office?”
    “Usually. And after that, his personal reasons.”
    “This Maureen Herald,” Dominique Rousse said. “She is a good friend of you?”
    In French, the words “good friend” applied to one of the opposite sex have a possible delicate ambiguity which Simon did not overlook.
    “I only met her yesterday,” he answered. “But I think she’s very nice.”
    “Do you want her to have this part?”
    “I wish her luck, but I don’t wish anyone else any bad luck,” said the Saint diplomatically. “I hope it all works out so that everybody’s happy.”
    He mentally excluded Sir Jasper Undine from that general benevolence, but decided not to bring up that issue. He could see that Lee Carozza was getting set to resume his inquisition, and he was instinctively disinclined to remain available for it. He finished his drink and stood up briskly.
    “Well, it was nice meeting all of you, but I must be going. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
    Because Undine had turned to the right when he left, Simon turned the other way, to obviate any risk of running into them again and seeming to have followed. In the direction thus imposed on him, opening off a narrow and unpromising alley, was the surprisingly atmospheric and attractive patio of the Auberge des Maures, which it was no hardship to settle for. He found a table in a quiet corner; and presently over a splendid bouillabaisse and a bottle of cool rosé he found himself inevitably considering the phenomenon of Sir Jasper Undine.
    It was a frustrating kind of review, because in spite of Undine’s resplendent qualifications as a person on whom something unpleasant ought to be inflicted, the appropriate form of visitation was not at all easy to determine.
    A simple extermination was naturally the most complete and