The Saint Sees It Through by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

unflattering, striking and nondescript,
natural and disguised— together with a miscellany of stamps, seals,
dies, and stickers which any properly conditioned bureaucrat would have
drooled with ecstasy to behold. It was an outfit that would have been worth a
fortune to any modern brigand, and it had been worth exactly that much to
the Saint before.
    He sat down at the desk and worked for an
unhurried hour, at the end of which time he had all the necessary
documents to authenticate an entirely imaginary seaman by the name
of Tom Simons, of the British Merchant Marine. He folded and refolded
them several times, rubbed the edges with a nail file, smeared them with
cigarette ash, sprinkled them with water and a couple of drops
of coffee, and walked over them several times until they were
convincingly soiled and worn.
    Then he finished dressing and went out. He
took a Fifth Avenue bus to Washington Square, and walked from there down
through the gray shabby streets of the lower east side until he found the
kind of store he was looking for.
    He couldn’t help the natural elegance of his normal appear ance, but the proprietor eyed him curiously when
he announced himself as a buyer and
not a seller.
    “I’ve got a character part in a
play,” he explained, “and this was the only way I
could think of to get the right kind of clothes.”
    That story increased his expenses by at least a hundred per cent; but he came out at the end of an hour with an
untidy parcel containing a complete
outfit of well-worn apparel that would establish the character of Tom
Simons against any kind of scrutiny.
    He took a taxi back to the Algonquin.
    There were two telephone messages.
    Miss Dexter phoned, and would call again about
seven o’clock.
    Miss Natello phoned.
    Simon arched his brows over the second
message, and smiled a
little thinly before he tore it up. The ungodly were certainly working. Fundamentally he didn’t mind that, but the
per sistence of the coverage took up
the slack in his nerves. And it wasn’t because he was thinking about himself.
    He called Avalon’s number, but there was no
answer.
    There are meaningless gulfs of time in real
life which never occur in well-constructed stories—hours in which nothing
is happening, nothing is about to happen, nothing is likely to happen,
and nothing does happen. The difference is that in a story they can be so
brightly and lightly skimmed over, simply by starting a fresh paragraph with some
such inspired sentence as “Simon Templar
went downstairs again for a drink, and Wolcott Gibbs waved to him across the
lobby, and they spent a couple of
congenial hours lamenting the sad standards of the current season on Broadway.”
    Simon Templar went downstairs again for a
drink, and Wolcott Gibbs waved to him across the lobby, and they
spent a couple of congenial hours lamenting the sad standards of the current
season on Broadway; and all the time Simon was watch ing the clock and
wondering what held back the hands. •
    It was fifteen hours, or minutes, after seven
when the call came.
    “Merry Christmas,” she said.
    “And a happy new year to you,” he
said. “What goes?”
    “Darling,” she said, “I forgot
that I had a date with my arranger to go over some new songs. So I had to rush
out. What are you doing?”
    “Having too many drinks with Wolcott Gibbs.”
    “Give him my love.”
    “I will.”
    “Darling,” she said, “there’s
a hotel man from Chicago in town—he used to come and hear me bellow when
I was at the Pump Room—and he wants me to go to dinner. And I’ve got to find
myself another job.”
    He felt empty inside, and unreasonably
resentful, and angry because he knew it was unreasonable.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “So am I. I do want to see you,
really.”
    “Have you met this creep before?”
    “Oh, yes. Lots of times. He’s quite
harmless—just a bit dreary. But he might have a job for me, and I’ve got to
earn an honest living somehow. Don’t