The Saint vs Scotland Yard by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page A

travelling. And the obvious deduction seemed too
good to be true.”
    Chapter VII
     
     
    Mallaby Road, Harrow, as the Saint discovered, was one of those
jolly roads in which ladies and gentlemen live. Lords and ladies may be
found in such places as Mayfair, Monte Carlo, and St.
Moritz; men and women may be found almost anywhere; but Ladies
and Gentlemen blossom in their full beauty only in such places as Mallaby
Road, Harrow. This was a road about two hundred yards long,
containing thirty of the stately homes of England, each of them a miraculously
pre served specimen of Elizabethan architecture, each of them ex actly the
same as the other twenty-nine, and each of them surrounded by
identical lawns, flower-beds, and atmospheres of overpowering gentility.
    Simon Templar, entering Mallaby Road at nine o’clock—an hour of
the morning at which his vitality was always rather low—felt slightly stunned.
    There being no other visible distinguishing marks or peculi arities about it, he discovered
No. 28 by the simple process of looking at
the figures on the garden gates, and found it after inspecting thirteen other numbers which were not
28. He started on the wrong side of
the road.
    To the maid who opened the door he gave a card bearing the name of
Mr. Andrew Herrick and the official imprint of the Daily Record. Simon
Templar had no right whatever to either of these decorations, which were the
exclusive property of a reporter whom he had once interviewed, but a little
thing like that never bothered the Saint. He kept every visiting card that was
ever given him and a few that had not been consciously donated, and drew
appropriately upon his stock in time of need.
    “Mr. Garniman is just finishing breakfast, sir,” said the maid doubtfully, “but I’ll ask him if he’ll see you.”
    “I’m sure he will,” said the Saint, and he said it so winningly that if
the maid’s name had been Mrs. Garniman the prophecy would have
passed automatically into the realm of sublimely concrete certainties.
    As it was,
the prophecy merely proved to be correct.
    Mr. Garniman saw the Saint, and the Saint saw Mr. Garni man. These
things happened simultaneously, but the Saint won on points. There
was a lot of Mr. Garniman.
    “I’m afraid I can’t spare you very long, Mr. Herrick,” he said.
“I have to go out in a few minutes. What did you want to see me about?”
    His
restless grey eyes flittered shrewdly over the Saint as he spoke, but Simon endured the scrutiny with the
peaceful calm which only the man who wears the suits of Anderson and Shepphard, the shirts of Harman, the shoes of
Lobb, and self- refrigerating conscience can achieve.
    “I came to ask you if you could tell us anything about the Scorpion,” said the Saint
calmly.
    Well, that is one way of putting it. On the other hand, one could say
with equal truth that his manner would have made a sheet of plate glass
look like a futurist sculptor’s impression of a bit of the Pacific
Ocean during a hurricane. And the innocence of the Saintly face would have
made a Botticelli angel look positively sinister in comparison.
    His gaze rested on Mr. Wilfred Garniman’s fleshy prow with no
more than a reasonable directness; but he saw the momentary flicker of
expression that preceded Mr. Garniman’s blandly puzzled frown, and wistfully
wondered whether, if he unsheathed his swordstick and prodded it
vigorously into Mr. Garniman’s immediate future, there would be a loud pop,
or merely a faint sizzling sound. That he overcame this insidious temptation,
and allowed no sign of the soul-shattering struggle to register itself on
his face, was merely a tribute to the persistently sobering influence of Mr.
Lionel Delborn’s official proc lamation and the Saint’s sternly practical
devotion to business.
    “Scorpion?” repeated Mr. Garniman, frowning. “I’m afraid
I don’t quite—— ”
    “Understand. Exactly. Well, I expected I should have to explain.”
    “I wish you would. I