Vendetta for the Saint. by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page B

He and Dino were quite good
friends.”
    “If Dino hasn’t told him already,”
said the Saint, “I
wouldn’t quite know how to get the news to him.”
    The manager looked
painfully blank.
    “Euston is dead too,” Simon
explained. “He got himself murdered in
Naples the other night.”
    “Dear me!” The manager was
stunned. “What a tragic
coincidence—there couldn’t be any connec tion, of course?”
    “Of course,” said the Saint, who
saw no point in wasting
time discussing his nebulous suspicions with this interlocutor.
    Outside, the heat of the day was already
filling the street,
but Simon hardly noticed it. His brain was too busy with the new thread that had
been added to the tangled web.
    At least one detail had been confirmed: the
large parcel of
boodle about which he had theorized had now become a historical fact and could
be identi fied as the
proceeds of the bank robbery. The ques tion remained whether it had been dispersed or whether it was still hidden somewhere. But
in ex change, another
part of the puzzle became more obscure: if Destamio was not Cartelli, how did
he fit into the picture?
    “Scusi,
signore — ha un
fiammifero?”
    A thin man stopped him at the mouth of a nar row passageway leading off the main street,
hold ing up an unlit
cigarette in one hand. The other hand
was inside his jacket as he gave a small polite bow. The everyday bustle of the street flowed
around them as Simon took out his lighter.
    “Will
this do?”
    He flicked the lighter into flame and held it, almost unthinkingly, his mind still occupied with other things. The man bent forward with his cigarette, and at the same time brought his other hand out and plunged a knife straight into Simon’s midriff.
    Or rather, that was his intention, and
anyone but the Saint would
have been dying with six inches of steel in his stomach. But Simon had not been un thinking for quite long enough, and the signifi cance of the thin man’s concealed hand sparked his lightning reflexes in the nick of
time to twist aside from the slashing
blade. Even so, it was so close that the
point caught in his coat and tore a long gash.
    Simon Templar would not often have gone berserk over a little damage to a garment, but it must be remembered what had so recently happened
to the rest of his wardrobe. Now he was wearing his only remaining suit, and this too had been wrecked, leaving him with literally nothing but rags to his name. Combined with a natural
resentment towards strangers who took advantage of his kindly instincts to try to stick daggers into
his digestive apparatus, it was the last straw.
    But instead of blinding him, anger only made
his actions more
precise. He grasped the wrist of the knife hand as it went by, and pivoted,
locking the thin man’s arm
under his own. He held that posi tion
with cold calculation, just long enough to make sure that an adequate quorum of
witnesses had stopped and
stared and thoroughly registered the fact of which one was holding the knife;
and then he made
another swift sharp movement that resulted in a crack of breaking bone and a short scream from his victim. The stiletto fell to
the pave ment.
    Without releasing his grip on the thin man’s wrist, Simon freed his other hand, carefully
ad justed the position of his
target, and put all his weight
into a piston stroke that planted his left fist squarely in the center of the other’s face.
Under the impact, nose and face gave way with a most satis fying crunch, but the man went down without
another vocal sound, and lay still. All things considered, Simon decided, as
his fury subsided as quickly
as it had flared, it had been only a humane anesthetic for a fractured ulna.
    The whole incident had taken only a few sec onds. Looking around warily for any possible
sec ond assault
wave, he saw a small Fiat standing at the other end of the alley where it connected with the next parallel street. The door on the
near side was open, and a
blue-chinned bandit sat at the