Free The Saint to the Rescue by Leslie Charteris

that broke the glassy water were made by gar. But as the sun rose
higher and hotter and the bass presumably sank deeper into their
cool weedy
retreats, Mr. Diehl grew thirstier, and began to think longingly of the supply of beer which he had seen loaded onto the
helicopter in a portable icebox.
    As if in telepathic unanimity, he saw the
Count heading back at last to the ship, and hastened to join him.
    “That,” he said, smacking his lips as he watched the
punc turing of a can dripping with cool
moisture, “is going to taste awful good.”
    “It certainly is,” Simon agreed, and
proceeded to prove it to himself.
    Mr. Diehl was very faintly aware of something
less than the elaborate olde-worlde courtesy he had read about,
some where, but he cheerfully reached in to grab and open his own can,
and was dully startled to find his movement barred by a steel-cored arm.
    “Just a minute, chum,” said the Saint. “Beer is
selling here for a thousand dollars a
shot.”
    Mr. Diehl’s grin this time was a trifle
labored.
    “Okay,” he said. “I’ll owe it
to you.”
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t give credit.
After all, my price is strictly based on how much the customer might
be willing to pay at the moment.”
    “You should of told me before we left, and I’d of brought some cash with me.”
    “Oh, I’m not as difficult as that. Your
check is good enough.”
    “Too bad I didn’t bring my check-book
either.”
    “I was afraid you mightn’t, so I brought
one for you. This is one of your banks, isn’t it?”
    Mr. Diehl stared stupidly at the printed pad
that was con jured almost from nowhere to be flourished under his
nose. In the circumstances, he was prepared to extend himself almost
infinitely to be a good joe and go along with a gag, but this was rapidly
getting beyond him.
    “Yes, it is,” he said strenuously.
“But frankly, Count, I must apologize if I missed the joke
somewhere—”
    “Suppose you start getting back on the
beam by dropping that ‘Count’ business, Ed,” Simon suggested kindly,
and it was only then that he shed the last vestiges of an accent which had
been getting progressively thinner with every sentence. “I’m
going to give you a big moment for your memoirs. I am the Saint, and I’m giving
you the priceless favor of my personal attention in this project of
collecting a small assessment which I’ve decided that you should pay on your
ill-gotten gains.”
    “You sound crazier every minute,”
Mr. Diehl mumbled, though in a still crazier way this was beginning to sound like the
most real nightmare he had ever experienced. “So you’re the Saint. Some
kind of fancy crook. All right, you kidnaped me—”
    “I don’t remember it that way ,” Simon
corrected him genially. “There was no violence or intimidation. In
fact, you told everyone who’d listen to you at the airport how much you were
going to enjoy this trip with me.”
    “But if you keep me here—”
    “I never said I wanted to keep you here.
I merely told you how much I’d charge to fly you out. That’s my privilege,
as a free agent in a free country.”
    Mr. Diehl glared at him through a kind of
fog. There was a purely mental haze as well as the emotional murk in it, steaming
off a much larger mass of incredibilia than his limited mentality
could assimilate at one gulp, a) The Saint was only a
mythological character anyhow; and b) even if he wasn’t, this
couldn’t be happening to him, Ed Diehl; and c) even if
it was happening, there must be some flaw in the structure of
such an outrageous swindle. But for the moment the lean
corsair’s face and figure that confronted him were fantastically
convincing.
    “You won’t get a nickel out of me,”
he said, and tried to overcome an infuriating feeling of futility.
“You and your Count of Cristamonte story—”
    “I didn’t try to get a nickel out of you
with that story,” said the Saint virtuously, “because that
would have been fraudulent. But there’s