Free Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris Page A

a number. For ten minutes he spoke earnestly to a certain Roger Conway, and gave minute directions. He had these orders repeated over to him to make sure that they were perfectly memorized and understood, and presently he was satisfied.
    “Hayn will have found out by now that I know about his connections with Chastel,” he concluded, “that is, unless he’s posted that letter without looking at it. We’ve got to act on the assumption that he has found out, and therefore the rule about having nothing to do with me except through the safest of safe channels is doubly in force. I estimate that within the next forty-four hours a number of very strenuous efforts will be made to bump me off, and it won’t be any good shutting your eyes to it. It won’t be dear Edgar’s fault if I haven’t qualified for Kensal Green by Monday morning.”
    Conway protested, but the Saint dealt shortly with that. “You’re a heap more useful to me working unknown,” he said. “I can’t help it if your natural vanity makes you kick at having to hide your light under a bushel. There’s only need for one of us to prance about in the line of fire, and since they know me all round and upside down as it is I’ve bagged the job. You don’t have to worry, I’ve never played the corpse yet, and I don’t feel like starting now!”
    He was in the highest of spirits. The imminent prospect of the violent and decisive action always got him that way. It made his blood tingle thrillingly through his veins, and set his eyes dancing recklessly, and made him bless the perfect training in which he had always kept his nerves and sinews. The fact that his life would be charged a five hundred per cent premium by any cautious insurance company failed to disturb his cheerfulness one iota. The Saint was made that way.
    The “needle” was a sensation that had never troubled his young life. For the next few hours there was nothing that he could do for the cause that he had made his own, and he therefore proposed to enjoy those hours on his own to the best of his ability. He was completely unperturbed by the thought of the hectic and perilous hours which were to follow the interlude of enjoyment-rather, the interlude gathered an added zest from the approach of zero hour.
    He could not, of course, be sure that Hayn had discovered the abstraction of the letter; but that remained a distinct probability in spite of the Saint’s excellent experiment in forgery. And even without that discovery, the check he had obtained, and Hayn’s confidence in giving it, argued that there were going to be some very tense moments before the Monday morning. Simon Templar’s guiding principle, which had brought him miraculously unscathed through innumerable desperate adventures in the past, was to assume the worst and take no chances; and in this instance subsequent events were to prove that pessimistic principle the greatest and most triumphant motto that had ever been invented.
    The Saint lunched at his leisure, and then relaxed amusingly in a convenient cinema until half-past six. Then he returned home to dress, and was somewhat disappointed to find no reply to his cable waiting for him at his flat.
    He dined and spent the night dancing at the Kit-Cat with the lovely and utterly delightful Patricia Holm, for the Saint was as human as the next man, if not more so, and Patricia Holm was his weakness then.
    It was a warm evening, and they walked up Regent Street together, enjoying the fresh air. They were in Hanover Square, just by the corner of Brook Street, when the Saint saw the first thundercloud, and unceremoniously caught Patricia Holm, by the shoulders and jerked her back round the corner and out of sight. An opportune taxi came prowling by at that moment, and the Saint had hailed it and bundled the girl in before she could say a word.
    “I’m telling him to take you to the Savoy,” he said. “You’ll book a room there, and you’ll stay there without putting even the