Free Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris Page B

tip of your pretty nose outside the door until I come and fetch you. You can assume that any message or messenger you receive is a fake. I don’t think they saw you, but I’m not risking anything. Refuse to pay any attention to anything or anybody but myself in person. I’ll be round Monday lunch-time, and if I’m not you can get hold of Inspector Teal and the lads and start raising Cain-but not before.”
    The girl frowned suspiciously. “Saint,” she said, in the dangerous tone that he knew and loved, “you’re trying to elbow me out again.”
    “Old darling,” said the Saint quietly, “I’ve stopped trying to elbow you out and make you live a safe and respectable life. I know it can’t be done. You can come in on any game I take up, and I don’t care if we have to fight the massed gangs of bad hats in New York, Chicago, Berlin and London. But there’s just one kind of dirty work I’m not going to have you mixed up, and this is it. Get me, old Pat? … Then s’long!”
    He closed the door of the taxi, directed the driver, and watched it drive away. The Saint felt particularly anxious to keep on living at that moment… . And then the taxi’s tail-light vanished round the corner, and Patricia Holm went with it; and the Saint turned with a sigh and an involuntary squaring of the shoulders, and swung into Brook Street.
    He had observed the speedy-looking closed car that stood by the kerb directly outside the entrance to his flat, and he had seen the four men who stood in a little group on the pavement beside it conversing with all apparent innocence, and he had guessed the worst. The sum total of those deceptively innocuous fixtures and fittings seemed to him to bear the unmistakable hall-mark of the Hayn confederacy; for the Saint had what he called a nasty suspicious mind.
    He strolled on at a leisurely pace. His left hand, in his trouser pocket, was sorting out the key of his front door; in his right hand he twirled the stick that in those days he never travelled without. His black felt hat was tilted over to the back of his head. In everything outward and visible he wore the mildest and most Saintly air of fashionable and elegant harmlessness, for the Saint was never so cool as when everything about him was flaming with red danger-signals. And as he drew near the little group he noticed that they fell suddenly silent, all turning in his direction.
    The Saint was humming a little tune. It all looked too easy-nothing but a welcome and entertaining limbering-up for the big stuff that was to follow. He had slipped the front door key off the ring and transferred it to a side pocket of his jacket, where it would be more easily found in a hurry.
    “Excuse me,” said the tallest of the four, taking a step forward to meet him.
    “I’m afraid I can’t excuse you, Snake,” said the Saint, regretfully, and swayed back from his toes as Ganning struck at him with a loaded cane.
    The Saint felt the wind of the blow caress his face, and then a lightning left uppercut came rocketing up from his knees to impact on the point of Snake’s jaw, and Ganning was catapulted back into the arms of his attendant Boys.
    Before any of them could recover from their surprise, Templar had leapt lightly up the steps to the portico, and had slipped the key into the lock. But as he turned and withdrew it, the other three came after him, leaving their chief to roll away into the gutter, and the Saint wheeled round to face them with the door swinging open behind him. He held his stick in both hands, gave it a half-turn, and pulled. Part of the stick stripped away, and in the Saint’s right hand a long slim blade of steel glinted in the dim light. His first thrust took the leading Boy through the shoulder, and the other two checked.
    The Saint’s white teeth flashed in an unpleasant smile. “You’re three very naughty children,” said the Saint, “and I’m afraid I shall have to report you to your Sunday-school teacher. Go a long