Free Follow the Saint by Leslie Charteris

desk and tested the blade with his thumb. It was sharp
enough. The eyes of the bound men dilated as they watched him.
    The Saint smiled.
    “From
the way you were talking when I first came in, it looks as if you know my
business,” he said. “And I hope you’ve realized by
this time that I know yours. It isn’t a very nice business; but
that’s something for you to worry about. All I’m concerned with
is to make sure that you pay the proper luxury tax to the right person, which
happens to be me. So will you attend to it as soon as possible, Henry? I should
think about ten thousand pounds will do for a first instalment. I shall
expect it in one-pound notes, delivered by messenger before two-thirty pm
tomorrow. And it had better not be late.” The Saint’s blue eyes were as
friendly as frozen vitriol. “Because if it is, Chief Inspector Teal will
be calling here again—and next time it won’t be an accident…. Mean while”—the
knife spun from his hands like a whirling white flame, and the three men
flinched wildly as the point buried itself with a thud in the small space
of carpet centrally between them—“if one of you gets to work with that,
you ought to be up and about again in a few minutes. Goodbye, girls; and help
yourself to some sal volatile when you get down stairs.”
    It was
nearing one o’clock by his watch when he reached the street; and Patricia was ordering
herself a second Martini when he strolled
into the cocktail room at Quaglino’s.
    She leaned back and closed her
eyes.
    “I
know,” she said. “Teal and the Flying Squad are about two blocks
behind you. I can tell by the smug look on your face.”
    “For
once in your life you’re wrong,” he said as he lowered himself into a chair.
“They’re so far behind that if Einstein is right they ought to have been here an hour ago.”
    Over lunch
he gave her an account of his morning.
    “But what is it all
about ?” she said.
    He frowned.
    “I
just wish I knew, darling. But it’s something bigger than burglary-—you can take bets on that.
If Henry Osbett is the Miracle Teapot in
person, the plot is getting so thick you could float rocks on it. If I haven’t
got mixed on what Claud Eustace told me last night, they run a radio programme,
and that costs plenty of dough and trouble.
No gang of burglars would bother to go as far as that, even to keep up appear ances. Therefore this is some racket in which the
dough flows like water; and I wish I could think what that could be. And it’s run by experts. In the whole of that shop
there wasn’t a single clue. I’ll swear that Claud Eustace himself could put it
through a sieve and not find anything. … I was just bluffing Henry, of course, but I think I made a good job of it.”
    “You
don’t think he’ll pay, do you?”
    “Stranger
things have happened,” said the Saint hope fully. “But if
you put it like that—no. That was just bait. There wasn’t anything else useful
that I could do. If I’d had them somewhere else I might have beaten it
out of them, but I couldn’t do it there, and I couldn’t put them in a bag
and bring them home with me. Anyhow, this may be a better way. It
means that the next move is up to the ungodly, and they’ve got to make it
fast. And that may give us our break.”
    “Of
course it may,” she agreed politely. “By the way, where did you tell
me once you wanted to be buried?”
    He
chuckled.
    “Under
the foundation stone of a brewery,” he said. ”But don’t
worry. I’m going to take a lot of care of myself.”
    His idea of taking care of
himself for that afternoon was to drive the
Hirondel down to the factory at an average speed of about sixty miles an hour to discuss the installation of a new type of supercharger designed to make the
engine several degrees more lethal
than it was already, and after wards
to drive back to London at a slightly higher speed in order to be
punctual for his appointment with Mr Teal. Con sidering that ride in