Free Saint Errant by Leslie Charteris Page A

glow before he let it drop into an ash tray.
    “Whether you want it or not, you are,” he said. “But we’ll take the best care we can of your tattered reputation.”
    He held out his hand to Patricia and helped her up; and they went out and left Maurice Kerr on his own doorstep, looking like a rather sullen and perturbed penguin, with an empty glass still clutched in his hand.
    “And that,” said Patricia, as the Saint nursed his car around a couple of quiet blocks and launched it into the southbound stream of Collins Avenue, “might be an object lesson to Dr Watson, but I left my dictionary at home.”
    The Saint dipped two fingers into the open pack in his breast pocket for another Pall Mall, and his smile tightened over the cigarette as he reached forward to press the dashboard lighter.
    “Aside from the fact that you’re much too beautiful to share an apartment safely with Mr Holmes,” he said, “what seems to bother you now?”
    “Why did you leave Kerr like that? He was working for Esteban. He told you so himself. He was telling you the story that Esteban told him to tell you-you even made him admit that. And Lida seems to have been shot with his gun. It’s all too obvious.”
    Simon nodded, his eyes on the road.
    “That’s the whole trouble,” he said. “It’s all too obvious. But if she really was shot with Kerr’s gun-which seems to be as certain as any guess can be-why did the guy leave it behind to lay a trail straight to his doorstep? He may be a poop, but can you believe that he’s that half-witted? There’s nothing in his record to show that he had softening of the brain before. A guy who can work his way through four rich wives in ten years may not be the most desirable character on earth, but he has to have something on the ball. Most of these over-bank-balanced broads have been around too.”
    Patricia fingered strands of golden hair out of her eyes.
    “He doesn’t sound like the dream-boy of all time,” she said. “I can imagine how Dick Verity would like to hear that Lida and Maurice were a steady twosome.” Her eyes turned to him with a sudden widening. “Simon, do you think-“
    “That there was blackmail in it?” The Saint’s face was dark and cold. “Yes, darling, I think we’re getting closer. But I don’t see the fine hand of Maurice in it. A man with his technique doesn’t suddenly have to resort to anything so crude as murder. But you meet all kinds of types at the Quarterdeck Club-and I think we belong there.”
    The moon was the same, and the rustle of palm fronds along the tall dark margins of the road, but the night’s invitation to romance had turned into something colder that enclosed them in a bubble of silence which only broke on the eventually uprising neons of the Quarterdeck Club and the hurricane voice of the Admiral.
    “Avast there!” he bellowed, as the car came to a stop. “My orders are to repel boarders.”
    Simon opened the door and swung out a long leg.
    “A noble duty, Horatio,” he murmured, “but we belong here -remember? The sheriff wouldn’t like it if he thought we’d jumped ship.”
    The Admiral stood firmly planted in his. path. His face was no longer ruddily friendly, and his eyes were half shuttered.
    “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know how you were able to disembark, but my orders-“
    That was as far as he got, for at that moment the precise section of his anatomy known to box-fighting addicts as the button came into unexpected violent contact with an iron fist which happened at that moment, by some strange coincidence, to be traveling upwards at rocket speed. For one brief instant the admiral enjoyed an entirely private fireworks display of astonishing brilliance, and thereupon lost interest in all mundane phenomena.
    The Saint caught him as he crumpled and eased his descent to the gravel. There was no other movement in the parking lot, and the slow drumming of the distant surf blended with a faint filtration of music from