Free The Saint in Action by Leslie Charteris, Robert Hilbert; Page B

spearmint and doing whatever homely things chief inspectors did when they were off duty. And while the Saint was holding his breath the answer, in a familiar sleepy voice, came on the line.
    “Hullo.”
    “Hullo,” said Simon. “This is the Saint.”
    There was a moment’s pause.
    “Well, what do you want?” Teal asked nastily.
    “I’m okay,” said the Saint. “Can I speak to Patricia?”
    “She’s not here.”
    Simon took a pull at his cigarette.
    “Oh, hullo, Pat,” he said. “How are you?”
    “I tell you she isn’t here,” yowled the detective. “Why should she be? I’ve got enough to do–-“
    “I’m fine, darling,” said the Saint. “I’m with Quin-tana now.”
    “Who?”
    “Luis Quintana … at 319 Cambridge Square.”
    “Look here,” Teal said cholerically, “if this is another of your ideas of a joke–-“
    “I’ve talked things over with him,” said the Saint, “and he’s ready to do business. I’ve told him that we’ll keep everything quiet—about Urivetzky being alive, and about those forged American short-term loan bearer bonds, and about Perez murdering Ingleston— all for forty thousand pounds cash. It seems fair enough to me if it’s all right with the rest of you.”
    There was another silence for a second or two, and then Teal said in a different voice: “Are you talking to me?”
    “Yes, darling,” said the Saint. “I’m in his study now, and he’s ready to hand over the money at once. There’s only one condition. He knows that you know all about these things, and he wants you all to come over and sign an undertaking to keep your mouths shut as well as mine. I guess we’ll have to agree to that.”
    “You want me to come over to 319 Cambridge Square?” said Teal slowly.
    “Yes, Pat. At once. Quintana insists on it, and I can’t argue with him.”
    “Shall I bring some help?”
    “Yes, bring the others. He wants you all to sign. You needn’t send your names in—they’ll be expecting you. Will you come on over?”
    “They’ve got a gun on you, I suppose,” Teal said intelligently.
    “That’s the idea,” said the Saint. “As quick as you can, darling. ‘Bye.”
    He dropped the microphone back and pushed the telephone away with a smile of satisfaction.
    “They’ll be here in a few minutes,” he announced.
    Urivetzky unlocked his fingers and leaned back; and Perez, who had sat down on the arm of the same chair, crossed his legs and took out a cigarette. Quin-tana nodded and put his gun down on the desk where it was still within easy reach. Every one of their individual reactions held an unspoken triumph that would have shrieked aloud its confirmation of the Saint’s deductions—if he had wanted any confirmation. They were like three spiders waiting for the entrance of the flies.
    None of them spoke. An atmosphere of guarded relaxation settled upon the scene, in which they waited in savoury anticipation for the logical outcome of their own ingenuity.
    The Saint himself was not reluctant to be spared the trouble of making conversation. At ease in his chair, with an outward confidence and equanimity that was even more convincing than theirs, with his head thrown back so that he could build intermittent smoke-ring patterns towards the ceiling, he watched in his imagination the machinery that his telephone call had set in motion.
    Now Teal was hanging up the receiver after another telephone call. Now he would be kicking off his carpet slippers and going quietly frantic over the obstinacy of his boot laces. And over in the gloomy soot-grimed building on the Embankment that was called Scotland Yard there would be a suppressed crescendo of traffic ir certain bare echoing corridors, and big heavy-footed men would be buttoning their prosaic and respectable coats and reaching down their prosaic and respectable hats; and a car or two would start up and swing round in the courtyard and stand there unexcitedly ticking over; and a man would hurriedly