Free Saint Goes West by Leslie Charteris

without even a check in his winged dash to Freddie’s room.
    His automatic was out in his hand when he flung the door open, to look across the room at Freddie Pellman, in black trousers and unbuttoned soft dress shirt, stretched out on the davenport, staring with a hideous grimace of terror at the rattlesnake that was coiled on his legs, its flat triangular head drawn back and poised to strike.
    Behind him, the Saint heard Esther stifle a faint scream; and then the detonation of his gun blotted out every other sound.
    As if it had been photographed in slow motion, Simon saw the snake’s shattered head splatter away from its body, while the rest of it kicked and whipped away in series of reнflex convulsions that spilled it still writhing spasmodically on to the floor.
    Freddie pulled himself shakily up to his feet.
    “Good God,” he said, and repeated it. “Good God-and it was real! Another second, and it’d have had me!”
    “What happened?” Esther was asking shrilly.
    “I don’t know. I was starting to get dressed-you see?-I’d got my pants and shirt on, and I sat down and had a drink, and I must have fallen asleep. And then that thing landed on my lap!”
    Simon dropped the gun back into his pocket.
    “Landed?” he said.
    “Yes-just as if somebody had thrown it. Somebody .must have thrown it. I felt it hit. That was what woke me up. I saw what it was, and of course I let out a yell, and then the door slammed, and I looked round too late to see who it was. But I didn’t care who it was, then. All I could see was that God-damn snake leering at me. I almost thought I was seeing things again. But I knew I couldn’t be. I wouldn’t have felt it like that. I was just taking a nap, and somebody came in and threw it on top of me!”
    “How long ago was this?”
    “Just now! You don’t think I lay there for an hour necking with a snake, do you? As soon as it fell on me I woke up, and as soon as I woke up I saw it, and of course I let out a yell at once. You heard me yell, didn’t you, Esther? And right after that the door banged. Did you hear that?”
    “Yes, I heard it,” said the Saint.
    But he was thinking of something else. And for that once at least, even though she had admitted that she was not so bright, he knew that Esther was all the way there with him. He could feel her mind there with him, even without turnнing to find her eyes fastened on his face, even before she spoke.
    “But that proves it, Simon! You must see that, don’t you? I couldn’t possibly have done it, could I?”
    “Why, where were you?” Freddie demanded.
    She drew herself up defiantly and faced him.
    “I was in Simon’s room.”
    Freddie stood hunched and stiff and staring at them. And yet the Saint realised that it wasn’t any positive crystallising of expression that made him look ugly. It was actually the reнverse. His puffy face was simply blank and relaxed. And on that sludgy foundation, the crinkles of unremitting feverish bonhomie, the lines and bunchings of laborious domineering enthusiasm, drained of their vital nervous activation, were left like a mass of soft sloppy scars in which the whole synopнsis of his life was hieroglyphed.
    “What is it now?” Lissa’s voice asked abruptly.
    It was a voice that set out to be sharp and matter-of-fact, and failed by an infinitesimal quantity that only such ceaseнlessly critical ears as the Saint’s would catch.
    She stood in the doorway, with Ginny a little behind her.
    Freddie looked up at her sidelong from under his lowered brows.
    “Go away,” he said coldly. “Get out.”
    And then, almost without a pause or a transition, that short-lived quality in his voice was only an uncertain memory.
    “Run along,” he said. “Run along and finish dressing. Siнmon and I want to have a little talk. Nothing’s the matter. We just had a little scare, but it’s all taken care of. I’ll tell you presently. Now be nice children and go away and don’t make a fuss. You,