Free The Saint and the Happy Highwayman by Leslie Charteris Page B

you have inside information,” said the Saint.
    She looked at him over her clenched fists, dry-eyed and defiant.
    “If there were any justice in the world Al Eisenfeld would be executed.”
    The Saint raised his eyebrows and she read the thought in his mind and met it with cynical denial.
    “Oh no—not in that way. There’s no murder charge that anyone could bring against him. You couldn’t bring any legal evidence in any court of law that he’d ever done any physical harm to anyone that I ever heard of. But I know that he is a murderer. He murdered my father.”
    And the Saint waited without interruption. The story came tumbling out in a tangle of words that bit into his brain with a burden of meaning that was one of the most profound and illuminating surprises that he had known for some considerable time. It was so easy to talk to him that before long he knew nearly as much as she did herself. He was such an easy and understanding listener that somehow it never seemed strange to her until afterwards that she had been pouring out so much to a man she had known for less than an hour. Perhaps it was not such an extraordinary story as such stories go —perhaps many people would have shrugged it away as one of the commonplace tragedies of a hard-boiled world.
    “This fellow Schmidt was a pal of Eisenfeld’s. So they tried to make Dad lay off him. Dad wouldn’t listen to them. He was Police Commissioner before this administration came in and he’d never listened to any politicians in his life. He always said that he went into the force as an honest man, and he was going to stay that way. So when they found they couldn’t keep him quiet, they framed him. They made out that he was behind practically every racket in the town. They did it cleverly enough. Dad knew they’d got him. He knew the game too well to be able to kid himself. He was booked to be thrown out of the force in disgrace— probably sent to jail as well. How could he hope to clear himself? The evidence which he had collected against Schmidt was in the District Attorney’s office, but when Dad tried to bring that up they said that the safe had been burgled and it was gone. They even turned it around to make it look as if Dad had got rid of the evidence himself—the very thing he had told them he would never agree to do, so—I suppose he took the only way out that he could see. I suppose you’d say he was a coward to do it, but how could you ever know what he must have been suffering?”
    “When was this?” asked the Saint quietly.
    “Last night. He—shot himself. With his police gun. The shot woke me up. I—found him. I suppose I must have gone mad too. I haven’t slept since then—how could I ? This morning I made up my mind. I came out to do the only thing that was left. I didn’t care what happened to myself after that.” She broke off helplessly. “Oh, I must have been crazy! But I couldn’t think of anything else. Why should he be able to get away with it? Why should he?” she sobbed.
    “Don’t worry,” said the Saint quietly. “He won’t.”
    He spoke with a quiet and matter-of-fact certainty which was more than a mere conventional encouragement. It made her look at him with a perplexity which she had been able to forget while he made her talk to him reawakening in her gaze. For the first time since they had sat down, it seemed, she was able to remember that she still knew nothing about him; that he was no more than a sympathetic stranger who had loorned up unheralded and unintroduced out of the fog which had still not completely cleared from her mind.
    “Of course you aren’t a detective,” she said childishly. “I’d have recognized you if you were; but if you aren’t, what are you?”
    He smiled.
    “I’m the guy who gives all the detectives something to work for,” he said. “I’m the source of more aches in the heads of the ungodly than I should like to boast about. I am Trouble, Incorporated—President Simon