Free The Saint in Persuit by Leslie Charteris

became aware even as he walked from the stairs into the lobby that he was being followed. Reflected in the glass door which led on to the street, he could see the same two worthies keeping what they must have considered a discreet distance behind him.
    Simon went ahead out the door. He would walk around the block and see just how persistent his escort was.
    Outside it was dark except for an occasional street light, and the sidewalks glinted with a sprinkling of rain just beginning to fall. There was thunder not far away out over the estuary, and a fresh breeze accompanied the summer shower. Sticking close beneath awnings and architectural outcroppings, the Saint could stroll casually without getting too wet. Then when he reached the corner the rain started to build towards its climax. He stood under a stone archway in deep shadow, watching the drops dance on the pavement. Half a block away, two other men, a small one and a bulkier one, stopped and waited in the shelter of a doorway. There was a five-minute pause, a silence relieved by rumbles of thunder and the occasional hiss of the tires of a passing car, and then the shower was over as abruptly as it had begun. Simon sauntered on his way, turning into a darker side street. In the strip of sky which showed overhead between rows of tiled eaves, the stars were already appearing between patches of scudding cloud.
    Behind the Saint there was a distinct sound of footsteps.
    “If those characters are just out for an innocent stroll, I’ll give them a chance for a little more privacy,” he mused.
    He turned under an archway which led into a short alley which opened at its opposite end on to another dimly lit street. About halfway along the deserted arcade, he paused to listen.
    After a few seconds’ silence, a single pair of footsteps came quickly along behind him.
    Without showing any visible indication, the Saint’s body and mind went on combat alert. His muscles were relaxed and ready for swift movement in any direction, to meet any threat—including the rather clumsy threat that immediately became an actuality.
    The man with the hypodermic-needle moustache and the Hallowe’en nose was holding the point of a knife in the immediate vicinity of his jugular vein.
    “At once, senhor!” the little man ordered hoarsely. “Give me what you have in your pockets!”
    The Saint, wishing to keep his blood to himself, thought it wise to eliminate the threat of the knife-tip before proceeding to deal with the comedian who was aiming it. He pretended to acquiesce, reached into one of his jacket pockets, and brought out the letter he had taken from the top of Vicky Kinian’s wardrobe. With a sudden dramatic gesture he flung the white envelope aside into the shadows.
    “Is that what you were after?” he asked mildly.
    In the first instant that this enemy’s attention was distracted, Simon struck like a snake. The rigid edge of one of his hands smashed the knife arm of the other man aside, and then with a twisting swinging combination of movements he flipped his opponent into the air, yanked him through a completely graceful somersault, and helped him to as ungentle a landing as possible flat on his face on the cobblestones.
    As might have been predicted, the second attack wave lumbered on to the field as soon as the first had crunched to a temporary standstill. Arms flying, the bigger of the two strangers—obviously bringing into play all the subtle chiv-alric skills learned in a lifetime of a dockyard brawls—hurled himself into the combat. Hoping to achieve an outflanking triumph he lunged to whip a thick arm around the Saint’s throat from behind. But the Saint caught the arm before its trap-like action was completed, brought the elbow joint against the fulcrum of his shoulder, and all in one magnificently flowing gesture levered his huge assailant up and over and dropped all two hundred pounds of him flat on the pavement not far from the site of his colleague’s