Free Saint on Guard by Leslie Charteris

bellboy to be taken to his room, and shook hands.
    “With all the doormen in the Army, the ass has to,” he said. “Do you carry a pocket edition of Familiar Quotations?”
    “A weakness of mine, I’m afraid,” Uttershaw admitted. “But at least it’s a little more distinctive than the usual conversational cliches.” He sighed deprecatingly. “I was thinking of taking you up on that invitation to lunch.”
    Simon realised that he was hungry himself, for the prisoner’s breakfast with which he had been regaled at some unholy hour had not been planned to induce the vigorous vibrations to which his constitution was accustomed.
    “Why don’t you?” he said.
    They went into the bright paneled dining room and ordered Little Necks and sole veronique, with sherry for a preface. Simon sipped his glass of pale gold Cedro and remarked: “This is a little more restful than the love-nest we met in.”
    ” ‘Domestic happiness, thou only bliss of Paradise that has survived the Fall’,” said Uttershaw ironically. “I very seldom let my business connections lure me into their private lives, but sometimes one just can’t avoid it. I was sorry for you. If you’ll forgive my saying it, your method of getting to see him was clever enough in theory, but if you’d known more about Milton Ourley you’d never have tried it that way.”
    The Saint passed over the assumption that he had engineered his introduction from the start, and appreciated Uttershaw’s tacit and friendly elimination of a number of unnecessary pretenses.
    “Do you think he could have talked if he’d wanted to?”
    “If he’d wanted to. Yes. I don’t doubt it. He seems to be getting the iridium he needs, and he certainly isn’t getting it from me. And I’m not trying to sound like a great king of commerce, but the fact remains that there just isn’t any other legitimate way of getting it that I wouldn’t know about.”
    Simon considered the statement for a few moments while he watched a waiter threading his way through the tables towards them, brandishing platters of clams with the legerdemain of some phenomenal cymbalist. He gazed down at them appreciatively as they settled in front of him—seven beautiful bivalves, glistening with their own juicy freshness. The Saint felt very pleased about clams, in a generous and cosmic way. He was glad he had invented them.
    He did careful things with horseradish, tabasco, and lemon.
    “By the way,” he inquired casually, “has your insurance company offered any reward for the recovery of your iridium?”
    “Ten per cent of the value of the amount recovered, I believe.” Uttershaw’s glance was mildly interrogative in turn. “Is that the motive of your interest?”
    “Partly,” said the Saint with a slight smile. “But only partly.”
    He speared a fat young clam from its shell, dunked it in cocktail sauce, and savored its delicate succulence with unmitigated relish.
    Uttershaw went through the same motions, but he went on looking at the Saint with a directness that contrived to be quite undisconcerting.
    “I didn’t miss your exit line last night,” he said. “How much did the Linnet sing?”
    “A little less than enough,” Simon said warily. “You heard about him?”
    “I read a morning paper.”
    “What did you think?”
    Uttershaw hunched his shoulders faintly as he went for another clam.
    “As a mere amateur at this sort of thing, I wondered whether he was punished for singing too much, or whether he was choked off before he really hit a tune. What’s your opinion?”
    Simon let the question go unanswered while he tasted his sherry again, and when he put his glass down he seemed to have a convenient impression that he had already answered and could start again on another tack.
    “He made quite a lot of headlines,” he observed idly.
    “fie was quite a figure in his business, you know,” Uttershaw J said.
    “You must have known him, of course.”
    “Fairly well. He bought his