Read Online Brighter Buccaneer by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Leslie Charteris
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line sometime, but I can look after that. He might kind of meet with an accident.”
It was not the first time that Teal had been met with a similar lack of enthusiasm, and he knew the meaning of the word “no” when it was pushed up to him in a certain way. He departed heavily; and Simon Templar, who was sipping a Dry Sack within view of the vestibule, watched him go.
“You might think Claud Eustace really wanted to arrest me,” he remarked, as the detective’s broad back passed through the doors.
His companion, a young man with the air of a gentlemanly prize-fighter, smiled sympathetically. His position was privileged, for it was not many weeks since the Saint’s cheerful disregard for the ordinances of the law had lifted him out of a singularly embarrassing situation with a slickness that savoured of sorcery. After all, when you have been youthfully and foolishly guilty of embezzling a large sum of money from your employers in order to try and recoup the losses of an equally youthful and foolish speculation, and a cheque for the missing amount is slipped into your hands by a perfect stranger, you are naturally inclined to see that stranger’s indiscretions in an unusual light.
“I wish I had your life,” said the young man-his name was Peter Quentin, and he was still very young.
“Brother,” said the Saint good-humouredly, “if you had my life you’d have to have my death, which will probably be a sticky one without wreaths. Max Kemmler is a tough egg all right, and you never know.”
Peter Quentin stretched out his legs with a wry grimace.
“I don’t know that it isn’t worth it. Here am I, an A1 proposition to any insurance company, simply wasting everything I’ve got with no prospect of ever doing anything else. You saved me from getting pushed in the clink, but of course there was no hope of my keeping any job. They were very nice and friendly when I confessed and paid in your cheque, but they gave me the air all the same. You can’t help seeing their point of view. Once I’d done a thing like that I was a risk to the company, and next time they mightn’t have been so lucky. The result is that I’m one of the great unemployed, and no dole either. If I ever manage to get another job, I shall have to consider myself well off if I’m allowed to sit at an office desk for two hundred and seventy days out of the year, while I get fat and pasty and dream about the pension that’ll be no use to me when I’m sixty.”
“Instead of which you want to go on a bread-and-water diet for a ten-years’ sentence,” said the Saint. “I’m a bad example to you, Peter. You ought to meet a girl who’ll put all that out of your head.”
He really meant what he said. If he refused even to consider his own advice, it was because the perilous charms of the life that he had long ago chosen for his own had woven a spell about him that nothing could break. They were his meat and drink, the wine that made unromantic days worth living, his salute to buccaneers who had had better worlds to conquer. He knew no other life.
Max Kemmler was less poetic about it. He was in the game for what he could get, and he wanted to get it quickly. Teal’s visit to him that morning had brought home to him another danger that that accidentally eavesdropping plain-clothes man in the restaurant had thrown across his path. Whatever else the police knew or did not know, they now had the soundest possible reason to believe that Max Kemmler’s holiday in England had turned towards profitable business; for nothing else could provide a satisfactory reason for the Saint’s interest. His croupier had warned him of that, and Max was taking the warning to heart. The pickings had been good while they lasted, but the time had come for him to be moving.
There was big play at the club that night. Max Kemmler inspired it, putting forth all the bonhomie that he could call upon to encourage his patrons to lose their shirts and like it. He
It was not the first time that Teal had been met with a similar lack of enthusiasm, and he knew the meaning of the word “no” when it was pushed up to him in a certain way. He departed heavily; and Simon Templar, who was sipping a Dry Sack within view of the vestibule, watched him go.
“You might think Claud Eustace really wanted to arrest me,” he remarked, as the detective’s broad back passed through the doors.
His companion, a young man with the air of a gentlemanly prize-fighter, smiled sympathetically. His position was privileged, for it was not many weeks since the Saint’s cheerful disregard for the ordinances of the law had lifted him out of a singularly embarrassing situation with a slickness that savoured of sorcery. After all, when you have been youthfully and foolishly guilty of embezzling a large sum of money from your employers in order to try and recoup the losses of an equally youthful and foolish speculation, and a cheque for the missing amount is slipped into your hands by a perfect stranger, you are naturally inclined to see that stranger’s indiscretions in an unusual light.
“I wish I had your life,” said the young man-his name was Peter Quentin, and he was still very young.
“Brother,” said the Saint good-humouredly, “if you had my life you’d have to have my death, which will probably be a sticky one without wreaths. Max Kemmler is a tough egg all right, and you never know.”
Peter Quentin stretched out his legs with a wry grimace.
“I don’t know that it isn’t worth it. Here am I, an A1 proposition to any insurance company, simply wasting everything I’ve got with no prospect of ever doing anything else. You saved me from getting pushed in the clink, but of course there was no hope of my keeping any job. They were very nice and friendly when I confessed and paid in your cheque, but they gave me the air all the same. You can’t help seeing their point of view. Once I’d done a thing like that I was a risk to the company, and next time they mightn’t have been so lucky. The result is that I’m one of the great unemployed, and no dole either. If I ever manage to get another job, I shall have to consider myself well off if I’m allowed to sit at an office desk for two hundred and seventy days out of the year, while I get fat and pasty and dream about the pension that’ll be no use to me when I’m sixty.”
“Instead of which you want to go on a bread-and-water diet for a ten-years’ sentence,” said the Saint. “I’m a bad example to you, Peter. You ought to meet a girl who’ll put all that out of your head.”
He really meant what he said. If he refused even to consider his own advice, it was because the perilous charms of the life that he had long ago chosen for his own had woven a spell about him that nothing could break. They were his meat and drink, the wine that made unromantic days worth living, his salute to buccaneers who had had better worlds to conquer. He knew no other life.
Max Kemmler was less poetic about it. He was in the game for what he could get, and he wanted to get it quickly. Teal’s visit to him that morning had brought home to him another danger that that accidentally eavesdropping plain-clothes man in the restaurant had thrown across his path. Whatever else the police knew or did not know, they now had the soundest possible reason to believe that Max Kemmler’s holiday in England had turned towards profitable business; for nothing else could provide a satisfactory reason for the Saint’s interest. His croupier had warned him of that, and Max was taking the warning to heart. The pickings had been good while they lasted, but the time had come for him to be moving.
There was big play at the club that night. Max Kemmler inspired it, putting forth all the bonhomie that he could call upon to encourage his patrons to lose their shirts and like it. He
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