Read Online Featuring the Saint by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page A

who had endeavoured to turn this knowledge to account in the furthering of their life’s ambition-without, it must be admitted, any signal success.
    While there were not many men at large who in cold blood could have mustered up the courage actually to bump the Saint off (for British justice is notoriously swift to strike, and English criminals have a greater fear of the rope than those of any other nationality), there were many who would have delighted to do the Saint grievous bodily harm; and Simon Templar had no great wish to wake up in his bed one night and find someone pouring vitriol over his face, or performing any similar kindly office. Therefore he had made elaborate arrangements, in the converted mews where he had taken up his new headquarters, to ensure the peace and safety of his slumbers.
    He woke up, a few nights after his raid upon Jermyn Street, to the whirring of the buzzer under his pillow. He was instantly alert, for the Saint slept and woke like a cat; but he lay still in bed for a few moments before he moved, watching the nickering of tiny coloured lights in the panel on the opposite wall.
    Johnny Anworth knew all that there was to know about the ordinary kind of burglar alarm, and had adroitly circumvented the dummy ones which the Saint had taken care to fix to his doors and windows. But what Johnny did not understand was the kind that worked without wires. There were wireless alarms all over the Saint’s home-alarms that relied upon an invisible ray projected across a doorway, a stairway, or a corridor, upon a photo-electric cell on the opposite side. All was well so long as the ray continued to fall thus; but when anything momentarily obscured it, the buzzer sounded under the Saint’s pillow, and a tiny bulb blinked a coloured eye in the indicator panel on the Saint’s bedroom wall to show the exact locality of the intruder.
    Johnny Anworth had made absolutely no sound, and had heard none; and, when the Saint took him suddenly by the throat from behind, he would have screamed aloud if his larynx had not been paralyzed by the steely grip of the fingers that compressed it. He felt himself being lifted into the air and heaved bodily through a doorway, and then the lights went on and he saw the Saint.
    “Don’t make a noise,” drawled Simon. “I don’t want you to wake the house.”
    He had slipped on a startling dressing gown, and not a hair of his head was out of place. In defense of Simon, it must be mentioned that he did not sleep in a hair net. He had actually stopped to brush his hair before he went in search of the visitor.
    The capture was a miserable and unsavoury-looking specimen of humanity, his sallow face made even sallower by the shock he had received. The Saint, after a short inspection, was able to identify it.
    “Your name is Anworth, isn’t it, Beautiful? And I recently had the pleasure of socking you on the jaw-one night when you followed me from the Calumet.”
    “I never seed yer before, guv’nor-strite, I never. I’m dahn an’ aht-starvin’—”
    Simon reached out a long, silk-sheathed arm for the cigarette box-he had heaved the specimen into the sitting room.
    “Tell me the old, old story,” he sighed.
    “I ‘adn’t ‘ardly a bite to eat since Friday,” Johnny whined on mechanically. “This is the fust time I ever went wrong. I ‘ad ter do it, guv’nor—”
    He stopped, as the Saint turned. Incredulous audiences Johnny Anworth had had, indignant audiences, often, and even sympathetic audiences, sometimes-but he had never met such a bleak light in any outraged householder’s eyes as he met then. If he had been better informed, he would have known that there were few things to which the Saint objected more than being interrupted in his beauty sleep. This Simon explained.
    “Also, you didn’t come here on your own. You were sent.” The cold blue eyes never left Johnny’s face. “By a man named Lemuel,” Simon added, in a sudden snap, and read the truth