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Authors: Leslie Charteris
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have brought tears to the eyes of a football coach. In a mere matter of seconds they were out on Seventh Avenue opposite the Pennsylvania Hotel.
“Not that one,” said the Saint. “It’s too obvious. I’ve got another place in mind. Let’s joy-ride some more.”
“But why–-“
“Darling, that is a one-hack stand in front of your building. Anyone who was trailing us wouldn’t have much trouble finding our last driver.”
“Do you think he’d remember? He must have so many passen-gers–-“
The Saint sighed.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why taxi drivers always haul out a pad at the first red light and start scribbling in it? Did you think they were putting in a quick paragraph on the Great American Novel? Well, they weren’t. That’s a record that the Law makes them keep. Where from and to. So our driver doesn’t need such a memory. With that note to goose him, he’ll probably even remember that we were talking about going to Washington. Now if your glamor boy has any respect for my genius, which he may or may not have, he probably won’t believe we went to Washington. But he won’t be sure. If he’s very bright, he will immediately begin to think of what I was talking about just now —the technique of deception by the obvious. And he will begin to feel quite ill. Uncertainty will breed in his mind. And uncertainty breeds fear; and fear often leads clever men to do quite unclever things. Anyway, this will all help to make him miserable, and since he never set me up in a fancy apartment I don’t owe him anything. Taxi!”
He signed her into a small residential hotel off Lexington Avenue as the wife of an entirely fictitious Mr Tombs whose sar-cophagal personality had given him much private entertainment for many years, and left her there after he had made sure that she remembered his password seriously.
“You can do your thinking here, in pleasant surroundings,” he said. “Search your soul to the core and make your decision. I’m sorry I can’t stay to help you, but I have things to do while you wrestle with your private confusions.”
Her eyes wandered around the apartment, and then back to him, in a lost sort of way.
“Do you really have to go now?”
She didn’t have to ask that, and he wished that he didn’t have to make an answer.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated with a smile. “But this little war is still going on, and maybe the enemy isn’t waiting.”
The same bellboy who had just carried the rawhide suitcase in and out of the elevator met him in the small lobby with a somewhat unresolved blend of eagerness and suspicion. The contents of the bag alone weighed a full hundred pounds, and the Saint swung it in one hand as if it had been empty.
“The lining in this damn thing is all coming unstuck,” he said casually. “Is there any place near here where I could get it fixed?”
The boy’s dilemma resolved itself visibly in his slightly bovine eyes.
“There’s a luggage store a couple of blocks down on Lexington,” he said; and the Saint gave him another quarter and sauntered out, still airily swinging the bag.
Not being Superman, he was wielding it a little less jauntily when he turned into the store; but apart from a mild feeling of dislocation in his left shoulder he was able to amuse himself a little with the business of making the purchases which he had in mind—one of which was somewhat eccentric, to say the least, and fairly baffling to the proprietor of the adjoining sporting goods emporium.
His next stop was at the Fiftyfirst Street police station, where he had a weighty message to leave for Inspector Fernack. Then he took another cab to the Algonquin, and walked into the lobby just as the gray handsome figure of Allen Uttershaw turned away from the desk and caught sight of him.
” ‘The ass will carry his load’,” Uttershaw observed cheerily, raising his eyebrows at the Saint’s burden. “I was just asking for you.”
Simon surrendered his bag to a
“Not that one,” said the Saint. “It’s too obvious. I’ve got another place in mind. Let’s joy-ride some more.”
“But why–-“
“Darling, that is a one-hack stand in front of your building. Anyone who was trailing us wouldn’t have much trouble finding our last driver.”
“Do you think he’d remember? He must have so many passen-gers–-“
The Saint sighed.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why taxi drivers always haul out a pad at the first red light and start scribbling in it? Did you think they were putting in a quick paragraph on the Great American Novel? Well, they weren’t. That’s a record that the Law makes them keep. Where from and to. So our driver doesn’t need such a memory. With that note to goose him, he’ll probably even remember that we were talking about going to Washington. Now if your glamor boy has any respect for my genius, which he may or may not have, he probably won’t believe we went to Washington. But he won’t be sure. If he’s very bright, he will immediately begin to think of what I was talking about just now —the technique of deception by the obvious. And he will begin to feel quite ill. Uncertainty will breed in his mind. And uncertainty breeds fear; and fear often leads clever men to do quite unclever things. Anyway, this will all help to make him miserable, and since he never set me up in a fancy apartment I don’t owe him anything. Taxi!”
He signed her into a small residential hotel off Lexington Avenue as the wife of an entirely fictitious Mr Tombs whose sar-cophagal personality had given him much private entertainment for many years, and left her there after he had made sure that she remembered his password seriously.
“You can do your thinking here, in pleasant surroundings,” he said. “Search your soul to the core and make your decision. I’m sorry I can’t stay to help you, but I have things to do while you wrestle with your private confusions.”
Her eyes wandered around the apartment, and then back to him, in a lost sort of way.
“Do you really have to go now?”
She didn’t have to ask that, and he wished that he didn’t have to make an answer.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated with a smile. “But this little war is still going on, and maybe the enemy isn’t waiting.”
The same bellboy who had just carried the rawhide suitcase in and out of the elevator met him in the small lobby with a somewhat unresolved blend of eagerness and suspicion. The contents of the bag alone weighed a full hundred pounds, and the Saint swung it in one hand as if it had been empty.
“The lining in this damn thing is all coming unstuck,” he said casually. “Is there any place near here where I could get it fixed?”
The boy’s dilemma resolved itself visibly in his slightly bovine eyes.
“There’s a luggage store a couple of blocks down on Lexington,” he said; and the Saint gave him another quarter and sauntered out, still airily swinging the bag.
Not being Superman, he was wielding it a little less jauntily when he turned into the store; but apart from a mild feeling of dislocation in his left shoulder he was able to amuse himself a little with the business of making the purchases which he had in mind—one of which was somewhat eccentric, to say the least, and fairly baffling to the proprietor of the adjoining sporting goods emporium.
His next stop was at the Fiftyfirst Street police station, where he had a weighty message to leave for Inspector Fernack. Then he took another cab to the Algonquin, and walked into the lobby just as the gray handsome figure of Allen Uttershaw turned away from the desk and caught sight of him.
” ‘The ass will carry his load’,” Uttershaw observed cheerily, raising his eyebrows at the Saint’s burden. “I was just asking for you.”
Simon surrendered his bag to a
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