Read Online Saint Overboard by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page A

surveillance as this?
    He turned into the next tobacconist’s and
gained a breathing space while he purchased a pack of cigarettes. To find
out, he had to shake off his own shadow. And it had to be done in such a way that
the shadow did not know he was being intentionally shaken off, because an entirely innocent
young man in the role Simon had set himself
would never discover that he was being shadowed
anyway.
    He came out and walked more quickly to the
corner of the Rue
Levasseur. A disengaged taxi met him there, almost as if it had been timed for the purpose, and he stopped it
and swung on board without any
appearance of undue haste, but with a movement as swift and sure as an
acrobat’s on the flying trapeze.
    “ À la gare,” he said; and the taxi was off again without having actually
reached a standstill.
    Looking back through the rear window, he saw
the pink socks piling
into another cab a whole block behind. He leaned forward as they rushed into the Place de la R é publique.
    “Un moment,” he said in
the driver’s ear. “Il faut que j’aille premi è rement à la Banque Boutin.”
    The driver muttered something uncomplimentary
under his breath, trod on the brakes, and spun the wheel. By his limited lights, he
was not without reason, for the Banque de Bretagne and Travel Agency of
M. Jules Boutin are at the eastern end of the Rue Levasseur—in
exactly the opposite direction from the station.
    They reeled dizzily round the corner of the
Rue de la Plage, with that sublime abandon of which only French chauffeurs
and suicidal maniacs are capable, gathered speed, and hurtled around another
right-hand hairpin into the Boulevard F é art.
Simon looked back again, and saw no sign of the pursuit. There were three
other possible turnings from the hairpin junction which they had
just circumnavigated; and the Saint had no doubt that his pink-socked epilogue, having lost them
completely on that sudden swerve out of the
Place de la R é publique, and not ex pecting any such treacherous manoeuvre, was by
that time franti cally exploring
routes in the opposite direction.
    They turned back into the Rue Levasseur; and
to make abso lutely
certain the Saint changed his mind again and ordered another twist north to
the post office. He paid off the driver and plunged
into a telephone booth.
    She was in. She said she had been writing
some letters.
    “Don’t post ‘em till I see you,”
said the Saint. “What’s the number of your room?”
    “Twenty-eight. But—— ”
    “I’ll walk up as if I owned it. Can you bear to wait?”
     
     
     
    4
    She was wearing a green silk robe with a
great silver dragon crawling round it and bursting into fire-spitting life on
her shoul ders.
Heaven knew what she wore under it, if anything; but the curve of her thigh sprang up in a sheer sweep of
breath-taking line to her knee as she
turned. The physical spell of her wove a definite hiatus in between his entrance and his first line.
    “I hope I intrude,” he said.
    The man who was with her scowled. He was a hard-faced, hard-eyed individual, rather stout, rather bald,
yet with a solid atmosphere of
competence and courage about him.
    “Loretta—how d’ya know this guy’s on
the rise?”
    “I don’t,” she said calmly.
“But he has such a nice clean smile.”
    “Just a home girl’s husband,”
murmured the Saint lightly. He tapped a cigarette on his thumb-nail, and
slanted his brows side long at the objector. “Who’s the young heart’s delight?”
    She shrugged.
    “Name of Steve Murdoch.”
    “Of Ingerbeck’s?”
    “Yes.”
    “Simon to you,” said the Saint,
holding out his hand.
    Murdoch accepted it sullenly. Their grips
clashed, battled in a sudden straining of iron wrists; but neither of them
flinched. The Saint’s smile twitched at his lips, and some of the
sullenness went
out of the other’s stare.
    “Okay, Saint,” Murdoch said dourly.
“I know you’re tough. But I don’t like fresh guys.”
    “I hate them,