Read Online Saint Steps In by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

inquired at the desk, and it was.”
    She looked very pleased with herself, and very comfortable.
    “That still doesn’t tell me why you had to see me this way,” he said.
    “I wanted to meet you. Because I’ve been crazy about you for years.”
    “Why did you try to pretend to be a reporter?”
    She shrugged.
    “You
said it yourself, didn’t you? I’m a mildly enterprising nitwit. So I don’t want everyone to
know what a nitwit I am. I
suppose I could have made Mr. Devan call you up on some excuse and met you that way, but I try
to let him think I’m halfway
sane, because after all he does work for my father. And if I’d call you up and said I was dying to meet
you I was sure you’d just send the
house detective after me. So I thought I was being rather clever.” Her face became quite
empty and listless. “I guess I
wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
    Her vague light eyes studied him for a moment longer; and then she stood up.
    “Anyway,
I did get to meet you, just the same, so I think it was worth it … I’ll get out of your way now.”
    He watched her. The curious inward immobility that had seized him when she told him her name
had dissolved com pletely,
but imperceptibly, so that he hadn’t even noticed the change. But his brain was fluid and alive again now,
as if all the cells in it were
working like coordinated individuals, like bees in a hive.
    He
said: “Sit down, Andrea, and finish your drink.”
    She sat down, with a surprised expression, as if someone had pushed her. The Saint smiled.
    “After all, you were enterprising,” he murmured, “so
I’ll forgive you. Besides, it’s just occurred to me that you might be able to do something for me one of
these days.”
    Her
eyes opened.
    “Could
I? I’d do anything … But you’re just kidding me. Nothing so marvelous as
that could ever happen!”
    “Don’t
be too sure.”
    “Do
you often do that?—I mean, get perfect strangers to help you do things?”
    “Not often. But sometimes. And anyway, perhaps by that time we won’t be such strangers.”
    “I
hope not,” she said softly; and then she blinked. “This isn’t happening to me,” she said.
    He
laughed.
    “What do you do—work for Quenco too?”
    “Oh, no. I’m much too stupid. I just do nothing. I’m a very useless person, really. What would you
want me to do for you?”
    “I’ll
tell you when the time comes.”
    “I
hope it’ll be something exciting.”
    “It might be.”
    She leaned forward a little, watching him eagerly.
    “Tell
me—why did you think I might be an Axis agent? Were you expecting one?”
    “It wasn’t impossible,” he said carefully.
    “Are
you working on some Secret Service job? And those men you had the fight with tonight … No,
wait.” She frowned,
thinking. Somehow, although she said she was stupid, s he managed to look quite intelligent, thinking.
“Mr. Devan only
thought of a hold-up. But he knew this girl you rescued— Madeline Gray. You see, I’ve got a
memory like a parrot. Her father has an invention. Synthetic rubber. So the Gestapo or whatever it is want to get hold of
it. So they think if they can kidnap his daughter they can make him tell. But
you’re looking after her,
so they don’t get away with it. So you think they’ll be sending somebody to get rid of you. How’s
that?”
    He blew a meticulously rounded smoke-ring.
    “It’s
not bad.”
    “Is it
right?”
    “I can’t answer for all of it. Madeline Gray, yes. Father makes synthetic rubber, yes. Try to
kidnap daughter, yes. But who and why—that’s something to make up our minds
about slowly.”
    “Is that why
you asked if I was an Axis agent or a private crook?”
she said shrewdly.
    The shift of his
lips and eyebrows was cheerfully noncom mittal.
    “Wonderful
weather we’ve been having,” he said.
    “But you
were looking after her.”
    “I
am looking after her,” he said, without a trace of em phasis on the change of tense.
    She pouted humorously.
    “All right. I