Read Online Send for the Saint by Leslie Charteris, Peter Bloxsom - Free Book Online Page A

detect.”
    Ariadne returned looking more puzzled than ever.
    “He says he doesn’t know whom it is from,” she told the Saint with careful grammar. “And he made a joke that you as a clever detective should be able to work it out.”
    The Saint smiled faintly, knowing that he was beginning to get the measure of the impostor, and that he could see a vaguely forming outline of the last scene in the present act of the elaborate charade that was being played out with himself as one of the principals — and with Ariadne Two, in all probability, as another.
    That is, unless he introduced some twist of his own into the script. And one of Simon Templar’s special forms of mischief was refusing to go too far along with the most studiously prepared scenario, and introducing disconcerting variations of his own.
    In this case, it was an impulsive decision that somewhere along the line he had to pick someone who was not a fraud but a dupe, lay some cards on the table, and make an ally. On what could only have been a psychic hunch, based at best on somewhat longer acquaintance, he decided that the time had come to bet on Ariadne Two.
    Perhaps it was a reckless gamble; but if the Saint had never taken a chance he would never have taken anything.
    He took another fortifying pull at his martini, as some stalwart soul on the bank of a frozen lake might brace himself for the shock, and took the plunge.
    “Ariadne,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that your boss could be a fake ?”
    She looked at him blankly.
    “What?”
    “Your boss has employed me to winkle out an impostor who looks exactly like him and who’s been taking his place here, there, and everywhere. But I’ve reason to believe that he’s the impostor himself.”
    Simon waited while his words sank in; and the girl, as he had expected, looked at him as if at a lunatic child who had just asserted that the moon was made entirely of peanut butter.
    “I expect you know the ancient Greek legend of the Minotaur,” he went on soothingly. “This was a monster, half man and half bull, who lived in a maze of caves in Crete, and lived by gobbling up human sacrifices who were sent in to feed him. One of these was eventually a bloke named Theseus, who just happened to have made it with the daughter of the king. When his turn came, she gave him a spool of thread to reel out behind him. Theseus killed the Minotaur, and found his way out of the labyrinth by following the thread back. You were named after her — Ariadne. Now, you could help me find my way out of this crazy maze.”
    “But that’s quite ridiculous!” she exclaimed as soon as she had found her voice. “Mr Patroclos — an impostor? Do you think I don’t know him after five years?”
    “Believe me, this is no ordinary impostor.” The Saint’s cool voice sounded so reasonable that she was compelled almost against her will to give it a hearing. “This, even though I doubted the proposition myself, is what might justifiably be called the perfect impostor. The copy and the original are very nearly impossible to tell apart. And I know,” he added. “I’ve seen them both.”
    “But it’s unbelievable. How could — “
    The girl’s next words were masked by a ferocious bull-like bellow from the library, and they heard Patroclos Two screaming down the telephone.
    “Impossible! Quite impossible! I tell you, I sent no such message!”
    Simon followed Ariadne into the library. Patroclos Two was in an almost uncontrollable rage, thumping a fist on the desk in time with his words.
    “I don’t care! Check again … Then double check, you fool! … Of course I’ll countermand it. Just as soon as I can make out a coded message. Do it then. Ring me back — and hurry!”
    Patroclos Two’s eyes blazed and he slammed down the phone.
    “Ariadne — upstairs, the safe. Get my codebook.”
    He threw her the bunch of keys from his pocket, and she hurried off. Patroclos Two paced back and forth with a