Read Online The Saint and the Happy Highwayman by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online

large highball to lay down his views on the way in which he thought everything on earth ought to be run, from Japanese immigration to the permissible percentage of sulphur dioxide in dried apricots; but there was nothing outstandingly indicative of a political future in that. This is a disease which is liable to attack even the most honest and respectable citizens in such circumstances. But the idea that he himself should ever occupy the position in which he might be called upon to put all those beautiful ideas into practice had never entered Sam Purdell’s head in those simple early days; and if it had not been for the drive supplied by Al Eisenfeld, it might never have materialized.
    “You ought to be in politics, Sam,” Al had insisted, at the close of one of these perorations several years before.
    Sam Purdell considered the suggestion.
    “No, I wouldn’t be clever enough,” he said modestly.
    To tell the truth, he had heard the suggestion before, had repudiated it before and had always wanted to hear it contradicted. Al Eisenfeld obliged him. It was the first time anybody had been so obliging.
    This was three years before the columnist of the Elmford News was moved to inquire:
    “How long does our mayor think he can kid reporters and deputations with his celebrated pose of injured innocence?
    “We always thought it was a good act while it lasted; but isn’t it time we had a new show?”
    It was not the first time that it had been suggested in print that the naive and childlike simplicity which was Sam Purdell’s greatest charm was one of the shrewdest fronts for ingenious corruption which any politician had ever tried to put over on a batch of sane electors, but this was the nearest that any commentator had ever dared to come to saying that Sam Purdell was a crook.
    It was a suggestion which left Sam a pained and puzzled man. He couldn’t understand it. These adopted children of his, these citizens whose weal occupied his mind for twenty-four hours a day, were turning round to bite the hand that fed them. And the unkindest cut of all, the blow which struck at the roots of his faith in human gratitude, was that he had only tried to do his best for the city which had been delivered into his care.
    For instance, there was the time when, dragged forth by the energy of one of his rotund daughters, he had climbed laboriously one Sunday afternoon to the top of the range of hills which shelter Elmford on the north. When he had got his wind and started looking round, he realized that from that vantage point there was a view which might have rejoiced the heart of any artist. Sam Purdell was no artist, but he blinked with simple pleasure at the panorama of rolling hills and wooded groves with the river winding between them like the track of a great silver snail; and when he came home again he had a beautiful idea.
    “You know, we got one of the finest views in the state up there on those hills! I never saw it before, and I bet you didn’t either. And why? Because there ain’t no road goes up there; and when you get to my age it ain’t so easy to go scrambling up through those trees and brush.”
    “So what?” asked Al Eisenfeld, who was even less artistic and certainly more practical.
    “So I tell you what we do,” said Sam, glowing with the ardour of his enthusiasm almost as much as with the aftereffects of his unaccustomed exercise. “We build a highway up there so they can drive out in their automobiles week ends and look around comfortably. It makes work for a lot of men, and it don’t cost too much; and everybody in Elmford can get a lot of free pleasure out of it. Why, we might even get folks coming from all over the country to look at our view.”
    He elaborated this inspiration with spluttering eagerness, and before he had been talking for more than a quarter of an hour he had a convert.
    “Sure, this is a great idea, Sam,” agreed Mr Eisenfeld warmly. “You leave it to me. Why, I know—we’ll call