Read Online The Saint in Europe by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online

glare of wrath that smouldered in his eyes.
    Simon went past him without pausing for any social amenities, moving with the fluid soundlessness of a disembodied shadow.
    The door of the back office was ajar, outlined with the faint luminosity of a well-shaded light within. Simon pushed it with his fingertips, and it swung wider without even an uncooperative creak.
    Inside, he saw that the light came from a small profesнsionally shrouded electric lantern on the floor beside the massive safe. The safe was open, and the means of its openнing were evident in an assortment of shining tools spread on a velvet cloth in front of it.
    Between Simon and the safe stood a man with a large handkerchief knotted loosely around his throat, obviously serving as an easily replaceable mask, who was in the act of stuffing a handful of small tissue-paper packages into his pocket.
    “Good evening,” said the Saint, because it seemed as tactful a way of drawing attention to himself as he could think of.
    He said it very quietly, too, in case his audience had a weak heart, but just the same the man spun around like a puppet jerked with a string.
    The movement stopped there, because Simon was playнing the beam of his flashlight pointedly on the gun in his right hand, to discourage any additional reaction. But there was enough general luminance, between that and the shieldнed lamp on the floor, for each of them to see the other’s face.
    Mr Upwater stared at him pallidly, and licked his lips.
    “You weren’t supposed to be here for an hour,” he said stupidly.
    “That’s what I told you,” said the Saint calmly, “so that I’d know about what time you’d be here. Naturally you wanted to have comfortable time to do the job before I arrived, but you wouldn’t want to be too long before, in case it was discovered too soon for me to walk in and take the rap. You did the groundwork very cleverly-getting me to come here this morning and case the joint for you, while at the same time establishing myself as a prime suspect. The only thing I was a little worried about was whether you meant to really let me do the job myself, and hijack the boodle afterwards. But I decided you wouldn’t take that big a chance-you couldn’t be quite sure that with so much loot in my pockets I mightn’t yield to temptation and double-cross you. When you said yourself that every man has his price, you gave me a fix on your thinking,”
    Mr Upwater’s eyes were wild and haggard.
    “You’ve got it all wrong,” he said feverishly. “I was afraid you were just kidding me-that you wouldn’t really do it at all-so I made up my mind to do it myself.”
    “And not like any amateur, either,” said the Saint apнprovingly. “Those tools of yours are first class. I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me how you got wind of the Angel’s Eye being re-cut here? They were certainly doing their best to keep it quiet, to try and avoid having any trouble with people like us, as I could tell by the reception I got when I started to ask questions. It was nice work of yours to locate it; but you must have thought you were really in luck when you heard I was in town, all ready to be the fall guy.”
    “So help me, Mr Templar, I told you the truth-“
    “Oh, no, you didn’t. Not from the word Go. I knew you were lying from the moment you said you delivered the Angel’s Eye the day before yesterday and the cutting was supposed to start yesterday. Anyone who knows anything about diamonds knows that a cutter would study an imporнtant stone like that for weeks, maybe even months, before he made the first cut, because if he made any mistake about the grain he might break it into a lot of worthless fragments. And I was doubly sure that you didn’t work for any big-time jewelers when you said that the Angel’s Eye was as big as the Hope diamond and weighed about a hundred carats. For your information, the Hope diamond, good as it is, is only fortyfour and a quarter. It’s my