Read Online The Saint Sees It Through by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online

was no
sound at all. The Saint knocked again. Still no sound. He tried the door. It
opened on to a living room modestly furnished with medium-priced overstuffed
pieces.
    “Hullo,” Simon called softly.
“Foley?”
    He stepped inside, closed the door. No one
was in the living room. On the far side was a door leading into a kitchen,
the other no doubt led into the bedroom. He turned the kitchen light on,
looked about, switched off the light and knocked on the bedroom door. He
opened it, flicked the light switch.
    There was someone here, all right—or had been. What was here now was not a person, it was a corpse. It
sprawled on the rug, face down, and
blood had seeped from the back to the dark green carpet. It was—had been—a man.
    Without disturbing the body any more than
necessary, Simon gathered
certain data. He had been young, somewhere in his thirties; he was a white-collar worker, neat, clean; he bore identification cards which named him Gamaliel
Bradford Foley, member of the
Seamen’s Union.
    The body bore no information which would link
this man with Dr. Ernst Zellermann. Nor did the apartment, for that matter.
The Saint searched it expertly, so that it seemed as if nothing
had been disturbed, yet every possible hiding place had been thoroughly
explored. Foley, it seemed, was about to become engaged to a
Miss Martha Lane, Simon gathered from a letter which he shamelessly read. The
comely face which smiled from a picture on Foley’s dresser was probably her likeness.
    Since no other information was to be gathered
here, the Saint left. He walked a half dozen blocks to a crowded
all- night drugstore and went into an empty phone booth, where he dialled Brooklyn police.
    He told the desk sergeant that at such and
such an address “you will find one Gamaliel Foley, F-o-l-e-y,
deceased. You’ll recognise him by the knife he’s wearing—in his
back.”
     
    3
     
    At the crack of ten-thirty the next morning, Avalon Dexter’s call brought him groggily from
sleep.
    “It’s horribly early,” she said, “but I couldn’t
wait any longer to find but if you’re all
right.”
    “Am I?” the Saint asked.
    “I think you’re wonderful. When do you
want to see me?”
    “As soon as possible. Yesterday, for
example. Did you have a good time last night?”
    “Miserable. And you?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t call it exciting. I thought about you at
odd moments.”
    “Yes, I know,” she said.
“Whenever you did, I turned warm all over, and wriggled.”
    “Must have been disconcerting to your escort.”
    She laughed, bells at twilight.
    “It cost me a job, I think. He’d peer
at me every time it happened. I think he concluded it was St. Vitus. The job
was in Cleveland, anyway.”
    “Some of the best people live in Cleveland,” Simon said.
    “But you don’t, so I didn’t go.”
    “Ordinarily, I’d have a nice fast
comeback for such a leading remark, but I seem to have trouble finding any words at all.”
    “You could say ‘I love you.’ “
    “I love you,” Simon said.
    “Me, too, kid.”      
    “This being Friday,” Simon said,
“what do you say we go calling on people after we have brunched
together, and then let the rest of the day take care of
itself?”
    “That scrambling sound,” she said,
“is eggs in my kitchen. So hurry.”
    “Thirty minutes,” said the Saint,
and hung up.
    He had never needed thirty minutes to shave,
shower, and dress, but he needed to make a call.
    Hamilton said: “What kind of a jam are
you in this time?”
    “If you can get anything on one Gamaliel
Bradford Foley,” the Saint said, “it might be useful. I’d
do it myself, but you. can do it faster, and I expect to be sort of
busy on other things.”
    “What sort of things?”
    “I’m going to read the papers, and take
my girl calling.”
    “The same girl?”
    “But definitely,” said the Saint.
    “What have you learned?”
    “Nothing,” the Saint said,
“that is of any specific use to us, but the