Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"Or maybe," said Patricia, "this is the place you're looking for."

Simon stopped walking and looked at it.

There was a showcard in the centre of the window — the same card, as a matter of fact, which Mr Teal had seen. But the Saint was taking no chances.

"Let's make sure," he said.

He led her the rest of the way up the street for a block beyond the turning where Mr Teal would have branched off on the most direct route to his lodgings, and back down the opposite side; but no other drug-store window revealed a similar sign.

Simon stood on the other side of the road again, and gazed across at the brightly lighted window which they had first looked at. He read the name 'HENRY OSBETT & CO.' across the front of the shop.

He let go Patricia's arm.

"Toddle over, darling," he said, "and buy me a packet of Miracle Tea."

"What happens if I get shot?" she asked suspiciously.

"I shall hear the bang," he said, "and phone for an ambulance."

Two minutes later she rejoined him with a small neat parcel in her hand. He fell in beside her as she came across the road, and turned in the direction of the lower end of the street, where he had left the car.

"How was Comrade Osbett?" he murmured. "Still keeping up with the world?"

"He looked all right, if he was the fellow who served me." She passed him the packet she was carrying. "Now do you mind telling me what good this is supposed to do?"

"We must listen to one of their broadcasts and find out. According to the wrapper, it disperses bile—"

She reached across to his hip pocket, and he laughed.

"Okay, darling. Don't waste any bullets — we may need them. I just wanted to find out if there were any curious features about buying Miracle Tea, and I didn't want to go in myself because I'm liable to want to go in again without being noticed too much."

"I didn't see anything curious," she said. "I just asked for it, and he wrapped it up and gave it to me."

"No questions or stalling?"

"No. It was just like buying a toothbrush or anything else."

"Didn't he seem to be at all interested in who was buying it?"

"Not a bit."

He held the package to his ear, shook it, and crunched it speculatively.

"We'll have a drink somewhere and see if we've won anything," he said.

At a secluded corner table in the Florida, a while later, he opened the packet, with the same care to preserve the seals and wrappings as he had given to the first consignment, and tipped out the contents on to a plate. The contents, to any ordinary examination, consisted of nothing but tea — and, by the smell and feel of it, not very good tea either.

The Saint sighed, and called a waiter to remove the mess.

"It looks as if we were wrong about that eccentric millionaire," he said. "Or else the supply of doremi has run out… Well, I suppose we shall just have to go to work again." He folded the container and stowed it carefully away in his pocket; and if he was disappointed he was able to conceal his grief. A glimmer of reckless optimism curled the corners of his mouth. "You know, darling, I have a hunch that some interesting things are going to happen before this time tomorrow night."

He was a better prophet than he knew, and it took only a few hours to prove it.

Simon Templar slept like a child. A thunderstorm bursting over his roof would not have woken him; a herd of wild elephants stampeding past his bed would scarcely have made him stir; but one kind of noise that other ears might not have heard at all even in full wakefulness brought him back instantaneously to life with every faculty sharpened and on tiptoe.

He awoke in a breathless flash, like a watchdog, without the slightest perceptible alteration in his rate of breathing or any sudden movement. Anyone standing over him would not have even sensed the change that had taken place. But his eyes were half open, and his wits were skidding back over the last split second of sleep like the recoil of taut elastic, searching for a definition of the sound that had aroused him.

The luminous face of a clock across the room told him that he had slept less than two hours. And the thinly phosphorescent hands hadn't moved on enough for the naked eye to see when he knew why he was awake.

In the adjoining living-room, something human had moved.

Simon drew down the automatic from under his pillow and slid out of bed like a phantom. He left the communicating door alone, and sidled noiselessly through the other door which led out into the hall. The front door was open just enough to split the darkness with a knife-edge of illumination from the lights on the landing outside: he eased over to it like a cat, slipped his fingers through the gap, and felt the burred edges of the hole which had been drilled through the outside of the frame so that the catch of the spring lock would be pushed back.

A light blinked beyond the open door of the living-room. The Saint came to the entrance and looked in. Silhouetted against the subdued glow of an electric torch he saw the shape of a man standing by the table with his back to the door, and his bare feet padded over the carpet without a breath of sound until they were almost under the intruder's heels. He leaned over until his lips were barely a couple of inches from the visitor's right ear.

"Boo," said the Saint.

It was perhaps fortunate for the intruder that he had a strong heart, for if he had had the slightest cardiac weakness the nervous shock which spun him round would have probably popped it like a balloon. As it was, an involuntary yammer of sheer primitive fright dribbled out of his throat before he lashed out blindly in no less instinctive self-defence.

Simon had anticipated that. He was crouching almost to his knees by that time, and his left arm snaked around the lower part of the man's legs simultaneously with a quick thrust of his shoulder against the other's thighs.

The burglar went over backwards with a violent thud; and as most of his breath jolted out of him he freighted it with a selection of picturesque expletives which opened up new vistas of biologic theory. One hand, swinging up in a vicious arc, was caught clearly in the beam of the fallen flashlight, and it was not empty.

"I think," said the Saint, "we can do without the persuader."

He jabbed the muzzle of his gun very hard into the place where his guest's ribs forked, and heard a satisfactory gasp of pain in response. His left hand caught the other's wrist as it descended, twisted with all the skill of a manipulative surgeon, and let go again to grab the life-preserver as it dropped out of the man's numbed fingers.

"You mustn't hit people with things like this," he said reprovingly. "It hurts… Doesn't it?"

The intruder, with jagged stars shooting through his head, did not offer an opinion; but his squirming lost nearly all of its early vigour. The Saint sat on him easily, and made sure that there were no other weapons on his person before he stood up again.

The main lights clicked on with a sudden dazzling brightness. Patricia Holm stood in the doorway, the lines of her figure draping exquisite contours into the folds of a filmy neglige, her fair hair tousled with sleep and hazy startlement in her blue eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you had company."

"That's all right," said the Saint. "We're keeping open house."

He lounged back to rest the base of his spine against the edge of the table and inspected the caller in more detail. He saw a short-legged barrel-chested individual with a thatch of carroty hair, a wide coarse-lipped mouth, and a livid scar running from one side of a flattened nose to near the lobe of a misshapen ear; and recognition dawned in his gaze.

He waved his gun in a genial gesture.