Enter the Saint Read Free

that it gets to one of the doctors, and give him this note with it.”
    And the Saint went back to the wheel of his van and drove away, feeling that he was nearing the end of an excellent day’s work. He drove to the Great West Road, and out of London towards Maidenhead. Somewhere along that road he turned off into a side lane, and there he stopped for a few minutes out of sight of the main traffic. Inside the van was a large pot of paint, and the Saint used it energetically. He had never considered himself an artist, but he man-handled that van with the broad sweeping touch of a master. Under his vigorous wielding of the brush, the sign of Carter Paterson, which he had been at some pains to execute artistically the night before, vanished entirely; and the van became plain. Satisfied with the obliteration of the handiwork which only a few hours before he had admired so much, the Saint resumed the wheel and drove back to London. The paint he had used was guaranteed quick-drying, and it lived up to the word of its guarantee. It collected a good deal of dust on the return voyage, and duly dried a somewhat soiled aspect which was a very fair imitation of the condition in which Mr. Marks had received it.
    He delivered it to its home garage at Shepherd’s Bush and paid twenty-four hours’ hire. Some time later Mr. Marks returned to Chelsea. A little later still, the not-so-immaculate Simon Templar turned into another garage and collected his trim blue Furillac speedster, in which he drove to his club in Dover Street. And the Simon Templar who sauntered through to the bar and called for a pint of beer must have been one of the most impeccably immaculate young men that that haunt of impeccably immaculate young men had ever sheltered.
    “We don’t often see you as early as this, sir,” remarked the barman.
    “May it be as many years before you see me as early as this again, son,” answered the Saint piously. “But this morning I felt I just had to get up and go for a drive. It was such a beautiful morning.”
    Chapter III
MR. EDGAR HAYN was a man of many interests. He was the proud proprietor of “Danny’s,” a night club in a squalid street off Shaftesbury Avenue, and he also controlled the destinies of the firm of Laserre, which was a small but expensive shop in Regent Street that retailed perfumes, powders, rouges, creams, and all the other preparations essential to modern feminine face-repair. These two establishments were Mr. Hayn’s especial pets, and from them he derived the greater part of his substantial income. Yet it might be mentioned that the profits of “Danny’s” were not entirely earned by the sale of champagne, and the adornment of fashionable beauty was not the principal source of the prosperity of the house of Laserre. Mr. Hayn was a clever organizer, and what he did not know about the art of covering his tracks wouldn’t have been missed from one of the microscopical two-guinea alabaster jars in which he sold the celebrated Creme Laserre. He was a big, heavy-featured man, clean-shaven, pink complexioned, and faintly bald. His name had not always been Hayn, but a process of naturalization followed by a Deed Poll had given him an indisputable legal right to forget the cognomen of his father-and, incidentally, had eliminated for ever the unpleasant possibility of a deportation order, an exercise of forethought for which Mr. Hayn was more than once moved to give his sagacity a pat on the back. The police knew certain things about him which made them inclined to regard him with disfavour, and they suspected a lot more, but there had never been any evidence.
    He was writing letters at the big knee-hole desk in his private office at “Danny’s” when Ganning arrived. The knock on the door did not make him look up. He said, “Come in!”-but the sound of the opening and closing of the door was, to him, sufficient indication that the order had been obeyed; and he went on to finish the letter he had been