The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal Read Free Page A

after you wired me not to meet you at Southampton––”
    He laughed, a quiet lilt of laughter that had rung in her memory for many weeks.
    “Darling, that was because I was expecting an-other deputation of welcome at the same time, and it might have spoilt the fun for both of us. The deputation was there, too—but you shall hear about that presently.”
    He filled the two glasses which stood beside the bottle and carried one of them over to an arm-chair. Over the rim of his glass he regarded her, freshening the portrait which he had carried with him ever since he went away. So much had happened to him, so many things had touched him and passed on into the illimitable emptiness of time, but not one line of her had changed. She was the same as she had been on the day when he first met her, the same as she had been through all the lawless adventures that they had shared since she threw in her lot irrevocably with his. She looked at him in the same way.
    “You’re older,” she said quietly.
    He smiled.
    “I haven’t been on a picnic.”
    “And there’s something about you that tells me you aren’t on a picnic even now.”
    He sipped the golden nectar from his glass and delved for a cigarette. When she said that he was older she could not have pointed to a grey hair or a new line on his face to prove her statement. And at that moment she felt that the clock might well have been put back five years. The fine sunburnt devil-may-care face, the face of a born outlaw, was in some subtle way more keenly etched than ever by the indefinable inward light that came to it when trouble loomed up in his buccaneering path. She knew him so well that the lazy quirk of the unscrupulous freebooter’s mouth told a story of its own, and even the whimsical smile that lurked on in his eyes could not deceive her.
    “It isn’t my fault if you develop these psychic powers, old sweetheart,” he said.
    “It’s your fault if you can’t even stay out of trouble for a week now and again,” she said and sat on the arm of his chair.
    He shook his head and took one of her hands.
    “I tried to, Pat, but it just wasn’t meant to happen. A wicked ogre with a black guardee moustache hopped through a window and said ‘Boo!’ and my halo blew off. If I wanted to, I could blame it all on you.”
    “How?”
    “For just managing to catch me in Boston before I sailed, with that parcel you forwarded!”
    Patricia Holm puckered her sweet brow.
    “Parcel? … Oh, I think I remember it. A thing about the size of a book—it came from Monte Carlo, didn’t it?”
    “It came from Monte Carlo,” said the Saint carefully, “and it was certainly about the size of a book. In fact, it was a book. It was the most amazing book I’ve ever read—maybe the most amazing book that was ever written. There it is!”
    He pointed to the volume which he had put down on the table, and she stared at it and then back at him in utter perplexity.
    “Her Wedding Secret?” she said. “Have you gone mad or have I?”
    “Neither of us,” said the Saint. “But you wouldn’t believe how many other people are mad about it.”
    She looked at him in bewildered exasperation. He was standing up again, a debonair wide-shouldered figure against the sunlight that streamed in through the big windows and lengthened the evening shadows of the trees in the Green Park. She felt the spell of his daredevil delight as irresistible as it had always been, the absurd glamour which could even take half the sting from his moments of infuriating mysteriousness. He smiled, and his hands went to her shoulders.
    “Listen, Pat,” he said. “That book is a present from an old friend, and he knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. When I show it to you, you’ll see that it’s the most devilishly clever revenge that ever came out of a human brain. But before we go any further, I want you to know that there’s more power in that book for the man who’s got it than anyone else in