The Saint vs Scotland Yard Read Free

envelope that had accompa nied the
Final Demand against the coffee-pot, and his eyes rested on it for a
space with a gentle thoughtfulness—amaz ingly clear,
devil-may-care blue eyes with a growing glimmer of mischief lurking
somewhere behind the lazily drooping lids.
    And slowly the old Saintly smile came to his lips as he contemplated
the address.
    “Someone will have to
pay,” repeated the Saint thoughtfully; and Patricia Holm sighed, for
she knew the signs.
    And suddenly the Saint stood up, with his swift soft laugh, and took
the Final Demand and the envelope over to the fireplace. On the wall
close by hung a plain block calendar, and on the mantelpiece lay an old
Corsican stiletto. “Che la mia ferita sia
mortale,” said the inscription on the blade.
    The Saint rapidly flicked over the pages of the calendar and tore out the
sheet which showed in solid red figures the day on which Mr. Lionel
Delborn’s patience would expire. He placed the sheet on top of
the other papers, and with one quick thrust he drove the stiletto through
the collection and speared it deep into the panelled overmantel.
    “Lest we forget,” he said, and turned with another laugh to
smile seraphically into Patricia’s outraged face. “I just wasn’t born to be
respectable, lass, and that’s all there is to it. And the time has come for
us to remember the old days.”
    As a matter of fact, he had made that decision two full weeks
before, and Patricia had known it; but not until then had he made his open
declaration of war.
    At eight o’clock that evening he was sallying forth in quest of an
evening’s innocent amusement, and a car that had been standing in the
darkness at the end of the cul-de-sac of Upper Berkeley Mews suddenly
switched on its headlights and roared towards him. The Saint leapt back and
fell on his face in the doorway, and he heard the plop of a
silenced gun and the thud of a bullet burying itself in the woodwork above his head. He
slid out into the mews again as the car went past, and fired twice as it
swung into Berkeley Square, but he could not tell whether he
did any damage.
    He returned to brush his clothes, and then continued calmly on his way;
and when he met Patricia later he did not think it necessary to mention the
incident that had delayed him. But it was the third time since the episode chez Bird that the Scor pion had tried to kill him, and no one knew
better than Simon Templar that it would not be the last attempt.
     
     
    Chapter III
     
    For some days past, the well-peeled eye might at inter vals have
observed a cadaverous and lantern-jawed individual protruding about six
and a half feet upwards from the cobbled paving of Upper Berkeley Mews. Simon
Templar, having that sort of eye, had in fact noticed the
apparition on its first and in all its subsequent visits; and anyone less
well-informed than himself might pardonably have suspected some connection be tween the
lanky boulevardier and the recent disturbances of the peace. Simon
Templar, however, was not deceived.
    “That,” he said once, in answer to Patricia’s question,
“is Mr. Harold Garrot, better known as Long Harry. He is a moderately
proficient burglar; and we have met before, but not professionally. He
is trying to make up his mind to come and tell me something, and one of
these days he will take the plunge.”
    The Saint’s deductions were vindicated twenty-four hours after the
last firework display.
    Simon was alone. The continued political activities of a certain
newspaper proprietor had driven him to verse, and he was covering a sheet
of foolscap with the beginning of a minor epic expressing his own views on the
subject:
     
    Charles Charleston Charlemagne St. Charles
    Was wont to utter fearful snarls
    When by
professors he was pressed
    To note how England had progressed
    Since
the galumptious, gory days
    Immortalised
in Shakespeare’s plays.
    For him, no Transatlantic flights,
    Ford motor-cars, electric lights,
    Or radios at less than