Call for the Saint (The Saint Series) by Charteris Leslie

Author:Charteris, Leslie [Charteris, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2014-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

4

Devoted students of our hagiography who have been following these chronicles for the past several years may be a little tired of reading the exposition of Inspector John Henry Fernack’s emotional state, which usually punctuates the narrative at moments like this. Your favourite author, to be perfectly candid, is a little tired of writing it. Perhaps this is one occasion when he might be excused. To compress into a few sentences the long epic of failures, disappointments, and frustrations which made up the history of Inspector Fernack’s endless pursuit of the Saint is a task before which the staunchest scribe might quail. And it is almost ludicrous to attempt to describe in mere words the quality of incandescent ire that seethed up in him like a roiled volcano as the Saint’s welcoming smile flashed in the chiselled bronze of that piratical face.

“Of course,” Simon murmured. “I knew it.”

The detective glowered at him.

“How did you know?”

“My dear John Henry!” the Saint grinned. “That concerto you played on my doorbell was unmistakably a Fernack arrangement.” He waved him to a chair. “Sit down, won’t you? Let me pour you a drink—if Hoppy can spare it.”

“Sure,” said Mr Uniatz hospitably. “Just don’t take all of it.”

Inspector Fernack did not sit down. In fact, he looked more as if he might easily rise into the air, from the sheer pressure of the steam that seemed to be distending his chest.

For the same routine was going to be played out again, and he knew it, without being able to do anything to check or vary its course. It was all implicit in the Saint’s gay and friendly smile, and the bitterness of the premonition put a crack in his voice even while he ploughed doggedly onwards to his futile destiny.

“Never mind that!” he squawked. “What were you and this big baboon raising Cain about in the Masked Angel’s dressing-room tonight?”

“You mean last night, don’t you? It happens to be tomorrow morning at the moment.”

“I’m asking you,” Fernack repeated deliberately, “what were you doing—”

“It’s funny,” the Saint interjected, “all the places where a flying rumour will land.”

“It’s no rumour!” Inspector Fernack said trenchantly. “I was at the fight myself.” He removed the stogie from his mouth and took a step forward, his gimlet eyes challenging. “Why did you steal those gloves?”

The Saint’s brows lifted in polite surprise.

“Gloves?”

“Yes, gloves! The gloves that killed Torpedo Smith! Doc Spangler told me what happened. Why’d you take ’em?”

“My hands were cold,” Simon said blandly.

An imaginative audience might have fancied that it could hear the perspiration sizzling on Inspector Fernack’s face as its rosy glow deepened to purple. He thrust the stogie back into his mouth with a violence that almost choked him and bit into it savagely.

“You be careful, Templar!” he bellowed. “If I felt like it, I could pull you in for assault, trespass, malicious mischief, and petty larceny!”

Simon shook his head sadly.

“You disappoint me, Inspector. A hunter of your calibre talking about sparrows when there are tigers in them thar hills.

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