Charteris, Leslie by The Saint Intervenes

Author:The Saint Intervenes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-09-30T22:44:00.653000+00:00

IX

The Damsel in Distress

"You need brains in this life of crime," Simon Templar would say sometimes; "but I often think you need luck even more."

He might have added that the luck had to be consistent.

Mr. Giuseppe Rolfieri was lucky up to a point, for he happened to be in Switzerland when the astounding

Liverpool Municipal Bond forgery was discovered. It was a simple matter for him to slip over the border into his own native country; and when his four partners in the swindle stumbled down the narrow stairway that

leads from the dock of the Old Bailey to the terrible blind years of penal servitude, he was comfortably

installed in his villa at San Remo with no vengeance to fear from the Law. For it is a principal of

international law that no man can be extradited from his own country, and Mr. Rolfieri was lucky to

have retained his Italian citizenship even though he had made himself a power in the City of London.

Simon Templar read about the case—he could hardly have helped it, for it was one of those sensational

scandals which rock the financial world once in a lifetime—but it did not strike him as a matter for his

intervention. Four out of the five conspirators, including the ringleader, had been convicted and sentenced; and although it is true that there was a certain amount of public indignation at the immunity of Mr. Rolfieri, it was inevitable that the Saint, in his career of shameless lawlessness, sometimes had to pass up one inviting prospect in favour of another nearer to hand. He couldn't be everywhere at once—it was one of the very few human

limitations which he was ready to admit.

A certain Domenick Naccaro, however, had other ideas.

He called at the Saint's apartment on Piccadilly one morning—a stout bald-headed man in a dark blue suit

and a light blue waistcoat, with an unfashionable stiff collar and a stringy black tie and a luxuriant scroll of black moustache ornamenting his face—and for the first moment of alarm Simon wondered if he had been

mistaken for somebody else in the same name but less respectable morals, for Signor Naccaro was

accompanied by a pale pretty girl who carried a small infant swathed in a shawl.

"Is this-a Mr. Templar I have-a da honour to spik to?" asked Naccaro, doffing his bowler elaborately.

"This is one Mr. Templar," admitted the Saint cautiously.

"Ha!" said Mr. Naccaro. "It is-a da Saint himself?"

"So I'm told," Simon answered.

"Then you are da man we look-a for," stated Mr. Naccaro, with profound conviction.

As if taking it for granted that all the necessary formalities had therewith been observed, he bowed the

girl in, bowed himself in after her, and stalked into the living-room. Simon closed the door and followed the deputation with a certain curious amusement.

"Well, brother," he murmured, taking a cigarette from the box on the table. "Who are you, and what can I do for you?"

The flourishing bowler hat bowed the girl into one chair, bowed its owner into another, and came to rest

on its owner's knees.

"Ha!" said the Italian, rather like an acrobat announcing the conclusion of a trick.

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