Saint10 - The Saint & Mr Teal by Leslie Charteris

Author:Leslie Charteris
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-08-29T12:44:46+00:00

Simon made the rope fast, and Nilder leaned over the side.

"Why don't you come up here?" he suggested amiably. "I'm afraid you'll get rather wet if you stay where you are."

Simon had proposed to get aboard somehow from the beginning, but he had not expected such a prompt invitation. He climbed into the cockpit rather watchfully, with a tiny question mark roving through his mind. It was a perfectly normal invitation in itself, but if Mr. Nilder was revealing a little more astuteness than the Saint had credited him with . . . And then the morning breeze wafted over to him the fragrance of Ronald Nilder's breath, and Simon realized that the man was more than a little drunk.

"It's quite a coincidence that we should meet again so soon, isn't it?" Nilder remarked suddenly, as the engines picked up again and the one-man crew took the wheel. "I had an excellent view of you in my driving mirror yesterday."

His close-set eyes were fixed on the Saint with the peculiarly rigid stare of mild intoxication, and Simon understood in a flash that Ronald Nilder had oiled himself up to the exact stage of tiddliness at which a man becomes conscious of a verve and brilliance which no one else can perceive and which he himself never knew he possessed.

Simon returned the man's stare coolly. He had set out that morning with no intention of doing anything desperate, but he was always ready to adapt his style to circumstances. And Ronald Nilder was being so frantically and unnecessarily clever that he was asking for a suitable retort with both hands.

"Why, yes—it does seem odd, doesn't it?" murmured the Saint.

He tapped the helmsman gently on the shoulder, and the man half turned. In that position, the point of his jaw offered itself to the Saint's fist as a target that could not in common politeness be ignored. Simon duly obliged—gracefully, accurately, and with a detonating release of energy that lifted the helmsman clear onto the balls of his feet before he dropped.

"Perfectly priceless weather, isn't it?" murmured the Saint, conversationally.

He spun the wheel hard over, so that the Seabird heeled to starboard and came about in a flat skid. Simon straightened her up smoothly and let her run south, away from the river mouth.

His eyes returned to Nilder's face with a blue challenge of devilment to match his smile. It was on such moments of inspired unexpectedness that the Saint's greatness was founded. Looking at Ronald Nilder, he saw that the tipsy courage which had induced the man to take such a recklessly incalculable bull by the horns had wheezed down like a punctured tire. There was a kind of panic in Ronald Nilder's face, and he was trying clumsily to draw a gun.

Simon took it away from him quite good-humouredly and dropped it over the side.

"You know, that's another mistake, Ronald," said the Saint calmly. "Respectable yachtsmen never pull guns when their crew are assaulted. They just go mauve in the

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