The Saint to the Rescue

The Saint
to the Rescue

Doubleday edition published December, 1959

PERMABOOK
edition published
August, 1961

1st printing
                                       
 
June, 1961

All of the
characters in this book are ficti
tious, and any resemblance to actual
per
sons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This
PERMABOOK
includes
every word contained in the origi
nal, higher-priced edition. It is
printed from brand-new
plates made from completely reset, clear,
easy-to-read type.

PERMABOOK
editions
are distributed in the U.S. by Affili
ated Publishers, Inc., 630 Fifth
Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.

PERMABOOK
editions
are published in the United States by
Pocket Books, Inc., and in Canada by Pocket Books of
Canada,
Ltd.—the world’s largest publishers
of low-priced adult books.

Copyright, ©, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, by Leslie Charteris.
All rights
reserved. This permabook edition is pub
lished by arrangement
with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

PRINTED
 
IN THE U.S.A.

TABLE
  
OF
  
CONTENTS

The
Ever-Loving Spouse
   
•
   
3

The
Fruitful Land
   
•
   
41

The
Percentage Player
   
•
   
65

The Water Merchant
   
•
   
95

The Gentle Ladies
   
•
   
121

The Element of Doubt
   
•
   
149

3

T
HE
S
AINT
met Otis
Q
.
Fennick on the fire escape of the Hotel Mercurio, in San Francisco,
at about four o’clock in
the morning.

Like many another eminently simple statement,
the fore
going now involves an entirely disproportionate series of
ex
planations.

Simon Templar was staying at the Mercurio,
which was
a long way from attaining the luxurious standards of the
kind
of hotel that he usually frequented, because when he headed
for San
Francisco he had neglected to inform himself that a
national convention of
the soft-drink and candy industry was
concurrently infesting that otherwise
delightful city. After
finding every superior hostelry clogged to the
rafters with
manufacturers and purveyors of excess calories, he had de
cided that
he was lucky to find a room in any hotel at all.

The room itself was one of the least desirable
even under
that second-rate roof, being situated at the back of the
build
ing overlooking a picturesque alley tastefully bordered with garbage cans
and directly facing an eye-filling panorama of
grimy windows and
still grimier walls appertaining to the
edifice across the
way. The iron steps of the outside fire-escape partly obscured this appealing
view by slanting across
the upper half of the window; and it was
there that Simon
first heard the stealthy feet of Mr. Fennick, and a moment
later, being of a curious disposition, saw them through a gap
at the
edge of the ill-fitting blind. He had dined at his
friend Johnny Kan’s
temple of oriental gastronomy on Grant
Avenue for old times’
sake, and afterwards Johnny had in
sisted that they should go out together
and look for some late
entertainment that might not have been
discovered by the assembled exploiters of appetizing toothache, and what with
one thing
and another it had been very late when he got
home, and he had only
just shed most of his clothes and
brushed his teeth when he heard the
furtive scuffling outside
which was the surreptitious descent of Mr.
Fennick.

In such a situation, the ordinary sojourner in
even a second-
rate hotel would either have remained gawking in numb per
plexity or
have started howling an alarum, with or without
the intermediacy of
the house phone. Not being ordinary
in any way, Simon Templar rolled up the
shade with a crafts
man’s touch which almost miraculously silenced its
antique
mechanism—he had already switched off the lights in order
to see out
better, and the window had never been closed since
he accepted the room,
on account of the stuffiness of its lo
cation—and swung
himself across to the nearest landing of
the fire escape with
the deceptively effortless grace of a trained gymnast, having reacted with such
dazzling speed that he arrived there simultaneously with the cautiously
groping
prowler.

“Me Tarzan,” said the Saint
seductively. “You Jane?”

His voice should not have been at all
terrifying—in fact, it
was carefully pitched low enough to have been
inaudible to anyone who had not already been disturbed by Mr. Fennick’s rather
clumsy creeping. But Mr. Fennick was apparently un
used to being
accosted on fire escapes, or perhaps even to
being on them at all;
at any rate, it was immediately obvious
that no intelligible
sound was going to emerge for a while from
the fish-like opening
of his mouth. It became clear to Simon
that the acquaintance
would have to be developed in a more
leisurely manner and less
unconventional surroundings.

“You’d better come in before you catch
cold or break your neck,” he said.

Mr. Fennick gave him no struggle. He was a
small man, and the Saint’s steel fingers almost met their thumb around
the upper
arm that they had persuasively clamped on. He
squeezed his eyes
very tightly shut, like a little boy, as Simon
half lifted him across
the space to the window sill, which was
really no more than a
long stride except for having about
forty feet of empty air under it.

With the blind drawn and the lights on again,
the Saint
inspected his catch with proprietary interest. Mr.
Fennick
wore a well-pressed brown double-breasted suit of conserva
tive
tailoring, a white stiff-collared shirt, a tie very modestly
patterned
with neutral greens, and even a clean felt hat of
sedate contour. To
match his skinny frame, he had a rather wizened face with a sharp thin nose, a
wide thin mouth, and
lively intelligent brown eyes when he opened
them. He
looked much more like a member of some Chamber of Com
merce and
pillar of the Community Church than a felonious
skulker on fire
escapes.

“You know,” said the Saint at last,
“I don’t think you’re a
burglar after all. And this would be a rather
desperate hour for a Peeping Tom. I guess you must be a candy cooker.”