Mysterious notes that turned up in smart cocktail lounges or the pocket of Simon Templar's suit. . .
An organization of killers who would stop at nothing to fulfill their dream of power. . .
These are parts of a deadly jig-saw puzzle that led to torture and murder, with a great war hanging in the balance—while. the world waits for the results of the battle against international espionage that occurs when THE SAINT STEPS IN.
It was a note drawn in crudely blocked letters, and it had fallen from the handbag of the beautiful woman sitting across the table from Simon Templar, the Saint.
And from the way he reacted to the expression of terror on her face, the Saint knew he was on his way to new adventure —an adventure in espionage that was to help settle a deadly conflict!
FICTION PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK
Copyright, 1942,1943, by Leslie Charteris.
Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.
1. How Simon Templar dined in Washington,
and Sylvester Angert spoke of his Nervousness.
She was young and slender, and she had smiling brown eyes and hair the color of old mahogany. With a lithe grace, she squeezed in beside Simon Templar at the small table in the cocktail room of the Shoreham and said :'You're the Saint.'
Simon smiled back, because she was easy to smile at; but not all of the smile went into his very clear blue eyes that always had a faint glint of mockery away behind them, like an amused spectator sitting far back in a respectful audience.
He said: 'Am I?'
'I recognised you,' she said.
He sighed. The days of happy anonymity that once upon a time had made his lawless career relatively simple seemed suddenly as far away as his last diapers. Not that even today he was as fatefully recognisable as Clark Gable: there were still several million people on earth to whom his face, if not his name, would have meant nothing at all: but he was recognised often enough for it to be what he sometimes called an
