The Saint Sees It Through

Simon shook hands.

'Simon Simplon, I,' he said. 'Hello, kids. Where away?'

Avalon looked dubious.

'I'm not sure you're invited on this jaunt, Simon. The boys and I were just setting out to give the town a reddish hue.'

The Saint said: 'But I'm your agent. You can't do anything without me.'

She raised her eyebrow.

'Anything?'

'Well——'

The sailors snickered.

Avalon stamped a foot

'You know what I mean.'

'Miss Dexter,' Simon told her sternly, 'according to law, I am your agent. Perhaps that phrase carries implications which need not be considered here. I still say that I should be able to advise you on your goings about.'

She put a curl into her lip.

'Because you're my agent?'

'Lowly though that may be, yes.'

Joe Hyman, stocky, gray-suited, and Sam Jeffries, tall in blue, shifted from one foot to the other.

The Saint could have kissed her. She showed that perfect combination of camaraderie and contempt, of distrust and dec­lination, that a temperamental artist exhibits toward her agent.

'How do you do?' the Saint said, and shook hands.

Joe Hyman was inarticulate, with small hard hands. He shook as if his life depended upon it. Sam Jeffries gave the Saint a handful of limp bananas.

'We were just about to go out and put an edge on the town,' Jeffries said.

The Saint appeared to consider.

'A sound idea, seems to me. Why don't we all do it?'

Each of the boys looked at Avalon. They obviously didn't relish extra company. She looked at them, then at the Saint. She shrugged. Sam Jeffries said, 'Why not?'

So they all climbed into the Saint's cab. As Simon followed them into the interior, he glanced upward. He saw peering from a window the face of James Prather.

4

The first thing the Saint noticed, when he was seated in the jump seat—so he could watch through the rear window to see if they were being followed—was that Sam Jeffries had drawn from his pocket a snub-nosed revolver and pointed it unwaver­ingly at the vitals of Simon Templar.

'My goodness,' the Saint ejaculated mildly.

The revolver was held so that Avalon couldn't see it. She elevated exciting eyebrows. The Saint looked at her, then at Sam Jeffries. He shrugged. 'The meter,' he said, gesturing at his back. 'It clicks and clicks.'

The revolver seemed to waggle approbation.

Sam Jeffries eyed Simon for a long time.

'You're quite a guy, ain't you, bud?'

Simon shrugged.

'Oh—I wouldn't go that far.'

'We think you're quite a guy,' Sam insisted. 'We've been told you're more'n that. You see, I recognized you. You've had too many photos printed in the papers—Saint.'

Simon smiled, a devil-may-care smile, a smile as light as but­terflies' worries.

'So? And now that we're putting everything on the barrel­head, why are you holding that cannon on me?'

Avalon gasped, and glanced sidewise.

'Well,' Sam Jeffries said, 'I guess it ain't necessary. I really wouldn't shoot you without'n you done more'n you've did.'

Simon grinned.

'Thanks. Just to get the record straight, I really am this young lady's agent. She's a nightclub singer.'

Stocky Joe Hyman said: 'Huh?'

Sam Jeffries made a threatening motion at his pal.

' 'F she says she's a singer, she's a singer, see? 'N 'f he says he's her agent, well, shaddup, see?'

'I didn't mean nothing,' Joe said.

'Well, Mister?' Sam said to Simon.

The Saint eyed the gun, the neat blue suit, the maroon tie, the long tanned face of Sam Jeffries. He began to move one hand toward his inner coat pocket.

'May I smoke?'

'Sure,' Sam said.

The Saint took out his cigarette case, that case which had special properties that had before now helped him out of tighter spots than this. Not that the case seemed to differ from any similar case made of gold and embellished with a tasteful amount of precious gems. No, it seemed functional in design, if a bit on the ornate side. And functional it was; for one of its edges could be used as a razor. The toughest beard would fall before that redoubtable keenness. Not only was it a weapon for cutting bonds or throats, it contained ammunition which could be applied in sundry ways to the confusion of the Ungodly.

Interspersed among his regular brand were other special cigarettes which could blind, frighten, and fling into chaos such unsavory members of the human race as the Saint wished to blind, frighten, or fling into chaotic action. Each of these ex­plosive tubes consisted almost entirely of magnesium.

His sensitive fingers felt among the case's cargo to light upon a bona fide smoke, which he lighted. He puffed a blue cloud at the ceiling and placed the case in a convenient jacket pocket. There might be use for it later. In doing so, he felt the outline of the small knife, Belle, which nestled in her case up his sleeve.

He eyed Sam Jeffries with that devilish carelessness that had made his name not only a by-word but a guide to independence.

'What do you mean, what now?'

'Well,' Sam said, 'I didn't recognize you at first. But after we was in the cab, see, I says, 'Sam, that's the Saint,' I says. And I asks myself what would the Saint want of the likes of us, and I gets no answer, see. So then I says to myself it'd be a good idea maybe if I didn't take no chances, so I hauls out my rod.'

'Which fails to comfort me,' the Saint murmured. His in­audible sigh of relief was let out carefully and imperceptibly. His mind was concerned with one beautiful thought: Sam Jef­fries hadn't expected him to show up.

Avalon hadn't, then, tipped them off. If she were one of the Ungodly, she would have warned the two sailor boys. But she hadn't, and that made for singing in the veins.

He caught up his sudden joy in two mental hands and looked at it. It could be a treacherous kind of joy, going off half cocked at the most stupid stimuli. Suppose she had warned Sam Jef­fries. Would he be clever enough to put on an act of this sort? Perhaps not but perhaps yes, too. At any rate, Avalon might have been clever enough to instigate such an act.

So the whole situation solved nothing, as far as his estimate of Avalon was concerned. And it was becoming increasingly important that he arrive at a correct estimate of her intents and purposes.

For himself he had no fear. These were young men—boys, really, in experience—whom he could overpower, escape from, or capture, if he chose to do so. But if Avalon were in this with him, his actions might explode along a certain line; if she were not, they would certainly explode along other and more uncomfortable lines.

Not that the end result would be affected. The Saint felt that he was travelling along the right road. As soon as the sea came into the picture, he was convinced that at long last he was ap­proaching the goal.

For he had mental visions of ships sailing out of New York harbour, through the Canals, Panama or Suez, heading west or east, but always with the Orient at one end of the run. Small ships, 3000-ton freighters, carrying cargo to Calcutta; big ships, 20,000-ton liners of the restless deep, taking men and women to build a new world