06 Alias the Saint

"I have just learned your real name, Mr.--er-- Smith," Raxel said, "If I had known it earlier, I should not have made the mistake of underestimating your dangerousness. You should have been killed the first night you arrived at the inn."

"You should have been strangled at birth," said the Saint unpleasantly.

It was evening when Duncarry found him hanging over the rail and gazing at the approaching coasts of England with the same moody countenance.

"What's wrong?" asked the American, and Simon turned and chucked his cigarette end over the side.

"We've crashed Dun," said the Saint, as if he were announcing the end of the world.

Duncarry frowned.

"What are you getting at, Saint?"

"Isn't it obvious? Here we've spent weeks of sleuthing and spadework, and seen our share of the rough stuff as well, and we're never going to see a cent out of it. Have you forgotten that I'm a business organization?"

Duncarry shrugged.

"If the authorities see it the way I do, they'll say we've paid an instalment of your national debt all by ourselves. Isn't that enough for you?"

Simon Templar lighted another cigarette and resumed his disparaging inspection of the horizon.

"I cannot live by paying national debts," he said. "We shall have to find some other bunch of tough babies, and soak 'em good and proper to make up for this. I was trying to think of some sheep who are ripe for the slaughter. There's a couple of muttons in Vienna I was thinking of shearing one time."

"Maybe I'll be taking a holiday," said Duncarry.

He had taken a place at the rail beside the Saint, and Simon looked at him suddenly.

"Why?" demanded the Saint. "Wouldn't you like a trip to Vienna?"

"I'd love one--for my honeymoon," answered the American dreamily; and the Saint groaned.

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE

1

Patricia Holm raised her fair, pretty head from the Times.

"What," she asked, "is an obiter dictum?'

"A form of foot-and-mouth disease," said the Saint, glibly. "Obiter--one who obits; dictum--a shirt-front. Latin. Very difficult."

"Fool," said his lady.

The Saint grinned, and pushed back his chair. Breakfast was over; a blaze of summer sunshine was pouring through the open windows into the comfortable room; the first and best cigarette of the day was canted up between the Saint's smiling lips; all was right with the world.

"What's the absorbing news, anyway?" he in-quired lazily.

She passed him the paper; and, as is the way of these things, the matter which had given rise to her question was of the most ephemeral interest and yet it interested the Saint. Simon Templar had always been the despair of all those of his friends who expected him to produce Intelligent comments upon the affairs of the day; to read a newspaper not only bored him to extinction, but often gave him an actual physical pain. Therefore it followed, quite naturally, that when the mood seized him to glance at a newspaper, he usually managed to extract more meat from that one glance than the earnest regular student of the press extracts from years of daily labour.

It so happened that morning. Coincidence, of course; but how much adventure is free from all taint of coincidence? Coincidences are always coinciding--it is one of their peculiar attributes; but the adventure is born of what the man makes of his coincidences. Most people say: "How odd!"

Simon Templar said: "Well, well, well!"

But the Times really hadn't anything exciting to say that morning; and certainly the column that Patricia had been reading was one of the most sober of all the columns of that very respectable newspaper, for it was one of the columns in which such hardy annuals as Paterfamilias, Lieut-Colonel (retired), Pro Bono Publico, Mother of Ten, unto the third and fourth generation, Abraham and his seed for ever, let loose their, weary bleats upon the world. The gentleman ("Diehard") who had incorporated an obiter dictum in his effort was giving tongue on the subject of motorists. It was, as has been explained, pure coincidence that he should have written with special reference to a recent prosecution for dangerous driving in which the defendant had been a man in whom the Saint had .the dim beginnings of an interest;

"Aha!" said the Saint, thoughtful like.

"Haven't you met that man--Miles Hallin?" Patricia said. "I've heard you mention his name."

"And that's all I've met up to date," answered the Saint. "But I have met a bird who talks about nothing else but Miles. Although I suppose, in the circumstances, that isn't as eccentric as it sounds."