Featuring the Saint by Leslie Charteris

“That would be as safe as anything. I might get you reprieved on the grounds of insanity.”
    The Saint sighed.
    “You aren’t helpful, Beautiful Archibald.”
    “If you’d settle down to talk seriously—”
    “I am serious.”
    Sheridan stared. Then:
“Is that straight, Saint?” he demanded.
    “From the horse’s mouth,” the Saint assured him solemnly. “Even as the crow flieth before the pubs open. Sweet cherub, did you really think I was wasting precious time with pure pickled onions?”
    Sheridan looked at him. There was another flippant rejoinder on the tip of Archie Sheridan’s tongue, but somehow it was never uttered.
    The Saint was smiling. It was a mocking smile, but that was for Sheridan’s incredulity. It was not the sort of smile that accompanies a test of the elasticity of a leg. And in the Saint’s eyes was a light that wasn’t entirely humorous.
    Archie Sheridan, with a cigarette in his mouth, fumbling for matches, realized that he had mistaken the shadow for the substance. The Saint wasn’t making fun of revolutions. It was just that his sense of humour was too big to let him plan even a revolution without seeing the funny side of the show.
    Sheridan got a match to his cigarette.
    “Well?” prompted the Saint.
    “I think you’re pots, bats, and bees,” he said. “But if you’re set on that kind of suicide-lead on. Archibald will be at your elbow with the bombs. You didn’t forget the bombs?”
    The Saint grinned.
    “I had to leave them behind,” he replied lightly. “They wouldn’t fit into my sponge bag. Seriously, now, where and how do you think we should start the trouble?”
    They were sitting opposite one another at Sheridan’s bare mahogany dining table, and at the Saint’s back was the open door leading out onto the veranda and commanding an uninterrupted view of the approach to the bungalow.
    “Start the thing here and now and anyhow you like,” said Sheridan, and he was looking past the Saint’s shoulder towards the veranda steps.
    Simon Templar settled back a little more lazily into his chair, and a very Saintly meekness was spreading over his face.
    “Name?” he inquired laconically.
    “Shannet himself.”
    The Saint’s eyes were half closed.
    “I will compose a little song about him immediately,” he said.
    Then a shadow fell across the table, but the Saint did not move at once. He appeared to be lost in a day-dream.
    “Buenos dias, Shannet,” said Archie Sheridan. “Also, as soon as possible, adios. Hurry up and say what you’ve got to say before I kick you out.”
    “I’ll do any kicking out that’s necessary, thanks,” said Shannet harshly. “Sheridan, I’ve come to warn you off for the last time. The Andalusia berthed this morning, and she sails again on the evening tide. You’ve been nosing around here too long as it is. Is that plain enough?”
    “Plainer than your ugly face,” drawled Sheridan. “And by what right do you kick me out? Been elected President, have you?”
    “You know me,” said Shannet. “You know that what I say here goes. You’ll sail on the Andalusia-either voluntarily or because you’re put on board in irons. That’s all… . What’s this?”
    The Saint, perceiving himself to be the person thus referred to, awoke sufficiently to open his eyes and screw his head round so that he could view the visitor.
    He saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of indeterminate age, clad in a soiled white suit of which the coat was unbuttoned to expose a grubby singlet. Shannet had certainly not shaved for two days; and he did not appear to have brushed his hair for a like period, for a damp, sandy lock drooped in a tangle over his right eye. In one corner of his mouth a limp and dilapidated cigarette dangled tiredly from his lower lip.
    The Saint blinked.
    “Gawd!” he said offensively. “Can it be human?”
    Shannet’s fists swept back his coat and rested on his hips.
    “What’s your name, Cissy?” he demanded.
    The Saint