The Saint Goes On by Leslie Charteris

the annals of memory. To the High Fence, he was dead: he had been dropped off a boat into the lower waters of the Thames with a lump of iron tied to his feet-swallowed up in the bottom ooze and slime of the river, where any secret might well be safe. Both as a proven interferer and a potentially greater menace, he had been removed. But before being drowned, he had given up his secret. He had told exactly what he had done with the parcel of precious stones of which Mr. Clive Enderby had been bereaved-and the High Fence was going to Harwich to take the name of Joshua Pond in vain… . And Simon Templar had an increasingly blissful idea that he was going to be there to witness the performance.
    As the cab drew up before Cornwall House he saw a girl and a man coming out, and decanted himself on to the pavement before the taxi had properly reached a standstill.
    “Are you looking for some fun, souls?” he murmured. “Because if so, I could use you.”
    Patricia Holm stared at him for a moment in breathless silence; and then, with an incoherent little cry, she threw herself into his arms… .
    Mr. Uniatz swallowed, and touched the Saint with stubby fingers, as if he were something fragile.
    “Howja get wet, boss?” he asked.
    Simon grinned, and indicated the interested taxi driver with a movement of his head.
    “George here thinks I must have been in some water,” he said. “Give him a quid for the inspiration, will you?-I only had a fiver on me when I went out, but they pinched it.”
    He led Patricia back into the building with a damp arm round her shoulders, while Hoppy paid off the taxi and rejoined them in the foyer. They rode up in the elevator in an enforced silence; but Patricia was shaking him by the arm as soon as the door of the apartment had closed behind them.
    “Where have you been, boy? What’s happened?”
    “Were you worried?”
    “You know that.”
    He kissed her.
    “I guess you must have been. Where were you off to?”
    “We were going to call on Enderby.” She was still holding herself in the curve of his arm, wet as he was. “It was the only line we had-what you told me outside here, before Pryke took you off.”
    “I could of made him talk, boss,” said Mr. Uniatz, in a tone of pardonable disappointment. “After I’d got t’ru wit’ him–––”
    The Saint smiled.
    “I suppose he’d ‘ve been lucky to be able to talk. Well, the scheme might still be a good one… .” He toyed with the idea for a thoughtful moment; and then he shook his head. “But no-we don’t need it now. And there may be something much more useful for you to do. Get me a drink, Pat, if Hoppy’s left anything, and I’ll tell you.”
    Half an hour in his sodden clothes had left him chilled and shivery, but a steep tot of whisky would soon put that right. He lay submerged in a hot bath, with the glass balanced on the edge, and told them the story of his adventures through the open door. It was a tale that made Patricia bite her lips towards the end; but for him it was all in the past. When he came through into the living room again, cheerful and glowing from the massage of a rough towel, with his hair sleekly brushed again and a woolly bath-robe slung round him, lighting a cigarette with steady hands and the old irrepressible laughter on his lips, it was difficult to imagine that barely an hour ago he had fought one of his most terrific fights with death.
    “So here we are,” he said, with the blue lights crisp and dancing in his eyes. “We don’t know who the High Fence is; but we know where he’s going, and we know the password he’s going to give. It’s rather quiet and logical; but we’ve got him. Just because he’s made that one natural mistake. If I were swinging at the bottom of the Pool, as he thinks I am, there wouldn’t be a snag in his life. He’d just go to Harwich and recover his boodle; and that would be the end of a spot of very satisfactorily settled bother. But he’s going to have a