Send for the Saint by Leslie Charteris, Peter Bloxsom Page A

deter the unwelcome would-be guest who is outside and trying to get in. To anyone who is inside and wanting to get out they constitute only the most minor of nuisances.
    Simon stood on a chair to reach the alarm mechanism,
which was prominently in view above the front door, and took die simple course of switching it off. Then he replaced the chair and let himself quietly out, leaving the front door on the latch.
    The Hirondel was still parked around the corner in Bruton Street, where he had left it the night before. He headed west, and stopped at his mews house to make a phone call to Athens, where he left a brief message. Then he drove out on Cromwell Road, making for the airport.
    He was somewhere near Hounslow when his keenly tuned antennae for such matters told him that the big headlights in his rear-view mirror were showing rather more than chance persistence. Few drivers cared to keep pace for long with Simon Templar just for the hell of it; and yet he had no doubt that the same headlights had maintained their position behind him for at least five miles. The Saint had registered their presence from the first; or rather, some idle circuit in his subconscious mind, part of the automatic pilot that was so indispensable to a modern buccaneer, had registered them and had then monitored them moment by moment as he drove until their continued presence began to seem noteworthy, whereupon the appropriate signal had surfaced. Only then did he become conscious of the phenomenon and begin to consider what it might imply.
    He slowed abruptly, stepping hard on the brake, and watched in the mirror as the car behind bore down rapidly for a few seconds and then dropped back to its original distance. He speeded up again, and the other car kept pace. And the Saint smiled, hearing the battle trumpets begin to sing in his ears as of old.
    Even at its closest the car had been too far behind for him to identify the model. But he guessed that it must be a big car, perhaps a Rolls — or a Bentley.
    The Saint’s mouth tightened into the fighting lines which had heralded defeat for so many of his adversaries in the past. There were many questions still to be answered, but he knew now with an ice-crisp certainty that there was more to this particular game than he had supposed. The option was there, he knew, to leave it gracefully, but because the Saint was what he was, he knew he could never have done anything but play it out move by move to the final checkmate, or thrust by thrust to the last clash of steel against steel.
    He drove on in a mood of fresh thoughtfulness, with the light of battle in his eyes mingling with an amazed conjecture. And before he reached the airport he had laughed aloud, slapped the steering-wheel with both hands, and shaken his head in sheer helpless disbelief.
    At the airport he went to the Parnassian Airways desk and handed the sleepy girl on night duty a small manilla envelope addressed FOR THE PERSONAL ATTENTION OF D. PATROCLOS, ATHENS.
    “This is very urgent,” he stressed. “I’ve telephoned for it to be collected from Athens airport.”
    The girl examined the envelope.
    “Of course. Mr Patroclos. A very important man. Our own — our own big boss-man. I will see that it goes by the next plane.”
    “Thanks. And would you see that your people at the other end notify Mr Patroclos’ office as soon as the package arrives there?” It didn’t surprise the Saint to see that the car which had been following was no longer in evidence during the drive back to Patroclos’ house in Berkeley Square. He let himself in through the front door, making no particular attempt at silence, and reset the alarm more from neatness than a sense of necessity.
    From his room he could see the street at the front of the house; and after a few minutes, as he had expected a silver Bentley glided to a halt. Out of it stepped Patroclos Two.
    Simon heard him enter almost soundlessly by the front door, presumably after somehow