“Yes!” he almost screamed. “Yes, damn you! I was going to fix that little bitch. I’ll do it again if I ever have the chance. And you, too!... Now get me a doctor. Get me a doctor, d’you hear? D’you want me to bleed to death?”
The Saint drew a long deep breath, and put out the stub of his cigarette. He took a pack from his pocket and lighted another. And with that symbolic action he had put one more episode behind him, and the life of adventure went on.
“I don’t really know,” he said carelessly. “I don’t think there’d be any great injustice done if we let you die. Or we might keep you alive and continue with the shakedown. It’s really up to Lissa.”
He glanced at the girl again curiously.
She was staring at Freddie in a way that Simon hoped no woman would ever look at him, and she seemed to have to make an effort to bring herself back to the immediate present. And even then she seemed to be a little behind.
She said, “I just don’t get one thing. How did you know all that stuff had been planted in my drawer? And why were you so sure that my flimsy alibi was good?”
He smiled.
“That was the easiest thing of all. Aren’t you the detective-story fan? You might have gotten good ideas from some of your mysteries, but you could hardly have picked up such bad ones. At least you’d know better than to keep a lot of unnecessary incriminating evidence tucked away where anyone with a little spare time could find it. And you’d never have had the nerve to pull an alibi like that first attack on yourself if it was a phony, because you’d have known that anyone else who’d ever read a mystery too would have spotted it for a phony all the time. About the only thing wrong with Freddie is that he had bright ideas, but he didn’t read the right books.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Freddie implored shrilly, “aren’t you going to get me a doctor?”
“What would they do in a Saint story?” Lissa asked.