“What, in a town like this? I’d just as soon tell the Boy Scouts. In a town like this, the police wouldn’t know what to do with a murderer if he walked into the station and gave them a signed confession.”
“They got Johnny,” Simon pointed out.
“Listen, do you know who got Johnny? I got Johnny. Who recognised him? I did. I’d been reading one of those true detective magazines in a barber shop, and there was a story about him in it. In one of those true detective magazines. I recognised him from the picture. Did you read what it said in that clipping?”
“Yes,” said the Saint, but Freddie was not so easily headed off.
He took the paper out of his pocket again.
“You see what it says? ‘A village policeman’s gun wrote finis to the career...’ ”
He read the entire caption aloud, following the lines with his forefinger, with the most careful enunciation and dramatic emphasis, to make sure that the Saint had not been baffled by any of the longer words.
“All right,” said the Saint patiently. “So you spotted him and put the finger on him. And now one of his pals is sore about it.”
“And that’s why I need a bodyguard.”
“I can tell you a good agency in Los Angeles. You can call them up, and they’ll have a first-class, guaranteed, bonded bodyguard here in three hours, armed to the teeth.”