Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris

The three stories that make up Enter the Saint began life in the 1929 magazine The Thriller as stories about a gang known as the Five Kings. Their aim was to terrorise the London underworld with its cosy alliance with corrupt police and relieve them of large chunks of their ill-gotten gains. The wealth so liberated was then donated to good causes minus the gang’s ten percent commission.

In the first story, originally titled The Five Kings, we meet The Man who was Clever. The story begins with a mugging of a bookie by a gang who are then promptly mugged by the Saint who gives them a drawing of a stickman before reimbursing the bookie. They report back to their boss, drug smuggler Edgar Hayn, who has seen a similar drawing before inside one of his consignments of cocaine which on further investigation turns out to have been replaced by health salts.

We discover that the Saint is capable of beating up a gang of men in a roughhouse; is a master of disguise as he adopts the persona of a delivery man or an aristocrat with ease; is a practical joker; and is an expert cardsharp and con man. He carries hidden knives as well as a sword stick but dislikes guns as they are too noisy. Edgar Hayn turns out not to be as clever as he thought, and is relieved of ten thousand pounds donated to a hospital before being turned over to Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard.

The second story, originally titled The House on the Moors, is Policeman with Wings. It is an exciting fast-paced thriller involving police impersonation, a car chase, torture, a damsel in distress and Chief Inspector Teal. It also involves an unpleasant crook named Spider Sleat who ties up the Saint, whips him, and leaves him with a bomb. Big mistake, as the spider ends up on the bomb and the Saint ends up with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of Spider’s diamonds.

Finally, The Lawless Lady was originally titled Crook’s Cargo. The Saint drugs Chief Inspector Teal to relieve him of a prisoner in order to give him a flogging before returning him. The Saint makes it up to Teal by presenting him with a bigger capture.

But, that’s only the beginning. Strangely, the rest of the story is devoted to one of the Saint’s gang, or haloes, Dicky Tremayne. He is sent to infiltrate another gang led by the Lawless Lady herself, Audrey Perowne. She has a boat filled with unpleasant millionaires whom she intends to fleece. Dicky’s job is made harder by the fact that Audrey and he have fallen in love and there’s a jealous double-crosser present. The Saint returns at the end of the tale to rescue Dicky and Audrey, murder the double-crosser, and appropriate the loot much of which is again donated to a hospital.

The Saint’s absence for most of the final story makes for a slightly slower-paced read, but Dicky being a ju-jitsu expert still gives the reader some excitement. These early Saint stories show that the Saint has no compunction in taking a life where he justifies it.

Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris