“Wasn’t it rather sudden?”
“Ah, not exactly, sir. He went to sleep last Saturday, passed into a coma, and never awakened.”
“At what time,” Simon asked, “did he die?”
“At ten-forty,” the man replied. “It was a sad death. He was in a delirium. He kept shouting about shooting someone, and talked about a saint.”
Simon had moved into the house while listening to the tale of death and found himself looking off the hallway into a well-lighted den. His keen eyes noted that while most of the shelves were gay with the lurid jackets of adventure fiction, one section was devoted to works on psychology and psychiatry.
Here were the tomes of Freud, Adler, Jung, Brill, Bergson, Krafft-Ebing, and lesser lights. A book lay open on a small reading table.
The Saint stepped inside the room to look at it. It was titled In Darkest Schizophrenia by William J Holbrook, Ph.D.
Simon wondered what the psychic-phenomena boys would do with this one. This, he thought, would certainly give them a shot in the aura.
“Mrs Faulks is upstairs, sir,” the professional mourner was saying. “Are you a friend of the family? I’ll be glad to ask whether she can see you.”
“I wish you’d just show her this.” Simon forced one hand into a pocket. “And ask her—”
He never finished the question. Never.
There was nothing in the pocket for his hand to find. Nothing to meet his fingertips but a memory that was even then darkening and dying out along his nerves.
Publication history
The eight stories in this book were all written, initially, for magazine publication: “Judith” first appeared in the January 1934 edition of The American Magazine with a subsequent first British appearance being in the April 1934 edition of The Strand Magazine. “Iris” was based on a radio script entitled “The Man Who Murdered Shakespeare,” an original script written by Irvin Ashkenazy for the very first series of The Saint on the radio, which aired on 22 March, 1945. The prose version of the story then appeared in the Winter 1948 edition of Mystery Book Magazine before being collected in this volume. “Lida” first appeared in the August 1947 edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine whilst “Jeannine” made it in to the February 1948 edition of Argosy prior to this book. “Lucia” is one of the older stories, having first made print in the November 1937 edition of Double Detective magazine; “Teresa,” meanwhile, is almost as old, as it first appeared in the 5 November, 1938 edition of The Winnipeg Tribune under the title of “Masquerouge” and was subsequently syndicated to a number of newspapers around that date. “Luella” appeared in the October 1946 edition of Rex Stout’s Mystery Quarterly whilst “Emily” debuted in the November 1948 edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. “Dawn,” which is an unusual story for Leslie Charteris and the Saint anyway, first appeared under the title of “The Darker Drink” in the October 1947 edition of Thrilling Wonder Stories. It was then retitled to fit in with the ethos of this book, but subsequent magazine and book publications have reverted back to its original title.
The book was first published in late 1948 by the Doubleday Crime Club with a British edition following in August 1949. A French translation appeared in 1949 under the not terribly complicated title of Le Saint at les Femmes whilst a Spanish edition, with the even less complicated title of El Santo Errante, appeared in 1958.
All but two of the stories in this book were adapted for The Saint with Roger Moore: “Judith” appeared as part of the first season, initially airing on Thursday, 3 October, 1963 and starring Julie Christie as the eponymous lady. “Teresa” followed the week after, whilst “Iris” had to wait until 7 November. “Luella” first aired on 23 January, 1964 whilst “Lucia,” for reasons lost in the mists of time, was retitled “Sophia” and in an episode directed by Roger Moore first appeared on 27 February, 1964. “Lida” and “Jeannine” had to wait until the third season and were first broadcast on 4 October, 1964 and 11 October, 1964 respectively.