The Happy Highwayman

Blurb

The Happy Highwayman is a collection of short stories by Leslie Charteris, first published in 1939 by Hodder and Stoughton in the United Kingdom and The Crime Club in the United States. This was the 21st book to feature the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The 1963 Hodder and Stoughton paperback edition erroneously gives 1933 as the book's original publishing date.
This was the last set of Saint short stories until the publication of Saint Errant nine years later. It is also the first Saint book since Thieves' Picnic in which Templar's girlfriend and partner, Patricia Holm, does not appear. Also absent is Hoppy Uniatz, Templar's sidekick. However, the story "The Charitable Countess" does include the return of Inspector Fernack, last seen in 1935's The Saint in New York.
In his introduction to the 1963 Fiction Publishing Corporation edition of 1930s Enter the Saint, Charteris writes that he had no intention of updating his early stories as they were republished, preferring them to remain as period pieces. When Hodder & Stoughton republished The Happy Highwayman in 1963, however, some updates were done to parts of the texts.