Featuring the Saint

1

THE LOGICAL ADVENTURE THE most exciting stories of the Saint come, it seems to me, from among his later exploits, from the days when he was working practically alone-although Patricia Holm was never far away, and Roger Conway was always within call at times of need. I often think that it best suited the Saint's peculiar temper to be alone: he was so superbly capable himself, and so arrogantly confident of his own capability, that it irked him to have to deputize the least item of any of his schemes to hands that might bungle it, and exasperated him beyond measure to have to explain and discuss and wrangle his inspirations with minds that leaped to comprehension and decision less swiftly and certainly than his own. These trials he suffered with characteristic good humour; yet there is no doubt that he suffered sometimes, as may be read in other tales that have already been told of him. It is true that the Saint once became something perilously like a gang; there came about him a band of reckless young men who followed him cheerfully into all his crimes, and these young men he led into gay and lawless audacities that made the name of the Saint famous-or infamous -over the whole world; but even those adventures were no more than episodes in the Saint's life. They were part of his development, but they were not the end. His ultimate destiny still lay ahead; he knew that it still lay ahead, but he did not then know what it was. "The Last Hero" he was called once; but the story of his last heroism is not to be told yet, and the manner of it he never foresaw even in his dreams.

This story, then is one of a handful that I have unearthed from my records of those days of transition, when the Saint was waiting upon Fate. They were days when he seemed to be filling up time; and, as might have been expected of the man, he beguiled the time in his own incomparable fashion, with his own matchless zest; but it is inevitable that his own moods should be reflected in these tales which are exclusively his- that the twist of the tales should indicate what he himself felt about them at the time: that they were not really important and yet that they were none the less fantastically delightful interludes. For Simon Templar was incapable of taking anything of life half-heartedly-even an interlude. And it may be that because of all these things, because he had that vivid sense of the pleasant unimportance of all these adventures, the spirit of laughing devil-may-care quixotry that some have called his greatest charm dances through these tales as it does through few others.

I am thinking particularly of the adventure on which this story is based-a slight story, but a story. Yet it began practically from nothing-as, indeed, did most of the Saint's best stories. It has been said that Simon Templar had more than any ten men's fair share of luck in the way of falling into ready-made adventures; but nothing could be farther from the truth. It was the Saint's own unerring, uncanny genius, his natural instinct for adventure, that made him question things that no ordinary man would have thought to question, and sent him off upon broad, clear roads where no ordinary man would have seen the vestige of a trail; and some volcanic quality within himself that startled violent action out of situations that the ordinary man would have found stillborn. And if there is any story about the Saint that illustrates this fact to perfection it is this story which opens-ordinarily enough-upon the American Bar of the Piccadilly Hotel, two Manhattans, and a copy of the Evening Record.

"Eight to one," murmured the Saint complacently-"and waltzed home with two lengths to spare. That's another forty quid for the old oak chest. Where shall we celebrate old dear?"

Patricia Holm smiled.

"Won't you ever take an interest in something outside the racing reports?" she asked. "I don't believe you even know whether we've got a Conservative or a Labour Government at the moment."

"I haven't the faintest idea," said the Saint cheerfully. "Apart from the fact that a horse we've never seen has earned us the best dinner that London can provide, I refuse to believe that anything of the least importance has happened in England to-day. For instance"-he turned the pages of the newspaper-"we are not at all interested to learn that 'Evidence of a sensational character is expected to be given at the inquest upon Henry Stobbs, a mechanic, who was found, dead in a garage in Balham yesterday.' I don't believe the man had a sensational character at all. No man with a really sensational character would be found dead in a garage in Balham. . . Nor are we thrilled to hear that 'Missing from her home at South Norwood since January last, the body of Martha Danby, a domestic servant, was discovered in a disused quarry near Tavistock early this morning by a tramp in an advanced state of decomposition.' Not that we don't feel sorry for the tramp -it must be rotten for the poor fellow to have to cruise about the world in an advanced state of decomposition-but my point is--"

"That'll do," said Patricia.

"O.K.," said the Saint affably. "So long as you understand why I'm so-- Hullo-what's this?"

He had been folding the paper into a convenient size for the nearest waste basket when his eye was caught by a name that he knew; and he read the paragraphs surrounding it with a sudden interest. These paragraphs figured in that admirable feature "Here and There," conducted by that indefatigable and ubiquitous gossip "The Eavesdropper."

"Well, well, well!" drawled the Saint, with a distinct saintliness of intonation; and Patricia looked at him expectantly.

"What is it?"

"Just a little social chatter," said Simon. "Our friend is warbling about the progress of civil aviation, and how few serious accidents there have been since light aëroplane clubs started springing up all over the country, and how everyone is taking to the air as if they'd been born with wings. Then he says: 'There are, of course, a few exceptions. Mr. Francis Lemuel, for instance, the well-known cabaret impresario, who was one of the founders of the Thames Valley Flying Club, and who was himself making rapid progress towards his "A" license, was so badly shaken by his recent crash that he has been compelled, on medical advice, to give up all idea of qualifying as a pilot.' The rest is just the usual kind of blurb about Lemuel's brilliant career as a cabaret impresario. But that is interesting-now, isn't it-to know that dear Francis was sighing for the wings of a Moth!"

"Why?"

The Saint smiled beatifically, and completed the operation of preparing the Evening Record for its last resting place.

"There are many interests in my young life," he murmured, "of which you are still in ignorance, dear lass. And little Francis is one of them-and has been for some time. But I never knew that he was a bold, bad bird-man-outside of business hours. . . . And now, old Pat, shall we dine here or push on to the Berkeley Arms?"

And that was all that was said about Francis Lemuel that night, and for ten days afterwards; for at that time, bowing before Patricia's pleading, Simon Templar was trying to lead a respectable life. And yet, knowing her man, she was a little surprised that he dropped the subject so quickly; and, knowing her man again, she heaved a little sigh of rueful resignation when he met her for lunch ten days later and showed quite plainly in his face that he was on the trail of more trouble. At those times there were a renewed effervescence about the Saint's always electric personality, and a refreshed recklessness about the laughter that was never far from the surface of his blue eyes, that were unmistakable danger signs. The smooth sweep of his patent-leather hair seemed to become sleeker and slicker than ever, and the keen brown face seemed to take on an even swifter and more rakish chiselledness of line than it ordinarily wore. She knew these signs of old, and challenged him before he had finished selecting the hors d'aeuvres.

"What's on the programme, Saint?"

Simon sipped his sherry elegantly.

"I've got a job."

"What's that?"

"You know-work. Dramatis persona: Simon Templar, a horny-handed son of toil."

"Idiot! I meant-what's the job?"

"Private Aviator Extraordinary to Mr. Francis Lemuel," answered the Saint, with dancing eyes. "And you can't laugh that off!"

"Is that what you've been so mysterious about lately?"

"It is. I tell you, it wasn't dead easy. Mr. Lemuel has an eccentric taste in aviators. I got a lot of fun out of convincing him that I was a really shabby character. Try to imagine the late lamented Solomon applying, incog., for the job of 'Ask Auntie Abishag' on the staff of the Lebanon Daily Leader. . . ." The Saint grinned reminiscently. "But as an ex-R.A.F. orficer, cashiered for pinching three ailerons, four longerons, and a brace of gliding angles, I had what you might call a flying start."

"And what are you supposed to do?"

"Propel him about the bright blue sky."

"Where?"The Saint bisected a sardine with precision and dexterity.

"That," he answered, "is the point. According to rumours, Francis is proposing to extend his cabaristic activities into the other capitals of Europe. But why by air? The latest and most rapid means of transport,' says you, intelligent-like. Oh, every-time. But the whole of civilized Europe is served by very comfortable public airways-very comfortable-and my researchers into Mr. Lemuel's character never made me think he was the sort of cove who'd sacrifice his armchair in a pukka flying Pullman and go batting through the blue in an open two-seater air-louse just to save an hour here and there. Mystery Number One. That's why I was so interested to read that Brother Francis had been trying to aviate solo-you remember?"

Patricia nodded.

"I wondered--"

"Never give tongue before you've got the bluebottle by the blunt end," said the Saint. "That's my motto. But I always believe in taking two looks at anything that seems to have slipped the least bit off the main line, and that was a case in point. Particularly with a man like Francis Lemuel. I've al ways thought he was far too respectable to be above suspicion. Now we may start to learn things."

She tried to find out how he had contrived to discover that Mr. Lemuel had been searching for a disreputable aviator; she was equally curious to know how the Saint had contrived to present himself for the job; but Simon Templar still had his own little secrets. About some of the preliminary details of his adventures he was often absurdly reticent.

"I heard about it," he said, "and a bloke I met in a pub out at Aldgate landed me on the front door, so to speak. . . . Mystery Number Two, of course, is why the aviator should have been disreputable. . . ."

He talked energetically about this problem, and left her first questions otherwise unanswered. And with that she had to be content-until, abruptly, he switched off the subject altogether, and for the rest of that day refused to talk any more about what he was pleased to call "affairs of state."

Other things happened afterwards-very shortly afterwards. A few other people entered the story, a few other threads came into it, a few diverting decorations blossomed upon it; but the foundations of the story were already laid, and it is doubtful whether any of the subsequent events herein described would have eventuated at all if Simon Templar had not chanced to catch sight of that innocent paragraph in the Evening Record. For of such material were the Saint's adventures made.

And nothing can be more certain than that if the Saint had not been a man of such peculiar genius and eccentric interests he would not to this day carry an eight-inch scar on his right forearm as a memento of the adventure, and Mr. Francis Lemuel would not have experienced such a sudden and cataclysmic elevation, and one Jacob Einsmann might still have been with us, and M. Boileau, the French Minister of Finance, would not have been put to considerable inconvenience -and (which is perhaps even more important) a girl whose name used to be Stella Dornford would not now be married to a bank clerk with very ordinary prospects, and living in a very ordinary apartment in Battersea, and perfectly happy in spite of that.

2

The Calumet Club is situate (as the estate agents so beautifully put it) in a spacious basement in Deacon Street, Soho. This statement should be taken at its face value. There are, in fact, no premises whatsoever in any way ostensibly appertaining to the said club on the street level, or on any of the floors above. Entrance to the club is by means of a narrow flight of stone steps leading down into a microscopic area; and through a door opening upon this area one may (if one is known to the management) obtain access to the club itself, via a room which only an estate agent would have the nerve to describe as a vestibule, and past a porter who has been other things in his time.

The Calumet Club has an extensive if curiously exclusive membership. Things are discussed there-fascinating things. Money and other objects of virtue change hands there. And sometimes strange things are said to have happened there- very strange things. The Saint was distinctly interested in the Calumet Club. It was one of the irregular interests of his young life.

Nevertheless, the visit he paid to it on a certain evening began as a mere matter of routine, and was embarked upon without immediate malice premeditated.

For thus is the way paved for adventure, as far as human ingenuity can contrive it, with good sound non-skid tarmac. Upon learning, almost beyond dispute, that Mr. Phineas Poppingcove is a saccharine smuggler, you do not, whatever your principles and prowess, immediately invade his abode, beat him vimfully about the head with some blunt instrument, and so depart with the work of discouragement satisfactorily accomplished. If you discover, after patient investigation, that the rooms in which Miss Desiree Sausage professes to teach the latest ballroom dances (h. & c.) are in reality the dens where foolish young men are fleeced of their fathers' money at wangled games of halma, you do not, even if you are the Saint, instantly force your way into those rooms, shoot the croupier, denounce Miss Sausage, and take the stake money home with you as a souvenir. Or, if you do, your promising career is liable to terminate abruptly and in a manner definitely glutinous. The Saint, it should be remembered, had been in that sort of game for some time; and he knew, better than anyone else, the value of painstaking preparation. When everything that could possibly be known about the lie of the land and the personal habits of its denizens was known, and the line of subsequent retreat had been thoroughly surveyed, mapped, dressed, ventilated, and upholstered-then, oh, yes, then the blunt instrument, wielded with decisive celerity and no uncertain hand. But not before.

This visit to the Calumet Club was definitely "before"; and the Saint was therefore prepared and even expecting to behave himself with all the decorum that the occasion demanded.

He passed to a comer table, ordered a drink, lighted a cigarette, and settled himself comfortably.

It was then barely eleven, and the club would not begin to do real business for about another half-hour. The nucleus of an orchestra was rhythmically, if a trifle unenthusiastically, insisting that it didn't care how much some lady unspecified made it blue. To the accompaniment of this declaration of an unselfish devotion of which the casual eye, judging the orchestra solely by appearances, would never have believed them capable, four self-appointed ladies, in two pairs, and two other self-appointed ladies paired with an equal number of temporary gentlemen, were travelling in small circles round a minute section of inferior parquet. At other tables round the floor a scattering of other clients, apparently male and female, were absorbing divers brands of alcohol in the lugubrious fashion in which alcohol is ordinarily absorbed in England during the hours in which the absorption is legal. In fact, the Calumet Club was just yawning and stretching itself preparatory to waking up for the night's festivities.

The Saint sighed, inhaled cigarette smoke luxuriously, tasted the modest glass of beer which the waiter brought him, paid twice the usual retail price for it, added a fifty-percent bonus, and continued to inspect his fellow members with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

One by one he dismissed them. Two men whom he had met there several times before saluted him, and he smiled back as if he loved them like brothers. An unattached damsel at an adjacent table smiled sweetly at him, and the Saint smiled back just as sweetly, for he had a reputation to keep up. And then, in another corner, his gaze came to rest upon a man he had seen before, and a girl he had never seen before, sitting together at a table beside the orchestra.

Simon's gaze rested upon them thoughtfully, as it had rested upon other people in that room; and it only rested upon them longer than it had rested upon anyone else that night, because at that moment, when his glance fell upon them, something stirred at the back of his brain and opened its in ward intangible eye upon the bare facts of the case as conveyed by the optic nerves. The Saint could not have said what it was. At that moment there was nothing about that corner of the scenery to attract such an attention. They were talking quite ordinarily, to judge by their faces; and, if the face of the girl was remarkably pleasant to look upon, even that was not unprecedented in the Calumet Club and the entourage of Baldy Mossiter. And yet, in spite of these facts rather than because of them, Simon Templar's queer instinct for the raw material of his trade flicked up a ghostly eyelid in some dim recess of his mind, and forced him to look longer, without quite knowing why he looked. And it was only because of this that the Saint saw what he saw, when the almost imperceptible thing happened in the course of one of Mr. Mossiter's frequent and expressive gestures.

"Have you got a cigarette?" murmured the unattached damsel at the adjacent table, hopefully; but the sweetness of the smile which illuminated the Saint's features as she spoke was not for her, and it is doubtful whether he even heard.

He lounged out of his chair and wandered across the room with the long, lazy stride that covered ground with such an inconspicuous speed; and the man and the girl looked up together as he loomed over their table.

"Hullo," drawled the Saint.

He sat down in a vacant chair between them, without waiting to be invited, and beamed from one to the other in a most Saintly way.

"Beautiful weather we're having, aren't we, Baldy?"

"What the devil do you want, Templar?" snarled Mr. Mossiter, with no cordiality. "I'm busy."

"I know, sweetheart," said the Saint gently. "I saw you getting busy. That's why I came over."

He contemplated Mr. Mossiter with innocent blue eyes; and yet there was something in the very innocence of that stare besides its prolonged steadiness that unaccountably prickled the short hairs on the back of Mossiter's bull neck. It did not happen at once. The stare had focused on its object for some time before that cold draught of perplexedly dawning comprehension began to lap Mossiter's spinal column. But the Saint read all that he wanted to read in the sudden darkening of the livid scar that ran down the side of Mossiter's face from his left temple to his chin; and the Saintly smile became dazzlingly seraphic.

"Exactly," said the Saint.

His gaze shifted over to the girl. Her hand was still round her glass-she had been raising it when the Saint reached the table, and had put it down again untasted.

Still smiling, Simon took the girl's glass in one hand and Mossiter's in the other, and changed them over. Then he looked again at Mossiter.

"Drink up," he said, and suddenly there was cold steel in his voice.

What d'you mean?"

"Drink," said the Saint. "Open your mouth, and induce the liquid to trickle down the gullet. You must have done it before. But whether you'll enjoy it so much on this occasion remains to be seen,"

"What the hell are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. That's just your guilty conscience. Drink it up, Beautiful."

Mossiter seemed to crouch in his chair.

"Will you leave this table?" he grated.

"No," said the Saint.

"Then you will have to leave the club altogether. . . . Waiter!"

The Saint took out his cigarette case and tapped a cigarette meditatively upon it. Then he looked up. He addressed the girl.

"If you had finished that drink," he said, "the consequences would have been very unpleasant indeed. I think I can assure you of that, though I'm not absolutely certain what our friend put in it. It is quite sufficient that I saw him drop something into your glass while he was talking just now." He leaned back in his chair, with his back half turned to Mr. Mossiter, and watched the waiter returning across the floor with the porter who had been other things in his time, and added, in the same quiet tone: "On account of the failure of this bright scheme, there will shortly be a slight disturbance of which I shall be the centre. If you think I'm raving mad, you can go to hell. If you've got the sense to see that I'm telling the truth, you'll stand by to make your bolt when I give the word, and meet me outside in a couple of minutes."

Thus the Saint completed his remarks, quite unhurriedly, quite calmly and conversationally; and then the waiter and the porter were behind his chair.

"Throw this man out," said Mossiter curtly. "He's making a nuisance of himself."

It was the porter who had been other things in his time who laid the first rough hand upon the Saint; and Simon grinned gently. The next moment Simon was on his feet, and the porter was not.

That remark needs little explanation. It would not be profitable to elaborate a description of the pile-driving properties of the left hook that connected with the porter's jaw as Simon rose from his chair; and, in fact, the porter himself knew little about it at the time. He left the ground momentarily and then he made contact with a lot more ground a little farther on, and then he slept.

The elderly waiter, also, knew little about that particular incident. The best and brightest years of his life were past and over, and it is probable that he was growing a little slow on the uptake in his late middle age. It is, at least, certain that he had not fully digested the significance of the spectacle to which he had just been treated, nor come to any decision about his own attitude to the situation, when he felt himself seized firmly by the collar and the seat of his pants. He seemed to rise astonishingly into the air, and, suspended horizontally in space at the full upward stretch of the Saint's arms, was for an instant in a position to contemplate the beauties of the low ceiling at close range. And the Saint chuckled.

"How Time flies," murmured the Saint, and heaved the man bodily into the middle of the orchestra-where, it may be recorded, he damaged beyond repair, in his descent, a tenor saxophone, a guitar, and a device for imitating the moans of a stricken hyena.

Simon straightened his tie and looked about him. Action had been so rapid, during those few seconds, that the rest of the club's population and personnel had not yet completely awoken to understanding and reprisal. And the most important thing of all was that the sudden sleep of the porter who had been other things in his time had not only demoralized the two other officials who were standing in the middle distance, but had also left the way to the exit temporarily clear.

Simon touched the girl's shoulder.

"I should push along now, old dear," he remarked, as if there were all the time in the world and nothing on earth to get excited about. "Stop a taxi outside, if you see one. I'll be right along."

She looked at him with a queer expression; and then she left her chair and crossed the floor quickly. To this day she is not quite sure why she obeyed; but it is enough that she did, and the Saint felt a certain relief as he watched her go.

Then he turned, and saw the gun in Mossiter's hand. He laughed-it was so absurd, so utterly fantastic, even in that place. In London, that sort of thing only happens in sensational fiction. But there it was; and the Saint knew that Baldy Mossiter must have been badly upset to make such a crude break. And he laughed; and his left hand fell on Mossiter's hand in a grip of steel, but with a movement so easy and natural that Mossiter missed the meaning of it until it was too late. The gun was pointed harmlessly down into the table, and all Mossiter's strength could not move it.

"You had better know me," said Simon quietly. "I'm called the Saint."

Baldy Mossiter heard him, staring, and went white.

"And you must not try to drug little girls," said the Saint A lot of things of no permanent importance have been mentioned in this episode; but the permanently important point of it is that Baldy Mossiter's beautiful front teeth are now designed to his measure by a gentleman in a white coat with a collection of antediluvian magazines in his waiting room.

3

A few moments later, the Saint strolled up into the street. A taxi was drawn up by the curb, and the Saint briefly spoke an address to the driver and stepped in.

The girl was sitting in the far corner. Simon gave her a smile and cheerfully inspected a set of grazed knuckles. It stands to the credit of his happy disposition that he really felt at peace with the world, although the evening's amusement represented a distinct setback to certain schemes that had been maturing in his fertile brain. As a rough-house it had had its virtues; but the truth was that the Saint had marked down the Calumet Club for something more drastic and profitable than a mere rough-house, and that idea, if it was ever to be materialized now, would have to be tackled all over again from the very beginning and a totally different angle. A couple of months of shrewd and patient reconnaissance work had gone west that night along with Baldy Mossiter's dental apparatus, but Simon Templar was incapable of weeping over potential poultry annihilated in the egg.

"Have a cigarette," he suggested, producing his case, "and tell me your name."

"Stella Dornford." She accepted a light, and he affected not to notice the unsteadiness of her hand. "Did you-have much trouble?"

The Saint grinned over his match.

"Well-hardly! I seemed to get a bit popular all at once- that was all. Nobody seemed to want me to go. There was a short argument-nothing to speak of."

He blew out the match and slewed round, looking through the window at the back. There was another taxi close behind, which is not extraordinary in a London street; and, hanging out of the window of the taxi behind, was a man-or the head and shoulders of one-which, to Saint's suspicious mind, was quite extraordinary enough. But he was not particularly bothered about it at the moment, for he had directed his own driver to the Criterion, and nothing would happen there.

"Where are we going?" asked the girl.

"Towards coffee," said the Saint. "Or, if you prefer it, something with more kick. Praise be to the blessed laws of England, we can drink for another half-hour yet, if we hire a sandwich to put on the table. And you can tell me the story of your life."

In the better light of the restaurant, and at leisure which he had not had before, he was confirmed in the impression which he had formed at the Calumet. She was undeniably pretty, in a rather childish way, with a neat fair head and china-blue eyes. A certain grace of carriage saved her from mere fluffiness.

"You haven't told me your name," she remarked, when he had ordered refreshment.

"I thought you heard Mossiter address me. Templar-Simon Templar."

"You seem to be rather a remarkable man."

The Saint smiled. He had been told that before, but he had no objection to hearing it again. He really had very simple tastes, in some ways.

"It's rather lucky for you that I am," he answered. "And now, tell me, what were you doing at the Calumet with Baldy?"

He had some difficulty in extracting her story-in fact, it required all his ingenuity to avoid making the extraction look too much like a cross-examination, for it was evident that she had not yet made up her mind about him.

He learned, after a time, that she was twenty-one years old, that she was the only daughter of a retired bank manager, that she had run away from the dull suburban circle of her family to try to find fortune on the wrong side of the footlights. He might have guessed that much, but he liked to know. It took some much more astute questioning to elicit a fact in which he was really much more interested.

". . . He's a junior clerk in the branch that used to be Daddy's. He came to the house once or twice, and we saw each other occasionally afterwards. It was all rather sweet and silly. We used to go to the pictures together, and once we met at a dance."

"Of course, you couldn't possibly have married him," said the Saint cunningly, and waited thoughtfully on her reply.

"It would have meant that I'd never have got away from all the mildewed things that I most wanted to run away from. I wanted to see Life. . . . But he really was a nice boy."

She had got a job in a revue chorus, and another girl in the same show had taken her to the Calumet one night. There she had met Mossiter, and others. She was without friends in London, and sheer loneliness made her crave for any society rather than none. There had been difficulties, she admitted. One man, a guest of Mossiter's-a German-had been particularly unpleasant. Yes, he was reputed to be very rich. . . .

"Don't you see," said the Saint, "that Mossiter could only have wanted to drug you for one of two reasons?"

"One of two?"

"When does this German go back to Germany?"

"I think he said he was going back tomorrow-that's Friday, isn't it?"

Simon shrugged.

"Such is Life," he murmured; and she frowned.

"I'm not a child, Mr. Templar."

"No girl ever is, in her own estimation," said the Saint rudely. "That's why my friends and I have been put to so much trouble and expense in the past-and are likely to go on being bothered in the same way."

He had expected her to be troublesome-it was a premonition he had had about her from the first-and, as was his way, he had deliberately preferred to precipitate the explosion rather than fumble along through smouldering and smoke. But he was not quite prepared for the reaction that he actually provoked, which was that she simply rose and left the table.

"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you," was her parting speech.

He beckoned a waiter, and watched her go with a little smile of rueful resignation. It was not the first time that some thing of that sort had happened to him-cases of that type were always liable to be trying, and fulfilled their liability more often than not.

"And so she swep' out," murmured Simon wryly, as he pocketed his change; and then he remembered the men who had followed them from the Calumet. "Men"- it was unlikely to be "man." The Calumet bunch were not of that class.

There were, as a matter of fact, two of them, and their instructions had been definite. They were merely to obtain addresses. It was therefore doubly unfortunate for the one who was concerned to follow Stella Dornford that, when he grasped part of the situation, he should have elected to attempt a coup on his own.

Stella Dornford tenanted a minute apartment in a block close to the upper end of Wardour Street. The block was in the form of a hollow square, with a courtyard in the centre, communicating with the street by a short passage, and the entrances to all the main staircases opened onto this court yard. Standing in this courtyard, facing the doorway by which the girl had entered, the sleuth glanced up curiously at the windows. A moment later he saw one of the windows light up.

It was then that he decided upon his folly. The window which had lighted up was a French window, and it gave onto a narrow balcony-and, most tempting of all, it stood ajar, for the night was warm. And the building had been designed in the style that imitates large blocks of stone, with substantial interstices between the blocks. To reach that balcony would be as easy as climbing up a ladder.

He glanced about him. The courtyard was deserted and the light was poor. Once off the ground, he was unlikely to be noticed even if some other tenant passed beneath him. In the full blaze of his unconscious foolishness the man buttoned his coat and began to climb.

Standing in the shadows of the passage communicating with the street, Simon Templar watched him go. And, as he watched, with a newborn smile of sheer poetic devilment hovering on his lips, the Saint loaded up his newest toy-a small but powerful air-pistol.

He had acquired it quite recently, out of pure mischief. It wasn't by any means a lethal weapon, and was never intended for the purpose, but its pellets were capable of making a very painful impression upon the recipient. It had occurred to Simon that, adroitly employed from his window, it might serve as a powerful discouragement to the miscellaneous collection of professional and amateur sleuths whom from time to time he found unduly interested in his movements. But this occasion he had not anticipated, and his pleasure was there fore all the keener.

As the man on the wall reached the level of the second floor and paused for breath, Simon took careful aim.

The bullet smacked into the man's hand with a force that momentarily numbed his fingers. With a sharp gasp of pain and fear, he became aware that his hold was broken, and he had not enough strength in his uninjured hand to support himself with that alone. He gasped again, scrabbling wildly at the stone-and then his foot slipped. . . .

The Saint pocketed his toy, and stepped quickly back into the street-so quickly that the man who was waiting just outside the passage had not time to appreciate his danger before it was upon him. He felt his coat lapels gripped by a sinewy hand, and looked into the Saint's face.

"Don't follow me about," said the Saint, in a tone of mild and reasonable remonstrance; and then his fist shot up and impacted crisply upon the man's jaw.

Simon turned and went back down the passage, and crossed the courtyard swiftly; and the first window was flung up as he slipped into the shadow of the doorway opposite.

He went quickly up the dark stone stairs, found a bell, and pressed it. The door was opened almost immediately, but the girl was equally quick to shut it when she saw who her visitor was.

The Saint, however, was even quicker-with the toe of his shoe in the opening.

"There's something outside you ought to see," he said, and pushed quickly through the door while she hesitated.

Then she recovered herself.

"What do you mean by bursting in like this?" she demanded furiously.

"I told you-there's a special entertainment been put on for your benefit. Come and cheer."

He opened the nearest door, and went through the tiny sitting room as if he owned the place. She followed him.

"If you don't get out at once I shall shout for help. There are people all round, and a porter in the basement, and the walls aren't very thick-so you needn't think no one will hear."

"I hadn't bothered to think," said the Saint calmly. "Besides, they're all busy with the other attraction. Step this way, madam."

He passed through the open window and emerged onto the balcony. In a moment he found her beside him.

"Mr. Templar--"

Simon simply pointed downwards. She looked, and saw the little knot of people gathering about the sprawled figure that lay moaning at the foot of the wall.

"So perish all the ungodly," murmured the Saint.

The girl turned a white face.

"How did it happen?"

"He and a pal of his followed us from the Calumet. I meant to tell you, but you packed up in such a hurry and such a naughty temper. I followed. He was on his way up to this veranda when I hypnotized him into the belief that he was a performing seal and I was a piece of ripe herring, whereupon he dived after me."

He turned back into the sitting room and closed the window after her.

"I don't think you need join the congregation below," he remarked. "The specimen will be taken for a promising cat burglar who's come down in the world, and he will probably get six months and free medical attention. But you might remember this incident-it will help you to take care of your self."

She looked him in the eyes for several seconds.

Then: "I apologize," she said quietly.

"So do I," answered the Saint. "That remark was unnecessarily sarcastic, and my only defense is that you thoroughly deserved it."

He smiled; and then he reached for his cigarette case.

"Gasper? . . . Splendid. ... By the way, I suppose you don't happen to have such a thing as a kipper about the place, do you? I was going to suggest that we indulge at the Cri, but you didn't give me time. And this is the hour when I usually kip. ..."

4

A few days later Mr. Francis Lemuel made his first long flight with his new pilot. They went first to Paris, and then to Berlin, in a week of perfect weather; and of the Saint's share in their wanderings abroad, on that occasion, there is nothing of interest to record. He drank French and German beers with a solid yearning for good English bitter, and was almost moved to assassinate a chatty and otherwise amiable Bavarian who ventured to say that in his opinion English beer was zu stark. Mr. Lemuel went about his own business, and the Saint only saw him at sporadic mealtimes in their hotels.

Lemuel was a man of middle age, with a Lombard Street complexion and an affectation of bluff geniality of which he was equally proud.

Except when they were actually in transit, he made few calls upon his new employee's time.

"Get about and enjoy yourself, Old Man"-everyone was Old Man to Mr. Lemuel. "You can see things here that you'll never see in England."

The Saint got about; and, in answer to Lemuel's casual inquiries, magnified his minor escapades into stories of which he was heartily ashamed. He made detailed notes of the true parts of some of his stories, to be reserved for future attention; but the Saint was a strong believer in concentrating on one thing at a time, and he was not proposing to ball up the main idea by taking chances on side issues-at the moment.

He met only one of Lemuel's business acquaintances, and this was a man named Jacob Einsmann, who dined with them one night. Einsmann, it appeared, had a controlling interest in two prosperous night clubs, and he was anxious for Lemuel to arrange lavish cabaret attractions. He was a short, florid-looking man, with an underhung nose and a superfluity of diamond rings.

"I must have it der English or American girls, yes," he insisted. "Der continental-pah! I can any number for noddings get, aind't it, no? But yours---"

He kissed excessively manicured fingers.

"You're right, Old Man," boomed Lemuel sympathetically. "English or American girls are the greatest troupers in the world. I won't say they don't get temperamental sometimes, but they've got a sense of discipline as well, and they don't mind hard work. The trouble is to get them abroad. There are so many people in England who jump to the worst conclusions if you try to send an English girl abroad."

He ranted against a certain traffic at some length; and the Saint heard out the tirade, and shrugged.

"I suppose you know more about it than I do, sir," he submitted humbly, "but I always feel the danger's exaggerated. There must be plenty of honest agents."

"There are, Old Man," rumbled Lemuel. "But we get saddled with the crimes of those who aren't."

Shortly afterwards, the conversation reverted to purely business topics; and the Saint, receiving a hint too broad to be ignored, excused himself.

Lemuel and the Saint left for England the next morning, and at the hour when he took off from Waalhaven Aërodrome on the last stage of the journey (they had descended upon Rotterdam for a meal) Simon was very little nearer to solving the problem of Francis Lemuel than he had been when he left England.

The inspiration came to him as they sighted the cliffs of Kent.

A few minutes later he literally ran into the means to his end.

It had been afternoon when they left the Tempelhof, for Mr. Lemuel was no early riser; and even then the weather had been breaking. As they travelled westwards it had grown steadily worse. More than once the Saint had had to take the machine very low to avoid clouds; and, although they had not actually encountered rain, the atmosphere had been anything but serene ever since they crossed the Dutch frontier. There had been one very bumpy half-hour during which Mr. Lemuel had been actively unhappy. . . .

Now, as they came over English ground, they met the first of the storm.

"I don't like the look of it, Templar," Mr. Lemuel opined huskily, through the telephones. "Isn't there an aërodrome near here that we could land at, Old Man?"

"I don't know of one," lied the Saint. "And it's getting dark quickly-I daren't risk losing my bearings. We'll have to push on to Croydon."

"Croydon!"

Simon heard the word repeated faintly, and grinned. For in a flash he had grasped a flimsy clue, and had seen his way clear; and the repetition had confirmed him in a fantastic hope.

"Why Croydon?"

"It's the nearest aërodrome that's fitted up for night landings. I don't suppose, we shall have much trouble with the customs," added the Saint thoughtfully.

There was a silence; and the Saint flew on, as low as he dared, searching the darkening country beneath him. And, within himself, he was blessing the peculiar advantages of his favourite hobby.

Times without number, when he had nothing else to do, the Saint had taken his car and set out to explore the unfrequented byways of England, seeking out forgotten villages and unspoiled country inns, which he collected as less robust and simple-minded men collect postage stamps. It was his boast that he knew every other inch of the British Isles blindfolded, and he may not have been very far wrong. There was one village, near the Kent-Surrey border, which had suggested itself to him immediately as the ideal place for his purpose.

"I say, Old Man," spoke Lemuel again, miserably.

"Hullo?"

"I'm feeling like death. I can't go on much longer. Can't you land in a field around here while there's still a bit of light?"

"I was wondering what excuse you'd make, dear heart," said the Saint; but he said it to himself. Aloud, he answered cheer fully: "It certainly is a bit bumpy, sir. I'll have a shot at it, if you like."

As a matter of fact, he had just sighted his objective, and he throttled off the engine with a gentle smile of satisfaction.

It wasn't the easiest landing in the world to make, especially in that weather; but the Saint put the machine on the deck without a mistake, turned, and taxied back to a sheltered corner of the field he had chosen. Then he climbed out of the cockpit and stretched himself.

"I can peg her out for the night," he remarked, as Lemuel joined him on the ground, "and there shouldn't be any harm done if it doesn't blow much harder than this."

"A little more of that flying would have killed me," said Lemuel; and he was really looking rather pale. "Where are we?"

Simon told him.

"It's right off the map, and I'm afraid you won't get a train back to town to-night; but I know a very decent little pub we can stay at," he said.

"I'll phone for my chauffeur to come down," said Lemuel. "I suppose there's a telephone in this place somewhere?"

"I doubt it," said Simon; but he knew that there was.

Again, however, luck was with him. It was quite dark by the time the aëroplane had been pegged out with ropes obtained from a neighbouring farm, and a steady rain was falling, so that no one was about to watch the Saint climbing nimbly up a telegraph pole just beyond the end of the village street. . . .

Lemuel, who had departed to look up the post office, re joined him later in the bar of the Blue Dragon with a tale of woe.

"A telegraph pole must have been blown down," he said. "Anyway, it was impossible to get through."

Simon, who had merely cut the wires without doing any damage to the pole, nevertheless saw no reason to correct the official theory.

Inquiries about possible conveyance to the nearest main line town proved equally fruitless, as the Saint had known they would be. He had selected his village with care. It possessed nothing suitable for Mr. Lemuel, and no traffic was likely to pass through that night, for it was right off the beaten track.

"Looks as if we'll have to make the best of it, Old Man," said Lemuel, and Simon concurred.

After supper Lemuel's spirits rose, and they spent a convivial evening in the bar.

It was a very convivial evening. Mr. Lemuel, under the soothing influence of many brandies, forgot his day's misadventures, and embarked enthusiastically upon the process of making a night of it. For, he explained, his conversation with Jacob Einsmann was going to lead to a lot of easy money. But he could not be persuaded to divulge anything of interest, though the Saint led the conversation cunningly. Simon smiled, and continued to drink him level-even taking it upon himself to force the pace towards closing time. Simon had had some opportunity to measure up Francis Lemuel's minor weaknesses, and an adroit employment of some of this knowledge was part of the Saint's plan. And the Saint was ordinarily a most temperate man.

"You're a goo' feller, Ole Man," Mr. Lemuel was proclaiming, towards eleven o'clock. "You stick to me, Ole Man, an' don' worrabout wha' people tell you. You stick to me. I gorra-lotta money. Show you trick one day. You stick to me. Give you a berra job soon, Ole Man. Pallomine . . ."

When at length Mr. Lemuel announced that he was going to bed, the Saint's affable "Sleep well, sir!" would have struck a captious critic as unnecessary; for nothing could have been more certain than that Mr. Lemuel would that night sleep the sleep of the only just.

The Saint himself stayed on in the bar for another hour; for the landlord was in talkative mood, and was not unique in finding Simon Templar very pleasant company. So it came to pass that, a few minutes after the Saint had said good-night, his sudden return with a face of dismay was easily accounted for.

"I've got the wrong bag," he explained. "The other two were put in Mr. Lemuel's room, weren't they?"

"Is one of them yours?" asked the publican sympathetically.

Simon nodded.

"I've been landed with the samples," he said. "And I'll bet Mr. Lemuel's locked his door. He never forgets to do that, however drunk he is. And we'd have to knock the place down to wake him up now-and I'd lose my job if we did."

"I've got a master key, sir," said the landlord helpfully. "You could slip in with that and change the bags, and he wouldn't know anything about it."

Simon stared.

"You're a blinkin' marvel, George," he murmured. "You are, really."

With the host's assistance he entered Mr. Lemuel's room, and emerged with the key of the door in his pocket and one of Lemuel's bags in his hand. Mr. Lemuel snored rhythmically through it all.

"Thanks, George," said the Saint, returning the master key. "Breakfast at ten, and in bed, I think. . . ."

Then he took the bag into his own room, and opened it without much difficulty.

Its weight, when he had lifted it out of the aëroplane, had told him not to expect it to contain clothes; but the most superficially interesting thing about it was that Mr. Lemuel had not possessed it when he left England, and it was simply as a result of intensive pondering over that fact that the Saint had arrived at the scheme that he was then carrying out. And, in view of his hypothesis, and Mr. Lemuel's reaction to the magic word "Croydon," it cannot be said that the Saint was wildly surprised when he found what the bag actually held. But he was very, very interested, nevertheless.

There were rows and rows of neatly packed square tins, plain and unlabelled. Fishing one out, the Saint gently detached the strip of adhesive tape which sealed it, and prised off the lid. He came to a white, crystalline powder . . . but that had been in his mind when he opened the tin. Almost perfunctorily, he took a tiny pinch of the powder between his finger and thumb, and laid it on his tongue; and the Saintly smile tightened a little.

Then he sat back on his heels, lighted a cigarette, and regarded his catch thoughtfully.

"You're a clever boy, Francis," he murmured.

He meditated for some time, humming under his breath, apparently quite unmoved. But actually his brain was seething.

It would have been quite easy to dispose of the contents of the bag. It would have been equally easy to dispose of Mr. Lemuel. For a while the Saint toyed with the second idea. A strong solution of the contents of one of the tins, for instance, administered with the hypodermic syringe which Simon had in his valise . . . Then he shook his head.

"Try to remember, Old Man," he apostrophized himself, "that you are a business organization. And you're not at all sure that Uncle Francis has left you anything in his will."

The scheme which he ultimately decided upon was simplicity itself-so far as it went. It depended solely upon the state of the village baker's stock.

Simon left the Blue Dragon stealthily, and returned an hour later considerably laden.

He was busy for some hours after that, but he replaced Lemuel's grip looking as if it had not been touched, opening the door with Lemuel's own key.

It is quite easy to lock a door from the outside and leave the key in the lock on the inside-if you know the trick. You tie a string to the end of a pencil, slip the pencil through the hole in the key, and pass the string underneath the door. A pull on the string turns the key; and the pencil drops out, and can be pulled away under the door.

And after that the Saint slithered into his pajamas and rolled into bed as the first grayness of dawn lightened the sky outside his bedroom window, and slept like a child.

In the morning they flew on to Hanworth, where Lemuel's car waited to take them back to London.

The Saint was dropped at Piccadilly Circus; and he walked without hesitation into the Piccadilly Hotel. Settling himself at a table within, he drew a sheet of the hotel's notepaper towards him, and devoted himself with loving care to the production of a Work of Art. This consisted of the picture of a little man, drawn with a round blank head and straight-lined body and limbs, as a child draws, but wearing above his cerebellum, at a somewhat rakish angle, a halo such as few children's drawings portray. Then he took an envelope, which he addressed to Francis Lemuel. He posted his completed achievement within the hotel.

At half-past one he burst in upon Patricia Holm, declaring himself ravenous for lunch.

"With beer," he said. "Huge foaming mugs of it. Brewed at Burton, and as stark as they make it."

"And what's Francis Lemuel's secret?" she asked.

He shrugged.

"Don't spoil the homecoming," he said. "I hate to tell you, but I haven't come within miles of it in a whole blinkin' week."

He did not think it necessary to tell her that he had deliberately signed and sealed his own death warrant, for of late she had become rather funny that way.

5

There are a number of features about this story which will always endear it-in a small way to the Saint's memory. He likes its logical development, and the neat way in which the divers factors dovetail into one another with an almost audible click; he likes the crisp precision of the earlier episodes, and purrs happily as he recalls the flawless detail of his own technique in those episodes; but particularly is he lost in speech less admiration when he considers the overpowering brilliance of the exercise in inductive psychology which dictated his manner of pepping up the concluding states of the adventure.

Thus he reviewed the child of his genius: "The snow retails at about sixty pounds an ounce, in the unauthorized trade; and I must have poured about seventy thousand pounds' worth down the sink. Oh, yes, it was a good idea-to fetch over several years' supply at one go, almost without risk. And then, of course, according to schedule, I should have been quietly fired, and no one but Uncle Francis would have been any the wiser. Instead of which, Uncle's distributing organization, whatever that may be, will shortly be howling in full cry down Jermyn Street to ask Uncle what he means by ladling them out a lot of tins of ordinary white flour. Coming on top of the letter which will be shot in by the late post tonight, this question will cause a distinct stir. And, in the still small hours, Uncle Francis will sit down to ponder the ancient problem-What Should 'A' Do?"

This was long afterwards, when the story of Francis Lemuel was ancient history. And the Saint would gesture with his cigarette, and beam thoughtfully upon the assembled congregation, and presently proceed with his exposition: "Now, what should 'A' do, dear old streptococci? . . . Should he woofle forth into the wide world, and steam into Scotland Yard, bursting with information? . . . Definitely not. He has no information that he can conveniently lay. His egg, so to speak, has addled in the oviduct. . . . Then should he curse me and cut his losses and leave it at that? . . . Just as definitely not. I have had no little publicity in my time; and he knows my habits. He knows that I haven't finished with him yet. He knows that, unless he gets his counterattack in quickly, he's booked to travel down the drain in no uncertain manner. . . . Then should he call in a few tough guys and offer a large reward for my death certificate? ... I think not. Francis isn't that type. ... He has a wholesome respect for the present length of his neck; and he doesn't fancy the idea of having it artificially extended in a whitewashed shed by a gentleman in a dark suit one cold and frosty morning. He knows that that sort of thing is frequently happening-sometimes to quite clever murderers. ... So what does he do?"

And what Francis Lemuel did was, of course, exactly what the Saint had expected. He telephoned in the evening, three days later, and Simon went round to Jermyn Street after dinner-with a gun in his pocket in case of accidents. That was a simple precaution; he was not really expecting trouble, and he was right.

The instructions which he actually received, however, were slightly different from the ones he had anticipated. He found Lemuel writing telegrams; and the impresario came straight to the point.

"Einsmann-you remember the fellow who came to dinner?-seems to have got himself into a mess. He's opening a new night club to-morrow, and his prize cabaret attraction has let him down at the last minute. He hasn't been able to arrange a good enough substitute on the spot, and he cabled me for help. I've been able to find a first-class girl, but the trouble is to get her to Berlin in time for a rehearsal with his orchestra."

"You want me to fly her over?" asked the Saint, and Lemuel nodded.

"That's the only way, Old Man. I can't let Einsmann down when he's just on the point of signing a big contract with me. You have a car, haven't you?" "Yes, sir."

"I'll give you this girl's address"-Lemuel took a slip of paper, and wrote. "She's expecting you to pick her up at nine o'clock to-morrow morning. You must go straight to Hanworth. . . ."

Simon folded the paper and stowed it carefully away in his pocketbook, while Lemuel gave further instructions.

Lemuel was showing signs of the strain. There was a puffiness about his eyes, and his plump cheeks seemed to sag flabbily. But he played his part with a grim restraint.

Leaving Jermyn Street, the Saint found himself heading mechanically for the Piccadilly Hotel. There he composed, after some careful calculations with the aid of a calendar, a brief note: Unless the sum of Ł20,000 (Twenty Thousand Pounds) is paid into the account of J. B. L. Smith at the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, by 12 noon on Saturday, I shall forward to the Public Prosecutor sufficient evidence to assure you of five years' penal servitude.

The note was signed with one of the Saint's most artistic self-portraits, and it was addressed to Francis Lemuel.

This was on Thursday night.

As he strolled leisurely home the Saint communed with himself again.

"Uncle Francis wanted a disreputable aviator so that if anything went wrong the aviator could be made the scapegoat. But when he deduced that I was the Saint, that idea went west. What should I have done if I'd been Uncle Francis? ... I should have arranged for Mr. Templar to fall out of an aëroplane at a height of about four thousand feet. A nasty accident-he stalled at the top of a loop, and his safety belt wasn't fastened. . . . And Uncle knows enough about the game to be able to bring the kite down. . . . And that's what I thought it was going to be, with a few drops of slumber mixture in my beer before we went up next time. . . . But this is nearly as good. I do my last job of work for Uncle, and doubtless there is an entertainment arranged for my especial benefit in Berlin to-morrow night-or a man hired to file my elevator wires ready for the return journey on Saturday. Yes- perhaps this is even cleverer than my own idea. The commission to take this girl to Berlin is intended to disarm my suspicions. I am meant to think that I'm not suspected. I'm sup posed to think that I'm absolutely on velvet, and therefore get careless. . . . Oh, it should be a great little week-end!"

The only trouble he expected the next morning would not be directly of Lemuel's making-and in that, again, his deduction was faultless.

Stella Dornford was surprised to see him.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"I want you to fly with me," said the Saint dramatically, and she was taken aback.

"Are you Lemuel's man?"

Simon nodded.

"Extraordinary how I get about, isn't it?" he murmured.

"Is this a joke?"

He shook his head.

"Anything but, as far as I'm concerned, old dear. Now, can you imagine anyone getting up at this hour of the morning to be funny?" He grinned at her puzzled doubts. "Call it coincidence, sweetheart, and lead me to your luggage."

At the foot of the stairs he paused and looked thoughtfully round the courtyard.

"They seem to have scraped Cuthbert off the concrete," he said; and then, abruptly: "How did you get this job?"

"Lemuel was in front the other night," she answered. "He sent his card round in the interval--"

"Told you he was struck with your dancing, bought you out, signed you up--"

"How did you know?"

"I didn't. But it fits in so beautifully. And to make me the accessory-oh, it's just too splendiferous for words! I didn't know Francis had such a sense of humour."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm right, am I? Listen. He said: 'It's one of the worst shows I've ever seen, but your dancing, Old Man'-no, I suppose he'd vary that-'but your dancing, Old Woman, is the elephant's uvula.' Or words to that effect. What?"

"He certainly said he liked my dancing--"

"Joke," said the Saint sardonically.

She caught him up when he was loading her two suitcases into the back of his car.

"Mr. Templar--"

"My name."

"I don't understand your sense of humour."

"Sorry about that."

"I'd be obliged if you'd leave my dancing alone."

"Darling," said the Saint kindly, "I'd like to maroon it on a desert island. After I'd met you for the first time I made a point of seeing your show; and I must say that I decided that you are beautiful and energetic and well-meaning, and your figure is a dream-but if your dancing is the elephant's uvula, then I think the R. S. P. C. A. ought to do something about it."

Pale with fury, she entered the car, and there was silence until they were speeding down the Great West Road.

Then Simon added, as if there had been no break in his speech: "If I were you, old dear, I'd be inclined to think very kindly of that nice boy in the bank."

"I don't think I want your advice, Mr. Templar," she said coldly. "Your job is to take me to Berlin-and I only wish I could get there in time without your help."

All the instinctive antagonism that had come up between them like barbed wire at their first meeting was back again. After the accident to the amateur mountaineer there had been a truce; but the Saint had foreseen renewed hostilities from the moment he had read the name and address on the paper which Lemuel had given him, and he had been at no pains to avert the outbreak. Patricia Holm used to say that the Saint had less than no idea of the art of handling women. That is a statement which other historians may be left to judge; the Saint himself would have been the smiling first to subscribe to the charge, but there were times when Simon Templar's vanity went to strange extremes. If he thought he had any particular accomplishment, he would either boast about it or disclaim it altogether, so you always knew where you were with him. So far as the handling of women was concerned, his methods were usually of the this-is-your-label-and-if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-get-the-hell-out-of-here school-when they were not exactly the reverse-and in this case, at least, he knew precisely what he was doing. Otherwise, he might have had a more entertaining journey to Berlin than he did; but he had developed a soft spot in his heart for the unknown nice boy who used to take Stella Dornford to the movies-and, bless him, probably used to hold her hand in the same. Now, Jacob Einsmann would never have thought of doing a thing like that. . . .

There was another reason-a subsidiary reason-for the Saint's aloofness. He wanted to be free to figure out the exact difference that had been made in the situation by the discovery of the identity of his charge. A new factor had been introduced which was likely to alter a lot of things. And it was necessary to find out a little more about it-a very little more.

So they travelled between Hanworth and the Tempelhof in a frostbitten silence which the Saint made no attempt to alleviate; and in the same spirit he took Stella Dornford by taxi to the address that Lemuel had given him.

This was a huge, gloomy house nearly two miles away from the centre of fashionable gaiety, and anything less like a night club Simon Templar had rarely seen.

He did not immediately open the door of the taxi. Instead, he surveyed the house interestedly through a window of the cab; and then he turned to the girl.

"I'm sure Jacob Einsmann isn't a very nice man," he said. "In fact, he and I are definitely going to have words. But I'm ready to leave you at a hotel before I go in."

She tossed her head and opened the door herself.

The Saint followed her up the steps of the house. She had rang the bell while he was paying off the taxi, and the door was unbarred as he reached her side.

"Herr Einsmann wishes to see you also, sir."

The Saint nodded and passed in. The butler-he, like the porter at the Calumet Club, of hallowed memory, looked as if he had been other things in his time-led them down a bare, sombre hall, and opened a door.

The girl passed through it first, and Simon heard her exclamation before he saw Einsmann.

Then her hand gripped his arm.

"I don't like this," she said.

Simon smiled. He had read the doubt in her eyes when she first saw the house, and had liked the dam'-fool obstinacy that had marched her into it against his advice and her better judgment. But, while he approved her spirit, he had deliberately taken advantage of it to make sure that she should have her lesson.

"So!" Jacob Einsmann rose from his chair, rubbing his hands gently together. His eyes were fixed upon the girl. "You vould not listen to it vot I say in London, no, you vere so prrroud, but now you yourself to me hof come, aind't it?"

6

"Aye, laad, we've coom," drawled the Saint.

"So you hof got it vot you vanted, yes, no, aind't it?"

Einsmann turned his head.

"Ach! I remember you."

"And I you," said the Saint comfortably. "In fact, I spent a considerable time on the trip over composing a little song about you, in the form of a nursery rhyme for the instruction of small children, which, with your permission, I will now proceed to sing. It goes like this: " 'Dear Jacob is an unwashed mamser, We like not his effluvium, sir; If we can tread on Jacob's graft, Das wird jja wirklich fabelhaft.'

For that effort in trilingual verse I have already awarded myself the Swaffer Biscuit." Einsmann leered.

"For vonce, Herr Saint, you hof a misdake made."

"Saint?"

The girl spoke, at Simon's shoulder, startled, half incredulous. He smiled round at her.

"That's right, old dear. I am that well-known institution. Is this the Boche you mentioned at the Cri-the bird who got fresh at the Calumet?"

She nodded.

"I didn't know--"

"You weren't meant to," said Simon coolly. "That was just part of the deception. But I guessed it as soon as Lemuel gave me your name."

"You vos clever, Herr Saint," Einsmann said suavely.

"I vos," the Saint admitted modestly. "It only wanted a little putting two and two together. There was that dinner the other day, for instance. Very well staged for my benefit, wasn't it? All that trout-spawn and frog-bladder about your cabarets, and Lemuel warbling about the difficulty of getting English girls abroad. ... I made a good guess at the game then; and I'd have laid anyone ten thousand bucks to a slush nickel, on the spot, that it wouldn't be long before I was asked to ferry over a few fair maidens in Lemuel's machine. I had your graft taped right out days ago, and I don't see that the present variation puts me far wrong. The only real difference is that Francis is reckoning to have to find another aviator to carry through the rest of the contract-aind't it?"

His hand went lazily to his hip pocket; and then something jabbed him sharply in the ribs, and he looked down at a heavy automatic in the hand of the imitation butler, who had not left the room.

"You vill bring your gun out verree slowly," said Einsmann, succulently. "Verree slowly. . . ."

Simon smiled-a slow and Saintly smile. And, as slow as the smile, his hand came into view.

"Do you mind?" he murmured.

He opened the cigarette case, and selected a smoke with care. The butler lowered his gun.

"Let us talk German," said the Saint suddenly, in that language. "I have a few things to say which this girl need not hear."

Einsmann's mouth twisted.

"I shall be interested," he said ironically.

With an unlighted cigarette between his lips, and the cigarette case still open in his hands, Simon looked across at the German. Stella Dornford was behind the Saint; the imitation butler stood a little to one side, his automatic in his hand. "You are a man for whom there is no adequate punishment.

You are a buyer and seller of souls, and your money is earned with more human misery than your insanitary mind can imagine. To attempt to visit some of this misery upon yourself would do little good. The only thing to do is to see that you cease to pollute the earth."

His cold blue eyes seemed to bore into Einsmann's brain, so that the German, in spite of his armed bodyguard, felt a momentary qualm of fear.

"I only came here to make quite sure about you, Jacob Einsmann," said the Saint. "And now I am quite sure. You had better know that I am going to kill you."

He took a step forward, and did not hear the door open behind him.

Einsmann's florid face had gone white, save for the bright patches of colour that burned in either cheek. Then he spoke, in a sudden torrent of hoarse words: "Sol You say you will kill me? But you are wrong. I am not the one who will die to-night. I know you, Herr Saint! Even if Lemuel had not told me, I should still have known enough. You remember Henri Chastel? He was my friend, and you killed him. Ach! You shall not have a quick death, my friend--"

With the Saintly smile still resting blandly on his lips, Simon had closed his cigarette case with a snap while Einsmann talked, and was returning it to his hip pocket. ... He performed the action so quietly and naturally that, coming after the false alarm he had caused when he took it out of the same pocket, this movement of his hand passed almost unnoticed. Nor did it instantly seem strange to the audience when the Saint's hand did not at once return to view. He brought the hand up swiftly behind his back; he had exchanged the cigarette case for a gun, and he nosed the muzzle of the gun through the gap between his left arm and his body.

"You may give my love to Henri," he remarked, and touched the trigger.

He saw Einsmann's face twist horribly, and the German clutched at his stomach before he crumpled where he stood; but Simon only saw these things out of the tail of his eye. He had whipped the gun from under his armpit a second after his first shot; there was no time to fetch it round behind his body into a more convenient firing position, and he loosed his second shot with his forearm lying along the small of his back and the gun aimed out to his left. But the butler's attention had been diverted at the moment when the Saint fired first, and the man's reaction was not quite quick enough. He took the Saint's bullet in the shoulder, and his own shot blew a hole in the carpet.

Then the door slammed shut and Simon turned right round.

The man who had seized Stella Dornford from behind a moment before the Saint's first shot was not armed, and he had not taken a second to perceive the better part of valour. Unhappily for his future, the instinct of self-preservation had been countered by another and equally powerful instinct, and he had tried to compromise with the two. Perhaps he thought that the armed butler could be relied upon.

The speculation is interesting but unprofitable, for the man's mental processes are now beyond the reach of practical investigation. All we know is that at that precise instant of time he was heading down the hall with an unconscious bur den.

And the Saint had wrenched at the handle of the door, and found it locked from the outside. Simon jerked up his gun again, and the report mingled with a splintering crash.

Her jerked the door open and looked up and down the dark hall. At the far end, towards the back of the house, another door was closing-he saw the narrowing strip of brighter light in the gloom. The strip vanished as he raced towards it, and he heard a key turn as he groped for the handle. Again he raised his automatic, and then, instead of the detonation he was expecting, heard only the click of a dud cartridge. He snatched at the sliding jacket, and something jammed. He had no time to find out what it was; he dropped the gun into his pocket, made certain of the position of the keyhole, and stepped back a pace. Then he raised his foot and smashed his heel into the lock with all his strength and weight behind it.

The door sprang open eighteen inches-and crashed into a table that was being brought up to reinforce it. The Saint leaped at the gap, made it, wedged his back against the jamb, and set both hands to the door. With one titanic heave he flung the door wide and sent the table spinning back to the centre of the room.

The girl lay on the floor by the doorway. On the other side of the room, beyond the upturned table, the man who had brought her had opened a drawer in a desk, and he turned with an automatic in his hand.

'Schweinhund!" he snarled.

The Saint laughed, took two quick steps, and launched himself headlong into space in a terrific dive. It took him clear over the table, full length, and muddled his objective's aim. The man sighted frantically, and fired; and the Saint felt something like a hot iron sear his right arm from wrist to elbow; then Simon had gathered up the man's legs in that fantastic tackle, and they went to the floor together.

The Saint's left hand caught the gunman's right wrist and pinned it to the floor; then, his own right hand being numb, he brought up his knee. ...

He was on his feet again in a moment, gathering the automatic out of the man's limp hand as he rose.

The girl's eyes fluttered as he reached her, but the Saint reckoned that freight would be less trouble than first aid. He put his captured gun on a chair; and, as the girl started to try to rise, he yanked her to her feet and caught her over his left shoulder before she could fall again.

Quickly he tested his right hand again, and found that his fingers had recovered from the momentary shock. He picked up the gun in that hand.

A faint sound behind him made him turn swiftly, and he saw the gunman crawling towards him with a knife. He had not meant to fire, but the trigger must have been exceptionally sensitive, and the gunman rolled over slowly and lay quite still.

Then the Saint broke down the hall.

A gigantic Negro loomed up out of the twilight. Careful of the trigger this time, the Saint snapped the muzzle of the gun into the man's chest, and the Negro backed away with rolling eyes. Keeping him covered, Simon sidled to the door and set the girl gently on her feet. She was able to stand then; and she it was who, under his directions, unbarred the door and opened it.

"See if there's a taxi," rapped the Saint, and heard her hurry down the steps.

A moment later she called him.

He gave her time to get into the taxi herself; and then, like lightning, he sprang through the door and slammed it behind him.

The chauffeur, turning to receive his instructions through the little window communicating between the inside and the outside of the cab, heard the shout from the house, and looked round with a question forming on his lips. Then something cold and metallic touched the back of his neck, and one of his fares spoke crisply: "Gehen Sie schnell, mein Freund!"

The driver obeyed.

The fact that, having been given no destination to drive to, he was quietly steering his passengers in the direction of the nearest police station, is of no great historical interest. For when he reached the station he was without passengers; and the officials who heard his story were inclined to cast grave doubts upon that worthy citizen's sobriety, until confirmation of some of his statements arrived through another channel.

Stella Domford and the Saint had quietly left him in a convenient traffic block; for Simon had much more to do in the next twenty-four hours, and he was in no mood to be delayed by embarrassing inquiries.

7

"And if that doesn't learn you, my girl," said the Saint, a trifle grimly, "nothing ever will."

They were in a room in the hotel where the girl had parked her luggage before proceeding to the interview with Einsmann. The Saint, with a cigarette between his lips and a glass tankard of dark syrupy Kulmbach on the table beside him, was sitting on the bed, bandaging his arm with two white linen handkerchiefs torn into strips. Stella Domford stood by shame facedly.

"I'm sorry I was such a fool," she said.

Simon looked up at her. She was very pale, but this was not the pallor of anger with which she had begun the day.

"Can I help you with that?" she asked.

"It's nothing," he said cheerfully. "I'm never hurt. It's a gift. . . ."

He secured his effort with a safety pin, and rolled down his sleeve. Then he gave her one of his quick, impulsive smiles.

"Anyway," he said, "you've seen some Life. And that was what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"You can't make me feel worse than I do already."

He laughed and stood up; and she looked round as his hands fell on her shoulders.

"Why worry, old dear?" he said. "It's turned out all right- so what the hell? You don't even have to rack your brains to think of an unfutile way of saying 'Thank you.' I've loved it. The pleasure of shooting Jacob in the tum-tum was worth a dozen of these scratches. So let's leave it at that." He ruffled her hair absently. "And now we'll beat it back to England, shall we?"

He turned away, and picked up his coat.

"Are you leaving now?" she asked in surprise.

Simon nodded.

"I'm afraid we must. In the first place, this evening's mirth and horseplay is liable to start a certain hue and cry after me in this bouncing burg. I don't know that that alone would make me jump for the departure platform; but there's also a man I want to see in England-about a sort of dog. I'm sorry about the rush, but things always seem to happen to me in a hurry. Are you ready?"

They landed for a late meal at Amsterdam; and they had not long left Schiphol behind when the darkness and the monotonous roar of the engine soothed Stella Dornford into a deep sleep of sheer nervous weariness. She awoke when the engine was suddenly silenced, and found that they were gliding down into the pale half-light before dawn.

"I think there's enough light to make a landing here," Simon answered her question through the telephones. "I don't want to have to go on to Croydon."

There was, at least, enough light for the Saint to make a perfect landing; and he taxied up to the deserted hangars and left the machine there for the mechanics to find in the morning. Then he went in search of his car.

In the car, again, she slept; and it is therefore not surprising that she never thought of Francis Lemuel until after the Saint had unloaded her into one of the friendliest sitting rooms she had ever seen, and after he had prepared eggs and bacon and coffee for them both, and after they had smoked two cigarettes together. And then it was Simon who reminded her.

"I want you to help me with a telephone conversation," he said, and proceeded to coach her carefully. A few minutes later she had dialled a number and was waiting for the reply.

Then: "Are you Piccadilly thrrree-eight thrrree-four?" she asked sweetly.

The answer came in a decorated affirmative. "You're wanted from Berlin."

She clicked the receiver hook; and then the Saint took over the instrument.

"Dot vos you Lemuel, no? . . . You vould like to hear about it der business, aind't it? ... Ja! I hof seddled it altogether der business. Der man yill not more trrouble gif, andt der samples I hof also received it, yes. . . ."

A couple of lines of brisk dialogue, this time in German, between the Saint and an excellent impersonator of the Berlin exchange, cut short the conversation with the Saint hurriedly concluding: "Ja! I to you der particulars to-morrow vill wrrrite. ..."

"It's detail that does it," murmured Simon complacently, as he replaced the receiver.

Stella Domford was regarding him with a certain awe. "I'm beginning to understand some of the things I've read about you," she said; and the Saint grinned. Shortly afterwards he excused himself; and when he returned to the sitting room, which was in a surprisingly short space of time, he had changed out of the characteristically conspicuous suit in which he had travelled, and was wearing a plain and unnoticeable blue serge. The Saint's phenomenal speed of dressing would have made the fortune of a professional quick-change artist; and he was as pleased with the girl's unspoken astonishment at his feat as he had been with her first compliment.

"Where are you going?" she demanded, when she had found her voice.

"To see you home, first," he answered briskly. "And then I have a little job of work to do."

"But why have you changed?"

The Saint adjusted a cheap black tie.

"The job might turn into a funeral," he said. "I don't seriously think it will, but I like to be prepared."

She was still mystified when he left her at the door of her apartment.

From there he drove down to Piccadilly, and left his car in St. James's Street, proceeding afterwards on foot. Here the reason for his change of costume began to appear. Anyone might have remarked the rare spectacle of a truly Saintly figure parading the West End of London at six o'clock in the morning arrayed in one of the most dazzling creations of Savile Row; but no one came forward to describe the soberly dressed and commonplace-looking young man who committed the simplest audacity of the season.

Nor could he ever afterwards have been identified by the sleepy-eyed porter who answered his ring at a certain bell in Jermyn Street; for, when the door was opened, Simon's face was masked from eyes to chin by a handkerchief folded three-cornerwise, and his hat brim shaded his eyes. So much the porter saw before the Saint struck once, swiftly, mercifully, and regretfully, with a supple rubber truncheon. . . .

The Saint closed the door behind him and unbuttoned his double-breasted coat. There were a dozen turns of light rope wound round his waist belt-fashion, and with these he secured the janitor hand and foot, completing the work with a humane but efficient gag. Then he lifted the unconscious man and carried him to the little cubicle at the back of the hall, where he left him-after taking his keys.

He raced up the stairs to the door of Lemuel's apartment, which was on the second floor. It was the work of a moment only to find the right key. Then, if the door were bolted . . . But apparently Lemuel relied on the security of his Yale lock and the watchfulness of the porter. . . .

The Saint passed like a cat down the passage that opened before him, listening at door after door. Presently he heard the sound of rhythmic breathing, and he entered Lemuel's bedroom without a sound, and stood over the bed like a ghost.

He was certain that Lemuel must have spent a restless night until the recent telephone call came through to calm his fears.

There were a bottle, a siphon, a glass, and an ash tray heaped with cigarette ends on a table by the bedside to support this assumption; but now Lemuel must be sleeping the sleep of the dead.

Gently Simon drew the edge of the sheet over the sleeping man's face; and onto the sheet he dripped a colourless liquid from a flask which he took from his pocket. The atmosphere thickened with a sickly reek. . . .

Five minutes later, in another room, the Saint was opening a burglar-proof safe with Lemuel's own key.

He found what he was expecting to find-what, in fact, he had arranged to find. It had required no great genius to deduce that Lemuel would have withdrawn all his mobile fortune from his bank the day before; if there had been no satisfactory report from Einsmann before morning, Lemuel would have been on his way out of England long before the expiration of the time limit which the Saint had given him.

Simon burned twenty-five thousand pounds' worth of negotiable securities in the open grate. There was already a heap of ashes in the fireplace when he began his own bonfire, and he guessed that Lemuel had spent part of the previous evening disinfecting his private papers; it would be a waste of time to search the desk. With about forty thousand pounds in Bank of England notes cunningly distributed about his person, the Saint closed the safe, after some artistic work on the interior, and returned to Lemuel's bedroom, where he replaced the key as he had found it. Before he left, he turned the sheet back from Lemuel's face; the bedroom windows were already open, and in a couple of hours the smell of ether should have dispersed.

"A couple of hours. . . ." The Saint glanced at his watch as he went down the stairs, and realized that he had only just given himself enough time. But he stopped at the janitor's cubicle on his way out, and the helpless man glared at him defiantly.

"I'm sorry I had to hit you," said the Saint. "But perhaps this will help to console you for your troubles."

He took ten one-pound notes from his wallet and laid them on the porter's desk; then he hurried down the hall, and slipped off his masking handkerchief as he opened the door.

Half an hour later he was in bed.

Francis Lemuel had arranged to be called early, in case of accidents, and the reassuring telephone message had come too late for him to countermand the order. He roused at half-past eight, to find his valet shaking him by the shoulder, and sat up muzzily. His head was splitting. He took a gulp at the hot tea which his man had brought, and felt sick.

"Must have drunk more whisky than I thought," he reflected hazily; and then he became aware that his valet was speaking.

"There's been a burglary here, sir. About six o'clock this morning the porter was knocked out--"

"Here-in this apartment?" Lemuel's voice was harsh and strained.

"No, sir. At least, I've looked round, sir, and nothing seems to have been touched."

Lemuel drew a long breath. For an instant an icy dread had clutched at his heart. Then he remembered-the Saint was dead, there was nothing more to fear. . . .

He sipped his tea again and chuckled throatily.

"Then someone's been unlucky," he remarked callously, and was surprised when the valet shook his head.

"That's the extraordinary thing, sir. They've been making inquiries all round, and none of the other apartments seem to have been entered either."

Lemuel recalled this conversation later in the morning. He had declined breakfast blasphemously, and had only just man aged to get up and dress in time to restore his treasures to the keeping of his bank.

He saw the emptiness of his safe, and the little drawing which the Saint had chalked inside it by way of receipt, and went a dirty gray-white.

The strength seemed to go from his knees; and he groped his way blindly to a chair, shaking with a superstitious terror. It was some time before he brought himself to realize that ghosts do not stun porters and clean out burglar-proof safes.

The valet, coming at a run to answer the frantic pealing of the bell, was horrified at the haggard limpness of his master.

"Fetch the police," croaked Lemuel and the man went quickly.

Chief Inspector Teal himself had just arrived to give some instructions to the detective-sergeant who had taken over the investigations, and he it was who answered the summons.

"Sixty-five thousand pounds? That's a lot of money to keep in a little safe like this."

Teal cast sleepy eyes over the object, and then went down on his knees to examine it more closely. His heavy eyelids merely flickered when he saw the chalkmarks inside.

"Opened it with your own key too."

Lemuel nodded dumbly.

"I suppose he warned you?" said Teal drowsily-he was a chronically drowsy man.

"I had two ridiculous letters--"

"Can I see them?"

"I-I destroyed them. I don't take any notice of threats like that."

Teal raised his eyebrows one millimetre.

"The Saint's a pretty well-known character," he said. "I should hate to have to calculate how many square miles of newspaper he's had all to himself since he started in business. And the most celebrated thing about him is that he's never yet failed to carry out a threat. This is the first time I've heard of anyone taking no notice of his letters."

Lemuel swallowed. Suddenly, in a flash of pure agony, he understood his position. The Saint had ruined him-taken from him practically every penny he possessed-and yet he had left him one fragile thing that was perhaps more precious than ten times the treasure he had lost-his liberty. And Lemuel's numbed brain could see no way of bringing the Saint to justice without imperilling that last lonely asset.

"What was the Saint's grouse against you?" asked Teal, like a sleep-walking Nemesis, and knew that he was wasting his time.

All the world knew that the Saint never threatened without good reason. To attempt to get evidence from his victims was a thankless task; there was so little that they could say without incriminating themselves.

And Lemuel saw the point also, and clapped quivering hands to his forehead.

"I-I apologize," he said huskily. "I see you've guessed the truth. I heard about the burglary, and thought I might get some cheap publicity out of it. There was nothing in the safe. I drew the picture inside-copied it from an old newspaper cutting. . . ."

Teal heard, and nodded wearily.

But to Francis Lemuel had come one last desperate resolve.

8

There were many men in London who hated the Saint, and none of them hated him without cause. Some he had robbed; some he had sent to prison; some he had hurt in their bodies, and some he had hurt in their pride; and some, who had not yet met him, hated him because they feared what he might do if he learned about them all the things that there were to learn -which was, perhaps, the most subtle and deadly hatred of all.

Simon Templar had no illusions about his general popularity. He knew perfectly well that there were a large number of people domiciled between East India Dock and Hammersmith Broadway who would have been delighted to see him meet an end so sticky that he would descend to the place where they thought he would go like a well-ballasted black-beetle sinking through a pot of hot glue, and who, but for the distressing discouragements which the laws of England provide for such natural impulses, would have devoted all their sadistic ingenuity to the task of thus settling a long outstanding account. In the old days Simon had cared nothing for this; in those days he was known only as the Saint, and none knew his real name, or what he looked like, or whence he came; but those days had long gone by. Simon Templar's name and address and telephone number were now common property in certain circles; it was only in sheer blind cussedness, which he had somehow got away with, that he had scorned to use an alias in his dealings with Francis Lemuel and the Calumet Club. And there had already been a number of enterprising gentlemen who had endeavoured to turn this knowledge to account in the furthering of their life's ambition-without, it must be admitted, any signal success.

While there were not many men at large who in cold blood could have mustered up the courage actually to bump the Saint off (for British justice is notoriously swift to strike, and English criminals have a greater fear of the rope than those of any other nationality), there were many who would have delighted to do the Saint grievous bodily harm; and Simon Templar had no great wish to wake up in his bed one night and find someone pouring vitriol over his face, or performing any similar kindly office. Therefore he had made elaborate arrangements, in the converted mews where he had taken up his new headquarters, to ensure the peace and safety of his slumbers.

He woke up, a few nights after his raid upon Jermyn Street, to the whirring of the buzzer under his pillow. He was instantly alert, for the Saint slept and woke like a cat; but he lay still in bed for a few moments before he moved, watching the nickering of tiny coloured lights in the panel on the opposite wall.

Johnny Anworth knew all that there was to know about the ordinary kind of burglar alarm, and had adroitly circumvented the dummy ones which the Saint had taken care to fix to his doors and windows. But what Johnny did not understand was the kind that worked without wires. There were wireless alarms all over the Saint's home-alarms that relied upon an invisible ray projected across a doorway, a stairway, or a corridor, upon a photo-electric cell on the opposite side. All was well so long as the ray continued to fall thus; but when anything momentarily obscured it, the buzzer sounded under the Saint's pillow, and a tiny bulb blinked a coloured eye in the indicator panel on the Saint's bedroom wall to show the exact locality of the intruder.

Johnny Anworth had made absolutely no sound, and had heard none; and, when the Saint took him suddenly by the throat from behind, he would have screamed aloud if his larynx had not been paralyzed by the steely grip of the fingers that compressed it. He felt himself being lifted into the air and heaved bodily through a doorway, and then the lights went on and he saw the Saint.

"Don't make a noise," drawled Simon. "I don't want you to wake the house."

He had slipped on a startling dressing gown, and not a hair of his head was out of place. In defense of Simon, it must be mentioned that he did not sleep in a hair net. He had actually stopped to brush his hair before he went in search of the visitor.

The capture was a miserable and unsavoury-looking specimen of humanity, his sallow face made even sallower by the shock he had received. The Saint, after a short inspection, was able to identify it.

"Your name is Anworth, isn't it, Beautiful? And I recently had the pleasure of socking you on the jaw-one night when you followed me from the Calumet."

"I never seed yer before, guv'nor-strite, I never. I'm dahn an' aht-starvin'--"

Simon reached out a long, silk-sheathed arm for the cigarette box-he had heaved the specimen into the sitting room.

"Tell me the old, old story," he sighed.

"I 'adn't 'ardly a bite to eat since Friday," Johnny whined on mechanically. "This is the fust time I ever went wrong. I 'ad ter do it, guv'nor--"

He stopped, as the Saint turned. Incredulous audiences Johnny Anworth had had, indignant audiences, often, and even sympathetic audiences, sometimes-but he had never met such a bleak light in any outraged householder's eyes as he met then. If he had been better informed, he would have known that there were few things to which the Saint objected more than being interrupted in his beauty sleep. This Simon explained.

"Also, you didn't come here on your own. You were sent." The cold blue eyes never left Johnny's face. "By a man named Lemuel," Simon added, in a sudden snap, and read the truth before the crook had opened his mouth to deny it.

"I never 'eard of 'im, guv'nor. I was near starvin'--"

"What were you told to do?"

"I never--"

On those words, Johnny's voice trailed away. For he had heard, quite distinctly, the stealthy footfall in the passage outside.

The Saint also had heard it. He had not expected a man like Johnny Anworth to be on a job like that alone.

"You're telling naughty stories, Precious. . . ."

The Saint spoke gently and dreamily, stepping back towards the door with the silence of a hunting leopard; but there was neither gentleness or dreaminess in the eyes that held the burglar half hypnotized, and Johnny did not need to be told what would happen to him if he attempted to utter a warning.

"Naughty, naughty stories-you've brought me out of my beautiful bed to tell me those. I think I shall have to be very cross with you, Johnny--"

And then, like an incarnate whirlwind, the Saint whipped open the door and sprang out into the passage. Baldy Mossiter had a gun, but the Saint was too quick for him, and Baldy only just relaxed his trigger finger in time to avoid shooting himself in the stomach.

"Step right in and join the merry throng, Hairy Harold," murmured Simon; and Mossiter obeyed, the Saint speeding him on his way.

That Johnny Anworth, having started forward with the idea of taking the Saint in the rear, should have been directly in the trajectory of his chief, was unfortunate for both parties. Simon smiled beatifically upon them, and allowed them to regain their feet under their own power.

"You wait, Templar!" Mossiter snarled; and the Saint nodded encouragingly.

"Were you starving, too?" he asked.

There was some bad language-so bad that the Saint, who was perhaps unduly sensitive about these things, found it best to bind and gag both his prisoners.

"When you decide to talk, you can wag your ears," he said.

There was a gas fire in the sitting room, and this the Saint lighted, although the night was already torrid enough. In front of the burners, with ponderous deliberation, he set an ornamental poker to heat.

The two men watched with bulging eyes.

Simon finished his cigarette; and then he solemnly tested the temperature of the poker, holding it near his cheek as a laundryman tests an iron.

"Do you sing your song, Baldy?" he inquired-so mildly that Mossiter, who had an imagination, understood quite clearly that his own limits of bluff were likely to be reached long before the Saint's.

The story came with some profane trimmings which need not be recorded.

"It was Lemuel. We were to cosh you, and take your girl away. Lemuel said he knew for certain you'd got a lot of money hidden away, and we were going to make you pay it all over-while we held the girl to keep you quiet. We were going shares in whatever we got-- What are you doing?"

"Phoning for the police," said the Saint calmly. "You must not commit burglary-particularly with guns."

The law arrived in ten minutes in the shape of a couple of men from Vine Street; but before they came the Saint had made some things painfully plain.

"I'd guessed what you told me, but I always like to be sure. And let me tell you, you pair of second-hand sewer-skunks, that that sort of game doesn't appeal to me. Personally, I expect the most strenuous efforts to be made to bump me off -I'd be disappointed if they weren't-but my girl friends are in baulk. Get that. And if at any time the idea should come back to you that that would be a good way of getting at me- forget it. Because I promise you that anyone who starts that stuff on me is going for a long ride, and he'll die in a way that'll make him wish he'd never been born. Think that over while you're carving rocks on the Moor!"

Then the police came and took them away. They said nothing then, and went down for three years without speaking.

But the Saint was a thoughtful man at breakfast the next morning.

In the old days, Patricia Holm had shared his immunity. Now that his was gone, her own went also. The knowledge of her existence, and what she might be assumed to mean to the Saint, was free to anyone who took the trouble to watch him. The plan of campaign that the facts suggested was obvious; the only wonder was that it had not been tried before. For one thing, of course, the number of the Saint's enemies whose minds would take that groove was limited, and the number who would be capable of actually travelling along the groove was more limited still-but the idea must not be allowed to grow. And Lemuel had lost much-he would have a long memory.

"I don't think he's a useful citizen," concluded the Saint, out of the blue; and Patricia Holm looked up blankly from her newspaper.

"Who's that?"

"Uncle Francis."

Then she heard of the nocturnal visitors.

"He doesn't know that all the money I took off him has gone to Queen Charlotte's Hospital-a most suitable charity -less only our regular ten-percent fee for collection," said the Saint. "And if I told him, I don't think he'd believe me. As long as he's at large, he'll be thinking of his lost fortune-and you. And, as I said, I don't think he's a useful citizen."

"What can you do?" she asked.

Simon smiled at her. He really thought that she grew more beautiful every day.

"Sweetheart," he said, "you're the only good thing this rolling stone's collected out of all the world. And there's only one logical thing to do."

But he left her to guess what that was; he had not worked out the details himself at that moment. He knew that Francis Lemuel owned a large country house standing in its own spacious grounds just outside Tenterden, and the next day he learned that Lemuel had established himself there-"to re cover from a severe nervous collapse," the newspaper informed him-but it was not for another two days, when another item of news came his way, that the Saint had his inspiration for the manner in which Francis Lemuel should die.

9

I shall call on Wednesday at 3 p.m. You will be at home.

Francis Lemuel stared at the curt note, and the little sketch that served for signature, with blurring eyes. Minutes passed before he was able to reach shakily for the decanter-his breakfast was left untasted on the table.

An hour later, reckless of consequences, he was speaking on the telephone to Scotland Yard.

At the same time Simon Templar was speaking to Patricia Holm, what time he carefully marmaladed a thin slice of brown bread and a thick slice of butter.

"There are three indoor servants at Tenterden-a butler and a cook, man and wife, and the valet. The rest of the staff have been fired, and half the house is shut up-I guess Francis is finding it necessary to pull in his horns a bit. The butler and cook have a half-day off on Wednesday. The valet has his half-day on Thursday, but he has a girl at Rye. He has asked her to marry him, and she has promised to give her answer when she sees him next-which will, of course, be on Thursday. He has had a row with Lemuel, and is thinking of giving notice."

"How do you know all this?" asked Patricia. "Don't tell me you deduced it from the mud on the under-gardener's boots, because I shan't believe you."

"I won't," said the Saint generously. "If you want to know, I saw all that last part in writing. The valet is an energetic correspondent. Sometimes he goes to bed and leaves a letter half finished, and he's a sound sleeper."

"You've been inside Lemuel's house?"

"These last three nights. The burglar alarms are absolutely childish."

"So that's why you've been sleeping all day, and looking so dissipated!"

Simon shook his head.

"Not 'dissipated,'" he said. " 'Intellectual' is the word you want."

She looked at him thoughtfully.

"What's the game, lad?"

"Is your memory so short, old Pat? Why, what should the game be but wilful murder?"

Patricia came round the table and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Don't do it, Saint! It's not worth it."

"It is." He took her hands and kissed them, smiling a little. "Darling, I have hunches, and my hunches are always right. I know that the world won't be safe for democracy as long as Francis continues to fester in it. Now listen, and don't argue. As soon as you're dressed, you will disguise yourself as an elderly charwoman about to visit a consumptive aunt at Rye. At Rye you will proceed to the post office and send a telegram which I've written out for you-here." He took the form from his pocket, and pressed it into her hand. "You will then move on to Tenterden." He gave an exact description of a certain spot, and of an instrument which she would find there. "If you observe a crowd and a certain amount of wreckage in the offing, don't get excited. They won't be near where you've got to go. Collect the gadget and et ceteras, and push them into the bag you'll have with you. . . . Then, returning to the blinkin' railway station, you will leap into the first train in which you see a carriage that you can have all to yourself, and in that you will remove your flimsy disguise, disembark as your own sweet self at the next stop, catch the first train back to town, and meet me for dinner at the Embassy at eight. Is that clear?"

She opened the telegraph form, and read it.

"But what's the idea?"

"To clear the air, darling."

"But--"

"Uncle Francis? . . I've worked that out rather brilliantly. The time has gone by, sweetheart, when I could bounce in and bump off objectionable characters as and when the spirit moved. Too much is known about me-and robbery may be a matter for the robbed, but murder is a matter for the Lore. But I think this execution ought to meet the case. Besides, it will annoy Teal-Teal's been a bit uppish lately."

There was no doubt that his mind was made up; yet it was not without misgivings that Patricia departed on her mission: But she went; for she knew the moods in which the Saint was inflexible.

It was exactly three o'clock when the Saint, a trim and superbly immaculate and rather rakish figure, climbed out of his car at the end of Lemuel's drive, and sauntered up to the house.

"Dear old Francis!" The Saint was at his most debonair as he entered the celebrated impresario's library. "And how's trade?"

"Sit down, Templar."

The voice was so different from Lemuel's old sonorous joviality that the Saint knew that the story of "a severe nervous collapse" was not a great exaggeration. Lemuel's hand was unsteady as he replaced his cigar between his teeth.

"And what do you want now?"

"Just a little chat, my cherub," said the Saint.

He lighted a cigarette, and his eyes roved casually round the room. He remarked a tiny scrap of pink paper screwed up in an ash tray, and a tall Chinese screen in one corner, and a slow smile of satisfaction expanded within him-deep within him. Lemuel saw nothing.

"It's a long time since we last opened our hearts to each other, honeybunch," said the Saint, sinking back lazily into the cushions, "and you must have so much to tell me. Have you been a good boy? No more cocaine, or little girls, or any thing like that?"

"I don't know what you mean. If you've come here to try to blackmail me--"

"Dear, dear! Blackmail? What's that, Francis?-or shall I call you Frank?"

"You can call me what you like."

Simon shook his head.

"I don't want to be actually rude," he said. "Let it go at Frank. I once knew another man, a very successful scavenger, named Frank, who slipped in a sewer, and sank. This was after a spree; ever afterwards he was teetotal-but, oh, how unpleasant he smelt. Any relation of yours?"

Lemuel came closer. His face looked pale and bloated; there was a beastly fury in his eyes.

"Now listen to me, Templar. You've already robbed me once--"

"When?"

"D'you have to bluff when there isn't an audience? D'you deny that you're the Saint?"

"On the contrary," murmured Simon calmly. "I'm proud of it. But when have I robbed you?"

For a moment Lemuel looked as if he would choke. Then: "What have you come for now?" he demanded.

Simon seemed to sink even deeper into his chair, and he watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette with abstracted eyes.

"Suppose," he said lazily-"just suppose we had all the congregation out in the limelight. Wouldn't that make it seem more matey?"

"What d'you mean?"

Lemuel's voice cracked on the question.

"Well," said Simon, closing his eyes, with a truly sanctimonious smile hovering on his hips, "I really do hate talking to people I can't see. And it must be frightfully uncomfortable for Claud Eustace, hiding behind that screen over there."

"I don't understand--"

"Do you understand, Claud?" drawled the Saint; and Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal answered wearily that he understood.

He emerged mountainously, and stood looking down at the Saint with a certain admiration in his bovine countenance.

"And how did you know I was there?"

Simon waved a languid hand towards the table. Teal, following the gesture, saw the ash tray, and the discarded pink overcoat of the gum which he was even then chewing, and groaned.

"Wrigley," sighed the Saint, succinctly.

Then Lemuel turned on the detective, snarling.

"What the hell did you want to come out for?"

"Chiefly because there wasn't much point in staying where I was, Mr. Lemuel," replied Teal tiredly.

Simon chuckled.

"It's as much your fault as his, Francis, old coyote," he said. "If you must try to pull that old gag on me, you want to go into strict training. A man in your condition can't hope to put it over. . . . Oh, Francis! To think you thought I'd bite that bit of cheese-and land myself in good and proper, with Teal taking frantic notes behind the whatnot! You must take care not to go sitting in any damp grass, Francis-you might get brain fever."

"Anyway," said Teal, "it was a good idea."

"It was a rotten idea," said the Saint disparagingly. "And always has been. But I knew it was ten to one it would be tried -I knew it when I sent that note to Francis. I'm glad you came. Claud-I really did want you here."

"Why?"

Lemuel cut in. His face was tense and drawn.

"Inspector, you know this man's character--"

"I do," said Teal somnolently. "That's the trouble."

"He came here to try to blackmail me, and he'd have done it if he hadn't discovered you. Now he's going to try to get out of it on one of his bluffs-"

"No," said the Saint; and he said it in such a way that there was a sudden silence.

And, in the stillness, with his eyes still closed, the Saint listened. His powers of hearing were abnormally acute: he heard the sound he was waiting for when neither of the other two could hear anything-and even to him it was like nothing more than the humming of a distant bee.

And then he opened his eyes. It was like the unmasking of two clear blue lights in the keen brown face; and the eyes were not jesting at all. He stood up.

"As you said-you know me, Teal," he remarked. "Now I'll tell you what you don't know about Francis Lemuel. The first thing is that he's at the head of the dope ring you've been trying to get at for years. I don't know how he used to bring the stuff into the country; but I do know that when I was his private pilot, a little while ago, he came back from Berlin one time with enough snow in his grip to build a ski-slope round the Equator."

"It's a lie! By God, you'll answer for that, Templar--"

"Now I come to think of it," murmured Teal, "how do you know his real name?"

Simon laughed softly. The humming of the bee was not so distant now-the other two could have heard it easily, if they had listened.

"Don't haze the accused," he said gently. "He'll get all hot and bothered if you start to cross-examine him. Besides, the charge isn't finished. There's another matter, concerning a girl named Stella Domford-and several others whose names I couldn't give you, for all I know."

"Another lie!"

Teal turned heavy eyes on the man.

"You're a great clairvoyant," he said, judicially.

"At this man's request," said the Saint quietly, "I flew Stella Dornford over to Berlin. She was supposed to be going to a cabaret engagement with a man called Jacob Einsmann. The place I took her to was not a cabaret-I needn't mention what it was. The Berlin police will corroborate that."

Lemuel grated: "They want you for the murder of Einsmann."

"I doubt it," said the Saint. "I certainly shot him, but it shouldn't be hard to prove self-defense."

The bee was very much closer. And the Saint turned to Teal.

"I have one other thing to say," he added, "for your ears alone."

"I have a right to hear it," barked Lemuel shakily. "Inspector--"

"Naturally you'll hear it, Mr. Lemuel," said Teal soothingly. "But if Mr. Templar insists on telling me alone, that's his affair. If you'll excuse us a moment . . ."

Lemuel watched them go, gripping the table for support. Presently, through the French windows, he saw them strolling across the lawn, side by side. The air was now full of the drone of the bee, but he did not notice it.

He stumbled mechanically towards the side table where bottle and glasses were set out, but the bottle was nearly empty. Savagely he jabbed at the bell and waited an impatient half-minute; but no one answered. Cursing, he staggered to the door and opened it.

"Fitch!" he bawled.

Still there was no answer. The house was as silent as a tomb. Trembling with terror of he knew not what, Lemuel reeled down the hall and flung open the door of the servants' quarters. There was no one in sight.

On the table, he saw an orange envelope with a buff slip beside it. Impelled by an unaccountable premonition, he picked up the form and read: Come at once. I want you.

Ellen.

Fitch was already on his way to Rye. The Saint was thorough.

As Lemuel crumpled the telegram with furious hands, the bee seemed to be roaring directly over his head.

Simon Templar gazed thoughtfully at the sky.

"Cloudy," he remarked thoughtfully. "The weather forecasts said it would be cloudy to-day, and for once they're right."

Teal looked back over his shoulder.

"That aëroplane's flying pretty low," he said.

"Owing to cloud," said the Saint; and the detective glanced at him quickly.

"What's the big idea, Saint?" he demanded.

Simon smiled.

"I've been getting rather tired of answering that question lately," he said.

They had reached a clump of trees at the edge of the wide lawn, a couple of hundred yards away from the house; and here the Saint stopped. Both the men turned.

The aëroplane was certainly low-it was flying under five hundred feet, and the racket of its engine was deafening.

"I know your habits," said Teal sourly. "If you weren't here with me, Saint, I'd be inclined to think you were up there- getting ready to do some illegal bombing practice." He was watching the aëroplane with screwed-up eyes, while he took a fresh purchase on his gum; and then he added suddenly: "Do any of the other guys in your gang fly?"

"There ain't no gang," said the Saint, "and you ought to know it. They broke up long ago."

"I wouldn't put it above you to have recruited another," said Teal.

Simon leaned against a tree. His hand, groping in a hollow in the trunk, found a tiny switch. He took the lever lightly between his finger and thumb. He laughed, softly and lazily, and Teal faced round.

"What's the big idea?" he demanded again. "I don't know what it is, but you're playing some funny game. What did you fetch me out here to tell me?"

"Nothing much," answered the Saint slowly. "I just thought--"

But what he thought was not destined to be known. For all at once there came a titanic roar of sound, that was nothing like the roar of the aëroplane's engine-a shattering detonation that rocked the ground under their feet and hurled them bodily backwards with the hurricane force of its breath.

"Good God!"

Teal's voice came faintly through the buzzing in the Saint's ears.

Simon was scrambling rockily to his feet.

"Something seems to have bust, old watermelon."

"F-ZXKA," Teal was muttering. "F-ZXKA; F-ZXKA--"

"Ease up, old dear!" Simon took the detective by the shoulder. "It's all over. Nothing to rave about."

"I'm not raving," snarled Teal. "But I've got the number of that machine--"

He was starting off across the lawn, and the Saint followed. But there was nothing that they or anyone else could do, for Francis Lemuel's house was nothing but a great mound of rubble under a mushroom canopy of smoke and settling dust, through which the first tongues of flame were starting to lick up towards the dark clouds. And the aëroplane was dwindling into the mists towards the north.

Teal surveyed the ruin; and then he looked round at the crowd that was pattering up the road.

"You're arrested, Saint," he said curtly; and Simon shrugged.

They drove to Tenterden in the Saint's car, and from there Teal put a call through to headquarters.

"F-ZXKA," he said. "Warn all stations and aërodromes. Take the crew, whatever excuse they try to put up, and hold them till I come."

"That's the stuff," said the Saint approvingly; and Teal was so far moved as to bare his teeth.

"This is where you get what's coming to you," he said.

It was not Teal's fault that the prophecy was not fulfilled.

Simon drove him back to London with a police guard in the back of the car; and Teal was met almost on the doorstep of Scotland Yard with the news that the aëroplane had landed at Croydon. The prisoners, said the message, had put up a most audacious bluff; they were being sent to headquarters in a police car.

"Good!" said Teal grimly; and went through to Cannon Row Police Station to charge the Saint with wilful murder.

"That's what you've got to prove," said the Saint, when the charge was read over to him. "No-I won't trouble my solicitor. I shall be out in an hour."

"In eight weeks you'll be dead," said the detective.

He had recovered some of his old pose of agonized boredom; and half an hour later he needed it all, for the police car arrived from Croydon as the newspaper vans started to pour out of E.C. 4, with the printers' ink still damp on the first news of the outrage of Tenterden.

Two prisoners were hustled into Teal's office-a philosophical gentleman in flying overalls, and a very agitated gentleman with striped cashmere trousers and white spats showing under his leather coat.

"It is an atrrrrocity!" exploded the agitated gentleman. "I vill complain myself to ze Prime Ministair! Imbecile! Your poliss, zey say I am arrrrest-zey insult me-zey mock zem-selves of vat I say-zey trreat me like I vas a crriminal-me! But you shall pay--"

"And who are you pretending to be?" asked Teal, lethargically unwrapping a fresh wafer of his favourite sweetmeat.

"Me? You do not know me? You do not know Boileau--"

Teal did not.

"Take that fungus off his face," he ordered, "and let's see what he really looks like."

Two constables had to pinion the arms of a raving maniac while a third gave the agitated gentleman's beard a sharp tug. But the beard failed to part company with its foundations; and, on closer examination, it proved to be the genuine home-grown article.

Teal blinked as the agitated gentleman, released, danced in front of his desk, semaphoring with frantic arms.

"Nom d' un nom! You are not content viz insult me, you must attack me, you must pull me ze beard! Aaaaah!"

Words failed the man. He reeled against the desk, clawing at his temples.

Teal ran a finger round the inside of his collar, which seemed to have suddenly become tight.

Then the philosophical gentleman in overalls spoke.

" 'E 'as say true, m'sieu. 'E is M. Boileau, ze French Finance Minister, 'oo come ovair for confer--"

Teal signed to one of the constables.

"Better ring up the Embassy and see if someone can come over and identify him," he said.

"Merde alors!" screamed the agitated gentleman. "I vill not vait! I demand to be release!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to be identified, sir," said Teal unhappily.

And identified M. Boileau was, in due course, by a semi-hysterical official from the Embassy; and Teal spent the most uncomfortable half-hour of his life trying to explain the mistake.

He was a limp wreck when the indignation meeting finally broke up; and the telephoned report of the explosives expert who had been sent down to Tenterden did not improve Teal's temper.

"It was a big aërial bomb-we've found some bits of the casing. We didn't find much of Lemuel. . . ."

"Could it have been fired by a timing device?"

"There's no trace of anything like that, sir. Of course, if there had been, it might have been blown to bits."

"Could it have been fired electrically?"

"I haven't found any wires yet, sir. My men are still digging round the wreckage. On the other hand, sir, if it comes to that, it might have been fired by radio, and if it was radio we shan't find anything at all."

Teal had his inspiration some hours too late.

"You'd better search the grounds," he said, and gave exact instructions.

"Certainly, sir. But what about the aëroplane that went over?"

"That," said Teal heavily, "contained the French Minister of Finance, on his way to a reparations conference."

"Well, it couldn't have been him," said the expert sagely, and Teal felt like murder.

A few days later the Saint called on Stella Dornford. He had not seen her since the morning when he dropped her on his way to Jermyn Street, and she had not communicated with him in any way.

"You must think me a little rotter," she said. "It seems such a feeble excuse to say I've been too busy to think of anything--"

"I think it's the best excuse in the world," said the Saint.

He pointed to the ring on her finger.

"When?"

"Ten days ago. I-I took your advice, you see. . . ."

Simon laughed.

" 'To those about to marry,' " he quoted softly. "Well, you must come round to a celebratory supper, and bring the Beloved. And Uncle Simon will tell you all about married life."

"Why, are you married?"

He shook his head. For a moment the dancing blue eyes were quiet and wistful. And then the old mocking mirth came back to them.

"That's why I'll be able to tell you so much about it," he said.

Presently the girl said: "I've told Dick how much we owe you. I'll never forget it. I don't know how to thank you--"

The Saint smiled, and put his hands on her shoulders.

"Don't you?" he said.