The Saint and Mr. Teal

Chapter I

A CERTAIN Mr. Peabody, known to his wife as Oojy-Woojy, was no fool. He used to say so himself, on every possible occasion; and he should have known. He was a small and rather scraggy man with watery eyes, a melancholy walrus moustache, and an unshakable faith in the efficiency of the police and the soundness of his insurance company — which latter qualities may provide a generous explanation of an idiosyncrasy of his which in anyone else would have been described as sheer and unadulterated foolishness.

Mr. Peabody, in fact, is herewith immortalized in print for the sole and sufficient reason that he was the proprietor of a jewellery shop in Regent Street which the Green Cross gang busted one night in August. Apart from this, the temperamentalities, destiny, and general Oojy-Woojiness of Mr. Peabody do not concern us at all; but that busting of his shop was the beginning of no small excitement.

Mr. Peabody's idiosyncrasy was that of displaying his choicest wares in his window — and leaving them there for the passing crowd to feast their eyes upon. Not for him the obscurity of safes and strong rooms: that was only the fate of the undistinguished bulk of his stock, the more commonplace articles of virtu. His prize pieces were invariably set out behind the glass on velvet-lined shelves lighted by chastely shielded bulbs. An act of deliberate criminal foolishness, from the point of view of almost anyone except Mr. Peabody. From the point of view of the Green Cross boys, an act of sublime charity.

It was a very good bust, from the point of view of a detached connoisseur — carried out with all the slick perfection of technique of which the Green Cross boys were justly proud. The coup was no haphazard smash-and-grab affair, but a small-scale masterpiece of which every detail had been planned and rehearsed until the first and only public presentation could be guaranteed to flutter through its allotted segment of history with the smooth precision of a ballet. Mr. Peabody's emporium had been selected for the setting out of a list of dozens of other candidates simply on account of that aforesaid idiosyncrasy of his, and every item to be taken had been priced and contracted for in advance.

Joe Corrigan was booked to drive the car; Clem Enright heaved the brick; and Ted Orping, a specialist in his own line, was ready with the bag. In the space of four seconds, as previously timed by Ted Orping's stop watch, a collection of assorted bijouterie for which any receiver would cheerfully have given two thousand pounds in hard cash vanished from Mr. Peabody's shattered window with the celerity of rabbits fading away from a field at the approach of a conjuror with an empty top hat. A gross remuneration, per head of the parties concerned, of five hundred pounds for the job — if you care to look at it that way. Fast money; for on the big night the performance went through well within scheduled limits.

It was precisely two o'clock in the morning when Clem Enright's brick went through Mr. Peabody's plate glass, and the smash of it startled a constable who was patrolling leisurely down his beat a matter of twenty yards away. Ted Orping's hands flew in and out of the window with lightning accuracy while the policeman was fumbling with his whistle and lumbering the first few yards towards them. Before the Law had covered half the distance the job was finished, and the two Green Cross experts were piling into the back of the car as it jolted away and gathered speed towards Oxford Circus. The stolen wagon whizzed over the deserted crossroads as the first shrill blasts of alarm wailed into the night far behind.

"Good work," said Ted Orping, speaking as much for his own share in the triumph as for anybody else's.

He settled back in his corner and pulled at the brim of his hat — a broad-shouldered, prematurely old young man of about twenty-eight, with a square jaw and two deep creases running down from his nose and past the corners of his thin mouth. He was one of the first examples of a type of crook that was still new and strange to England, a type that founded itself on the American hoodlum, educated in movie theatres and polished on the raw underworld fiction imported by F. W. Woolworth — a type that was breaking into the placid and gentlemanly paths of Old World crime as surely and ruthlessly as Fate. In a few years more Ted's type was no longer to seem strange and foreign; but in those days he was an innovation, respected and feared by his satellites. He had learned to imitate the transatlantic callousness and pugnacity so well that he was no longer conscious of playing a part. He had the bullying swagger, the taste for ostentatious clothes, the desire for power; and he said "Oh, yeah?" with exactly the right shade of contempt and belligerence.

"Easy pickings," said Clem Enright.

He tried to ape Ted Orping's manner, but he lacked the physical personality. He was a cockney sneak thief born and bred, with the pale peaked face and shifty eyes of his inheritance. Alone and sober, his one idea was to avoid attracting attention; but in the shelter of Ted Orping's massive bravado he found his courage expanding.

He also lolled back in the seat and produced a battered yellow packet of cigarettes.

"Fag?"

Ted Orping looked down his nose.

"Y'ain't still smokin' those things?"

He twitched the packet out of the cockney's fingers and flipped it over the side. A rolled-gold cigarette case came out of his pocket and pushed into Clem Enright's ribs under a black-rimmed thumbnail.

"Take 'alf a dozen."

Clem helped himself, and struck a match. They lounged back again, exhaling the fumes of cheap Turkish tobacco with elaborate relish. Either of them would secretly have preferred the yellow gaspers to which they were accustomed, but Ted Orping insisted on their improved status.

Suddenly he leaned forward and punched the driver on the shoulder.

"Hey, Joe! Time you were turning east. The Flying Squad ain't after us tonight."

The driver nodded. They were speeding up the west side of Regent's Park, and the driving mirror showed no lights behind.

"And easy on the gas," Ted snapped. "You don't want to be copped for dangerous driving."

The car spun round a bend with a sharpness that sent Ted Orping lurching back into his corner, and held its speed. They drove east, and turned south again.

Ted Orping scowled. He wanted all his colleagues to acknowledge him as the boss, the Big Fellow, whose word was law — to be obeyed promptly and implicitly. Joe Corrigan didn't seem to cotton to the idea. And he had broad shoulders too — and grey Irish eyes that didn't flinch readily. Independent. Maybe too independent, Ted Orping thought. It was Joe Corrigan who had insisted that they should go into a pub and have a bracer before they did the job, and who had got his way against Ted Orping's opposition. Maybe Joe was getting too big for his boots… Ted ran a hand over the hard bulge at his hip, thoughtfully. Four or five years ago the independence of Joe Corrigan would never have stimulated Ted to thoughts of murder, but he had been taught that when a guy got too big for his boots he was just taken for a ride.

The car swung left, violently, and then to the right again. They were droning down a street of sombre houses on the east side of the park. One or two upper windows were lighted, but there were no pedestrians about — only another long-nosed silver-grey speed wagon drawn up by the curb with its side lights dimmed facing towards them.

All at once their brakes went on with a screaming force that jerked the two men behind forward in their seats. They skidded to a stop by the pavement, with their bonnet a dozen feet away from the nose of the silver car.

Ted Orping cursed and hitched himself further forward. His broad hand crimped on the driver's shoulder.

"What the hell—"

He fell back as the driver turned, with his jaw dropping.

The two Green Cross boys sat side by side, staring at the face of the man in the heavy leather coat that had been worn by Joe Corrigan when they set out. It was a lean sunburnt face, recklessly clean-cut and swashbuckling in its rakish keenness of line, in which the amazingly clear and mocking blue eyes gleamed like chips of crystal. There was a coolness, an effrontery, a fighting ruthlessness about it that left them momentarily speechless. It was the most dangerously challenging face that either of them had ever seen. But it was not the face of Joe Corrigan.

"The jaunt is over, boys," said the face amiably. "I hope you've had a good time and caught no colds. And thanks for the job — it was about the best I've been able to watch. You two ought to take it up professionally — you'd do well."

Ted Orping wetted his lips.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The driver smiled. It was a benevolent, almost seraphic smile, that bared a glint of ivory white teeth; and yet there was nothing reassuring about it. It was as full of the hair-trigger threat of sudden death as the round hollow snout of the gun that slid up over the back of the seat in the driver's hand. Ted Orping had seen smiles like that in the movies, and he knew.

"I am the Saint," said the driver gently. "I see you've heard of me. But perhaps you thought I'd gone out of business. Well, you can work it out. I'm sorry about Joe, but he kind of had an accident coming out of that pub. It seemed as if you were left without a driver, but I hated to disappoint you — so I took his place… You might keep your hands on your lap, Ted — it makes me nervous when they're out of sight."

The muzzle of the gun shifted slightly, so that Ted Orping looked down the barrel. His hands ceased to stray behind him, and lay still.

The Saint reached a long arm over to the floor at Ted Orping's feet and picked up the bag. He weighed it, speculatively and judiciously, under the two Green Cross boys' noses.

"A nice haul — as you were both saying," he murmured. "I couldn't have done better myself. But I think it's worth too much money for you lads to have all to yourselves. You might want to move up another stage in life and take to cigars — and cigars, Ted, need a strong tum-tum when you aren't used to them. So I'll just take care of it for you. Give my love to Joe and the rest of the gang; and if you hear any more of those rumours about my having retired you'll know what to say. And I hope you'll say it. It cannot be too widely known—"

Ted Orping came to life, grimly and desperately. It may have been that the actual sight of so much hard-won wealth vanishing into the hands of the mocking hijacker in front spurred him to the gamble; it may have been that he had to prove to himself that he wasn't afraid of any other man who carried a gun; or it may only have been the necessity of retaining Clem Enright's respect. Whatever his motive was, he took his chance, with a blaze of sheer animal courage.

He hurled himself forward out of his seat and grabbed at the gun in the Saint's hand. And the Saint pressed the trigger.

There was no report — only a sharp liquid hiss. A shining jet of ammonia leapt from the muzzle of the gun like a pencil of polished glass, and struck Ted Orping accurately on the bridge of his nose. It sprayed out over his face from the point of impact, burning his eyeballs with its agonizing sting and filling his lungs with pungent choking vapours. Orping fell back with a gasp; and Simon Templar opened the door.

He stepped out onto the pavement, and his gun still covered the two men. Clem Enright cringed away.

"So long, Clem," said the Saint genially.

He ran down to the other car. The engine was ticking smoothly over as he reached it, and he swung himself nimbly in beside the girl who sat waiting at the wheel. The car swung out and skimmed neatly past the front wheels of the motionless bandit wagon ahead; and the Saint turned to wave a farewell to the two helpless men as they went by.

Then he sank back with a laugh and lighted a cigarette.

"Haven't you ever noticed that the simplest ideas are usually the best?" he remarked. "That old water-pistol gag, for instance: could anything be more elementary, and yet more bright and beautiful? I see that our technique is not yet perfect, Pat — all we need is to discover some trick with the smell of the Ark still wafting fruitily about it, and we could clean up the world."

Patricia Holm steered the huge Hirondel round another corner, and the wind caught her fair hair as she turned to smile at him.

"Simon," she said dispassionately, "you have no conscience."

"None," said Simon Templar.

He was wearing a dinner jacket under his leather coat, and Joe Corrigan's cap went into a pocket in the car. Half an hour later they were strolling into the Breakfast Club for a celebratory plate of bacon and eggs and a final turn round the minute dance floor. And to any casual observer who saw the Saint drifting debonairly through the throng of elegant idlers, exchanging words with an acquaintance here and there, straightening the head waiter's tie, and at last demolishing a large dish of the club's world-famous specialty, it would have been difficult to believe that the police and the underworld alike reckoned him the most dangerous man in England — or that a matter of mere minutes earlier he had been giving a convincing demonstration that his hand had lost none of its cunning.

It amused Simon Templar to be taken for one of those elegant idlers, just as it amused him to be known for something totally different in other and no less exclusive circles. He was due to derive a great deal of amusement from the fact that a certain gentleman from St. Louis counted him the most serious obstacle to a well-planned campaign that was just coming to maturity.

Chapter II

THE city of St. Louis was not particularly proud of Tex Goldman. It knew him as a man who had successfully "beaten the rap" on five notorious occasions, who was no less at home with typewriters and pineapples than he was with the common heater, who had a choice selection of judges and police captains eating out of his hand, and who secured whatever subscriptions to the funds of "protection" he set out to collect. He ranked third on the city's roll of public enemies, and he made no secret of his aspirations to an even higher position; but nearly nine months ago an unfortunate incident had dictated a lengthy holiday. Tex Goldman had taken on the task of reducing a recalcitrant section of the Chinese laundry proprietors to a proper sense of their responsibilities, and in the process one of his bullets had found its mark in the heart of the leader of a powerful tong. Before nightfall the war gongs were beating for him; and Tex Goldman, who was no coward, took the advice of his friends and left St. Louis for his health.

He headed for New York, and felt homesick. He was used to being recognized as a big shot, but he found that Manhattan Island scored him as a smalltown hoodlum. When it formed any other estimate of him, the result was a warning to watch his step and pipe down. The Great Wet Way had its own emperors, who were not disposed to encourage competition. If he had been a smaller man he could probably have found a billet for his heater in one of the Broadway czars' bodyguards; if he had been bigger he might have negotiated for a little kingdom of his own; but Tex Goldman in those days came just between the useful extremes, and he wasn't wanted. Also he had a tip that the tong's hatchet men were close behind him. There was plenty of jack in his pocket, and for reasons known only to himself his thoughts wandered to a holiday in the Old World.

He came to England, looked around, and thought of business.

He was a big man running to fat, a little thin on top, with a round blue jowl and cold black eyes. A killer by nature and experience, of the authentic type that Ted Orping tried to emulate. He wore a yellow belted overcoat and a solitaire diamond in his tie; and the one thing he knew all about was how to pay for such adornments without wearing himself out in honest labour. He studied London and called it soft.

"There's a fortune to be picked up here by any man who ain't too particular," he said. "But you got to get organized. What's the use of a few bum stick-up men who've scarcely learnt to tell one end of a rod from the other? They're just nibbling at it — and they got the police scared already. All they want is pulling together by a man who knows the racket, and that guy's name is Tex Goldman."

He said that to Mr. Ronald Nilder, who was not a willing audience.

"You won't get away with it over here," said Mr. Nilder. "They're hot on murder in this country, and you can't bribe the police over anything big."

"You gotta show me," said Tex Goldman.

He extinguished a half-smoked cigar and lighted a fresh one. Tex Goldman never smoked more than half a cigar, and he paid two bucks for each of them.

"Can't bribe the dicks, huh? Are you tellin' me that no policeman ever took graft? Sure, the London police are wonderful — they ain't even human… Forget it, Nilder. You can bribe anyone if you make it big enough. Cuts in police pay mean men who want more money, and they got a sense of grievance that eases their consciences."

Mr. Nilder sat on the edge of a chair and twirled the handle of his umbrella. He was a well-fed and nattily dressed little man with close-set eyes and a loose lower lip. Tex Goldman knew what he was, despised him heartily, and intended to make use of him.

"I don't like it, Mr. Goldman."

"You ain't asked to like it or not like it," said the man from St. Louis bluntly. "All you got to do is take your orders from me and cash your shakedown, and you can put your feelings where they belong. You got a dandy little motor launch, and you got connections on the other side of the ditch. You just be a good boy and run the guns over for me as I order 'em, or do anything else I tell you with that boat of yours, and you and me will mix in fine. Otherwise Scotland Yard might hear some more about your vice racket."

Mr. Nilder winced slightly. He disliked hearing his business described so candidly. The Cosmolite Vaudeville Agency, which he controlled, was a prosperous organization that supplied cabaret artistes to every part of Europe and South America. Frequently the cabarets concerned were not so purely artistic as they might have been; but since the girls who went there had no relatives there were no embarrassing inquiries. Mr. Nilder was not troubled with moral scruples. He was a simple tradesman, like a greengrocer or a butcher, supplying a continuous demand; and his sole object was to avoid the attention of the police. The "cabaret" game was already almost played out, but there were other and less widely advertised channels which Mr. Ronald Nilder knew.

"It means prison if we're caught, Mr. Goldman," he said.

"It means prison if you're caught doing other things," said Goldman significantly. "But don't worry — I shouldn't ask you to do any shooting. All you gotta do is run those heaters, and you start Monday."

He peeled a dozen ten-pound notes off a thick pack and slipped them contemptuously across the table. Nilder picked them up, fingered them nervously, and pushed them into his pocket. He knew that Goldman could order him about as he willed — he was afraid of the big man from St. Louis, afraid of his cold black eyes and deep masterful voice, even more afraid of what the man from St. Louis could have told the police. But he was not happy. Violence was not in his line — not even when he had to take no active part in it, and was still paid generously.

He rose and picked up his hat.

"All right, Mr. Goldman. I'll be going."

"Just a minute."

Tex Goldman came out of his chair, stepped across to the smaller man. He caught Nilder by the lapel of his coat, quite gently; but his cold black eyes drilled into the other's brain like jagged iron.

"Talking of telling things to the dicks don't sound so good between friends, Nilder. Let's say I just mentioned it in case you didn't feel like listening to reason. You don't want to go thinking up any ideas like that by yourself. You play ball with me, and I'll play ball with you. But any time you think it might pay you to squeal…"

He never sounded like finishing the sentence. And Ronald Nilder went away with that deliberate half-threat ringing in his head, and the memory of Tex Goldman's grim stare before his eyes.

The interview took place at Tex Goldman's apartment. Tex had started his sojourn in London at a West End hotel, but with the prospect of a longer stay in front of him he had moved out to an apartment of his own in an expensive modern block near Baker Street. It was the nearest approach he could find to the American model to which he was accustomed, and on the whole it suited him very well. The rent was exorbitant, but it had the advantage of being on the first floor with an, emergency fire-escape exit down to an alleyway which communicated with a dirty lane in the rear.

It was eight o'clock when Nilder left. Goldman dressed himself leisurely in a new suit of evening clothes, put on a white Panama hat, and went down to W. 1.

He dined at the Berkeley, without haste, and went on later to a night club that was still waiting to be invaded by the after-theatre patrons. There was a girl there who came to his table — he had met her there regularly before. Tex Goldman ordered champagne.

"Guess you're too good for this, baby," he said. "Why don't you take a rest?"

He had asked that before; and she made the equivalent of every other answer she had given him.

"Would I get a lot of rest in your flat?"

Tex Goldman grinned and discarded another half-smoked cigar. He knew what he wanted, knew how to get it, and had an infinite capacity for patience in certain directions.

It was after two o'clock when he left the club — and the girl — and took a taxi back to Baker Street. In his apartment he exchanged his tail coat for a silk dressing gown, removed his collar and tie, and settled himself in an armchair over an evening paper.

Half an hour later his bell rang, and he went to open the door. A red-eyed Ted Orping stood outside, looking rather dishevelled in spite of his flashy clothes, with Clem Enright a little behind him.

"Well?"

There was trouble plainly marked on every feature of Ted Orping's face, ratified in the peaked countenance of Clem Enright; but Tex Goldman showed no emotion. He let the Green Cross boys pass, closed the door after them, and followed them through to the sitting room. Clem Enright sat awkwardly on the edge of an upright chair, while Ted Orping flung himself asprawl in an armchair and kept his hat on. Naturally it was Ted Orping who was the spokesman.

"Boss — we were hijacked."

Goldman gauged the length of his cigar butt calmly.

"How?"

"It was Corrigan's fault. Joe said he must have a drink before we did the job, an' he drove us round to Sam Harp's. Sam don't care what time it is if he's awake. We had a couple, an' came out — Clem an' me first, an' Joe last. Least, we thought it was Joe. We got in the car and drove off. We could only see what we thought was Joe's back, driving, an' we went up Regent Street to Peabody's. Did the job properly, just as it'd been fixed, an' hopped back in the wagon. There was a copper — a bull — on the beat, but he never got near us. We went around Regent's Park, an' then this guy cut out of it an' stopped. I still thought it was Joe. I asked him what he was playin' at, an' then he turned round. It wasn't Joe."

"Who was it?"

"The Saint." Ted looked at Goldman grimly and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "He stuck us up with a gun, an' took the bag. I went for him, an' his gun squirted ammonia in my face. He had another wagon fixed for his getaway. I was blind for a quarter of an hour. Clem had to drive me here."

Tex Goldman's cigar had gone out. He shredded it into the wastepaper basket.

"Where's Corrigan?"

"I dunno. We come straight here. There wasn't nothing we could do."

Goldman sat down. His square stubby fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, while his narrowed black eyes remained fixed on Ted Orping's face.

"We ain't here to be hijacked," he said. "We're here for all we can get. Get it quick — no mistakes — and scram. No one's gonna give us the runaround. Not dicks, Saints, nor anyone else. Anyone that gets in the way — well, it'll be just too bad about him. You got a gun. It's meant to be used. Back where I come from, we shoot fast and often. It saves trouble."

"Sure."

The black eyes swivelled round to Clem.

"You got a gun, Enright?"

"N-no, sir."

Goldman hitched open a drawer and dragged out a heavy blue-black automatic and a box of cartridges. He tossed the items, one after another, across the room to the little cockney.

"You got one now — and I didn't give it you for ornament. There's no room for pikers or double-crossers in this racket. Anyone that don't toe the line is only safe in one place. Anyone — understand?"

"Y-yes, sir."

Clem Enright turned the gun over in his hand, felt the weight of it, tested his fingers round the grip. He put it away in his pocket, reluctantly, with the box of cartridges, his eyes gleaming. He drew a deep breath and held some of it back, giving himself a chest, and conscious all the time of Ted Orping's critical scrutiny.

"I'll use it, Mr. Goldman," he said.

The whir of the front-door buzzer broke in on them sharply, sounding again and again, insistently.

Tex Goldman raised the lid of a cigar box.

"See who it is, Ted."

Orping slouched up and went out. The front door opened, and Joe Corrigan came bursting through into the sitting room. Ted Orping followed him in. Corrigan's hair was awry, his tie loose and askew; and his clothes looked as if he had been pulled backwards through a hedge. He stood just inside the room, breathing heavily, glancing from one face to another.

Goldman surveyed him with distaste.

"What d'you mean by coming here like that?" he demanded harshly. "Are you aiming to tell the world I'm in the habit of entertaining a pack of hoboes in my apartment at three o'clock in the morning?"

"I'm sorry," Corrigan said stolidly. "I thought I'd better come here at once and tell you what happened."

"I've heard most of it. What happened to you?"

Corrigan rubbed the palms of his hands down his trousers.

"We went to Sam Harp's, and I was coming out last. Ted was in a hurry to go, and I stayed to pay for the last round. There's a dark corridor between Sam's private room and the side door, and as I came down there I was caught from behind. There was two of 'em — whoever they were — and they had a handkerchief with chloroform on it. I sort of passed out. When I woke up I was lying on a heap of bricks in a building lot just next to Sam's."

"What did Harp say about it?"

"He didn't know anything. Said he locked the door after he let us in, and couldn't see that anyone had forced it."

"Have you any idea who the other guy was — besides the Saint?"

"I don't know, Mr. Goldman. I didn't hear neither of them speak—"

Corrigan's voice died away. The cold black eyes of Tex Goldman, screwed down to vicious pinpoints, were boring into his face with an inclement ferocity that appalled him. Ted Orping started up — one abrupt menacing movement. Clem Enright moved his feet restlessly, his mouth opening in stupid perplexity.

Tex Goldman's cigar waved a slight gesture of restraint.

"You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned the Saint, Corrigan," said the gunman silkily. "Who told you that was who it was?"

"I don't… Nobody told me, Mr. Goldman. I–I s'pose—"

"You skunk!"

Goldman moved with startling suddenness, swiftly and savagely. He pulled himself out of his chair and stepped up to within a foot of the Irishman. His eyes never left the other's face. One of his hands grasped the man's coat collar; the other dived into Corrigan's pockets, one after another, like a striking snake. It came out of one trouser pocket with a roll of new one-pound notes.

He flung Corrigan back. Ted Orping seized Corrigan from behind as the Irishman's fists clenched.

"You dirty double-crossing rat! So you sold us to the Saint!"

Goldman tore the notes across and across, and scattered them over the floor.

"Get out of here!"

"Listen, Goldman — I didn't—"

"Get out!"

Ted Orping twisted the man round and pushed him towards the door. Corrigan's eyes flamed, and he took a pace back into the room. Orping's hand touched his hip.

Then Joe Corrigan turned on his heel and left the apartment.

Tex Goldman looked at Orping steadily. There was a question in Ted Orping's gaze, another question in Tex Goldman's. Temporarily forgotten in his corner, Clem Enright shuffled his feet again, open-mouthed.

"There's only one way to deal with traitors," Goldman said.

Ted Orping nodded. He shrugged, with the callous understanding that he had been taught, and pulled down the brim of his hat. He went out without a word.

He caught Joe Corrigan in the street.

"Walk a little way with me, Joe?"

"You get away from me," grated Corrigan surlily. "I don't want your company."

Ted Orping took his arm.

"Aw, come on, Joe. You don't understand the boss. He's a great guy, but naturally he has to be suspicious. You must admit what you said didn't sound right. I just took his part so's I could try an' make things right for you when he cools off."

"I never double-crossed anyone," said Corrigan. "I dipped a toff's wallet on a bus this morning, and got those notes."

"O' course, Joe. That's what he ought to have thought of. I understand."

They walked up Baker Street from the Marylebone Road crossing. Near the top, a few yards from Regent's Park, Orping steered the other off to the right into a dimly lighted mews. They went a little way down it, and Corrigan stopped.

"What's the idea?" he demanded sullenly. "We don't want to go this way."

Ted Orping looked left and right.

"This'll do," he said.

"What for?"

"Just to give you what's coming to you, rat."

He fired three times before Joe Corrigan could speak

Chapter III

SIMON TEMPLAR came back from Amsterdam a few days later. The items of jewellery which sometimes came his way were never fenced in England — the Saint was far too notorious for that, and caution in the right place was still his longest suit. He travelled by roundabout routes, for his movements were always a subject of absorbing interest to the watchful powers of Scotland Yard. That particular trip took him the best part of a week, but it was worth three thousand pounds to him. He felt no remorse on account of Mr. Peabody. The insurance companies would cover most if not all of the loss, and Mr. Peabody had definitely asked for it. As for those insurance companies, Simon felt that the blow would not be likely to shake their stock to its foundations. In a misguided moment of altruistic zeal he had once attempted to insure his own life, and had discovered that so long as he undertook not to fly aeroplanes, travel in tropical parts, enter into naval or military service, become a lion-tamer or a steeplejack, or in fact do anything whatsoever that might by any conceivable chance endanger the life of a reasonably healthy and intelligent man, the insurance company would be charmed to accept his premiums. His opinion of insurance companies was that they were bloated organizations which were delighted to take anybody's money over risks that had been eliminated from every angle that human ingenuity could foresee. They were fair game so far as he was concerned, and his conscience was even more pachydermatous than usual over their rare misfortunes.

But he came back to a London in which the insurance companies were more worried than they had been for many years.

Patricia Holm met him in the Haymarket, where the Air Union bus decanted him after an uneventful journey from Ostend. One of the first things he saw was a crimson evening newspaper poster proclaiming "Another Bank Hold-up," but he was not immediately impressed. They strolled up to Oddenino's for a cocktail, and she sprang the news on him rather suddenly.

"They got Joe Corrigan," she said.

Simon raised his eyebrows. He read the newspaper cutting which she handed him, and smoked a cigarette.

"Poor devil!.. But what a fool! He shouldn't have gone back — at least, I thought he'd have the sense to put up a good story. Goldman must have caught him out somehow…. Tex is clever!"

The cutting simply described the finding of the body and its identification. Corrigan was the man of doubtful associations with three convictions to his name, and the police were hopeful of making an early arrest.

"I saw Claud Eustace in Piccadilly the day before yesterday," said Patricia. "He as good as told me they hadn't a hope of getting the man who did it."

"I suppose it'd be a long shot if the night porter in Tex's block recognized the photograph," said the Saint thoughtfully. "It isn't particularly flattering to Joe. And the whole Green Cross bunch would have their alibis." He speared a cherry and frowned at it. "Tex might have done it himself — or else it was Ted Orping. I don't see Brother Clem as a cold-blooded killer."

"There've been some odd-looking men hanging about Manson Place," she told him; and the Saint's eyebrows slanted again — dangerously.

"Any trouble?"

"No. But I've been taking care not to come home late at night."

Simon sipped his Bronx and gazed at the Bacchanalian array of shakers and glasses stencilled on the coloured glass behind the bar.

"I expected things would be quiet. Tex isn't the lad to waste his energies on side issues when there's big stuff in the offing. Now that I'm home, South Kensington may get unhealthy. Glory be, Pat — wouldn't you love to see the faces of the local trouts if Tex started spraying S.W.7 with Tommy guns for my benefit?"

It was characteristic of him to turn off the menace with a flippant remark, and yet he knew better than anyone what a threat hung over others in London besides himself — others who had a far sounder claim than he to object to a lavish expenditure of ammunition. The Saint had never cared to live safely; but there were others who held their lives less lightly.

Before dinner was over he had learned more. Things had been happening quickly in London while he had been away, and behind them all he could see the guiding hand of the man from St. Louis. After the fiasco of the Peabody raid it seemed as if Goldman had gone all out for a restoration of confidence in his followers. The work was rapid, ruthlessly thorough, a desperate bid for power under the standards of sudden death. The day after the Peabody raid, another jeweller's shop had been successfully smashed in Bond Street, and on the same night a small safe deposit off the Tottenham Court Road had been blasted open and half emptied while masked men with revolvers held a small crowd at bay and covered the escape of the inside party before the police reached the scene. In those cases the victims were discreet rather than valorous.

It was different at the Battersea branch of the Metropolitan Bank, which the same men held up the following midday. A cashier attempted to reach for a gun under the counter, and was shot dead where he stood. The gang escaped with over two thousand pounds in cash.

While officialdom was still humming with that outrage, another bank in Edmonton was similarly held up; but with the warning of the Metropolitan Bank murder fresh in their memories, the staff showed no resistance.

Conferences were held, and special reserves of armed men in plain clothes were called out to cover as many likely spots as possible. But the police were again outguessed. The next day, an excess of confidence on the part of the management concerned allowed a private car bearing the week's pay envelopes for half a dozen branches of a popular library to leave a bank in the City. It was intercepted at its first stop, the messenger sandbagged, and fifteen hundred pounds in cash stolen. A constable on point duty saw the incident and tried to pursue the bandits' car on the running board of a commandeered taxi. He was shot off it by the fugitives and seriously injured, but it was expected that he would live.

The tale went through a sequence of barefaced brigandage that was staggering.

"We're getting 'em scared," Tex Goldman said. "That's the only way to do it. Hit 'em, and keep on hitting. Don't give 'em time to think. In a month or two they'll be begging for mercy."

"You bet," said Orping.

He had automatically become Goldman's aide-decamp, and held his position by his own audacity. It was he who had shot the Metropolitan Bank cashier — in a week he had become a confirmed killer, with two notches on his gun and the bravado of experience. "Basher" Tope, who had shot the policeman, ran him a fair second.

Ted Orping poured out a dose of brandy from a silver hip flask. He had learned that trick too, and he used it often. Alcohol braced his recklessness up to a point at which murder meant nothing.

"The guy I'm wantin' to see again is the Saint," he said.

"You'll get your chance," said Goldman. "We'll know about it the minute he comes home. I'd like to see him myself."

He might or might not have been pleased to know that Simon Templar shared that wish with him in no uncertain manner.

As far as the Saint was concerned, the desired opportunity came his way with a promptness for which he had only a stretch of coincidence to thank. On the night when some of the events already mentioned were told to Simon they had dined at a favourite restaurant of theirs in Beak Street, a quiet little Spanish eating-house where the food was good and cheap and the crowd neither fashionable nor pseudo-Bohemian. It was some time after eleven o'clock when they left, and wandered through side streets towards Shaftesbury Avenue with the vague idea of having another cup of coffee somewhere before going home. They were just turning a corner when Simon saw the man from St. Louis emerging from a doorway. In a flash Simon had caught Patricia's arm and jerked her back into the narrow lane from which they had just been turning. He leaned against the wall, covering her with his body, with his broad back turned to the Yankee gunman.

"Tex himself!" he said. "Pretend to be powdering your nose — get out a mirror."

His ambition to see Tex Goldman again included a time and place of his own choosing, with the circumstances carefully reviewed and his plan of campaign completely polished — not a chance encounter in a back street that would do little more than advertise his return.

In the girl's mirror, he saw Goldman step into a taxi and drive off. Patricia saw the gunman for the first time.

"That's the boy who's causing all the trouble. And I wonder what he's doing around here tonight?"

They walked on, and Simon studied the doorway that had exhaled the new menace to the peace of London. A small illuminated sign over the lintel announced it as the Baytree Club. The door was open, but all that could be seen was a short passage leading to a flight of stairs, from beyond which came subdued sounds of music. It appeared to be one of those centres of furtive gaiety which one passes almost without noticing in daylight, and which suddenly become attractive when the neon signs wake up and the unprepossessing street outside is hidden in a kindly gloom.

The Saint stood on the opposite pavement with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth and surveyed the premises in a contemplative silence. A private car turned into the street and drew up outside the doorway to exude two men who went down the passage and up the stairs.

"Feel like a spot of night life, Pat?" queried the Saint.

There was a promise of mischief in his gaze. It might have come to anything or nothing, as the Fates decreed, but he felt that he would like to know more about a place where Tex Goldman descended to common or garden frivolity.

She nodded.

"O.K., boy."

They were crossing the road when the Saint's keen ears became aware that the music inside the club had stopped. There was nothing very remarkable in that, for even the most energetic orchestras must rest for a few moments now and then to expand their lungs and gargle. And yet it made the Saint hesitate. Somehow he associated that stoppage with the arrival of the two men who had just gone in — and the peculiar fact that their car was still standing outside, where parking was not allowed. Perhaps the glimpse he had had of Tex Goldman leaving the same premises a few minutes before had made him unduly suspicious. He turned off diagonally along the road, drawing Patricia with him. He seemed to hear the muffled sounds of some commotion inside the club — a commotion that was rather more than the usual babble of conversation that springs up between dances.

And then he heard the sound of feet pelting down the stairs.

He guided Patricia into the nearest porch, as if he were merely an innocent young citizen taking his girl friend home from a movie, and again used her mirror inconspicuously. He saw the two men dash out of the doorway and plunge into their car, and before they disappeared he had seen that the lower halves of their faces were covered by their white evening scarves.

The car pulled out and whirled up the street, passing them where they stood. Other feet were pounding down the steps of the club, and Simon looked round and saw the owner of the first pair reach the pavement. He was a frantic-looking young man with his bow tie draggling loose down his shirt front, and he yelled "Police!" in a voice that echoed down the street. In a few seconds he was joined by others with the same cry. One or two pale-faced girls crowded out behind the leading men.

Simon glanced after the departing car. He could still see its tail light as it was swinging round the next corner, and his hand flew to his hip…

It stayed there. His other hand followed suit, on the other hip. With his coat swept back behind his forearms, he lounged over towards the panic-stricken mob on the pavement. A police whistle was shrilling somewhere near by. He might have been able to do some damage to the bandits' car, but the official attention to his tactics might have been more embarrassing than the damage would have been worth. He was not yet ready to take the law into his own hands.

The frantic-looking young man confirmed his guess of what had happened.

"They held us up — it must have been the gang that's been holding up all the banks. Took all our money and the girls' jewellery. We couldn't do anything, or some of the girls might have got hurt… I say! Officer—"

A running policeman had appeared, and the young man joined the general surge towards him. Simon faded away from the group and rejoined Patricia.

"Let's stick around," he said. "If I know anything, Claud Eustace will be along."

He was right in his diagnosis. The chattering crowd gradually filtered back into the club to make its several statements, under the constable's pressure; and a couple of plain-clothes men arrived from Marlborough Street. After a while another taxi entered the street and released a plump, familiar figure. Simon buttonholed him.

"What ho, Claud!" he murmured breezily. "This is a bit late in life for you to take up dancing. Or has someone been trying to buy a box of chocolates after nine o'clock?"

The detective looked at him with a rather strained weariness.

"What are you doing here, Saint?"

"Taking an after-dinner breather. Giving the gastric juices their ozone. I just happened to be around when the fun started."

"Did you see the men?"

Simon nodded.

"Yes. But they were half-masked, of course. I got the number of the car; but it looked new, so I suppose it was stolen."

Teal rubbed his chin.

"If you can wait till I've finished here I'd like to have a talk with you."

"Oke. We'll toddle along to Sandy's and sniff some coffee. See you there."

The Saint took Patricia's arm, and they strolled through to Oxenden Street. Three quarters of an hour later Chief Inspector Teal came in and took his place at the counter.

"Did you get anything useful?" asked the Saint.

"Nothing," said Teal shortly. "The men had scarves over their faces, as you said. They were both in evening dress, which lets you out."

Simon sighed.

"That bee in your bonnet buzzes an awful lot," he protested. "Can't you think up anything better than that?"

"You've been abroad for a week, haven't you?"

"I have. Drinking good beer and associating with some stout Huns. The Secret Service must have been working overtime."

"I didn't suspect you seriously." Teal stirred three lumps of sugar into his cup. "This wholesale murder isn't in your line, is it? A wretched clerk and one of our own uniformed men shot down in a week — and nothing to show for it. It fairly makes your blood boil."

The detective's round face was unwontedly hollow in the cheeks. The failures of the last few hectic days were making their mark on his ponderous self-assurance.

"We've tried all the regulars," he said. "The Green Cross boys are the nucleus of it, we know, but so far they've been able to work a system of alibis that have left us flat. Most of them have come into a lot of money that they can't account for since this trouble started, but that isn't a crime. We had one of their best men in the other day — a fellow named Orping. He was playing the American gangster to the life. Between ourselves, we knocked him about a bit — you know what can be done — but we couldn't shake a thing out of him. I don't like that American line that Orping's got hold of. It looks ugly."

"Any idea where the stuff's being fenced?"

"I'm afraid not. I don't think it's being fenced in this country at all."

Simon Templar smiled inwardly, but he forbore to point a moral.

"Who's the Big Noise?" he asked; and the detective shrugged grimly.

"If we knew that, the trouble would be practically over. There are rumours that it's some sort of Yank, and all the registered aliens have come under observation, but we haven't learned much. Whoever he is, he's got his men right under his thumb. I've never met so many oysters before. The story is that Corrigan was one of the bunch who threatened to squeal, and what happened to him has put the fear of God into everyone else who might have talked."

The Saint pushed his hands into his pockets and gazed at the detective with a faint suggestion of mockery.

"It must have made you wish I was on the road again, Claud. It's something to think that you may have admitted that my reign of terror wasn't so bad after all."

Mr. Teal finished his coffee and unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum. His baby-blue eyes looked the Saint over with a certain seriousness.

"If you only had the sense to keep out of the newspapers and save the assistant commissioner from practising sarcastic remarks on me," he said, "I shouldn't be sorry if you were on the road for a while. You can do things that we can't do officially. We're trying to get special powers, but you know what that's likely to mean. It may take us months — and men will be killed every day while we're helpless. There's only one way to deal with this sort of thing. You've got to fight guns with guns, killing with killing, fear with fear."

They separated on an arrangement to lunch together in three days' time, which was the friendliest parting they had had for many months. It rather tickled Simon to think how the advent of a common enemy might make a branded outlaw almost persona grata with the Law, merely because his killings were more discriminate.

Patricia and the Saint drove boldly back to Manson Place in a taxi. There was a man tinkering with a motorcycle at the open end of the cul-de-sac: Simon saw him look up as the taxi passed, and reckoned that Tex Goldman would shortly be receiving some interesting news.

Curiously enough, it did not occur to him that a sharp pair of eyes in the car that had carried the hold-up men away from the Baytree Club might have noticed him where he stood in the street a few doors from the scene of the crime.

He paid off the taxi and mounted the short flight of steps to the front door of his temporary home circumspectly. The man at the corner still tinkered with his motorcycle. Simon slid aside the pivoted metal plate under the knocker and studied the indicator bulb which it concealed to make sure that no one had entered the house in his absence before he called Patricia to join him. He kept his right hand in his pocket while he unlocked the door and let her through, and his eyes never ceased their watchful survey of the street; but his precautions were a matter of routine. He was not expecting trouble immediately.

"It's rather a pity I let those Green Cross boys know who I was," he said.

There were several letters waiting for him, and he sat on the table in the sitting room and read them while Patricia Holm went to the kitchen to find him a bottle of beer.

She came back with a tray. He heard her put it down, and then he heard a crash.

"Never mind the glass," he said, without looking round. "We can always burgle Woolworth's for some more. Break the lot if you feel like it."

"Simon — I didn't—"

The Saint took his eyes off the letter he was reading. A motorcycle was roaring away with an open exhaust. He saw the broken window, and the shining metal cylinder that lay on the floor; and he moved like a streak of lightning.

The force of his rush hurled the girl, bruised and shaken, onto the settee, and the next instant the Saint's weight was flung on the back of it. The heavy piece of leather-upholstered furniture was toppled over by the impact, so that they lay sheltered behind it.

In another split second the thunder of the explosion deafened them, and the air was full of the whine of flying metal.

Chapter IV

PATRICIA HOLM looked up from her crossword puzzle.

"Give me a word for 'sack' in three letters, boy. M, A, something."

" 'Bag,' " suggested the Saint.

The girl eyed him sinisterly.

"What d'you mean — 'bag'? I said—"

"Eb, A, G," insisted the Saint adenoidally. "Bag. With a code id the doze."

They were having breakfast in the kitchen, for the sitting room was uninhabitable. A representative from a firm of decorators whom the Saint had telephoned came round at eleven and inspected the mess wisely.

"It looks as if there'd been an explosion, sir," he said.

"You're wrong," said the Saint. "A man came in here and sat on a pin after putting baking powder on his gooseberries in mistake for sugar. We're still looking for him."

An assurance was given that the firm would set to work to make good the damage as quickly as possible, and Simon bathed and dressed himself with unaltered cheerfulness. Any philosophically minded man in his position could have found something to be cheerful about that morning, for it was a miracle that the Saint was alive. If the pineapple expert had not misjudged the length of his fuse the end of all Saint stories would have been written in a sticky splash.

Chief Inspector Teal himself called in later. He had the report of the explosives man who had been sent down from the Yard to view the damage. The bomb was a home-made affair of the jam-tin type, but it might have been none the less effective for that. The assortment of broken nails and scrap iron with which it had been lined had pocked the walls and ceiling like a burst of shrapnel, and slit to ribbons the upholstery that had saved the Saint's and Patricia's lives.

"I'm wondering why they should have bothered about you," said Teal.

"Passing over the insult to my fame," drawled the Saint, "maybe someone overheard your suggestion to me last night. Or else there's someone in the gang with a grudge against me — Basher Tope is a Green Cross boy, and you may remember that I once had words with him. But don't take it to heart, Claud — I expect your turn will come."

Teal turned his chewing gum over somnolently.

"You haven't been interfering already, have you?" he inquired; and the Saint smiled.

"I never interfere, Claud. You know that."

"All the same, I think I'd change my address if I were you," said the detective.

Simon stood at the broken window after he had gone, and gazed down the road. The motorcycle man was no longer in sight, and it was unlikely that he would return. The crowd which had filled the road after the explosion the night before had had its eyeful and dispersed, and there were no curious sightseers to replace it that morning. London had taken the attempt on the Saint's life with considerable sang-froid. There were no suspicious loiterers in the vista on which the Saint looked out, but Simon Templar was not deceived.

"There might be something in Claud's idea as far as you're concerned, Pat," he said. "Ted Orping will be trying again, if none of the others do."

"How long is this going on for?" she asked.

"Until Tex Goldman is the Big Shot of London, or material for a front-page inquest," said the Saint. "Tex thinks the first and I think the second."

She slipped a hand through his arm. He was not utterly surprised at her gaiety.

"Gee, boy, it's thrilling!"

"You're a wicked little girl," said the Saint solemnly, "and if anybody hears you talk like that you'll find yourself thrown out of the Y.W.C.A. on your ear… But don't get the idea that London is going to be like Chicago. There are no gangs coming over here. It's just a wildcat scheme out of Tex Goldman's head, but there may be lots of skylarking and song before the swelling goes down."

The general public's interest in Simon Templar's fate was demonstrated more enthusiastically in newsprint than in person. Harassed editors in search of new headlines connected with the gang menace to London seized on the bombing incident joyfully, with an unspoken prayer of thanksgiving for the fact that it happened in time for them to find a position of suitable prominence for it before the country editions went to bed. Morning newspapers work under a tragic disadvantage compared with their brethren of the evening, for they are unable to rush out special editions at any hour of the day in order to scoop an exclusive story. This was the kind of event that they lived for.

The pashas of Fleet Street shared the Saint's knowledge that no seriously Chicagoesque wave of lawlessness was on its way, but it takes more than that to stop an experienced news editor. Fleet Street grabbed at the temporary orgy of violent crime, as it appeared to the public at the moment, with both hands. The Saint's escape was featured on the front page of every national daily; and in it, naturally, was mentioned the essential point that Simon Templar had survived the attack.

This fact was the subject of a short-tempered conference in the neighbourhood of Baker Street.

"Let me go after him with a gun, boss," said Ted Orping. "I'll get him for you."

"Yeah — you'd get him like you got him last time," replied Tex Goldman sourly. "You're just a beginner, and from what I hear that guy was toting a gun before you were weaned. You ain't much to look at, but you're more use alive than dead."

Orping scowled. He had almost thought out a fittingly belligerent retort when Goldman put away his cigar and waved him to silence.

"'Back in St. Louis, when a guy had to be bumped off we had a way of doing it. I'll tell you what it was. We found an empty apartment, or a room, or sump'n, that had a window fixed so's you could see his door. Then a coupla choppers, or maybe sometimes just one, would sit up in that window and watch till he came out. They had a machine gun, and they didn't care how long they waited. Some time he had to come out, and then he got his."

"How could we get a machine gun?" asked Orping skeptically.

"We couldn't — not yet," said Goldman. "But we can get a rifle, can't we? And half the houses in that street are boarding houses or apartments, ain't they? We'll get him — maybe tomorrow."

The simple feasibility of the idea impressed itself gradually on Ted Orping. He nodded.

"I'll do it," he said.

"You won't," said Tex Goldman, without emotion. "With a rifle, it wants a guy who can shoot. Tope can shoot, and I'll be wanting you for another job."

Extraordinarily enough, this was no less than the truth. During the Great War, Basher Tope had found himself pressed into the army with the coming of conscription, and had actually contrived to spend nearly six months of his service outside the military prisons which opened their doors to him as automatically as had the civil prisons with which he was so familiar. The only good mark on his military record was that he had passed his musketry courses with flying colours. It was a rather unexpected accomplishment to find in a man like that, but good shots are born a thousand times more often than they are made. Basher Tope had the gift, and Tex Goldman selected him uncompromisingly for the second assault.

He appeared in Manson Place that afternoon, wearing a stained black suit and hat and an impressive beard. In the fourth house which he tried he secured a front bed-sitting-room on the ground floor from which he had a perfect view of Simon.Templar's front door. He called himself Schwarz, a traveller for a Leipzig firm of publishers, and spoke English so badly that his Hoxton accent was indetectable among the dense clutter of other accents with which- his guttural speech was interspersed. He said he required a room only for two days, and could not stand hotels.

Unfortunately for him, he discarded his beard in the privacy of his room before he went to bed that night. Simon Templar, scanning the street from behind drawn curtains through a pair of field glasses, saw him through the window, and knew what to expect.

"Tex isn't wasting any time," he said.

His reply to the threat called for two curious articles of which at least one is not an ordinarily purchasable commodity; but a closed car had been standing near his back door in the mews all day, and he knew it would not be easy to go out and do his shopping.

He telephoned to a hotel, and to a firm of removers; and at half-past four a motor van drew up outside his front door, and two men in green baize aprons disembarked and rang the bell. They were admitted; and a few minutes later they came out again with a large wardrobe trunk. It was loaded into the van and delivered half an hour later to the hotel. Simon stepped out of it in his room, went unnoticed down the stairs, and in due course was shown up to his room again.

It stands to the credit of his remarkable knowledge of queer markets that he was able to make his purchases in a very short time.

At half-past ten the following morning, another van drew up outside the Saint's house. This time the men unloaded a large packing case and carried it inside. Half an hour later they brought it out again; and Basher Tope, at his window, did not notice that it appeared to be just as heavy when it came out as when it went in.

He stole a few minutes from his post to telephone Tex Goldman.

"Templar seems to be moving out," he said. "'E sent orf some luggage and a packin' case."

"I thought he would," said Goldman, with satisfaction. "Get back to your window and see you don't miss him."

There was a fast car outside the door of the house where Basher Tope had found his lodgings, waiting to take its part in his escape as soon as his job was done. The landlady came up to his room after lunch, and he paid her bill and muttered something about leaving that night. That left him free to depart at any time he pleased without exciting attention, and his task seemed easy. The fast car was only provided in case of unforeseen accidents.

There was certainly an accident, and it was certainly unforeseen.

Shortly afterwards Clem Enright, in a new brown check suit and a bowler hat, called round with a message.

"The boss says you're to get 'im before eight o'clock, an' 'e don't care 'ow yer do it."

"I'll get 'im if it's possible," growled Tope.

Clem Enright found him unresponsive to a line of conversation about "real men like you an' me, wot means to get wot we goes after," and departed huffily in a few minutes. There was a shabby loafer knocking his pipe out on the bumpers of the car as Enright came out, but Clem paid him no attention. Basher Tope had not noticed him, though he had been hanging around there for half an hour.

Simon Templar only required the street to himself for a couple of minutes to do what he had to do, but it took him all that time to get it.

He had left the house in the packing case in which he had returned to it, but one of his purchases had gone in with him and had not come out again. Patricia Holm stayed there to attend to it.

The shabby loafer shuffled out of Manson Place a quarter of an hour after Enright had gone; and in three quarters of an hour more, by devious routes, he became Simon Templar again. It was as Simon Templar that he rang up Chief Inspector Teal.

"If you've any time to spare, Claud, you might like to get the man who shot your policeman. He's staying in Manson Place, and his present job is to murder me."

"Whereabouts is he?" asked the detective eagerly, and Simon grinned into the mouthpiece.

"What's lighting-up time these days? About seven-thirty, isn't it?… Well, why don't you blow down to Queen's Gate about then? Hang around the corner of Manson Place and watch for the excitement."

Basher Tope had a boring afternoon, sitting in his window with a loaded rifle on his knee and his eyes glued to the green-painted door out of which he expected his target to emerge. The twilight came down while he watched, and a lamplighter went round the cul-de-sac to confirm the fact that it was getting near the time limit that Tex Goldman had given him.

And then, at seven-thirty exactly, a ground-floor window in the Saint's house suddenly sprang into a square of light.

Basher Tope leaned forward. He could see clearly into the room, which looked like a dining room. At one end of the table, with his back to the window, he could see the head and shoulders of a man in a grey suit who seemed to be absorbed in a book.

Basher Tope turned sideways and cuddled the stock of the gun slowly into his right shoulder.

A knock came on the door of his room. It made him jump, although he knew the door was locked.

" 'Oo's that?" he grunted.

"A gentleman called Smith rang up, Mr. Schwarz,". said his landlady's voice. "He told me to ask you when's Mr. Brown going out."

It was a prearranged message, and it showed that Tex Goldman was getting impatient. Basher Tope showed his teeth.

"Tell 'im 'e go out now."

He listened to the woman's footsteps receding along the hall, and nestled his cheek once more against the stock of his rifle. Carefully he aligned the sights, the fore-sight exactly splitting the V of the back-sight, and the tip of it resting steadily at six o'clock on a point just below where the Saint's left shoulder blade should have been. His forefinger tightened on the trigger…

Plop!

He could see the dark hole made by the bullet, and his target flopped forward. Even so he fired two more shots to make certain — one more to the heart, one to the back of the head. Then he unscrewed the silencer rapidly, folded the gun over its central hinge, and packed it away in a plain black handbag. He unlocked the door and went out to the waiting car. The engine answered the self-starter instantly.

Chief Inspector Teal idly watched the car turn into Queen's Gate; and then he found Simon Templar beside him.

"Well?" prompted the detective.

"That was Basher Tope," said the Saint casually, jerking a thumb after the retreating car. "He's just killed me."

"What d'you mean — he's just killed you?" snapped the detective. "Why didn't you—"

"I mean, he thinks he has. As a matter of fact, he's pumped three bullets into a tailor's dummy with an old coat of mine on, and it fell over when Pat pulled a string. It's too bad about Basher."

Teal looked down towards the Saint's house and saw three splintery stars in the glass of the lighted window. It seemed as if he were about to say something, but he never said it. The crash of an explosion hit the left side of his face like a blow, and he turned quickly. Less than a hundred yards up Queen's Gate he saw the car that had carried the bearded man away swerving wildly across the road, and the whole of one shattered side of it seemed to be hanging loose.

The car jumped the curb, ran across the pavement, and piled itself up with a second crash against a strip of area railings that bent over like reeds under the impact. Passers-by began running towards it, but Teal stood where he was. His baby-blue eyes returned to the Saint's face.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

Simon slid out a cigarette case. His own eyes were just as steady as Teal's — perhaps even steadier — and he shook his head with a slow motion of great sorrow.

"The way I figure it out, Claud," he said, "I think you'll find he must have had some sort of bomb on board, in case the rifle didn't work. It must have short-circuited, or something, and gone off. It's just too bad about him."

Chapter V

SIMON took Patricia back to the hotel where he had booked a suite. They went there with the comforting feeling that they were not being followed, since at that moment there was no one available to follow them, and had a cocktail in the lounge with the knowledge that it would be sheer bad luck if any of the ungodly happened to come upon them there. Temporarily they had disappeared into the wide world, so far as Tex Goldman's information was concerned.

This hotel was the Dorchester, where the Saint had taken two small but luxurious rooms, with bath, overlooking Hyde Park. They were commended by the fact that they were faced by no other buildings from which shots might be fired; and although they cost twelve pounds a day Simon was untroubled by the thought of what the Sunday-night orators a short distance away at Marble Arch might say about his extravagance if they knew. The accommodation satisfied that instinct in him which demanded the best of everything at any price; and he was not proposing to pay for it himself.

"It is a fascinating thought," said the Saint, nibbling a potato chip, "that there are well over forty million living souls in this great England. If every one of them gave me sixpence, none of them would really miss it, and I should be a millionaire."

''You'd better start collecting," said Patricia.

"I'm afraid it would take too long," said the Saint regretfully. "Especially when we got north of the Tweed. No — we shall have to muck along with what we can collect in lumps from just a few people. Which reminds me that it must be nearly three months since we last thought of Mr. Nilder."

It was quite true that Simon Templar's memory had almost lost hold of that natty and unsavoury little gentleman. Three months ago he had sent him through the post a polite intimation that a gift of about ten thousand pounds to the Actors' Orphanage would be in order, but that had been rather more of a derisive gesture to Mr. Teal than a proposal of serious dimensions. The other exciting things that had happened about that time had driven the idea out of his head, but now it came back to him out of the blue.

He felt that a brief interlude of change from the somewhat strenuous circumstances of his war with Tex Goldman would do him good. Ordinary gang wars, after all, were not strictly in his line. They provided a definite interest in life, and a plentiful supply of skylarking and song, but taken continuously they were a heavy diet. Simon Templar required his share of the lighter things as well.

No one knew better than the Saint that Scotland Yard was perfectly capable of taking care of the ordinary and open forms of law-breaking. In the Saint's various arguments with the Tex Goldman mob, he had done very little more than could have been done by any detective with an original turn of mind and an equal freedom from responsibility to the stolidly unimaginative Powers who draw princely salaries for encumbering with red tape and ballyhoo the perfectly simple process of locating ungodliness and smacking it on the nose. His self-appointed mission was far more concerned with those ugly twists of ungodliness which rarely come within the ken of Scotland Yard at all — and which, if they do come within that myopic ken, are usually found to be so studiously legal that officialdom can find nothing to do about them.

The profession of Mr. Nilder came very fairly into that category.

At that moment Simon Templar knew little about him. A word of information had come his way through one of the mysterious channels by which such words reached his ears. It was a word that would have meant nothing to Scotland Yard, but to the Saint it opened up an avenue of fascinating speculation which he knew he would have to explore some day. Three months ago he had seized on it blindly for a passing need, and now it seemed to him that the time was ripe for investigating it further.

"We ought to know more about Ronald," said the Saint.

It was quite natural for him to turn aside like that to such a comparatively trivial affair, though his life had been called for twice in the last few days and the Green Cross boys were still combing London for him with their message of death. Numbers of beefy men were drawing their weekly pay envelopes for looking after the Green Cross boys, but he was not included in the distribution.

Mr. Ronald Nilder left London the next morning, as a matter of history — alone, and driving the modest two-year-old Buick which was the limit of his ostentation on the road. Simon Templar, also as a matter of history, went with him — though Mr. Nilder did not know this.

The preparation of successful buccaneering raids on the aforesaid members of the ungodly requires an extensive knowledge of the victims' habits. The actual smacking of them on the nose is very spectacular and entertaining to behold; but although it is those high spots of privateering that the chronicler is happiest to record, it is still tediously true that if there were no dull periods of preparation there would be no high spots. You have to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower before you can dive off, and the elevator is often out of order.

Simon figured it was a nice day for a drive. London was in the grip of its brief summer. From Aldgate to the Brompton Road, locked lines of grumbling traffic edged along their routes in rackety crawls of a few feet at a time, and subsided again into jammed immobility with a ceaseless belching of blue smoke and mephitic fumes — an unforgettable procession of tribute to the singular genius of the authorities who had organized enormous gangs of workmen to dig up roads and excavate new and superfluous Underground stations at every point where their activities could set a capstone on the paralytic confusion. The slobbering sultans of Whitehall thought about the colossal tax on petrol, and rubbed their greasy hands gleefully at the idea of the tens of thousands of gallons that were being spewed out into space for the pleasure of keeping engines running between two-yard snail's-rushes; while the perspiring public stifled in the fetid atmosphere, and wondered dumbly what it was all about — being constitutionally incapable of asking why their money should be paid into the bank balances of traffic commissioners nominally employed to see that such conditions should not exist. London, in short, was just the same as it always was, except for the temperature; and the Saint felt almost kindly disposed towards Mr. Nilder as the dusty Buick picked up speed as they left Kingston, and he was led rapidly out into the cleaner air of Surrey.

With these bolshevistic reflections to divert him, the Saint had an easy part to play as the hind quarters of a loose tandem that headed by the most direct road to Bursledon. Mr. Nilder did not know the Saint's car, and he did not know the Saint; and Simon made no particular effort to hide himself. After all, there is nothing very startling about two motorists trailing to the same destination at approximately the same average speed, and the Saint did not feel furtive that morning.

They ran into Bursledon with fifty yards between them, and there Mr. Nilder's car swung off sharply to the right down a lane that led along the backs of the many dockyards that line the river. Simon drove on Across the bridge, parked at the side of the road, and returned on foot.

He stood in the middle of the bridge and leaned his elbows on the parapet, gazing down along the lines of houseboats and miscellaneous other craft that were moored in the stream. The mingled smells of paint and tar and sea water drifted to his nostrils down the slight sultry breeze, and he could hear the clunk of spasmodic hammering from one of the yards on his right. Somehow it brought back to him a nostalgia of other and perhaps better days when he had been free to go down to limpid tropical seas under the swelling white sails of a schooner and his forays against the ungodly had been fought under the changing skies of forbidden pearling grounds. All at once that twist of retrospect made him envy the men he had left behind — bad men and all. And for one moment of memory he felt tired of the grubby ratting through smirched city streets which had claimed him for so long…

And then he saw a dinghy putting out from the shore, and Mr. Ronald Nilder in the stern.

His cigarette canted up alertly, and the blue far-seeing eyes ranged out over the water. In a few moments he was able to pick out the dinghy's objective — a trim white fifty-foot motor cruiser that rode lazily at its moorings in midstream. It looked fast — faster than anything else in the perspective — and at the same time it had a sweetly proportioned breadth of beam that guaranteed it seaworthy as well.

The Saint hunched himself off the parapet and strolled along to the lane down which Nilder's car had disappeared. Wandering through the yards, he had glimpses of the cruiser which showed him Ronald Nilder's progress in a series of illuminating snapshots.

He saw the dinghy come alongside and the oarsman holding it steady while Nilder climbed aboard. Then he saw Nilder disappearing into the cabin and the oarsman making the dinghy fast to a cleat on the stern. Then the oarsman going forward over the cabin roof and lowering himself into the cockpit. Then Nilder appearing again beside him, having exchanged his grey homburg for a white-topped yachting cap, and not looking very nautical even then…

By which time the Saint was leaning on the bows of an old M.L. hull directly opposite the Seabird — he was close enough to read the name painted on a shining white lifebuoy.

A whiskered old salt a couple of yards away was parcelling the ends of a frayed length of rope; Simon caught his eye and waved vaguely towards the Seabird.

"That's a nice boat," he said.

The old salt looked out over the water and spat.

"Not bad, sir, if you like that sorter thing. I wouldn't be seen dead in it, sir, if you ask me."

"Nothing like sail, eh?" murmured the Saint sympathetically.

"Ar," said the old salt, spitting emotionally. "Now yer talkin'. Them jiggery things is all right fer ladies an' fancy toffs; but wot I says is, give me a man's boat every time."

Simon screwed up his eyes. The Seabird had cast off and was sliding smoothly down towards the Channel. The man who had rowed the dinghy held the wheel, and Ronald Nilder stood with his hands in his pockets and gazed backwards towards the bridge benevolently.

"All the same," Simon remarked, "she looks as if she could stand some weather."

"She goes to France all right," conceded the salt reluctantly. "The gentleman wot owns 'er often does it. Says 'e likes to look inside a casino now an' then."

The Saint proffered a packet of cigarettes and switched a casual glance round the yard. Parked up beside the wall of a boathouse he saw the shape of a car under a waterproof dust cover, and identified the number on the exposed plate.

"Looks as if she might have gone there today," he said, indicating the Buick.

"Shouldn't be surprised if she 'ad," said his informant, accepting the smoke. "Can't be going for long, though, because the gentleman said 'e'd be back tomorrow."

Simon nodded thoughtfully and lounged back on the M.L.

"I suppose you haven't got a little motorboat for hire, have you?" he asked.

The old salt's scornful attitude towards power underwent a rapid change when he found that the Saint professed his complete — personal indifference to the merits of canvas. Yes, he had an excellent motorboat. It was, he implied, such an exceptional motorboat that it could not be included in any general denunciation of mechanical craft. It could be chartered by the day, the week, the month, the year, or, presumably, by the century; and it was the property of a gentleman wot owned racehorses wot always seemed to win when 'e said they would, which naturally raised its virtues to a pitch that surpassed perfection.

Simon looked it over, decided that it would suit him, and arranged to take it out the next morning.

"I just feel like floating around and doing a spot of fishing," he said.

He drove down to the inn at Warsash, and put a call through to Patricia.

"Ronald has gone to hit up the casinos, and I'm going to buy some string and bend a pin," he said. "We may say 'Ship ahoy!' to each other at seven bells."

With a tremendous effort, which could only have been inspired by an unfaltering loyalty to his sense of duty, he managed to breakfast at six o'clock the next morning, and to parade at the boatyard at seven with a reasonably professional-looking array of gear. He chugged down to the Solent and cruised up and down opposite the mouth of the Hamble with a cigarette in his mouth and a baited line over the side. Moreover, he caught a fish, which greatly lowered his estimation of piscine intelligence.

And whilst he was doing that he produced a Thought.

"There are boats tooling in and out of here every day during the season, and nobody gives a damn. It isn't the shortest crossing to the French coast, but for anyone running cargo it must have its advantages."

It was nine o'clock when he sighted the Seabird's bow wave making up the Solent towards him, and it told him that Ronald Nilder's boat could certainly move fast. It was making over twenty knots, and he had very little time to prepare for the scene which he intended to stage.

He let his line go to the bottom and shut off the idling motor. He was directly in the Seabird's course as she headed for the entrance of the river, and as she came within hailing distance he stood up and flagged her vigorously, yelling some despairing sentence about a breakdown. It was an even chance that Nilder would ignore his signals and cut round him; but the Saint's luck was working that day. He saw the cruiser's white bow wave sink down and the water foaming astern as her engines went into reverse. She manoeuvred deftly alongside him, and they rolled together in the slight swell.

"I'm awfully sorry to trouble you," said the Saint, "but my motor's conked out, and I haven't any oars or anything."

"Where do you want to get to?" asked Nilder.

He stood in the cockpit, with his cap tilted to what he obviously thought was a rakish angle.

"Bursledon," said the Saint. "But I expect someone could come out to me from wherever you're going to—"

"We're going there ourselves. We'll take you in tow."

At a nod from Nilder, the helmsman went aft and flung out a rope. He seemed to comprise the entire crew of the Seabird, and seen at close quarters he appeared noticeably lacking in that winsome benignity of countenance which is found on the dials of governors of infant orphanages.

Simon made the rope fast, and Nilder leaned over the side.

"Why don't you come up here?" he suggested amiably. "I'm afraid you'll get rather wet if you stay where you are."

Simon had proposed to get aboard somehow from the beginning, but he had not expected such a prompt invitation. He climbed into the cockpit rather watchfully, with a tiny question mark roving through his mind. It was a perfectly normal invitation in itself, but if Mr. Nilder was revealing a little more astuteness than the Saint had credited him with… And then the morning breeze wafted over to him the fragrance of Ronald Nilder's breath, and Simon realized that the man was more than a little drunk.

"It's quite a coincidence that we should meet again so soon, isn't it?" Nilder remarked suddenly, as the engines picked up again and the one-man crew took the wheel. "I had an excellent view of you in my driving mirror yesterday."

His close-set eyes were fixed on the Saint with the peculiarly rigid stare of mild intoxication, and Simon understood in a flash that Ronald Nilder had oiled himself up to the exact stage of tiddliness at which a man becomes conscious of a verve and brilliance which no one else can perceive and which he himself never knew he possessed.

Simon returned the man's stare coolly. He had set out that morning with no intention of doing anything desperate, but he was always ready to adapt his style to circumstances. And Ronald Nilder was being so frantically and unnecessarily clever that he was asking for a suitable retort with both hands.

"Why, yes — it does seem odd, doesn't it?" murmured the Saint.

He tapped the helmsman gently on the shoulder, and the man half turned. In that position, the point of his jaw offered itself to the Saint's fist as a target that could not in common politeness be ignored. Simon duly obliged — gracefully, accurately, and with a detonating release of energy that lifted the helmsman clear onto the balls of his feet before he dropped.

"Perfectly priceless weather, isn't it?" murmured the Saint, conversationally.

He spun the wheel hard over, so that the Seabird heeled to starboard and came about in a flat skid. Simon straightened her up smoothly and let her run south, away from the river mouth.

His eyes returned to Nilder's face with a blue challenge of devilment to match his smile. It was on such moments of inspired unexpectedness that the Saint's greatness was founded. Looking at Ronald Nilder, he saw that the tipsy courage which had induced the man to take such a recklessly incalculable bull by the horns had wheezed down like a punctured tire. There was a kind of panic in Ronald Nilder's face, and he was trying clumsily to draw a gun.

Simon took it away from him quite good-humouredly and dropped it over the side.

"You know, that's another mistake, Ronald," said the Saint calmly. "Respectable yachtsmen never pull guns when their crew are assaulted. They just go mauve in the frontispiece and say: 'What the devil, sir, is the meaning of this outrage?' "

Nilder stared at him whitely; and the Saint de-clutched the engine and allowed the Seabird to lose way.

"And now that the audience has gone to sleep, Ronald," he remarked, "I'll tell you a secret. While I was sitting out here hoping that some young fish who'd never heard of my reputation would accept one of my worms, I thought to myself what a useful base this would be for anyone who didn't want to advertise his cargo." He saw Nilder crouch a little, and did not smile. "I'm afraid several girls must have been sorry they accepted an invitation to go yachting with you. But what do you bring back with you on the return journey, Ronald? — that's what worries me."

Nilder licked his lips and did not answer.

Then a hand like steel gripped his arm, and a brown face that had lost all its geniality looked down into his.

"Shall we go and look?" said the Saint.

He thrust Nilder through the door that led into the saloon aft. There were a couple of wicker hampers on the table, and Simon surveyed them thoughtfully. That, of course, was the simplest way of bringing any reasonably sized cargo ashore.

"Champagne and caviare sandwiches?" drawled the Saint. "That's just what the doctor ordered for me."

He pushed Nilder onto one of the sofa berths and snapped up the lid of one of the baskets.

He was not quite sure what he expected to find, but it was certainly not what he saw. He looked at it in silence for several seconds, and then he raised the lid of the other hamper. The contents of that one were the same.

"So it's Tommy guns, is it?" he said quietly. "I wondered when that was coming. And how long have you known Tex Goldman?"

Still Nilder did not answer.

Without losing sight of him for an instant, Simon carried out the hampers one by one and dumped them overboard into the deepest part of the Solent. He came back and lifted Nilder off the sofa by his collar.

"I asked you a question, you horrible little scab," said the Saint. "How long have you known Tex Goldman?"

Nilder shook his head in a dumb travesty of stubbornness. And the Saint's fist crashed into his mouth and knocked him back against the bulkhead.

"If you don't talk now you won't smile for months," said the Saint equably. "It'll be too painful. I don't like you, and I loathe your trade. How long have you known Tex Goldman?"

Nilder wiped his bleeding lips.

"I don't know him, I tell you. What right have you—"

But in three more minutes he was glad to talk.

"I knew him six years ago, before he went to America. He was flying kites — passing bad checks. He got to know something about a girl I–I found a job for. She was only fifteen, but how was I to know? It wasn't my fault… He was deported. Then when he came back he made me help him. It was blackmail. I didn't want to do it—"

"That's nearly all I want to know," said the Saint. "How many trips have you made so far?"

"This is the first — I swear it is—"

Simon flung him back into a corner.

"That's as much of your voice as I can stand, Ronald — really."

He went and found the small cramped engine room, and drained every drop of oil out of the sumps into an empty two-gallon can which he found. In instalments, he poured it away over the side, without letting Nilder see what he was doing; and then he returned to the saloon.

"I expect you'll be leaving the country as soon as you can," he said. "If it will help you to see the indications for a spot of travel, I may tell you that if I ever see you again the rest of your travelling will be done behind two black horses with flowers round you. And you won't make any complaints about this little voyage before you go, because if I were arrested I should feel fearfully talkative."

"You'll pay for this, you dirty bully!" snarled Nilder furiously. "Goldman will have something to say to you—"

"I shouldn't be surprised," said the Saint contemptuously. "Tex has the guts to say it, which you haven't."

He climbed out of the saloon by the after door and hauled up his own motorboat.

Thirty seconds later he was creaming up the river towards Bursledon, while the Seabird drifted on down the Solent on the falling tide.

Chapter VI

HE was back at Warsash in another twenty minutes, and as he stepped out of his car beside the inn he was just able to catch a sight of the Seabird turning to race up towards the Hamble. Even while he paused to watch it for a moment, the bow wave sank down and the ship's bows began to yaw round as she lost way. Simon grinned happily to himself and went through to the dining room.

He twitched his nostrils appreciatively at the aroma of crisping bacon which greeted him. Three hours in the fresh sea air after the sketchy meal he had swallowed at six a.m., plus a certain amount of useful exercise, had done their full share towards setting up his appetite to its ordinary matutinal proportions.

"I'll have two fried eggs, lots of bacon, and about a quart of coffee," he said to the waitress who had already served him with one breakfast that day. "After that, I might be able to toy with three more eggs, a pound of mushrooms, and a lot more bacon. Go out and tell them to kill the pig, Gladys."

While at least part of his order was being executed he went to the telephone and put another call through to Patricia.

"Hullo, darling," he said. "This is very late for you to be up."

"I have been to bed," said the girl.

"So have I," murmured the Saint breezily. "But not for long. I don't think this early rising is healthy — the prospect of it takes such a lot of kick out of the night before, and I hate having my morning tea by moonlight."

"How did the fishing go?"

"Pretty well." Simon glanced round him cautiously, but there was no one within earshot. "When last observed, Brother Ronald was running into a lot of trouble. I ran all the oil out of his engines, and unless he thought of greasing them with his own perspiration they've seized up in a way that'll take days to unstick. The Seabird won't be making any more voyages for a while."

Patricia laughed softly.

"When are you coming home, boy?"

"Well — this is Friday, isn't it? I seem to remember that we have a date for lunch with Claud Eustace Teal. I'll meet you at the Bruton at twelve-thirty."

He went back to his second breakfast with the contented knowledge that another and very different conversation must have been seething over the London wire at about that time, and he was right.

Ronald Nilder did not think it expedient to go into details.

"The Saint caught me in the Solent, Goldman. He didn't say it was him, but it couldn't have been anyone else. He threw the guns overboard and beat me up."

Tex Goldman had the gift of not wasting time on useless bad language.

"Get back here as quick as you can," he said grimly. "I'll have something waiting for the Saint."

Simon Templar, however, had an equally valuable gift which had stood him in good stead before. On that Friday morning it worked at full pressure. He had a very clear conception of Tex Goldman's psychology. Wherefore he drove back to London by way of Leather-head and Epsom, and Ted Orping waited for him at the end of the Portsmouth Road in vain.

It was a minute or two before twelve-thirty when he entered the doors of Lansdowne House, but Patricia was waiting for him. The Saint ordered cocktails and told her the detailed history of his early-morning escapade.

"If you came back by a roundabout way, I expect Nilder's got home about the same time," she said, and Simon smiled.

"I doubt it, old darling," he said calmly. "I stuck my penknife through both his back tires and the spare for luck, so he could either wait for someone to repair the damage or catch a train that won't get him in for another quarter of an hour. That'll make it a bit too much of a rush for him to catch the two o'clock via Boulogne, so he can either make a dash for the four o'clock Dover-Calais or wait for the eight-twenty via Dieppe or the nine o'clock via Havre — my familiarity with these timetables is remarkable," said the Saint modestly. "In any case, he'll have to go to his bank first, and that's all I'm interested in."

The girl looked at him curiously.

"There was a time when he wouldn't have got off so lightly," she said.

Simon leaned back with his long legs stretched out in front of him and watched the smoke from his cigarette curling towards the ceiling.

"I know. But we weren't so businesslike in those days, and the income tax wasn't five bob in the pound. Besides which, the activities of the great Claud Eustace weren't quite so near the mark. No, Pat — in the autumn of his life this young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of subtler things, which includes ingenious methods of getting his dirty work done for him. And I think I know a far, far neater way."

And then he looked round and saw the oval figure of Chief Inspector Teal crossing the lounge towards them. He hitched himself up and called for more Martinis.

"Tell us about things," he murmured.

"There's nothing much to tell," said the detective sleepily, sinking into a chair. "We're still working, and we'll get our men before long. I suppose you read about the Underground hold-up last night?"

Simon shook his head.

"I haven't seen a morning paper."

"They wounded two men and got away with over three thousand pounds in cash — the booking-office takings from several stations. That's where it's so difficult. They've got us guessing all the time. First it's jewellers' shops; then we guard those, and it's banks. Then we watch the banks, and it's a night club. Now it's the Underground. We can't possibly protect every place in London where you can find large sums of money, and they know it."

"No more clues?"

"We're working on several lines," said the detective, with professional vagueness; but Simon Templar was not impressed.

"As I see it," he said, "your trouble is to get hold of the man up top who's producing all these smart ideas. It's no good knocking off Green Cross boys here and there — you can always keep tabs on them in the ordinary way, and it's just this unknown bloke who's got control of 'em who's making 'em dangerous for the time being."

Teal nodded.

"That's about it."

"And if you did find this unknown bloke, he'd probably turn out to be so unknown that all the evidence you could get against him wouldn't hang a mosquito."

"That's often the trouble," said Teal gloomily. "But we can't work any other way."

"Let's have some lunch," said the Saint brightly.

Throughout the meal he played the perfect host with a stern devotion to the book of etiquette that Patricia could not understand. He talked about racing, beer, aeroplanes, theatres, politics, sparking plugs, dress reform, and cancer — everything that could not be steered to any subject that the detective might find tender. Most particularly he avoided saying anything more about the Green Cross boys or their unknown leader; and more than once Teal looked sideways at him with a kind of irritated puzzlement. It was not like the Saint to show such an elaborate desire to keep possibly painful matters out of discussion, and the symptom made Mr. Teal feel a dim uneasiness.

At two o'clock he excused himself with a muttered hint of official business, and Simon accompanied him to the door. Teal twiddled his bowler hat and stared at him somnolently.

"You're keeping something back," he said bluntly. "I can't make you tell me if you don't want to, but I suppose you realize that these shootings will go on until we get the man who's at the back of it."

"That reminds me," said the Saint. "Can you give me the names of all the people who've been shot up since the fashion started — including the policeman?"

He wrote down the names Teal gave him on the back of an envelope, and waved the detective a cheery farewell without saying anything in answer to his implied question — a fact which did not dawn clearly upon Mr. Teal until he was halfway down Berkeley Street.

Simon went back to Patricia, and his eyes were gay and dangerous.

"This is where we work very fast," he said. "London stinks in my throat, and we need a holiday. Wouldn't you like to get hold of a ship and sail out into the great open seas?"

"But what do we do now?" she asked; and the Saint tilted his eyebrows in teasing mysteriousness.

"One of the agenda is to have words with Clem Enright. Thank God, Corrigan told me where he hangs around when he's not doing anything — otherwise it might have been difficult."

He was lucky enough to find Clem Enright at his third attempt, in a public house near Charing Cross station; but he made no fuss about his discovery. Clem Enright, in fact, did not know that it had been made.

Clem in his earlier days had haunted the public bars of the taverns where he drank; but recently, under the patronizing tuition of Ted Orping, he had learned to walk quite unselfconsciously through the saloon entrance. Clem was handling more money than he had ever had in his life before, and in the daze of his newfound affluence he was an apt pupil.

He sat behind a whisky and soda — "Only bums drink beer," insisted Ted — with his derby hat tipped cockily over one ear in what was meant to be an imitation of Ted Orping's swagger, listening to a lecture from his hero.

"Protection," said Ted Orping impressively. "That's what we're goin' for. Protection."

"I thought that was somethink to do wiv politics," said Clem hazily.

"Not that sort of protection, you chump," snarled the scornful Ted. "Who cares about that? I mean protection — like they do it in America. Ain't you never heard of it? What I mean is, you say to a guy: 'Here you are with a big business, an' you never know when some gang may hold you up or chuck a bomb at you. You pay us for protection, an' we'll see nothing happens to you."

"But I thought we was doing the 'old-ups," said Clem.

Ted Orping sighed and spat a loose strand of tobacco through his teeth.

"Course we are, fathead. That's just to show 'em what may happen if they don't pay. Then when they're all frightened, we come an' talk about protection. We get just as much money, an' we don't have to work so hard."

"Sounds all right," said Clem.

He took a drink from his glass and tried to conceal his grimace. He'd never cared for whisky and never would, but it cost twice as much as beer, and a toff always had the best. They were toffs now — Ted Orping said so. They owned cigarette cases, had their nails manicured, and changed their shirts twice a week.

"This is a big thing," said Ted, leaning sideways confidentially. "It's goin' to grow an' grow — there ain't no limits to it. An' we're in at the beginnin', like the guys who started motorcars an' wireless. An' what are they now? Look at 'em!"

"Marconi," hazarded Clem helpfully, "Austin,Morris, 'Enry Ford—"

"Millionaires," said Ted. "That's what. And why? Because they were in first. Just like we are. An' we can be millionaires too. Ain't Tex told you what them guys in Chicago live like? Sleepin' in silk sheets, tickin' off judges, an' havin' the mayor to dinner off gold plates. That's what we'll be like one day. Have another drink."

He went to the bar to have the glasses replenished and came back to the corner where they were sitting. A barmaid began to cry "Time, please!" and Ted put his tongue out at her impudently.

"We won't have none of this, either," he said. "We'll have it in our own homes, an' nobody can say 'Time' there. Why, we're better off in England, because there ain't no third degree here."

"Wot's that mean?" asked Clem.

"Well, when you get pinched they don't treat you friendly like they do here. They don't just ask you a few questions which you needn't answer, an' then lock you up till you see the beak in the mornin'. What they do is, they take you into a room, about half a dozen bloody great coppers, an' they make you talk — whether you know anything or not."

Enright regarded him owlishly.

" 'Ow do they do that?"

"They know how," said Ted Orping. "There's nothing they won't do to make you confess. Keep you without water, bash you about, beat you with a rubber hose, grind your teeth down with a dentist's drill — just any torture they can think of. You got to be tough to keep your trap shut when they do things like that."

Clem Enright shuddered as Orping proceeded to explain other methods of persuasion that he had read of. Clem didn't feel tough — not in that way. He had had his arms twisted often enough by bigger boys in his ragamuffin youth to know what acute physical pain was like, and he didn't fancy any of its more agonizing refinements.

"Time, please," said the barmaid again, and a shirt-sleeved potman began to take up the refrain as he collected glasses off the tables with every circumstance of the spiteful satisfaction which public-house employees seem to feel when they enforce that fatuous law.

"Come on," said Ted finally. "Let's get out of here."

He turned his glass defiantly upside down and swaggered out of the bar, with Clem following him. On the pavement they paused.

"Where are you goin'?" asked Ted. "I got a date with a dame."

He had spent three hours in a cinema the day before and learnt several new words.

"I'll go down to the revolver range and practise a bit of shooting," said Enright.

"Right-oh," said Ted heartily. "You can't get too much practice, but don't let 'em know you got a gun of your own. See you tonight."

They separated there, and Clem Enright walked slowly and a little unsteadily down Villiers Street. He was always conscious of his inferior toughness in the presence of Ted Orping, who had killed two men and wounded others. The weight of the automatic in his hip pocket gave him the feeling of being a genuine desperado only occasionally — at other times it seemed to bulk out under his clothes like a poached pheasant, and he went into a cold sweat at the momentary expectation of feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder and hearing familiar words of invitation murmured genially in his ear. Of late he had spent a lot of his money on ammunition at the range and had once scored a target of twenty-four at twelve paces.

They didn't believe he had it in him to be tough — that was the trouble. He was a good man with the brick in a smash-and-grab, and he could drive a car pretty well in an emergency, but they didn't class him as a man to take the initiative in any violence. And it rankled. He was as good as they were, but they had never let him play a prominent part in a hold-up. He had a sense of injustice about it, and in his daydreams he lived for the glory of the day when he could demand the right to equality with them by virtue of the notch on his own gun.

Sometimes he heard in imagination the horrible grunt of the policeman whom Basher Tope had shot, the way the man clutched at his stomach and kicked like a wounded rabbit. And then the cold sweat came out on him again… He closed his eyes to the vision and tried to think of it differently. He saw his own eyes behind the sights, his own finger curling steadily and ruthlessly round the trigger, the gun held as firmly as if in a vise — he had read plenty of the literature of his profession, and knew how it ought to be done; Then the crisp smack of the report, the jerk of the barrel, the pride and the confidence that would come…

"Hey, you!"

The rasp of a voice that seemed to be aimed straight at his ear made him start.

He looked round with his heart pumping ridiculously. He was almost opposite the range, down at the bottom of Villiers Street, and he had not noticed the approach of the car that had slipped silently down the street and pulled up so close to him that the running board brushed his trousers.

The man at the wheel had a hard sunburnt face that seemed faintly familiar, but the yellow-tinted tortoise-shell glasses over his eyes and the unlighted cigar in his mouth did not assist recognition. He spoke with a strong American accent.

"Get in. Goldman wants you — quick."

Clem leaned over, opening the door. The hope that never slept in his narrow bosom roused up and palpitated.

"Any idea wot it is?"

"I can't tell you, but I know there's shooting in it. Got your heater?… Good boy. Let's keep moving."

Clem Enright leaned back and let himself relax in contemplation of the roseate dawn of his apotheosis. So it had come at last, the chance that he had been praying for. It followed so closely on the trend of his daydream that he could scarcely believe it was true. Now if only luck was with him — if the sudden fit of trembling that had seized his limbs wore off and left him as cool and steady-nerved as he had been in his dreams…

He did not notice the way they went, or give another thought or glance to the man who drove him. Again and again he lived over, in visions, a score of shootings in which he was the only surviving hero… And then, in what seemed only a few minutes, he became aware that the car had stopped and the engine was switched off. They were in one of the small side streets of Chelsea — he could identify the district by the shops he could see in the King's Road at the end.

"Wot's up?" he demanded. "This ain't the place."

"This is a special secret headquarters," said the driver, with a scrappy smile. "You haven't been here before."

Clem Enright's chest swelled as he followed his guide through the street door, along a narrow passage, and up a long flight of stairs. Special secret headquarters! He had had no notion that there was such a place. He would swear that Ted Orping had never seen it. And he was the privileged one who had been chosen for what must be an extraordinarily important mission. All at once his opinions of Ted Orping underwent a catastrophic change. They became almost pitying. A nice chap, Ted, but a bit full of himself. Liked to pretend he was bigger than he was. Plenty of muscle, of course, but you wanted more than that. Brains. Personality…

They went through a miniature hall and passed into a spacious studio that lofted right up into the roof. It was impossible to see out, for all the light came from two large skylights high up in the rafters. And then Clem heard the unmistakable click of a lock and spun round.

His guide was leaning against the door, detaching the key from the lock and dropping it into his pocket. While Enright stared at him, fascinated, he pitched away the cigar and removed the tinted glasses which had so effectively disguised him.

"What d'you think you could pose as, Clem?" inquired the Saint chattily. "Ajax defying the lightning?"

Chapter VII

ENRIGHT crouched back against a divan, with his eyes distending as if they were being inflated by a couple of power pumps.

"Wot's the idea?" he croaked.

"Just words," answered Simon urbanely. "Words, words, words, as the Swan of Avon used to tell his pals when Ann Hathaway had one of her off days."

He took out his cigarette case and selected a cigarette, sauntering across the room with his level gaze fixed on Clem Enright all the time. There was something terrifying to the cockney about that unswerving and passionless stare. In a flash of unspeakable fear Clem remembered his gun and reached for it; and his stomach seemed to turn to water when he found that it was no longer at his hip.

Simon produced it from his own pocket.

"I borrowed it, Clem," he explained easily. "You haven't got a license for it, and that's a serious offense. Besides, it might have chipped the wallpaper if you missed me."

He was right in front of Enright then, and the edge of the divan was directly behind the man's knees. Simon gave him a gentle push, and the cockney sat down with a bump.

"Now we can talk," said the Saint.

He lighted his cigarette deliberately, while Clem watched him with scared and shrinking eyes. And then that very clear and level gaze found Enright's face again.

"This racket of yours is over, Clem," said the Saint quietly. "I'm cleaning it up today. As far as you're concerned, it's just a question whether we should hand you over to the police or give you a run for it."

"I ain't never done nuffink, guv'nor," Enright whined. "Strite I ain't—"

"Straight you certainly aren't," answered the Saint calmly. "But we didn't bring you here to discuss that. We brought you here because there's something we want you to do, and the only interesting point is how long it's going to take to persuade you to do it. Have you ever heard of the third degree?"

Enright cringed away with his face going white.

"Yer can't do that to me!" he yelped. "Yer can't."

"We can only try," said the Saint mildly.

He opened a cupboard and proceeded to lay out on the table a life preserver, a short length of rubber hose, a large pair of pincers, and an instrument that looked very like a thumbscrew but was actually a patent tin opener. As he produced each item he weighed it in his hand, tested it meditatively, and gave Enright every chance to visualize its employment before he put it down.

Then he turned again to the shaking man.

"The flat underneath is empty," he remarked pleasantly, "so you can yell as much as you like. What would you like to have done to you first?"

Enright swallowed a lump in his throat. The stimulating effects of the whisky he had drunk had vanished altogether, leaving him at the stage where he would have burst into tears on the slightest provocation. Nobody loved him, and he was going to be tortured till he talked.

"They'd kill me," he said huskily. "Joe Corrigan squealed, and 'e was killed."

"No one will kill you if you behave," said the Saint. "You can lie low here till the gang's broken up, and I'll see you out of the country if you want to go abroad. Also I'll say nothing about you to the police, and I'll let you keep all your money."

Clem Enright tried to lick the saliva round a mouth that had gone unaccountably arid. All his dreams of glory had gone west, and yet he felt lucky. There was that in the Saint's eye which told him that Ted Orping's lurid descriptions paled into fairy tales beside what that lean soft-spoken man was capable of doing.

"Wot d'yer want to know?"

"How much have you been getting from Goldman?"

"Fifty quid a week, wiv extra pickings when we did somethink good."

"How much did Ted get?"

"I dunno, guv'nor. P'raps 'e got a bit more — 'e did more than they let me."

"Didn't it ever occur to you that there was a lot more money than that in what you were doing?"

"Goldman said 'e better bank for us, guv'nor. We 'ad plenty o' dough to spend, and 'e said where we used to go wrong was by spending everythink when we was flush and then 'aving nothink to see us through rainy days. 'E said you 'ad to 'ave capital so's you could wait for the right job instead of 'aving to do some-think in a nurry."

Simon nodded.

"Where does Goldman keep this money?"

'"E's got a safe in 'is bedroom — in the wall. Some of it's there, anyway. I seen 'im take money out of it to give me, and it was full of dough."

The Saint smoothed his hair and indicated a telephone which stood on a small table beside the divan.

"Now there's just one other little thing you can do for me," he said. "Do you know a man called Ronald Nilder?"

"Yus — I seen 'im once."

"You can ring him up and say what I tell you to."

Enright looked at the telephone, and then at the Saint again.

"Yer wouldn't fergit yer promise, would yer, guv'nor? — cross yer 'eart and 'ope to die?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die," said the Saint gravely.

Mr. Ronald Nilder was completing the packing of his third suitcase when the telephone bell rang in his bedroom. For a few moments he thought of letting it ring unanswered, but cunning dictated the bolder course. He picked up the receiver.

"'Ullo," said a voice. "Is that Nilder?"

"This is Mr. Nilder speaking," he replied primly.

"Goldman wants to know why yer ain't come to see 'im like 'e told yer. 'E says yer to meet 'im at once out-side Mark Lane station. It's very urgent." Nilder hesitated for a moment. Then: "All right," he said. "Who's that speaking?" "Enright 'ere," said the voice. "Go on — 'urry. If Goldman ain't there yer to wait for 'im. G'bye."

Nilder replaced the receiver and paced up and down the room. He had planned to catch the eight-twenty train via Newhaven, and that gave him plenty of time to keep the appointment. After all, Goldman had no reason to suspect that he had given anything away. It was just his bad luck that the Saint had caught him — the same thing had happened to other men, and their integrity had not been questioned. He had the testimony of his engineer to support his story. He knew Enright's name and recognized his voice after the name was given him — there was no trap about it. It would be quite safe to hear what Goldman had to say — it might even have a valuable bearing on his own getaway — whereas to evade it would immediately arouse suspicion. And already he was feeling a little ashamed of the panic that had made him draw all his money from the bank and pack up to leave London in such haste.

Thus Ronald Nilder worked it out, as the Saint had expected him to, and left his flat five minutes later. But just in case of accidents he removed the bulging wallet from his pocket and hid it behind a row of books — his pocket would have been well worth picking that afternoon.

He had a long wait at Mark Lane; but with that we are not yet concerned.

It was half-past four when Simon Templar arrived at Tex Goldman's apartment by way of the fire escape and let himself in through the bathroom window. A call from the nearest telephone booth had ascertained that Goldman was not at home; and the Saint was not looking quite like his normal self. He had a suit of workman's overalls over his clothes and a leather bag of tools in his hand, in which outfit he was not likely to arouse so much curiosity on fire escapes as he would have done in one of the light grey fresco suits of Anderson & Sheppard. But the gun which he had taken from Clem Enright was in his pocket, and it was fully loaded. Simon Templar was cleaning up. And he was making no mistakes.

Tex Goldman came in at five.

He had a girl with him — the girl who had partnered him at the night club. She was a rather beautiful child, with fair hair that was a little too brilliant to be natural, and big serious eyes. She hung on Tex Goldman's arm. It was the visit to his apartment that he had worked for for so long, and the way it had happened was one that he had not expected a week ago.

"It's marvellous, Tex," she said.

"It ain't bad," said Tex Goldman. "It just wanted one thing, and she's here now."

She sat in the settee. He sat on the arm, looking down at her.

"Gee, baby," he said, "if you told me a week ago I could do this, I'd 've burst myself laughin'. Must be old age, I reckon."

"I don't care what it is."

Goldman took out a bulky leather case. With the unconsciousness of habit, he nipped the end off a cigar and stuck it between his teeth.

"I guess you know all about me," he said.

"I don't mind."

"It ain't much to think about. All my life I been a hood. That's the way I was raised. I came out of the gutter — but I came out. Back in St. Louis they call me tough. I killed plenty men, but that don't seem to mean a thing. It's the way you work in the racket — bump a guy before he bumps you. But I never double-crossed a pal, and I never carried a gun for vice. I ain't pullin' any reformation act. I guess I'll go on the same way — till I get mine."

She took a scented cigarette from a lacquer case and stared straight ahead.

"I'm not such a schoolgirl myself," she said quietly. "I've been around. I don't like killing — any of those things you do. I don't like knowing I'll have to sit around and wait till someone does the same thing to you. I didn't think I could ever face it. Now it seems different, somehow. I've got no choice. I just want you to be good to me."

"I'm on the level, kid. I never been mushy in my life, so I can't say any of those pretty things you'd like to hear. But I'll play square with you."

"Always?"

"Say, if I ever give you the runaround, you can put me on the spot with my own gun."

It was at that moment that Tex Goldman's head was hit.

The blow didn't stun him. It wasn't intended to. But he felt the sickening sharp crash of a gun butt at the base of his hair, and it seemed to rock the brain inside his skull so that for a second or two his sight was blotted out in a dizzy sea of blackness filled with whirling red sparks. He pitched forward, throwing out his hands, and saved himself on the table. He heard the girl beside him cry out, and then a hand snatched at his hip pocket before his wits could struggle back to coherent functioning. When his own hand reached the pocket his gun was gone.

He turned slowly and saw the weapon being juggled gently round the forefinger of a tall man in grey.

"Hullo, Tex."

Goldman drew himself up rockily under the rake of the tall man's smile.

"What the hell—"

"No bad language, Tex," said the Saint. "I'm sorry I had to dot you a small one, but I thought it'd be safer. You're the kind of guy who wouldn't be stuck up very easily, and if you tried to shoot it out with me the birds in the other apartments might have heart failure."

Goldman's eyes creased up till only the pupils showed, gleaming like frozen chips of jet.

"Mr. Simon Templar?"

"Yeah. And breaking up your racket. This country can get along without your kind of crime. Maybe America can show us lots of things, but you've come over with one kind of thing we don't want to be shown. It upsets all the dear old ladies who make our laws." The Saint was not smiling. "Too many men have been killed since you set up shop. I came here to kill you, Tex."

The girl clutched at Tex Goldman's hand, staring at the Saint with wide pitiful eyes.

"You can't!" she sobbed. "You can't! We were only married to-day—"

Not a muscle of the Saint's face moved.

"I'm taking the girl, too," he said. "For another reason. You get it together."

She shrank against Tex Goldman's shoulder, with horror added to the tragedy of her eyes.

"Why d'you want to kill me?" she whispered. "I've done nothing. I've never killed anyone… But I don't care. I don't care! I love him! Go on, you coward."

"Never mind that." Tex Goldman's voice cut very quietly and tremorlessly through hers. "Never mind what you think she's done, Templar. I guess you're wrong about her. She's on the level. You can't burn down a woman. You got me all right. Give me what's coming to me. But let the kid get the hell out of here first. I can take it for both of us."

He looked at the Saint without flinching. That was the racket. You took it when your turn came, without whining. You didn't show yellow.

And then he saw that the Saint was smiling.

"Thanks, Tex," said the Saint. "You've got the guts. I guess that lets you out."

Chapter VIII

GOLDMAN didn't understand.

"I told you I came here to kill you," said the Saint. "That's about true — anyway, it's one reason. Then I heard your conversation. I just wondered. The girl told me you were married today. I put up the rest of it just to prove to myself whether you were really on the level, and it seems as if you are. It breaks my heart, but I suppose we'll have to go home now without killing you. Even I can't spoil a honeymoon… It's rather a charming thought, Tex — that after all you may be a white-haired old daddy one day, sitting by the fire with a dozen kiddies perched on your knee, telling them fairy stories about the Little Red Riding Hood, and Goldmanlocks and the Three Bears, and Wicked Uncle Al."

Goldman drew a deep breath, but he did not speak. The cold winds of death had blown too close to him, and when that clammy breath is still in a man's throat he has very little to say.

"But the part about breaking up your racket has got to stand," said the Saint, and his blue eyes were steady steel again as he spoke. "We don't like it — it makes life just a little too strenuous. I've emptied your safe already this afternoon, and I expect you'll find that rather discouraging."

He indicated the open door of the bedroom through which he had come. Smiling momentarily, he dipped into a side pocket and dug out half a dozen large notes which he dropped onto the settee.

"I'll give you these back as a wedding present. You wouldn't want to arrive back in St. Louis broke."

Goldman moistened his lips.

"Still hijacking, huh?"

"Still hijacking. All this is to be divided up among the poor devils who got shot in the course of your campaign, except what I keep myself. I take a rather larger share, because I was getting shot at all the time. You won't see it back, Tex." The Saint's voice was grim and purposeful. "You won't even get me bumped before you go, because you don't know where I'm staying and you won't have time to find me. You're taking a train to France at eight-twenty, and you can make your sailing arrangements from Cherbourg. You needn't tell Ted Orping and all the boys, but that's what you're going to do. Because at ten o'clock tonight, whether I'm alive or dead, a message will go to Chief Inspector Teal at Scotland Yard and tell him all about the deportation order that still holds good against William Gold, alias Tex Goldman, cheap stick-up man of six years back. You won't find it so easy to slip into the country again."

Tex Goldman stared at him.

"How did you find out about that?"

"Comrade Nilder told me," said the Saint easily "He falls apart with a very little shaking."

Goldman showed his teeth.

"I might have known it. That lousy, double-crossing little heel—"

"I should speak to him quite severely about it if I were you," said the Saint, very softly. "Unless I'm mistaken, he'll be calling in here before you go to tell you his troubles… And now I must leave you. Have a jolly honeymoon — and when you give my love to the boys in St. Louis, say it with ukuleles. Fare thee well, fair lady."

He retreated smartly to the door and let himself out. In another moment he was flying down the stairs.

On the street corner he came up behind Mr. Teal.

"Well, what is it?" demanded the detective. "I got your message and came straight along, but why all the mystery?"

"I don't want to speak too soon," said the Saint, "but I think we may see some fun. A certain gentleman is very annoyed."

"Who do you mean?"

The Saint was smilingly uncommunicative. He took Teal's arm and guided him into a convenient teashop, choosing a table near the window from which he could keep the entrance of Tex Goldman's apartment block under observation.

They sat there for two hours, and Mr. Teal grew restive.

"If you can't show me any more than a plate of toasted scones," he said, "I'll have to be going. I've got work to do. What's on your mind?"

"Don't go yet, Claud," said the Saint. "I've done more work today than you've done in the last week.

I've been cleaning up. Things are happening now."

This was just five minutes after he had seen Ted Orping pass in through the door he was watching.

Tex Goldman answered the bell.

"What is it, Ted?" he asked briefly.

He was impatient, but he did not want Orping to see it. In the bedroom three suitcases were packed and ready for his departure.

"That bus depot hold-up tonight, boss—"

"It's postponed — indefinitely."

Ted Orping's eyebrows went up.

"What for, boss?"

"It's poppycock — that's why. It's a waste of time. It's a risk for nothing." Goldman tapped him on the shoulder. "I'll tell you why I'm passing it up, Ted, I've got onto something that'll make you wonder why you ever wasted your time holding up a bank. It's something so big, it'll make your mouth water till you have to tie a bucket round your neck. And it's foolproof. One grand raid — and finish. There'll be ten thousand pounds in it for every man who doesn't go soft. Have a cigar."

Orping's eyes opened.

"What is it, boss?"

"I can't tell you now." Goldman glanced round him. He lowered his voice. "There's a squealer somewhere — and I got a hunch I could lay my finger on him. Nothing's safe while there's squealers around." Orping's mouth hardened. He bit off the end of a cigar and spat it into the fireplace.

"Let me see him!"

The front door bell rang again. Goldman's cold eyes bored into Ted's like the eyes of a statue. He spoke out of the side of his mouth, viciously.

"Let him in."

Orping went to the door.

It was Ronald Nilder — hatless, ashen grey of face, loose mouth quivering. A soiled scrap of paper was clutched in one trembling hand. He rushed halfway across the room towards Goldman, and pulled up, his fists clenched and his pasty features jerking.

"What's this mean?" he almost screamed. "Tell me what it means, damn you!"

"What does what mean?" asked Goldman coldly.

Nilder thrust out the scrap of paper. Unhurriedly Goldman flattened it out and read what was written on it:

"I took all my money out of the bank," Nilder was babbling. "I put it in my wallet. When you telephoned for me to meet you at Mark Lane I hid it behind some books in my flat. I waited an hour for you. When I got back, the door had been broken in and my wallet was empty. That's all there was in it. What d'you mean by taking my money, you—"

With three more unhurried movements Goldman tore the paper across, across, and across again, and trickled the pieces into his wastepaper basket. Then he looked at Nilder again, and there was such an inexorable malignity in his gaze that the other's babbling died away into a strangled silence.

"I didn't send for you to meet me at Mark Lane," he said; "I didn't write that note; and I don't know anything about your money. Now tell me why you squealed to the Saint."

Nilder's mouth seemed to go whiter. He took breath in two quick frantic gasps. His mouth was sagging open in a horrible limpness of fear.

"You needn't answer," Goldman said, with that same slow frozen venom. "I can read it in your face. You squealed because you're yellow. He slapped your wrist once, and you fell to pieces. That's what a rat like you does. And then you come here with some lily-livered gold-bricking alibi, and hope I'll eat it. What d'you think this is — a kindergarten? What do I do — fall on your neck and kiss you? You louse!"

"I didn't!" Nilder gibbered throatily. "Don't look, at me like that, Goldman. I wouldn't squeal on you. I wouldn't give you away. I can explain everything, I tell you! Listen to me—"

"Get out!" rasped Goldman, in a sudden hiss of icy savagery. "Get out of my sight — before I smash that snivelling face of yours into jelly!"

Nilder backed away with a choking gulp. Never in his life had he seen such a bitter malevolence blazing at him out of a pair of human eyes.

"Don't hit me!" he gabbled. "Don't hit me. I didn't tell anything. I wouldn't double-cross you. Listen, Goldman—"

Ted Orping grasped him by the collar and hurled him back to the door.

"You heard what the boss said," he snarled. "Scram!"

Mr. Ronald Nilder had never done anything so undignified. He did not even know what the word meant, but the tone in which it was uttered was sufficient explanation. Shaking with a sick terror of what he had seen in Tex Goldman's eyes, he scrammed.

Ted Orping listened to the front door closing. He looked at the man from St. Louis.

"Do I give him the works, boss?"

Tex Goldman lighted his cigar before replying. It was a long time since he had felt any satisfaction in pronouncing sentence of death. In the racket, death was meted out simply as an operation of expediency — without hate, often even with regret. But for this time at least he felt a vindictive sense of justice.

"Yeah," he said. "Put him out."

Simon Templar saw Nilder walking blindly away from the block, and stood up, plunking a half-crown down on his bill. Teal followed him. As they reached the pavement, Ted Orping came out and slipped into the footsteps of the Cosmolite Vaudeville Agent.

"What's happening?" asked Teal.

"Something good and fast," answered the Saint, "or I'm no psychologist."

He led Teal on to join the procession of two. Suddenly Nilder stopped and hailed a taxi that came crawling past. Orping spun round and gazed into a shop window just quickly enough to escape notice. As soon as Nilder had climbed in, Orping dashed across the road and entered another cab. Simon pulled his hat down over his eyes and sprinted for the nearest rank, dragging the detective after him. They sank onto the cushions breathlessly.

"This is a game of follow-my-leader," said the Saint, almost merrily.

The three taxis speeded in procession along the Marylebone Road, worked down to Portland Place, crossed Oxford Street, and went down Regent Street. One tour of the Piccadilly Circus merry-go-round, and they cut down into Jermyn Street.

Simon leaned forward and spoke through the telephone to the driver.

"Take it easy here."

The cab in front stopped, and they were stuck behind it. Sitting well back to keep out of sight, the Saint saw Ted Orping pay off the driver and walk on. The cab in front moved on, and they followed slowly after it. Simon saw Nilder's back in the doorway of the house of service flats where he lived: Orping caught up with him in the entrance and gripped his arm. The Saint could only guess what was said, but the two men passed out of sight together.

Simon stopped the taxi, and they got out. He led Teal to the other side of the street.

"This is another wait," he said, "but it won't be a long one."

He lighted a cigarette, though he was not expecting to get more than a few puffs.

Presently he raised his head sharply.

"Did you hear that?"

It had been a sound like two very distant backfires in quick succession; but he knew they were not backfires.

Then he saw Ted Orping coming out, and crossed the road suddenly. Orping did not see him till they were face to face.

"A word with you, Ted," said the Saint affably. "Did you make quite sure Ronald wouldn't talk?"

The other gaped at him with a wild, almost superstitious dread. And then, with a kind of slavering gulp, he turned and ran.

Simon ran faster. Looking back, Orping saw him only a yard behind, running easily, and groped for his gun. But he had thought of that too late. Simon clipped his heels together and dropped on him heavily. He twisted Orping's right wrist up between his shoulder blades and kept one bony knee in the small of the man's back.

"Lemme up," Orping whimpered. "You can't hold me for nothing."

"Only for wilful murder," said the Saint unctuously, and watched Chief Inspector Teal lumbering ponderously across the road towards them.