The Saint In Action

I

The fact that Simon Templar had never heard of the "Z-Man" was merely a tremendous proof that the Z-Man himself, his victims and the police authorities had joined forces in a monumental conspiracy of silence, For the Saint invariably had a zephyr finger on the pulse of the underworld, and the various forms of fun and frolic that went on in the ranks of the ungodly without his knowledge were so few that for all practical purposes they might have been regarded as nonexistent.

He was lunching alone at the Dorchester Grill when the first ripple of new adventure irrigated the dusty dryness of a particularly arid spell. He had been ruminating on the perfidious dullness of the cloudy day when the grillroom was suddenly supplied with its own sunshine. A girl had entered.

She was alone. She was tall and trim waisted and as graceful as a dancer, and the soft waves of her fair golden hair rippled in the gentle stir of air caused by her own motion. Exquisitely dressed, devastatingly sure of herself, she was escorted to a vacant table in a sudden hush of awed admiration that enveloped a world-famous film producer, two visiting bishops, three cosmopolitan millionaires, a music-hall comedian, a couple of ancient marquises and about fifty other minor celebrities, in a simultaneous speechlessness of homage. Simon Templar, who had as many human instincts as any of the aforesaid, would have stared at her anyway; but somehow he found himself watching her with even more than that natural curiosity and interest. And a faint tentative tingle went through him as he realized why.

For an instant, when he had first raised his eyes and seen her, he had wondered if Patricia Holm had missed an appointment of her own and had come to join him. This girl was surprisingly like Pat; the same height, the same fair grace, the same radiant charm. There was something vaguely familiar about her face too; and now the Saint was no longer reminded of Pat. He wondered who she was, and he was not the kind of man to be satisfied with wondering.

"Tell me, Alphonse," he murmured to the waiter who was hovering about him like a ministering angel, "who is the vision in smoke blue at that table over there?"

The waiter looked across the room.

"That, sir," he said, with a certain visible contempt for such ignorance, "is Miss Beatrice Avery."

Simon wrinkled his brow.

"The name strikes a chord but fails to connect."

"Miss Avery is a film star, sir."

"So she is. I've seen photographs of her here and there."

"Her latest picture, Love, the Swindler is the best thing she's done," volunteered the waiter dreamily. "Have you seen it, sir?"

"Fortunately, no," answered the Saint, glancing with some pain at the waiter's enraptured face, and then averting his own. "Swindlers have never interested me — much."

The waiter departed, hurt, and Simon continued to watch the girl at the other table. It was only a transient interest which held him, his inevitable interest in any exceptionally beautiful girl, coupled with the additional fact, perhaps, that Beatrice Avery was certainly a great deal like Pat… And then in an instant, as if an invisible magic wand had been waved, his interest became concrete and vital. He flipped out his cigarette case and put a smoke between his lips. Nobody could have guessed that his attention was more than casually attracted as he lighted the cigarette and inhaled deeply; the sudden lambent glint that came into his blue eyes was masked behind their lazy lids and the filmy curtain of smoke that trickled from his nostrils. But in that instant he knew with the blissful certainty of experience that the syncopated clarions of adventure had sounded in the room, even if no other ears were tuned to hear them.

As the girl had seated herself a waiter had deftly removed the "reserved" card which had been conspicuously displayed on the table, and the cloud of obsequiously fluttering chefs de restaurant, maitres d'hotel, waiters, commis and miscellaneous bus boys had faded away. Evidently she had intimated that she was not yet ready to order. The girl had then given the grillroom a thoughtful once-over as she removed her gloves and lighted a cigarette. These trifling details Simon had noticed while his own waiter was burbling about Love, the Swindler. All very proper and correct — and commonplace. But that which followed was not commonplace at ail. Beatrice Avery's cigarette suddenly dropped from her fingers to the floor, and the colour drained out of her face until the patches of rouge on her cheeks and bright-tinted lips stood out in vivid contrast to the deathly pallor of her skin. Her eyes grew wide and glazed with terror, and she stared at the table as though a snake had suddenly appeared through a hole in the snowy cloth.

Simon hadn't the remotest idea what it was all about. That was the common factor of most adventures — you usually didn't until you were well into them. The difference between the Saint and most other men was that most other men were satisfied to wonder and let it go at that; whereas the Saint had to find out. And Simon Templar had discovered after some years of experiment that the most direct way of finding anything out was to go and ask somebody who knew. Characteristically he didn't hesitate for a second. Almost without any conscious decision on his part his seventy-two inches of lean, debonair immaculacy had unfolded from their chair and were sauntering across to Beatrice Avery's table; and he was smiling down at her with sapphire lights twinkling in gay blue eyes that few women had ever been able to resist.

"Could you use an unemployed knight-errant?" he murmured.

The girl seemed to shrink back. Some of the colour had returned to her face, but her eyes were more terrified than ever. He could see at close quarters that her resemblance to Pat was purely superficial. She had none of that calm ethereal tranquillity that was Pat's very own. She opened her bag as if she was too dazed and desperate to have grasped what he was saying.

"I didn't expect you so soon," she said breathlessly.

He was a bit slow on the repartee for two reasons. First he was wondering why she had expected him at all; and secondly he was searching the square of snowy whiteness with its gleaming glass and silver for some explanation of the frozen horror that he had seen in her face. Everything was in order except for the fact that a knife and two forks were out of their correct places and laid in a peculiar zigzag. Even the most fastidious stickler for table ceremony would hardly have registered quite so much horror at that displacement of feeding tools, and Beatrice Avery looked like the healthily unceremonious kind of girl who wouldn't have cared a hoot if all the knives and forks and spoons were end up in a flowerpot in the middle of the table.

"I came over as soon as you sent out the distress signals," Simon began and then he stopped short out of sheer incredulous startlement.

The girl had taken something from her bag, and she was looking at him with such an expression that the words died a natural death on his lips. She had conquered her fear; and instead of the terror that had been there before her eyes were charged with so much loathing and hatred and disgust that Simon Templar knew just what it felt like to be one of those wriggly things with too many legs that make their abode under flat stones. The reaction was so amazing and unexpected that for once in his life the Saint was at a loss for words. He invariably had such a totally different effect on beauteous damsels in distress that his self-esteem as though it had been hit by a coal truck.

"I have nothing whatever to say to you." The girl suddenly thrust a bulky envelope into his hand and rose. "But if you have any regard at all for my feelings please return at once to your own table."

Her voice was low and musical, but it had in it the bitter chill of an arctic night. She didn't even look at him again, or she would have seen the utter bewilderment in his eyes. She closed her red mouth very tightly and walked with a steady tread and long, exquisitely graceful legs towards the exit. Simon was convinced that she had never done anything half so fine before the camera.

He stood and watched her out of sight and then returned slowly to his own table in a kind of seething fog. The manhattan he had ordered earlier had arrived, and he drank it quickly. He felt that he needed it. And then in a hazy quest for enlightenment he took another look at the envelope which she had left in his paralyzed hands. It was not sealed; and the numbed feeling in the pit of his stomach tightened as he glanced into it.

"Well, well, well!" he murmured softly.

His tanned face hardened into bronze lines of puzzled concentration, with his eyes steadied into fragments of blued steel against the sunburned background, for the envelope was stuffed full with Bank of England notes for one hundred pounds apiece.

He withdrew the ends and flicked his thumb over them. Without careful counting he calculated that the wad contained about a hundred bills — ten thousand genuine and indisputable pounds. After his recent experience and in spite of the manhattan he was in no condition to resist shocks of that kind. Boodle he had seen in his time, boodle in liberal quantities and many different forms, but he had always worked for it. He had never seen it come winging into his hands when he wasn't even looking for it, like pigeons going home to roost. At any other time he would have been inclined to accept it as one of the many inexplicable beneficences of his devoted guardian angel; but he didn't feel like that now.

He couldn't get that look of hers out of his mind. It hurt his pride that she could have mistaken him for the common and vulgar agent of some equally common and vulgar blackmailer. It seemed obvious enough that that was what had happened… But was it? Simon didn't know exactly how many dazzling figures it took to write down Beatrice Avery's annual income, but he knew that film stars were burdened with hardly less colossal living expenses, for they have to scintillate off the screen as well as on or else risk submersion in the fathomless swamps of public forgetfulness. And the Saint doubted very much if Beatrice Avery, for all her fabulous salary, could afford to whack out ten thousand pounds as if it were chicken feed. A sum like that spoke for a grade of blackmail that could hardly be called common or vulgar: it hinted at something so dark and ugly that his imagination instinctively tried to turn away from it. He didn't like to believe that such a golden goddess could have anything in her past that she would pay so much to keep secret. It made him feel queerly grim and angry.

He finished his lunch, paid his bill and then looked up the name of Beatrice Avery in the telephone directory. Her address appeared as 21 Parkside Court, Marble Arch. Simon made a mental note of it, paid a call in Piccadilly and then strolled along to his own apartment in Cornwall House.

"Anybody called, Sam?" he inquired of the wooden-faced janitor; and Sam Outrell detected a faintly thoughtful note in the Saint's voice.

"Were you expecting somebody, sir?"

"I'm always expecting somebody. But this afternoon, in particular, I shall expect a lady, gloriously fair and graceful, with wavy golden hair—"

"I know, sir. You mean Miss Holm."

"No, I don't mean Miss Holm," said Simon as he strolled to the elevator. "The lady's name, Sam, is Miss Avery. If she appears before you with my name on her rosebud lips shoot her straight up."

He was whisked to his floor, and as he let himself into his apartment he found Hoppy Uniatz in the living room's best easy chair with his feet on the table. Mr Uniatz was chewing the ragged end of a cigar, and there was an expression on his battle-scarred face which indicated that all was right with the world. The empty whisky bottle on the table may have contributed its own modest quota to this happy state of affairs.

"Hi, boss," said Mr Uniatz cordially. "Where ya bin?"

Simon spun his hat across the room.

"Lunching at the Dorchester."

"I got no time for dem fancy places," said Mt Uniatz disparagingly. "Dose pansy dishes ain't nut'n to eat. Now yesterday I find a swell jernt where a guy can get a kosher hamboiger wit' fried onions an' all de fixin's—"

"I wondered why that cigar was so overpowering," said the Saint, moving carefully out of range of Mt Uniatz's breathing. "I'm not sure yet, Hoppy, but there are indications that fun and games hover in the middle distance."

"Who's dat, boss?" asked Mr Uniatz, struggling valiantly to get his grey matter flowing.

This was no small effort, for nature had only provided him with a very small quantity, and even this was of a glue-like consistency.

"You may be right about the Dorchester," said the Saint sourly as he eased himself into a chair. "Anyway, it didn't do me much good. A charming young lady gave me ten thousand quid and the dirtiest look of the century. Tell me, Hoppy, has anything happened to my face to make it look as if I'd blackmail charming young ladies?"

"You look okay to me, boss," said Mr Uniatz blankly. "Who is dis dame?"

Remembering Mr Uniatz's mental disadvantages, Simon told his story in simple one-syllable words that would have sent the director of children's hour programs delirious with delight. He had had so much practice in that difficult exercise that Mr Uniatz, in spite of the limitations of his cerebral system, finally grasped the basic facts.

"De goil t'inks you are some udder guy," he said brightly.

"You put it in a nutshell, Hoppy," said the Saint admiringly.

"De guy who puts de black on her."

"Precisely."

"De guy," persisted Hoppy, working nobly to get all his facts in order, "who is playing games in de distance."

The Saint sighed and was bracing himself to go into further laborious explanations when the sound of the telephone bell spared him the ordeal. He went to the instrument.

"Two visitors for you, sir, but they ain't ladies," said Sam Outrell hurriedly.

"Give me two guesses."

"You ain't got time for guessin', sir," interrupted the janitor. "It's Mr Teal, and he's lookin' madasell, and he went straight up without letting me call you first. He'll be there any minute—"

"Don't worry, Sam," said the Saint imperturbably. "I'm not leaving. Go out and get Mr Teal some chewing gum, and we'll have a party."

The doorbell rang violently, and Simon Templar hung up the telephone and went out to admit his favourite visitor. And the absolute truth is that he hadn't a cloud on his conscience or any suspicion that the visit would be more than a routine call.

II

Chief inspector claud eustace teal thrust his large regulation foot into the opening as soon as the Saint unlatched the door. It was an unnecessary precaution, for Simon flung the door wide and stood aside invitingly with a smile on his lips and the light of irrepressible amusement in his eyes.

"Come in, souls," he said genially. "Make yourselves at home. And what can I do for you today?"

The invitation was somewhat superfluous, for Mr Teal and the man with him, whom Simon recognized as Sergeant Barrow, were already in. They hadn't waited to be asked. They came in practically abreast, and Barrow kicked the door to with his foot. The Saint was compelled to back into the living room in face of that determined entry. There was an unusual aggressiveness about Mr Teal; his plump body seemed taller and broader; the phlegmatic dourness of his round pink face under its shabby derby was increased by the hard lines of his mouth. He looked like a man who was haunted by the memory of many such calls on this smiling young buccaneer — calls which had only lengthened the apparently hopeless duel which he had been waging for years against the most stupendous outlaw of his day. And yet he looked like a man who had a certain foreknowledge that this time he would emerge the victor; and a kind of creepy puzzlement wormed itself into the Saint's consciousness as the meaning of those symptoms forced itself upon him.

"Hi, Claud," said Mr Uniatz in friendly greeting.

Chief Inspector Teal ignored him.

"I want you, Templar," he said, turning his sleepy eyes on the Saint.

"Of course you do, Claud," said the Saint slowly. "Somebody has sold an onion after closing time, and you want me to track him down for you. A gang of lemonade smugglers who have eluded Scotland Yard for years have been—"

"I mean," Teal said immovably, "that I'm taking you into custody on a charge of—"

"Wait!" said the Saint tragically. "Think what you'd be losing if you really pulled me in. What would you do with your afternoons if you couldn't come round here for these charming little conversaziones?"

"All the talking in the world won't save you this time, Templar," said Mr Teal in a hard voice. "Do you want to see the warrants I've got? One for your arrest and another to search this flat."

The Saint shrugged watchfully.

"Well, Claud," he said resignedly, "if you want to make a fool of yourself again it's your funeral. What's the charge this time?"

"Demanding money with menaces," said the detective flatly. For a moment his eyes lost their sham of perpetual boredom; they looked oddly hurt and at the same time contemptuous. "You know how much I've wanted to get you, Templar; but now that the time's come I'd just as soon not have the job. I never thought I shouldn't even want to touch you."

Simon glanced down at his brown hands, and in his mind was a vivid memory of Beatrice Avery's look of unutterable loathing. Teal's voice contained that very look, transmuted into sound. His pulses, which up to that moment had been ticking over as steadily as clockwork, throbbed a shade faster.

"Is there something the matter with me?" he asked curiously. "Have I suddenly taken on a resemblance to Boris Karloff, or is it only a touch of leprosy?"

"You're the Z-Man," retorted Mr Teal and stopped chewing his cud of tasteless chicle.

There was a silence that pressed down on the four men like a tangible substance. It was as though the air had become a mass of ectoplasm. Hoppy Uniatz broke the suffocating spell by shuffling his feet. It is doubtful if more than a dozen words of the conversation had infiltrated through the bony mass which protected the spongelike organization of nerve endings which served him in lieu of a brain; but the impression was growing on him that Mr Teal was making himself unpleasant.

"What was dat crack again?" he said, his unmusical voice crashing into the silence like a bombshell.

"Yes, Claud," said the Saint gently. "What was it?"

"You heard me the first time," Teal said crunchily. "You're the Z-Man; and if I couldn't prove it I wouldn't have believed it myself. It's something new to know that you've sunk as low as that."

Simon moved across to the mantelpiece and leaned an elegant elbow on it. He pulled hard at his cigarette until the end glowed red; and the smoke stayed down in his lungs. A dim light was breaking in the darkness through which he had been groping his way: he saw in his mind's eye the disarranged knives and forks on Beatrice Avery's table in the Dorchester Grill, and he knew the meaning of that queer zigzag formation. They had shaped the letter z; and it was the sudden sight of this that had caused the girl's terror.

But the light was still not enough… The Saint's eyes switched over to Mr Teal, and their clear blue glinted like the sheen of polar waters under the sun.

"My poor old blundering fathead," he said kindly. "I'm afraid you're off the rails again, for the umpteenth time. I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Dat goes for me, too, boss," contributed Mr Uniatz, who had clearly understood every word of the Saint's last terse sentence.

Mr Teal's lips thinned out.

"Oh, you don't know what the hell I'm talking about?" he barked. "Are you going to deny that you were in the Dorchester Grill an hour ago?"

"Why should I deny it? I lunched there."

"And you spoke to Miss Beatrice Avery?"

"We had a few brief words, yes. Of course I suppose that was very wicked of me, because we hadn't been introduced—"

"You took a package from her."

"No."

"You deny taking a package from her?" shouted Mr Teal.

"I do. She thrust the package into my hand and breezed off before I could even examine it—"

Teal's face turned a shade redder.

"You're not going to save yourself by quibbling like that," he snarled. "It's no good, Templar. You can try it on the jury. You're under arrest."

He took his right hand out of his pocket for the first time in that interview; and a pair of handcuffs clinked in it.

Simon glanced at them without moving.

"Hadn't you better think again, old dear?" he suggested quietly. "I don't know why I should go out of my way to save your hide, but I suppose I'm funny that way. Perhaps it's because life wouldn't be the same if you got chucked out of Scotland Yard on your ear and couldn't bring your tummy round to see me any more. Perhaps it's because I object to being marched into Piccadilly with bracelets over my wrists. But somehow or other I've got to save you from yourself."

"You don't have to worry—"

"But I do, Claud. I can't help it. it'd keep me awake at night, thinking of you sleeping out in the cold gutters with no one to even buy you a piece of spearmint. And it's all so obvious. The whole trouble is that you're jumping to too many conclusions. Just because I'm the Saint, and you never found any other criminals, you think I must be all of them. Then you hear of some guy called the Z-Man, so you think I must be him too. Well, who the hell is this Z-Man, and why haven't I heard of him before?"

Chief Inspector Teal bit on his gum in a supercharged effort of self-control that threatened to boil over at any moment. It was only by straining his will power to the limit that he succeeded in recovering the pose of mountainous boredom that he usually struggled in vain to maintain in the Saint's maddeningly nonchalant presence.

"I don't know what you hope to gain by all this, Templar, but you're wasting your breath," he said, shifting his lump of worn-out spearmint from one side of his mouth to the other. "I'm acting on facts that even you can't get away from. You may as well know that Sergeant Barrow was in the Dorchester at the time."

"Keeping a fatherly eye on me?"

"No; he was looking for someone else that we're interested in. But that's neither here nor there. Barrow happened to sec Miss Avery, and for reasons which I'm not going to explain he kept his eye on her."

"I only hope his thoughts were pure," said the Saint piously.

"Barrow saw you take a package from Miss Avery, and immediately afterwards he saw her leave the restaurant," continued Mr Teal coldly. "He accosted her in the foyer—"

"Disgusting, I call it," said the Saint. "What these policemen get away with—"

"He showed her his authority—"

"She must have been thrilled," murmured Simon.

"She refused to say anything, and Barrow rang me up," went on Teal, his self-control gradually slipping and his voice taking on its old familiar blare. "I got hold of these warrants, but I went to Miss Avery's flat first. She denied knowing anything about the Z-Man, but I'd been expecting that. What I did make her admit was that the package she handed you contained a large sum of money."

"Ten thousand pounds," said the Saint lazily. "I counted it."

Teal glowered at him, popeyed.

"I want that package—"

"Sorry, old dear," said the Saint regretfully. "I haven't got it."

"You haven't got it!" brayed Mr Teal.

"Calm yourself, sweetheart," drawled the Saint. "Much as I hate parting with perfectly good boodle when it's pushed right into my hand, I realized that a mistake had been made. Always the perfect gentleman, I immediately took steps to correct the error. On my way home I stopped at a District Messenger office and bunged the package back to Miss Avery, with contents intact. So you see, Claud, old thing, you'll have to tear those warrants up and go back to the assistant commissioner and let him flay you alive. And now that that's all cleared up, what about a smoke and a drink?"

He flicked open his cigarette case with one hand and indicated the whisky decanter with the other. Hoppy Uniatz, aware of the decanter's presence for the first time, moved mechanically towards it, licking his dry lips. Mr Teal, who had been unravelling his tonsils from his epiglottis, lumbered forward like a migrating volcano.

"You're not getting away like that this time, Templar," he said thickly. "You're coming with me! We've been after the Z-Man for a long time, and now we've got him. Are you coming quietly?"

"About as quietly as a brass band," answered the Saint succinctly. "But you needn't blow your whistles and bring in a troop of rozzers. I'm not going to pull a gun on you or start any roughhouse. I know it's a serious thing to interfere with an officer of the law in the execution of his duty — even when he's a mahogany-headed dope with barnacles all over his brain like you are. You say you're armed to the molars with warrants, or else I'd just bounce you out on your fat stomach and call it a day." His blue eyes rested on Mr Teal like twinkling icicles. "So instead of that I'll give you a chance to save your bacon. Before you commit the unmitigated asininity of arresting me and thereby get yourself slung out of a perfectly good job don't you think you'd better take the one obvious step?"

Nothing was obvious to Mr Teal except that he had got Simon Templar where he wanted him at last. But there was a mocking, buccaneering challenge in the Saint's voice that could not go unanswered.

"What obvious step?" he asked scorchingly. "I've got all the evidence I need—"

"I'm sorry; I forgot for the moment that you're only a detective," Simon apologized. "Let me put it into simple words. My answer to you is that Miss Avery gave me the ten thousand quid by mistake, and I rectified the mistake by immediately sending the money back to her. She's bound to have received it by now — and I know she's on the telephone. Since she seems to be the only important witness against me wouldn't it be rather a good idea to make quite certain that all this beautiful evidence of yours is really in the bag?"

He indicated his own instrument and his meaning was clear enough. But Chief Inspector Teal merely grunted and opened the handcuffs.

"That's an old one, isn't it?" he said contemptuously. "While I'm fooling about with the telephone you make your getaway. I'm surprised that you should suggest such a whiskery—"

He was interrupted by the shrill ringing of the twin bells of the telephone, and the Saint automatically reached for the instrument.

"No, you don't!" barked Mr Teal. "I'll take it."

Simon couldn't help smiling, for the detective was doing the very thing he had just been sneering at. But the Saint had no desire to make a getaway. He had a hunch that he knew where that call was coming from.

"Hullo!" said Mr Teal in a carefully controlled, Saintly voice.

"Is that Mr Simon Templar?"

"Yes," replied Mr Teal untruthfully; and he experienced a sudden awful feeling as though somebody had removed his stomach in one piece, leaving a wide open space; for the voice at the other end of the wire belonged unmistakably to Beatrice Avery. Mr Teal went to the movies often enough to know that.

"I owe you a humble apology, Mr Templar, for making such a stupid mistake," said Beatrice Avery, and Mr Teal heard the words through a kind of infernal tantara, in which the assistant commissioner's eloquent sniff was the most easily recognizable sound. "Thank you a thousand times for sending the money back so promptly. It was all a silly joke. Please forgive me."

III

If there was any joke in sight it was beyond the range of Mr Teal's sense of humour. He stood clinging to the telephone like a drowning man attached to a waterlogged straw. However it had been managed, somehow it had been done again: the Saint had been right in his hands and had slipped through them like a trickle of water. It was impossible, incredible, inhuman, unfair, unjust — but it had happened. Teal's head buzzed with the petrifying impact of the blow. He swallowed voicelessly, trying to think of something to say or do, but his brain seemed to be taking a temporary siesta. All he could think of was that he wanted to find some peaceful place in which to die. And at the same time he was bitterly aware that the Saint would probably still be capable of making him turn in his grave.

The Saint had enough confirmation of his hunch in the expression on Mr Teal's stricken face. He took the receiver gently out of the detective's hand and placed it to his own ear.

"I was half expecting you to ring, fair lady," he said easily. "If ever we meet again I hope you will make full compensation for that look you gave me—"

"I just told you, Mr Templar, that it was only a silly joke," interrupted the girl's breathless voice. "Please forget all about it."

"That's not so easy. If there's anything I could do to help—"

"Help?" The girl forced a laugh, and to the Saint it sounded almost hysterical. "Why should I want any help? It was just an idiotic practical joke, and it went wrong. That's all, Mr Templar. I'm afraid I made a dreadful little fool of myself, and I shall be eternally grateful if you'll forget the whole thing."

"Is it as bad as that, darling?" Simon asked softly. "Because—"

"Thank you so much, Mr Templar. Good-bye."

Simon slid a cigarette into his mouth as he turned away from the instrument. In the fuliginous silence that followed, as the Saint lighted his smoke, Chief Inspector Teal's pudgy fingers slowly and laboriously unwrapped a fresh wafer of spearmint. Mr Teal was making a game effort to recover his composure, and it was brutally hard going. He was tied in a knot, and he knew it. It was an old, old knot, and he was familiar with every twist of it. Once again he had believed that triumph was within his grasp, and once again that debonair outlaw had cheated him. And it would happen again and again and again and forever. The knowledge percolated into Mr Teal's interior like a liquid cannon ball, solidifying into its original shape in the lower region of his stomach. He thrust the wafer of gum into his mouth and glared murderously at the unemotional Sergeant Barrow.

"Well?" he demanded sulphurously. "What are we waiting for?"

"Don't take it so much to heart, Claud, old dear," said the Saint, his voice surprisingly innocent of raillery. "Don't be in a hurry to dash off either. You're not bursting with anxiety to have that chat with the assistant commissioner, are you? I'm not going to prod you in the waistcoat—"

"You'd better not try!" said Mr Teal hoarsely as he shifted his ample paunch well out of range of the Saint's questing forefinger.

"Have a drink, and let's get together," pleaded the Saint. "The mistake you made was natural enough — and if the worst comes to the worst you can always shove the blame onto Sergeant Barrow. You probably will anyhow. Hut that doesn't make it up to me. The thing which pains me is that you should have mistaken me for this bird of prey who calls himself the Z-Man. A bloke who can cause a girl full of charm and glamour and a hard-boiled detective to frizzle me with a couple of looks like the interior of a sewage incinerator must be pretty epizootic. Tell me, Claud, who is this descendant of Dracula?"

But something else had settled upon Mr Teal's tortured presence — something oddly stubborn and impenetrable that didn't fit in with his earlier demonstrations any more than it belonged to the stunned paralysis which had since overcome him. It was as if he had drawn back inside himself and locked a door.

"Forget it," he said stonily.

"I can't forget something 1 don't know. Be reasonable, dear old nitwit. It's only fair to me—"

"I don't know anything about the Z-Man, and nobody else knows anything about the Z-Man," Teal said deliberately. "I was just trying to be funny. Understand?"

He nodded sleepily, jerked his head towards Sergeant Barrow, and they both left. As the front door gave a vicious slam Hoppy Uniatz reached for the whisky decanter and thrust the neck of it into his capacious mouth.

"Boss," he said, coming to the surface, "I don't get nut'n."

"Except the whisky," murmured the Saint, rescuing the decanter. "For once, Hoppy, I'm right in your street. I don't get nut'n either."

"Why ja let dem bums get away wit' it?" asked Mr Uniatz discontentedly. "Dey got a noive, bustin' in like dat. Say, if we knew some politicians we could have dose mugs walkin' a beat again so fast—"

Simon was not listening. He was pacing up and down like a tiger, inhaling deeply from his cigarette; and as Mr Uniatz watched him a slow smile of appreciation illuminated his homely face. He could see that his boss was thinking, and, knowing from his own experience what a painful ordeal this was, he relapsed into a sympathetic and respectful silence.

It was clear enough to the Saint that Mr Teal had been disturbed by certain dimensions of his blunder which hadn't been apparent at first sight. The very existence of the Z-Man, it seemed, had been a closely guarded secret — until Teal had let the cat peep out of the bag and wink at Simon Templar, of all people. Unable to undo the damage which he had done in his first excess of confidence, the detective had taken the only remedy he had left and had escaped from the Saint's magnetic presence before he could be lured into any more mistakes. But as far as the Saint was concerned he had still left plenty of interesting ideas behind him.

A key turned in the front door, and a moment later Patricia Holm walked into the living room. She looked at the Saint accusingly.

"I met Teal downstairs," she said. "What are we going to be arrested for now?"

"Nothing," answered the Saint peacefully. "Claud Eustace thought I was, though, until I showed him the error of his ways. Sit down, lass, and listen to the tale of how a perfectly respectable buccaneer was mistaken for the ungodliest of the ungodly."

Patricia sat down with the patience that she had learned through years of testing it. She had known the Saint too long to be surprised by any story he had to tell; and she knew him too well to be deceived by the transparency of his present calm. There was the unmistakable hell-for-leather lilt in his voice, hinting at battle, murder and sudden death; and when that lilt was there it was as useless to oppose him as it would have been useless to argue with a cyclone.

"We're going after the Z-Man," he said dreamily.

"Who's the Z-Man?"

"I don't know."

"That ought to give us a flying start then," said Patricia kindly. "Do you know what it's all about, Hoppy?"

"I don't know nut'n," answered Mr Uniatz as though he were a phonograph record with a crack in it.

It didn't take the Saint long to give a full and vivid recital of what he knew. He was always fond of his own voice, but this time there wasn't much for him to tell. The girl listened with growing interest; but at the finish, when he asked for her opinion, she had none to offer.

"You still don't really know anything," she objected.

"Exactly," agreed the Saint, unabashed. "It was only by chance that I heard anything about the Z-Man at all — and that was mostly because Claud dropped a brick. It's just another proof, Pat, old cherub, that my guardian angel never falls down on the job. Something tells me that this game is Big, and I should be lacking in moral duty if I didn't sit in on it. Observe the reactions of Beatrice Avery and Claud Eustace Teal — two people who have just about as much in common as a gazelle and a hippopotamus. Both of them closed up as enthusiastically as a couple of lively clams. Both of them refused to discuss the subject of the Z-Man. Both of them told me it was all a joke."

The Saint rose to his feet and lighted another cigarette. His eyes were mere slits of steel.

"A joke!" he repeated. "If you'd seen the look in Beatrice Avery's eyes, Pat, you'd know how much of a joke the Z-Man is! Teal, too. He was fool enough to think I was the Z-Man, and he didn't want to put the bracelets on me because he'd have to touch me! By God, this bird must be something that 'd make Jack the Ripper look like a Salvation Army drummer boy."

"You still don't know anything useful," Patricia said practically. "What are you going to do — advertise for him?"

"I don't know… There's a hell of a lot I don't know," answered the Saint, scowling. "I don't even know what the Z-Man's racket is — excepting that it must be damned profitable. It's no good asking Teal for information; he's in trouble enough already. I can't go to Beatrice Avery — or at least, if I did she wouldn't see me or tell me anything."

"She might see me."

"She won't see anybody," said the Saint. "After what has happened today she'll be scared as stiff as a corpse. Don't you get it, darling? She had an appointment with the Z-Man or one of his agents, and she knows she failed to keep it. The Z-Man won't know that she actually did keep it, and he'll start turning on the heat. This girl will have extra locks and bolts on her doors—"

"Didn't you say that she and I look a bit alike?"

"Only in height and build and fair-headedness and general beauty and all that sort of thing," replied Simon. "You're both the same type, that's all."

"Then leave it to me," said Patricia calmly. "I'll show you what a real detective can do."

It was the conventional tea hour when she entered the handsome new apartment house in the neighbourhood of Marble Arch known as Parkside Court. Number 21 was on the sixth floor, and Patricia went up in the elevator in spite of the fact that the porter had warned her that Miss Avery had given instructions that she was not at home to anybody. The porter had put it more broadly than this; he had declared that Miss Avery had gone down to Cornwall for a holiday — or up into Aberdeenshire, he wasn't sure which. But Patricia had looked at him with her sapphire-blue eyes, so remarkably like the Saint's, and her bewitching smile, and the unfortunate man had dried completely up.

In the carpeted corridor, outside the door of number 21 a man was repairing a vacuum cleaner. Patricia was sorry for him. He had taken the vacuum cleaner apart into so many pieces that it was very doubtful whether it could ever be put together again. Notwithstanding his workmanlike overalls, Patricia had no difficulty in recognizing him as an employee of some private detective agency. He had "ex-policeman" stamped all over him in embossed lettering.

"No good you ringing that bell, miss," he said gruffly as Patricia placed her finger on the button. "There's nobody at home. Miss Avery's gone into the country."

He had looked at her very hard at first with a somewhat startled expression on his face. Patricia knew why. She went on smiling at him.

"Is there any special way of ringing?" she enquired sweetly. "I don't think she'll refuse to see her own sister."

The man suddenly grinned.

"Well, of course that's different, miss," he said hastily. "I thought there was a likeness. Why, when you came round the corner I took you for Miss Avery herself."

He gave three short rings, a long one and three more short. The door was almost immediately opened by a nervous-looking maid.

"Okay, Bessie, it's Miss Avery's sister."

Patricia walked straight in, just as the Saint might have done, and her complete assurance gave the maid no chance to reply. A moment later, in the artistically lighted living room, she was face to face with Beatrice Avery.

"I'm quite harmless, and I hope you'll forgive me for getting in by a trick, Miss Avery," she said directly. She opened her bag and produced a card. "This will tell you who I am — and perhaps you'll guess why I'm here."

The film star's frightened eyes looked up from the card.

"Yes, I've heard your name," she whispered. "You work with the Saint, don't you? Sit down, please, Miss Holm. I don't know why you've come. I told Mr Templar over the phone that it was all a silly joke—"

"And I'm here because the Saint didn't believe you," Patricia interrupted gently. "If you've heard of him you must know that you can trust him. Simon thinks that something ought to be done about the Z-Man, and he's the one man in all the world to do it."

Beatrice Avery's breasts stirred shakily under her clinging satin negligee, and her grey eyes grew obstinate — with the dreadful obstinacy of utter fear.

"It's all very absurd, Miss Holm," she said, trying to speak carelessly. "There's no such person as the Z-Man. How did Mr Templar know… I mean, there's nothing I can tell you."

"You'd rather pay ten thousand pounds—"

"There's nothing I can tell you," repeated the girl, rising to her feet. "Nothing! Nothing at all! Please leave me alone!"

Her voice was almost shrill, and Patricia saw at a glance that it would be hopeless to prolong the interview. Beatrice Avery was a great deal more frightened than even the Saint had realized or Patricia had expected. Patricia was shrewd and understanding, and she knew when she was wasting her time. Anybody less clever would have persisted and only hardened Beatrice Avery's obstinacy. All Patricia did was to point to her card on the table.

"If you change your mind," she said, "there's the phone number. We'll do anything we can to help you — and we keep secrets."

She was not feeling very satisfied with herself as she rode down in the elevator. It wouldn't be pleasant to go back to the Saint and report failure after the boast she had made. But it couldn't be helped. It was just one of those things. The Saint would think of some other approach…

The hall was deserted when she reached it, and she walked out into the evening dusk and paused uncertainly on the sidewalk in the glow of the red and green neon lights that decorated the entrance. A taxi crawled by, and she signalled. The driver swung round in the road and pulled in.

"Cornwall House, Piccadilly," said Patricia.

"Yes, miss," answered the driver, reaching round and opening the door.

She got in, and the cab was off before she had fairly closed the door. Something hard and round pressed into her side, and she looked quickly into the shadows. A smallish man with ferretlike eyes was sitting beside her.

"One scream, sister, and you're for it," said the man in a flat matter-of-fact voice. "This thing in your side is a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it."

"Oh!" said Patricia faintly, and she sagged into limpness.

She had done it so well that Ferret Eyes was completely taken in. Patricia, her brain working like oiled machinery, did not blame herself for having fallen into such a simple trap. She had had no reason to be on the alert for one; and she knew that it had not been laid for her at all. The ungodly had mistaken her for Beatrice Avery! And why shouldn't they? She was the same height and colouring, close enough to have deceived even the Saint at a distance, and she had emerged from the apartment house where Beatrice Avery lived. With the added help of the dim light she might have deceived anyone — and might go on deceiving him for a while, so long as she kept her mouth shut. It was to avoid being forced to talk too much that she had feigned that rapid faint, to give herself a chance to think over her next move.

She was aware of a throb of excitement within her. There was no fear in her — the Saint had taught her to forget such things. Instead he had bequeathed her so much of his own blithe recklessness that she saw in a flash that while she had failed with Beatrice Avery she might yet succeed in this new and unexpected quarter. It amused her to think that while the enemy wouldn't have dared to use the taxicab trick with her, they had thought it good enough for the film star, who was naturally unversed in the ways of the ungodly. And yet it was she, Patricia Holm, who had fallen for it! It was a twist that might provide the Saint with the scent he was looking for.

She was preparing to come naturally out of her faint when the taxi bumped heavily and swung giddily round in a sharp arc. Then it came to a jerky stop, and Pat heard some doors closing. She sat half forward with a dazed look on her face.

"Take it easy, sister," said Ferret Eyes gratingly. "Nobody's going to hurt that lovely face of yours — yet."

"Where am I? What are you going to do to me?" she gasped, her voice faltering. "I'll pay!" she went on hysterically. "I tried to pay at the Dorchester. You didn't come. I had the money—"

"Tell it to somebody else," he said callously.

He forced her to get out, and she saw that the cab had been driven into an ancient garage and the doors closed on it. There was a ramshackle door at the rear, just against the cab's radiator; and he gripped her by the arm and hustled her through it and down a steep flight of stairs into a low, malodorous cellar. The taxi driver followed. An electric torchlight flashed on her out of the black darkness as she stumbled down to the bottom — and a man who was already down there behind the light drew his breath through his teeth in a long sibilant hiss.

"Who's the damn fool responsible for this?" His harsh voice came from behind the blaze. "This girl is not Beatrice Avery!"

The taxi driver lurched forward.

"You're crazy!" he growled. "I recognized 'er as soon as she came out…" He swung Patricia round and stared into her face with the light full on it; and then he swore savagely. "God, it isn't! But it's just like 'er. I never sore 'er in a light like this…"

Ferret Eyes stiffened and swore also, more fluently. His grip on the girl's arm tightened.

"Well, who is she?" he rasped. "She knows what it's about — she was gabbing about the money as if she knew everything!"

The man behind the torch reached out a clawlike hand and seized Patricia's bag. He opened it. The card she had given to Beatrice Avery was not the only one. She could feel him staring from the card to her face in the silence that followed.

"Patricia Holm!" said the man in the darkness with a dry, sandy grit in his voice. "That's who she is. A fine pair of saps you've turned out to be!" His voice quivered with rising fury. "No wonder she fooled you! Don't you know who she is? Haven't you ever heard of the Saint?"

There was a silence that descended like a fog. It seemed to throb and vibrate through the cellar, filling it with a choking stillness broken only by the heavy breathing of the three men. It was something, Patricia reflected wryly, to know that the Saint's name alone was capable of creating such panic. At that moment it was about the only asset she had.

"You know what he'll say when he finds out that your blasted blundering has brought the Saint down on us!" snapped the man behind the torch. "You'd better do something about it. I'll hold this girl here. You two get straight out and go after Templar. And get him before he gets you. Understand? Don't come back until you've got him!"

"Why bother?" drawled a voice that cut through the air like the thrust of a rapier blade. "I've already invited myself. And just which of you is planning to be the hero?"

Three gasps sounded in unison, and the beam of the electric flashlight jerked round as if it had been snatched by an invisible wire. On the mouldering stairs stood the Saint, immaculate and deadly.

IV

The gun in Simon Templar's hand circled leisurely over the three male occupants of the cellar in a generous expansiveness of invitation. The man who had been doing the talking was still only a vague shape behind the dazzling bulb of his electric torch; but the Saint's uncanny eyes pierced the screen of light enough to see the unoccupied hand which reached round towards a hip pocket.

"That's only one of the many ways of dying, brother," said the Saint instructively. "But of course you can make your own choice…"

The hipwards movement of the hand was arrested, and at the same moment the man switched off his torch. He was disappointed, however, in assuming that this would result in a decrease in the cellar's illumination. The general lighting effect was not only doubled, but he himself stood in the direct glare of a miniature searchlight. The Saint had decided that it was time to take full stock of the situation, and his own flashlight was even better than the one that had gone out.

The man who had stood concealed behind the light was a disappointment. His appearance, after the crisp and authoritative tone of his voice, came as a considerable shock. He was a small skinny bird of about forty, extraordinarily neatly dressed, his ornamentations including a waisted overcoat and fawn spats. His face was small featured with sandy eyebrows just visible over the tops of his highly respectable gold-rimmed pince-nez. His nose and mouth were small; and his chin, after a half-hearted attempt to establish itself, drifted away to hide itself shyly in his neck.

"You ought to be more careful, Andy," Simon admonished him. "Take that gun out of your pocket if you like, but spread it out on the floor where we can all feast our eyes on it."

"My name is not Andy," said the chinless man.

"No? Except for the eye gear and the spats you look exactly like Andy Gump," answered the Saint. "Pat, old darling, if you can spare a moment you might build up our collection of artillery."

Not one of the men attempted to move. They knew the Saint's reputation, and they had an earnest and unanimous desire to continue living. Behind the bantering cadence of the Saint's voice there was a glacial chill that converted the cellar into a refrigerator. His gun was extremely visible, too, and the lean brown fingers that held it had a lively quality that made them look as if they would just as soon start squeezing as keep still.

Patricia relieved the clerkly-looking Mr Gump of his gun, and Ferret Eyes threw his own weapon on the floor before she could even turn to him.

"I ain't got no pistol, miss, swelp me I ain't," swore the taxi driver hoarsely.

She believed him, but she patted his pockets just the same. And Simon descended the stairs.

"Now, boys, you can line yourselves up against that wall over there," he said with an indicative flick of his gun muzzle. "And don't forget where you are… Pat, you take this heater and stand well to the side. Here's the torch, too, and keep the light nicely steady… It will interest you birds to know," he added for the benefit of the obedient trio, "that the lady can hit a microbe's eye at fifty yards. If you don't believe me, you only have to bring on your microbes."

He took Mr Gump's gun from Patricia and picked up Ferret Eyes' weapon from the floor; then he swiftly examined both and thrust them into his pocket. From another pocket he produced a second automatic of his own. He never trusted strange weapons. Holding his gun with careless ease, he briefly inspected the taxi driver and Ferret Eyes; he was not particularly interested in either of them since they definitely came within the dull category of small fry. Mr Gump, however, was probably very close to the Z-Man. Mr Gump needed careful investigation. He looked very meek and inoffensive as the Saint started going through his pockets — except perhaps for the snakelike glitter in his eyes behind the gold-rimmed pince-nez — a glitter which belied the disarming weakness of his chin.

And suddenly Mr Gump gave a demonstration which proved him to be either a very rash fool or a very brave man. As Simon Templar was in the act of insinuating a brown hand into Mr Gump's breast pocket a knee shot up and dug itself into the lower region of his stomach. With a simultaneous cohesion of movement Mr Gump grabbed at the Saint's gun and tore it out of Simon's relaxed fingers. In another instant the muzzle was jammed hard against Simon's chest with Mr Gump's finger on the trigger.

"Drop that gun, Miss Holm, or your friend becomes an angel instead of a Saint," said Mr Gump.

Patricia made no movement. Nobody made any movement. And the Saint chuckled.

"That was careless of me, brother — but not so careless as you think," he murmured. "That gun's the one I didn't load."

He raised his hand almost casually and took hold of Mr Gump's small nose. He gripped it very hard between his finger and thumb and twisted it.

Click!

Mr Gump pulled the trigger in a flurry of blind fury and extreme anguish. And that empty click! was the only result. He pulled again, and nothing happened. Nothing, that is, except that the agonizing torque on his sensitive nose increased. He let out a strangled squeal and dropped his useless weapon; and at the same time the Saint released his grip.

"I told you it wasn't loaded," said the Saint, picking up the automatic by the trigger guard and dropping it into his pocket. "I think I'd better use your gun, Andy. But don't try any more tricks like that, or I might really have to hurt you."

Mr Gump did not reply; except for the baleful glitter in his streaming eyes he seemed unmoved. Patricia., who knew the Saint's twisted sense of humour better than anybody, wondered why he had wasted time by amusing himself so childishly at Mr Gump's expense. There must have been a reason somewhere; for Simon Templar never did strange things without a reason, and it was invariably a good one. It was noticeable that he held the new gun, which was loaded with death, in such a way that Mr Gump would never have a chance of grabbing it.

"So we collect pretty pictures, do we?"

The Saint's voice held nothing but tolerant amusement as he inspected the four glossy photographs of feminine pulchritude which he had abstracted from Mr Gump's breast pocket.

"Why not?" said the other defensively. "I'm a film fan."

"Brother, you certainly know how to pick winners," commented the Saint. "This young lady in the voluminous mid-Victorian attire, complete with bustle, is undoubtedly Miss Beatrice Avery, shining star of Triumph Film Productions Limited. Very charming. Of course it's her you thought you were snatching tonight. Number Two, in the exotic Eastern outfit, is the lovely Irene Cromwell, under contract with Pyramid Pictures. We could use her, Andy. Number Three, in the dinky abbreviated beach suit, is no less a person than Sheila Ireland, now starring with Summit Picture Corporation. I can see I shall have to get out my old water wings. And Number Four—" He paused, and his eyes hardened. "Very sad about Number Four, don't you think, Andy? A couple of months ago Miss Mercia Landon was doing the final scenes of her new film for Atlantic Studios. A couple of months ago… And now?"

"I don't know what you're getting at," said Mr Gump woodenly.

"If you don't the Z-Man is very careless in choosing his assistants," answered the Saint.

"What the hell do you mean?" stammered the chinless man, his inward alarm crashing suddenly through the veneer of calm which he had tried to preserve. "There's no harm in my carrying those photographs. Anybody can get them. I'm a film fan—"

"So you told me," agreed the Saint, slipping the photographs into his own pocket. "And a kidnapper in your spare time, too, by the looks of it," he added casually. "Well, I may as well see what the rest of your hobbies arc — although I'm not likely to find anything half so interesting as your favourite film stars."

He put a cigarette into his mouth, lighted it with a match which he sprung into flame with his thumbnail and set it at a rakish angle. If the men before him had known him better they would have sweated with fear, for that rakish slant was an infallible sign that something was going to happen and that he was personally going to start it. Patricia felt her heart beating a shade faster. Except for that one danger signal there was nothing to give her a clue to what was in his mind.

He completed the search, finding cigarettes, matches, money, keys and all the usual contents of an average man's pockets, but nothing to reveal Mr Gump's real identity and nothing to connect him with the mysterious Z-Man. Even the tailor's label inside his breast pocket had been removed.

"Well, gents, we can call it an evening." The Saint wavered his gun muzzle gently over the three men. "Pat, old thing, sling me the torch and then get up to the garage. We've finished here."

She obeyed at once; and a moment later Simon himself was backing up the stairs, keeping his flashlight flooding downwards. As soon as he reached the top he swung the door to and fastened it. It was not a good door. There were cracks in it, the hinges were old and rusted, and the lock had long since ceased to function; but the Saint overcame these trifling drawbacks by the simple expedient of propping three or four heavy wooden stakes against the door. Since it opened outwards the three musketeers would have to work for some time before they could make their escape.

"We have been having a lot of luck lately, haven't we?" Patricia remarked philosophically.

"Have I grumbled?" asked the Saint, making no attempt to lower his voice — and, indeed, speaking quite close to the barricaded cellar door. "We're going to shoot off to Parkside Court now, old dear, and warn Beatrice Avery that she'd better be packing. After what happened to you it's pretty obvious that the ungodly are likely to put in some fast work, and we're going to be just one move ahead of them. If necessary we'll take the fair Beatrice away by force."

"Why didn't you question those fellows about the Z-Man?"

"They wouldn't have come through with a syllable unless I'd beaten it out of them, and I'm not in one of my torturing moods this evening," answered Simon. "Don't worry about the Three Little Pigs — it'll take them about an hour to get out, and I doubt if they'll go after Beatrice again tonight anyway. Ready, darling?"

While he spoke he had been flashing his torch about the garage. There was a telephone in one corner, and this interested him for a moment; but a few odd potatoes lying on the floor against one of the walls interested him almost as much. He picked up the biggest he could find and bent down at the rear of the taxi to jam the providential tuber firmly over the end of the exhaust pipe.

"All set, keed," he murmured, and his eyes were bright with mischief.

V

The men in the cellar heard the main garage door creak open and then close. After that there was a large silence, broken at last by Ferret Eyes. Exactly what he said is immaterial. Ninety percent of it would have burned holes through any printed page, and the subject matter in between the frankly irrelevant patches cast grievous aspersions on Simon Templar's parentage, his physical characteristics and his purely personal habits. The air of the cellar was rapidly turning a deep blue when the chinless man cut in.

"It's no good cursing the Saint," he said sharply. "The mistake was yours, Welmont, and you know it. Why don't you try cursing yourself?"

"What's Z going to say?" asked Welmont, a frightened note coming into his voice. "It wasn't my fault, Raddon. Damn it, you can't blame me. From the other side of the road the girl looked exactly like Beatrice Avery. How the hell was I to know? She came out of Parkside Court—"

"Save it until later." Raddon cut him off impatiently. "The first thing we've got to do is to get out of here. See what you can do with the door, Tyler. You know more about this damn place than I do."

The taxi driver mounted the stairs and heaved against the door. It creaked and groaned but gave no sign of opening.

"It's jammed," he reported unnecessarily. "The lock's no good, and there ain't any bolts. That ruddy perisher must have done somethink." He swore comprehensively. "Now we're in a ruddy mess, ain't we? I told yer not to bring that ruddy jane to my garridge."

It was not the best of all places for applying force. The stairs were narrow and steep and slippery, and there was no possible way of exerting leverage or even making a shoulder charge. It was equally impossible for two men to stand side by side. Raddon himself went up and examined the door, holding the torch to the cracks so that the beam of light passed through.

"There's only one way to get out," he said. "If we cut away the lower part of the door we can use a plank to shift the props. There are two or three planks lying in the cellar against the wall. You'd better start, Tyler."

The taxi driver cursed and grumbled but set to work. The door was old and misshapen, but it was tough. Tyler and Welmont, working in turn while Raddon held the light, took the better part of half an hour to break through. They had only penknives for tools, and they had to split and chip away the wood in fragments. Finally Tyler forced one of his heavy boots through the opening with a vicious kick. A plank was then thrust through and the props dislodged.

"'S'pose 'e sends the rozzers?" asked the driver anxiously. "I'll lose my licence, that's wot I'll do. I was a ruddy fool to let you use my garridge."

"If Templar had sent the police they'd have been here twenty minutes ago," Raddon answered promptly. "The Saint doesn't want the police in this any more than we do. But he's an interfering swine, and we've got to get after him. Start up the cab, Tyler."

"Give me a charnce, will yer?" protested Tyler, climbing into his seat. "I'll 'ave it out in a jiffy."

He was an optimist. They gave him a chance; but the self-starter, which usually had the engine firing after the first whirr, whirred in vain. Tyler's cursing only added to the ear-aching sounds which filled the garage.

"You'll have no batteries left," Raddon said helpfully.

The taxi man climbed down from his seat.

"Funny bloomin' thing," he rumbled. "She don't usually play tricks like this 'ere. "Tain't as if she was stone cold neither."

"Perhaps you forgot to turn the petrol on," ventured Welmont.

"P'raps there ain't any blinkin' engine," snarled Tyler. "Wot the 'ell d' yer take me for?" He uncovered the engine and addressed a few scorching remarks to it. "Can't nobody show me a light?" he said bitterly. "Think I'm a blarsted cat? Nothink wrong with the jooce." The carburetor flooded at his touch. "Ignition looks all right too. 'E didn't take out the plugs. Nothink loose nowhere…"

He tried again, with the same result. The engine, for some inexplicable reason, amused itself by turning over, but it simply refused to fire. Tyler had been a taxi driver for years, and before that he had worked as a motor mechanic. The cab was his own property, and he always did his own repairs. He tried everything he could think of, but he never thought of taking a look at the rear end of the exhaust pipe.

"We've wasted enough time," said Raddon angrily. "I've got to get in touch with Z—"

He broke off as he caught sight of the telephone in the corner. It was only by chance that he had seen it at all, for it was almost hidden behind a number of ancient and ragged tires which hung on the wall, and Welmont's torchlight had swung in that direction quite casually and without any intentional objective. Raddon's eyes narrowed behind the gold-rimmed pince-nez, and he flashed his own torch into the corner.

"Is this phone connected?" he asked sharply.

"Wot the 'ell d' yer mean?" Tyler demanded, looking round indignantly. "Think I ain't paid the rent for it? Of course it's connected."

"Why didn't you tell me it was here?" Raddon retorted. "I could have used it long ago. Now it may be too late… You heard what Templar said to the Holm girl before they left?"

He went to the instrument, held his light steadily on it and dialled Scotland Yard. As soon as the switchboard operator answered he spoke in a deep voice with a forced foreign inflection.

"Take this down garefully," he said distinctly. "Simon Templar, alias the Saint, alias the Z-Man, is at this moment gidnabbing Beatrice Avery, the film star, from her apartment in Barkside Gourt. That's all."

He hung up before the operator could answer.

" 'Ere, wot abaht me?" demanded Tyler frantically. "You got a ruddy nerve, usin' my phone for that job. They can trace that call. Think I want the cops round 'ere arskin' questions?"

"You know nothing about it," said Raddon calmly. "You left the garage unlocked, and somebody used your phone. What does it matter, you fool? They can't pin anything on you. I had to get through to the Yard at once. If they pull Templar in he'll spend the next two weeks trying to explain his movements. The Yard's been trying to get him for years, and if they catch him red-handed snatching the Avery girl they'll send him up for a ten-year stretch."

He turned to the instrument again and flashed his light on the dial. Placing his body between the telephone and the other two men so that they could not watch the movements of his finger, he quickly dialled another number and waited. He listened to the steady "burr-burr" for a few moments, and then a voice answered.

"Raddon here," he said in a rapid subdued voice. "Something has gone wrong. Can't do anything more this evening. Better turn our attention to the next proposition…" He broke off and listened. "All right. Usual place tomorrow, as early as possible."

He hung up at once and found Welmont looking curiously at him out of his ferret eyes.

"Was that Z?" Welmont asked.

"It was Gandhi," answered Raddon curtly. "If you're ready we'll go. There's nothing more for tonight. Too dangerous to move until we know more about Templar."

They departed — none too soon for Tyler, who was jumpy and worried — leaving one of the big double doors slightly ajar.

Simon Templar stroked the cog of his lighter and inhaled deeply and luxuriously from a much-needed cigarette. He heard the three men walking over the cobbles outside; and then silence. With the lithe ease of a panther he lowered himself from the overhead beam on which he had been lying at full length, dropped to the roof of the taxi and thence descended to the ground.

There was a smile on his lips as he dusted himself down. That beam, so easily reached from the roof of the taxi, had positively asked him to make its acquaintance when he had first glanced up at it. Patricia, he knew, could handle her end of the job with smooth efficiency; he had had a couple of minutes earnest talk with her before they parted. For Simon Templar, even before he left the cellar, had put in some of that characteristic quick thinking which was the everlasting despair of the law and the ungodly alike. His restless brain, working at supercharged pressure, had looked into the immediate future with a clarity that was little short of clairvoyant; he had formulated a plan of action out of a situation that had not even acquired a definite geography. But that power of thinking ahead into the most remote possibilities was the gift which had so often left his enemies breathless in the background, hopelessly outpaced by the hurricane speed of the Saint's imagination…

Which satisfactorily explains why he was still in Mr Tyler's garage, dusting the well-creased knees of his impeccable Anderson & Sheppard trousers and by no means dissatisfied with the results of his roosting. He grinned helplessly as he realised how easily the departed trio could have seen him if they had only looked up into the dusty rafters. Not that it would have mattered much: he was armed, and they weren't. However, it was just as well that he had remained undiscovered. His ears hadn't told him much more than he knew already; but his eyes had served him well.

Raddon's phone call to Scotland Yard had given him nothing to worry about. If he knew anything of Patricia she would be through with Beatrice Avery long before the padded shoulders of the law could darken the portals of Parkside Court.

His eyes had served him on the second phone call. Lying along the overhead beam, he had looked straight down upon the telephone… He chuckled as he thought of Raddon's precautions. Raddon would never have used the instrument at all for his second call if it had been one of the old-fashioned non-dialling type. He couldn't have given his number to the exchange without giving it to Welmont and Tyler at the same time. Dialling was different: he had only to obtrude his body between his companions and the telephone, and they couldn't possibly know what number he had called.

But the Saint, with a perfect bird's-eye view, had watched every movement of Raddon's fingers on the dial; his supersensitive ears had listened to every click of the returning disc; he had memorized the number and tucked it securely away in a corner of his retentive brain. Raddon's finger had first jabbed into the PRS hole, then into the ABC, then into the PRS again. This could only mean one exchange — PAR, otherwise PARliament. The numbers were easy, Raddon had called PARliament 5577.

The Z-Man's telephone number! Or, at least, a number he was in the practice of using.

There were ways and means of discovering to whom that number had been allocated. Searching through the London Telephone Directory was one of them, but the Saint had never been able to rave about that particularly tedious occupation. There were easier methods. One of them he tried at once. He dialled PARIiament 5577 himself and blew smoke rings at the mouthpiece while he waited. His connection came quickly, and a thick voice said:

"Vell?"

"The same to you, comrade," said the Saint fraternally. "Kindly put me through to Mr Thistlethwaite—"

"Vot? Der iss nobody named that," said the thick voice.

"You'll pardon me, but there's a very large somebody named that," said the Saint firmly. "Senior partner of the firm of Thistlethwaite and Abernethy—"

"This iss not the firm you say."

"No? Then who is it?" asked the Saint obstinately. "What's the idea of using Thistlethwaite and Abernethy's telephone number? Aren't you Parliament 5577?"

"Yes."

"Then don't be silly. You're Thistlethwaite. Or are you Abernethy?"

"Ve are not dose names," shouted the thick voice.

The line became dead, but Simon Templar was not discouraged. He had not expected to click at the first attempt. He dialled the number a second time and waited.

"Vell?"

"Oh, it's you again, is it?" said the Saint cheerfully. "Vell — I mean, well, that proves that you must be Thistlethwaite. Or else you're Abernethy. I damn well know I dialled the right number."

"Ve are not Thistle-vot-you-say und somebody," roared the thick voice, its owner clearly under the impression that he was dealing with a genial half-wit. "You got the wrong number again, you fool!"

"If you're Parliament 5577 you're Thistlethwaite and Abernethy," insisted the Saint. "Think I don't know?"

"Ve are Zeidelmann und Co.," bellowed the angry voice, "und ve know nothing of the peoples you say."

"Well I'm damned!" said Simon in surprise. "Then am I the bloke who's been making the mistake? A thousand apologies, dear old frankfurter. And the same to Co."

He hung up, and with his cigarette slanting dangerously out of the corner of his mouth he turned over the last few pages of Vol. II of the London Telephone Directory, which lay on a shelf. There was only one Zeidelmann & Co.; and the address was Bryerby House, Victoria.

The Saint paused for a moment to remove the potato from the taxicab's exhaust pipe, and as he strode silently down a long narrow yard with high walls on either side he reflected on the absurdity of a mere humble potato rendering impotent one of man's greatest mechanical wonders. And at the same time he reflected on his own remarkable good fortune. Beyond any shadow of doubt, his guardian angel was having a busy day…

VI

He was somewhere in the Cricklewood district, and he found his great cream-and-red Hirondel parked where he had left it. His opportune arrival in the garage cellar a little earlier had been no coincidence. He had allowed Patricia Holm to go to Parkside Court alone, but he had hovered cautiously in the offing himself, and it had been a simple matter to follow the taxi which had started off with such suspicious abruptness.

"The Z-Man — Zeidelmann & Co.," he said to himself as he drove swiftly towards Victoria. "Significant — and yet rather too easy. There's a catch in it somewhere."

Bryerby House stood in a quiet road off Victoria Street. Simon parked his car near by and walked to the office building. He had formulated no plan of action, but doubtless something would occur to him when it was necessary. Direct action, the straightforward and devastatingly simple approach which had always appealed to him, continued to offer tempting possibilities. It looked as if Zeidelmann & Co. had something to do with the Z-Man. Therefore he wanted to feast his eyes on Zeidelmann & Co. The logic of the proposition seemed incontrovertible; and as for its consequences, Simon was cheerfully prepared to let the Lord provide.

There was a wicked glimmer of anticipation in his eyes as he inspected the grubby board in the hall on which was painted a list of the occupants and their various callings. Zeidelmann & Co. apparently did nothing for a living, for beyond stating that their office was situated on the ground floor the board was completely dumb. The Saint wandered down a shabby bare-boarded passage, scanning the names on the doors as he passed them. He met nobody, for Bryerby House was one of those janitor-less office buildings in which one could wander unhindered and unchallenged at any hour of the day; and although the evening was quite young it was still old enough for most businessmen to have paddled off to the discomfort of their suburban homes. The passage took a turn at the end, and Simon Templar found himself facing a glass-topped door. There was a light within, and painted on the glass were the illuminating words:

Simon cocked his hat at the sign.

"And indeed they are," he drawled and knocked on the door.

"Vell?" came a familiar thick voice.

"So our old pal Mr Veil is here," murmured the Saint, turning the door handle and entering. "Good evening, Z-Man," he added affably as he closed the door and lounged elegantly against it. "This is the Saint calling. And how's the trade in old pots and pans?"

One hand rested carelessly in his pocket, and the other flicked a cigarette into his mouth and then snapped a match head into flame. His languidly mocking eyes had missed nothing in the first quick survey of the room. The office was small and barren. It contained nothing but a shabby flat-topped desk, a couple of chairs, a table lamp and a telephone. At the desk sat a big shadowy man — the Saint could only see him indistinctly, for the lampshade was tilted over so that, the light shone towards the door and left the man at the desk in semigloom. It seemed to be a popular lighting system among the clan.

"Himmel! You are the crazy fool who telephoned, yes?"

"Well, I did telephone," Simon admitted. "But I don't know if I'd answer to the rest of it." His gaze swept coolly over the room again. "You must do a thriving business here," he drawled. "I see your stock's pretty well sold out. Or do you mostly keep it in old cellars?"

"Vot you vant mit me?" demanded the other. "Vot iss tiss 'Saint' nonsense? I am Mr Otto Zeidelmann, und you I do not know."

"That's a condition which will be remedied from now onwards, brother," said the Saint pleasantly. "You'll get to know me better every minute. I dropped in this evening to have a look at you, and I must say you're not very obliging. That lampshade — excuse me."

Thud!

Something like a streak of silver lightning hissed across the desk and buried its point in the arm of the chair a fraction of an inch from Mr Zeidelmann's hand, which had been edging towards the centre drawer of the desk.

"I'm getting out of practice," said the Saint regretfully. "I meant that knife to pin your sleeve to the chair."

Mr Zeidelmann looked down at the still quivering ivory hilt and sat as still as a mummified corpse.

"God!" he muttered shakily. "Are you a lunatic?"

"No," said the Saint mildly. "But I'm afraid you'll look like one if you waste any time denying that you're the Z-Man. By the way, did you notice that in your perturbation you said 'God' just now instead of 'Gott'? You want to watch little details like that when you disguise yourself. Respectable manufacturers' agents don't keep guns in their desk drawers, either — or any other kind of drawers, if it comes to that. Besides, I heard Mr Gump — Mr Raddon to you — talking to you over the phone. He made an appointment for tomorrow. That's why I'm here this evening."

The Z-Man stared at him without speaking, rolling a pencil monotonously between his fingers. The sudden shattering discovery that the notorious Saint knew so much must have hit him like a blow in the stomach. Recovery was not easy. Meanwhile Simon had leisure to inspect his victim with greater care. His sight had accommodated itself to the unequal lighting, and he was able to form a fair picture of Mr Zeidelmann's appearance.

He had to acknowledge that if he had set out to feast his eyes he was doomed to be disappointed again. Mr Zeidelmann was no feast except in sheer quantity. He was grossly fat, with a great swelling belly which occupied all the space between his chair and the desk. A thick woollen muffler was bundled round his neck, and above it the Saint could catch only a glimpse of the dark beard which camouflaged the shape of his chin. Big horn-rimmed spectacles with clumsily thick rims covered his eyes, and a wide-brimmed soft hat was pulled well down over his forehead.

"You know, brother, if you're one of the curios I wouldn't want you on my mantelpiece," observed the Saint critically. "You remind me of a great, fat, overgrown slug. Only in appearance of course; for slugs are highly moral and inoffensive creatures, and their only crime is to sneak up on your lettuces at night and test their succulency. By the way, I wonder if you leave a visible trail of slime behind you wherever you go?"

"You make the mistake!" Zeidelmann said gutturally. "I nodding vot you say understand. I am not this man you say. You come here, und you insult me—"

"And call you a slug—"

"Und say I am a Z-Man, votever that iss," proceeded Mr Zeidelmann wrathfully. "I tell you, you make the mistake. You are one pig fool."

"You can't get away with it, Ariolimax Agrestis — which, believe it or not, is what Mama Slug calls Papa Slug when she wants to cut a dash," said the Saint imperturbably. "You didn't know I was such a walking encyclopedia, did you? There's no mystery about it really. You see, slug, I always make a point of knowing everything there is to be known about obnoxious vermin and pernicious germ life."

"Vill you go avay?" thundered Mr Zeidelmann.

"In a way," said the Saint, "you puzzle me. You're not particularly good, and I'm wondering where you got your Frankenstein reputation. I'm beginning to think that you're just an amateur. Blackmailers often are. But your racket isn't exactly common-or-garden black, is it? You seem to mix it with kidnapping on the side. You've hit a new angle of the game, and you've got me guessing."

"Me, too!" fumed the big man in the chair. "I, too, guess! Vot you mean I do not know."

"Oh yes, you do; and you'd better know what I mean when I tell you that Beatrice Avery is now out of your reptilian reach," said the Saint coldly. "She's safely hidden away — and so are your other intended victims."

"You are crazy mad. I had no victims."

"You also have a large sackful of boodle tucked away somewhere, Mr Vell, and when the right time comes I'm going to dig my shovel into it." The Saint was missing none of the Z-Man's many reactions. He watched his victim's hands, his heaving stomach and his dark vicious eyes, just visible behind the big lenses. "As far as I can see you've been running your show too long, so I'm going to close it down." He pulled himself off the door and shifted closer towards the desk. "And now if you don't mind we're going to have a much more intimate look at you, as the bishop said to the actress. Take off the fur and the windows and give your face an airing."

He made a suggestive move of the hand which still rested in his pocket; and then his ears caught a faint whisper of sound behind him. He started to turn, but he was a shade too late. The door behind him was already open, and something round and hard jabbed accurately into his spine. The toneless voice of Mr Raddon spoke behind him.

"Take your hand out of your pocket and keep still."

The Saint kept still.

"This is a dirty trick, Andy," he complained. "I distinctly heard you tell Comrade Vell that you'd meet him tomorrow at the usual place. Why can't you keep your word instead of butting in like this and spoiling everything?"

He continued to keep studiously still, but he did not move his hand from his pocket. The bantering serenity of his voice had not changed in the slightest degree, and the smile on his lips was unaltered. The Z-Man, who had struggled cumbersomely to his feet, did not know that behind that blandly unruffled smile the Saint's brain was turning over like a high-speed turbine.

"Shut the door, Raddon," he said tensely. "Your gun in his back keep, und if he a muscle moves, shoot."

"Well done, slug," approved the Saint. "You sound exactly like Dennis the Dachshund."

"So, Mr Saint, your cleverness iss not so hot, yes?" Zeidelmann's voice came in a throaty purr. "There are things that even you do not know — you who knows so much about slugs. You do not know that I haf a code with Raddon for use on the telephone. 'Tomorrow' means 'today', und 'today' means 'tomorrow.' 'Yes' means 'no', und 'no' means 'yes.' Ve are careful, yes?"

"No," said the Saint. "Or should that be 'yes'? It sounds like a silly game to me. Don't you ever get muddled?"

The pressure on his spine increased.

"You talk too much," Raddon said curtly. "Take your gun out of your pocket and put it on the desk."

The Saint's eyes were twinkling blue icicles.

"Talking about guns, where did you get this one from?" he enquired. "I took one rod from you, and I've got it in my pocket at this very moment. Guns aren't so easy to pick up in London. I believe you're bluffing, Andy."

"You drivelling fool!" grated Raddon. "Do as I tell you."

There was more than impatience and exasperation in his voice. It was just a little too sharp to be convincing. Simon Templar laughed almost inaudibly and took the chance that he had to take.

"You haven't got a gun, brother," he said softly. "Have you?"

Without warning his right heel swung back in a kick that any mule in the full bloom of robust health would have boasted about for weeks. Mr Raddon collected it on his shin, and as he reeled back with a shriek of agony the Saint spun round like a human flywheel, his arm slamming vimfully into the other's wrist. His precaution was unnecessary, for the object which clattered to the floor from Raddon's hand was a harmless piece of iron piping.

"Your ideas are too juvenile," said the Saint sadly. "I read detective stories myself. Instead of fooling about with that chunk of gas barrel you ought to have whacked me on the back of the head with it."

Several other things happened immediately afterwards — one of them quite unrehearsed and unexpected. As Raddon bumped into the wall and clawed wildly at it to keep his balance his hand dragged over the electric light switch to which the standard lamp was connected. Instantly the room was plunged into inky darkness, for there was no light out in the passage near enough to penetrate the glass top of the door. The Saint leaped towards the switch, his gun now snug in his fist; and as he did so a splintering crash of glass came from the other side of the room, and he looked round and saw an uneven patch of grey light in the blackness. He knew just what had happened. The Z-Man, fearing that the tables were to be turned again, had left his lieutenant to his fate and charged desperately into the window, taking blind and glass and broken frame with him. Mr Zeidelmann was nothing if not thorough.

The Saint dashed for the window, and one of his feet got caught in the flex of the table lamp and almost tripped him. It was only a brief delay, but that was all the Z-Man needed. When Simon dived through the window into the narrow alley which ran along the rear of the building he caught a glimpse of a bulky, lumbering figure streaking away beneath a solitary lamp at the far corner. Considering Mr Zeidelmann's load of superfluous flesh, he certainly knew how to sprint. The Saint ran to the end of the alley and found himself in a dingy side street. A little way from this was a main road, with buses and other heavy traffic. The Z-Man had vanished into the anonymity of London's millions.

Simon was not surprised to find Mr Otto Zeidelmann's office empty when he got back. Nobody seemed to have noticed the crash of glass, if there was anyone left in the building to notice it; and Mr Raddon had clearly wasted no time in taking advantage of his opportunity. The Saint was not disturbed about that — he had already had all that he wanted from Comrade Raddon in a business way, and an extension of their acquaintance along social lines was something that the Saint could hardly see as a pleasure without which life would be merely a succession of empty hours.

He retrieved his knife from the arm of the chair and made a quick search of the office. As he had anticipated, every drawer of the desk was empty except the middle one, which contained a loaded revolver of ancient design. It was obvious that the Z-Man used the office only for a base of communications when his assistants were on the job. He was too clever to have any hand in the actual operations, but he could be reached by telephone if necessary. And after this, Simon reflected ruefully, he would certainly find himself a new address and telephone number… The visit hadn't been anything like as profitable as he had hoped it would be, but it had been fun while it lasted. And at least, in spite of disguises, he would have some slight chance of recognizing Mr Zeidelmann when they met again. The Saint's mind always turned optimistically towards the boundless possibilities of the future. He wondered how Patricia was getting on with her share of the campaign.

VII

Patricia Holm had had little or no difficulty in inducing Beatrice Avery to leave her apartment and go down to the big limousine with Hoppy Uniatz at the wheel which waited outside. With that calm realism which was peculiarly her own she had described her recent adventure, and the film actress had come to the obvious conclusion that Parkside Court was the unhealthiest spot in London. Perhaps she had been close to that conclusion even before that, for since Patricia's last visit she had had time to reconsider the Saint's offer.

"I asked for it, in a way," said Patricia as the car raced towards Piccadilly. "I took advantage of my superficial resemblance to you to gain admission to your flat, and when the Z-Man's agents saw me come out they made the same mistake as your bodyguard."

"Supposing it had really been me?" said Beatrice Avery with a shudder. "I shouldn't have had the Saint to help me."

"Well, you've got him now," said Patricia. "So you can stop worrying. The Saint's after the Z-Man, and that means that the Z-Man will have so much on his mind that he won't have time to think about you."

"But why are we going to Scotland?"

"We're not going to Scotland."

"When we were on our way out your said you always preferred to motor to Scotland at night because the roads were clearer—"

"That was just for the benefit of the commissionaire," Patricia explained.

The car stopped outside a handsome new apartment house in Berkeley Square. Patricia went up to Irene Cromwell's extravagant flat. The exotic star of Pyramid Pictures was not in.

"I think she had better be," said Patricia to the scared-looking maid who had answered the door. "Tell her that Miss Holm, of the Special Branch, Scotland Yard, wishes to see her on a matter which affects her personal safety."

The maid, duly impressed, discovered that her mistress was in after all. She left Patricia in the little hall for only a minute and then ushered her into a gorgeous boudoir which only a five-hundred-pound-a-week film star could dream of maintaining. Irene Cromwell looked surprisingly frail and timid, wrapped in a trailing, feather-trimmed chiffon negligee.

"You are from Scotland Yard?" she asked, her eyes round and big.

"I don't want to beat about the bush," replied Patricia, her manner brisk and efficient. "It has come to our knowledge at Scotland Yard that the Z-Man is active again…"

"The Z-Man!" breathed the other girl, turning deathly pale.

"Oh yes, we know all about him, and we think it would be wise to transfer you to a place of safety," continued Patricia imperturbably. "I have an official car waiting outside. Miss Beatrice Avery, whom you probably know, is in the car already. You will also be accompanied, I hope, by Miss Sheila Ireland."

The startled actress opened her eyes even wider.

"But where are we going? I've got a dinner engagement—"

"Ireland," answered Patricia, without batting an eyelid. "We have everything arranged with the Free State authorities. Ireland is within a comparatively few hours and yet sufficiently remote for our purpose. You see, Miss Cromwell, it is of vital importance that Scotland Yard should be left with a clear field. While this organization is being cleaned up you are in grave danger."

Irene Cromwell took less than a minute to make up her mind. In fact she regarded Patricia's suggestion as a police order; and so thoroughly had the urgency of the matter impressed itself on her mind that she was ready, with two packed suitcases, within the incredible space of twenty minutes.

Beatrice Avery had been given her cue, and she kept up the deception as the limousine rolled smoothly off towards Kensington. But very little was said. Irene Cromwell sat back in her corner, huddled in her furs, apparently fascinated by the very official-looking cap which reposed on the unprepossessing head of Mr Uniatz.

Exactly the same procedure was followed in Sheila Ireland's dainty home — and again Patricia got away with it. The blonde Venus of Summit Pictures was successfully lured out into the waiting car; and any doubts she might have entertained were dispelled when she saw Beatrice Avery and Irene Cromwell. An impression was left behind that Miss Ireland was bound for a remote spot in the Welsh mountains.

At Patricia's request further discussion of the subject that was uppermost in all their minds was tacitly postponed. The limousine now started off in real earnest, leaving London behind and speeding through the night in the direction of Kingston. Their actual destination was Weybridge, less than twenty miles to the southwest.

Simon Templar's house on St George's Hill was not easily found at night, but Hoppy Uniatz knew every inch of that aristocratic neighbourhood with its nameless roads and its discreetly hidden residences which were far too exclusive to be demeaned by ordinary numbers. The passengers in the car caught vague glimpses of pine trees and silver birches which rose from the rolling banks of rhododendrons and bracken.

There were bright lights in the windows as the limousine came to a standstill outside the front door; and a man with a loose walrus moustache and a curious strutting limp came out on the step.

"Here we are, Orace," said Patricia as she got out.

"Yer lyte," replied Orace unemotionally.

He took charge of the suitcases and showed no surprise at seeing three of the prettiest girls in England follow Patricia out of the car. If they had been three performing kangaroos he wouldn't even have blinked. Years of employment in Simon Templar's service had deprived him of any quality of surprise he might have once possessed.

"Dinner narf a minnit," he said when they were in the hall, and stumped off to his own quarters.

"He means it too," smiled Patricia. "But for once Orace and the dinner must be kept waiting."

She led them into the living room and looked from Irene Cromwell to Sheila Ireland with quiet calmness. Mr Uniatz, who had helped to carry the bags in, licked his lips and gazed longingly at the cocktail cabinet, where liquor was always to be found in plenty and in great variety. But he caught Patricia's warning eye, and he knew that the time for refreshment had not yet come. His impersonation of a police officer was no longer important, but Patricia Holm felt that the sudden shock of Mr Uniatz's speech would be lessened if she explained certain other things to her guests beforehand.

"You'll forgive me, I hope, for practising a small deception," she said, in her forthright way. "Miss Avery knows that I'm not really connected with Scotland Yard. I am Patricia Holm, and this house belongs to Simon Templar."

"You mean — the Saint?" asked Irene with a little quiver of excitement and incredulity.

"The Saint is out to get the Z-Man, and before he could let himself go he had to be sure that he wouldn't be placing any of you in danger," Patricia went on. "I took the risk of lying to you in London because it was too urgent to go into explanations. But before we go any farther I want to tell you that you're free to go whenever you please. This very minute if you like. Any one of you or all three of you can go if you want to. You haven't been kidnapped. The car is ready to take you back to London. But if you're wise you'll stay here. I'll tell you why."

Irene and Sheila, bewildered at first, began to understand as she went on; and Beatrice Avery contributed some heartfelt persuasions of her own. And while they talked the subtle atmosphere of peace and security with which the Saint had invested the house began to add its charm to the. other arguments. The girls looked at each other and then at the less comforting dark outside…

"Well, you've been very frank about it, Miss Holm," said Irene Cromwell at length. "I'm willing to stay if you think it would help. But the studio—"

"You can phone them in the morning and say you've been taken ill."

"But why are we safer here than in London?" asked Sheila.

Patricia smiled.

"With Orace and Hoppy Uniatz to look after us we can make faces at a dozen Z-Men," she replied confidently. "Also nobody except yourselves knows where you are. And this house isn't quite as innocent as it looks. It has all sorts of surprises for people who try to crash the gate. Now suppose we have a cocktail."

Mr Uniatz drew a deep breath.

"Say, ain't dat an idea?" he asked of the assembled company with the enthusiasm of an alchemist who has just heard of the elixir of life. "Dat'll make everyt'ing okay."

Orace was serving the second course of dinner when he cocked his head on one side and listened. Patricia, too, had heard the familiar drone of the Hirondel.

"It's 'im," remarked Orace ominously. "And abaht time too. 'E'll get some cold soup."

VIII

Chief inspector teal was out of his office when Raddon's telephone call came through to Scotland Yard. Consequently another officer went to Parkside Court, purely as a matter of routine, to make a few discreet enquiries. All he learned was that Beatrice Avery had left for Scotland and that she had been accompanied by her sister. It seemed, therefore, that the telephone call was true to type — in other words merely another of those pointless practical jokes which regularly add to the tribulations of the C.I.D.

Mr Teal, when he heard about it, was not so sure.

It is a matter of record that he set off to Parkside Court without a minute's delay to make some enquiries of his own; and they were not so discreet. He cross-examined the hall porter and the commissionaire and the elevator boy until they were in momentary expectation of being dumped into a Black Maria and shot off to the cells. Mr Teal was definitely suspicious because when he had interviewed Beatrice Avery that afternoon she had definitely assured him that she had no intention of leaving London. And now, apparently, she had gone off to Scotland.

"Why Scotland?" demanded Mr Teal, turning his baby blue eyes smoulderingly on the commissionaire.

"She didn't tell me she was going to Scotland," said the man. "But I heard her sister saying that they'd have a nice clear run—"

"How do you know it was her sister?"

"That private detective chap who was here told me so," said the commissionaire. "As soon as they'd gone he went off duty. Miss Avery's maid went home too. The flat's empty."

From the description supplied by the commissionaire and the elevator boy Mr Teal had no difficulty in recognizing Patricia Holm. His worst suspicions were strengthened when the commissionaire proffered the additional information that the limousine which had waited outside had been driven by a large man with a face which had the appearance of having once been run over by a traction engine and afterwards left in the hands of an amateur face-lifter.

"The Holm girl and Uniatz!" raged Mr Teal, champing viciously on his flavourless spearmint. "It's as clear as daylight! They came here as openly as a couple of innocent schoolchildren and got her away with some fairy tale. I'll bet it was the Saint himself who rang up the Yard — just to get my goat!"

These remarks he addressed to himself as he paced up and down the luxuriously carpeted foyer. The monumental conviction was growing within him, and rapidly assuming the size of the Arc de Triomphe, that the Saint had made every variety of fool of him in the early afternoon.

Simon Templar was the Z-Man. Mr Teal's grey matter was flowing like molten lava. The Saint had spotted Sergeant Barrow at the Dorchester, and on the off-chance that Barrow had spotted him he had thought it advisable to shoot back the package of money to Beatrice Avery so that he could clear himself. Whatever hold he had on her had been enough to force her to lie on the telephone. Then, to keep her quiet, he had kidnapped her… It was like the Saint's devilish sense of humour to ring up… There wasn't any real proof… But if he could find Beatrice Avery in the Saint's hands there would be enough evidence to put him away for keeps, the detective told himself to the accompaniment of an imaginary fanfare of triumphal trumpets. It would be the last time that the Saint would pull a long nose at the majesty of the law…

Seething and sizzling like a firework about to go off, Mr Teal realized that he was wasting time at Park-side Court. He plunged into the police car which had brought him, and was driven to Cornwall House. He guessed that this would be a further waste of time, but the visit had to be made. He was right. Not only did Sam Outrell coldly inform him that the Saint was away, but he used a passkey to show him the empty flat. Fuming and expectorating a devitalized lump of chicle onto the sidewalk for the unwary to step on, he climbed into his car again and this time told the driver to go to Abbot's Yard in Chelsea. It was well known that the Saint owned a studio in this modernized slum.

"We might as well try it," Teal said grimly. "Ten to one they've taken the girl out of London, but it would be just like the Saint's blasted nerve to hold her here right under our very noses."

Again his fears were confirmed. Twenty-six Abbot's Yard was in the same condition as Mother Hubbard's supboard; and enquiries among the near-artist neighhours elicited the information that the Saint had not been seen for weeks.

Mr Teal was so exasperated that he nearly inserted the next slice of spearmint into his mouth without removing the pink wrapper; but on the intellectual side his grey matter was not quite so white hot now and therefore was slightly more efficient. He was certain of one thing: the Saint had not taken Beatrice Avery to Scotland. After years of experience of Simon Templar's methods Mr Teal easily guessed that Patricia Holm's reference to Scotland had very much the fishy smell of a red herring.

"Not much good looking for him, is it, sir?" asked the driver of the police car depressingly.

"No; let's sit down on the curb and play shove-ha'penny," retorted Mr Teal with searing sarcasm.

"I mean, sir, the Saint's got all sorts of hideouts," said the man. "There's no telling—"

"I've long since come to the conclusion that most of these stories of the Saint are pure legend," said Mr Teal with a real flash of intelligence. "In nine cases out of ten he remains in full view and just dares us to do our worst. One of these days he's going to dare us once too often. Perhaps this is the day," he added hopefully. "Anyhow, let's get going."

"Where to, sir?"

"We know he's got a place at Weybridge, so we might as well run down and have a look at it," replied Mr Teal, climbing into the car. "We'll try every place we know until we find him."

The more he thought of his recent interview with the Saint, the more he reviewed the subsequent happenings, the higher became his dudgeon. In everything except outward appearance Chief Inspector Teal was exactly like a fire-breathing dragon as he sat in the back of the car, asking the driver why he had left the engine behind and what was the blank-blank idea of driving with the brakes full on.

However, in spite of his unsympathetic comments the journey was accomplished in remarkably good time, and a gleam of hope appeared in Mr Teal's overheated blue eyes when he saw lights gleaming from the windows of Simon Templar's house on St George's Hill. In answer to his thunderous knock and insistent ringing the door was opened by Orace, who inspected him with undisguised disfavour.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" said Orace witheringly.

"Is Templar here?" roared Mr Teal.

"Is 'oo 'ere? If you mean Mister Templar—"

"I mean Mr Templar!" said the detective chokingly. "Is Mr Templar here?"

"Oo wants ter know?"

"I want to know!" bellowed Mr Teal, his spleen surging out of him like a discharge of poison gas. "Stand out of the way, my man. I'm coming in—"

"Like 'ell you are," Orace said stolidly. "Back door fer you, my man. The idear!"

At this point of the proceedings Simon Templar, resplendent in tuxedo and soft silk shirt, materialized into the picture. The living-room door was half open, and the Saint had an idea that the dialogue would soon become blue around the edges and unfit for the shell-like ears of his guests.

"All right, Orace," he said breezily. "Walk right in, Claud Eustace. What brings you into the wilds this evening? Not that I wasn't expecting you—"

"Oh, you were expecting me, were you?" broke in Mr Teal, forcing the words past his strained throttle with some difficulty. "Well, I hope you're glad to be right. You've been just a little too smart since I saw you this afternoon. Now I know damned well you are the Z-Man!"

"In that case, dear heart, there must be two Z-Men," answered the Saint accommodatingly. "Isn't it amazing how the little fellows breed? I'm glad you're here, Claud. There's something I want you to do. It'll interest you to know that I had quite a chat with the original Z-Man this evening—"

"When I want to listen to any more of that I'll let you know," Teal said massively. "Just now I'm going to be busy. I have reason to believe that you kidnapped Miss Beatrice Avery from her apartment in Parkside Court this evening, and I'm not going to leave this house until I've searched it — and you might as well know that I haven't got a warrant."

"But why search the house, dear old fungus?" Simon protested reasonably. "Kidnapping is a hard word, and I resent it. But I'm willing to make allowances for your blood pressure. At the rate the red corpuscles are being pumped through that lump of petrified wood you wear your hat on the poor thing must be feeling the strain. Have I denied that Miss Avery is under this roof? She came down with Patricia a little more than an hour ago, and we're just having our coffee."

Mr Teal gulped, and his chewing gum slithered to the back of his mouth, played hide-and-seek with his tonsils and finally slid into his gullet before he could recover it.

"What!" His voice was like a pinpricked carnival balloon. "You admit you've got her here? You admit you're the Z-Man? Then by God—"

"My poor boob," said the Saint sympathetically, "I haven't admitted anything of the sort. I merely said that Miss Avery was having dinner with me. If that makes me the Z-Man it makes you the Grand Lama of Tibet. Miss Avery is a friend of Pat's, and we've got a couple of other good-looking girls here too. We're making a collection of them. If you'll promise to behave yourself I'll take you in and let you look at them."

He turned back into the living room, and Mr Teal followed him with the beginnings of a new vacuum pumping itself out from under his belt. Somehow it was going to be done again — the awful certainty of it made Mr Teal feel physically sick. He had a wild desire to turn back to his car and drive away to the end of the earth and forget that he had ever seen Scotland Yard, but he had to drag himself on, like a condemned man walking to the scaffold.

He stood in the doorway with his hands clasped tightly on his belt and stared around at the four eye-filling sirens who reclined in armchairs around the fire. Patricia Holm and Beatric Avery he knew; but his heavy eyelids nearly disappeared into the back of his head when he heard the names of Irene Cromwell and Sheila Ireland. And the worst of it was that they all looked perfectly happy. They didn't leap up with shrill cries of joy and greet him as their deliverer. They studied him with the detached curiosity of surgeons inspecting a new kind of tumour revealed by an operation.

Mr Teal grunted his acknowledgment of the introductions and stood glaring desperately at Beatrice Avery.

"I've got one thing to ask you, Miss Avery," he said with a hideous presentiment of what the answer would be. "Did you come here entirely of your own free will?"

"I think that's a very unkind thing to ask, Mr Teal," she answered sweetly. "It's unkind to me, since it implies that I'm weak minded; and it's unkind to Mr Templar—"

"I want to be unkind to Mr Templar!" Teal stated homicidally. "If there is any kind of threat being held over you, Miss Avery, I give you my word that so long as I'm here—"

"Of course there isn't any threat," she said. "How ridiculous! What do you think Mr Templar is — a sort of Bluebeard?"

Mr Teal didn't dare to say what he thought Mr Templar was. But he knew that Beatrice Avery would give him no help. There was nothing about her that gave the slightest hint of fear or anxiety. However accomplished an actress she might be, he knew that she could never have acted like that under compulsion. What other supernatural means the Saint had taken to silence her, Mr Teal couldn't imagine; but he knew that it was hopeless to fight them.

He pulled himself miserably together.

"I don't think I need bother you with any more questions, Miss Avery," he said brusquely.

He went out of the room very much like a beaten dog, and if he had had a tail it would have been hanging between his legs. The Saint followed him out, closed the door and lighted a fresh cigarette.

"Cheer up, Claud," he said kindly. "You've got over these things before, and you'll get over it again. Look me squarely in the eye and tell me you're sorry I'm not the Z-Man, and I'll spread you all over the hall in a mass of squashy pulp."

The detective looked at him for a long time.

"Damn it, Saint, you've got me," he growled sheepishly. "You know how much I want to get my hands on you, but I'd still be glad if you weren't the Z-Man."

"Then why not be glad?"

"I think I'm getting some more ideas now," Teal went on, flashing the Saint a glance which was very far from sleepy. "Miss Avery — Miss Cromwell — Miss Ireland. Top-line film stars, every one. Let me make another guess. Those girls are the Z-Man's intended victims; and if you aren't the Z-Man yourself you've brought them here so that they'll be safe while you go after him."

"You must have been eating a lot of fish and spinach," said the Saint respectfully. "Your ideas are improving every minute — except for one minor detail. I've been out after the Z-Man already, I've met him, and we had quite an interesting Jive minutes."

Mr Teal, who had just rolled up a fresh slice of spearmint with his tongue like a miniature piece of music, shook his head sceptically.

"Just because I'll believe you up to a point—"

"Would I lie to you, Claud?" asked the Saint. "Have I ever told you anything but the truth? Listen, brother, I don't know much about the Z-Man, but I can tell you this. Until this evening he has been known as Mr Otto Zeidelmann, and he's large and fat and has a black beard and wears horn-rimmed glasses and speaks with a phony German accent. He has been using an office in Bryerby House, Victoria, for his business address; but you needn't trouble to look for him there, because I don't think he likes the place so much now. And I doubt if his appearance in ordinary life is anything like my description. But that's where I saw him, and that's what he looked like to me."

Mr Teal opened his mouth, but words failed him.

"And here's a gun," Simon went on, taking something wrapped in a silk handkerchief from his pocket. "It's one of my own, but I fooled a gentleman who goes by the name of Raddon into making a grab for it, and you ought to find a fair sample of his fingerprints. Get Records to look them up, will you? I have an idea it's what you professionals call a Clue. I'll drop into your office in the morning and get your report. Has that percolated?"

"Yes," replied Mr Teal, taking the gun and putting it carefully away. "But I'm damned if I get the rest. Is this another of your tricks, or are you playing the game for once? We've been trying to get a line on the Z-Man for months—"

"And I heard of him for the first time today," murmured the Saint with a smile. "You can call it luck if you like, but most of it's due to the fact that I'm not festooned with red tape until I look like a Bolshevik Egyptian mummy. Having a free and unfettered hand is a great help. It might even help you to solve a mystery sometimes — but I'm not so sure about that."

"Well, what are you getting out of it?" asked Mr Teal with reasonable curiosity. "If you think I'm going to believe that you're doing this for fun—"

"Maybe I might persuade the Z-Man to contribute towards my old age pension," Simon admitted meditatively, as though the idea had just occurred to him. "But it's still a lot of fun. And if you get his body, dead or alive, you ought to be satisfied. Don't you think you're asking rather a lot of questions?"

Mr Teal did, but he couldn't help it. His mind would never be at ease about anything so long as he knew that the Saint was busy. He stared resentfully at the smiling man in front of him and wondered if he was still only being hoodwinked again.

"I've got to get back to town," he said curtly. "I'm sorry about the misunderstanding. But who the devil did phone that message through to the Yard?"

"That was Comrade Raddon, whose fingerprints are carefully preserved on that gun in your pocket," Simon replied. "I expect he thought it was a bright idea. Now run along home and play with your toys."

Mr Teal hitched his coat round.

"I'm going," he said, fighting a losing battle with the new crop of gnawing suspicions that were springing up all over the well-fertilized tracts of his unhappy mind. "But get this. If you still think you're putting anything over on me—"

"I know," said the Saint. "I needn't think I can get away with it. How empty the days would be if I couldn't hear that dear old litany! I think I could recite it in my sleep. Come again, Claud, and we'll have some new grey hairs for you." He opened the front door and steered the detective affectionately down the steps. "Take care of Mr Teal, George," he said to the police driver who still sat at the wheel of the car. "He isn't feeling very strong just now."

He patted the detective's bowler hat well down over his ears and went back into the house.

IX

Back in the living room the Saint's air of leisured badinage fell off him like a cloak. He draped himself on the mantelpiece with a cigarette tilting from his mouth and a drink in his hand and started to ask questions. He had a lot to ask.

They were not easy questions, and the answers were mostly vague and unsatisfactory. The subject of the Z-Man was not one that seemed to encourage conversation; but Simon Templar had a knack of his own of making people talk, and what he did learn was significant enough. Two or three months earlier Mercia Landon, dancing and singing star of Atlantic Studios, had been working in the final sequences of a new supermusical when for no apparent reason she had had a breakdown. All work on the production was held up, the overhead mounted perilously, and finally the picture had to be shelved. It was rumoured that Mercia was being threatened by a blackmailer, but nobody knew anything for certain. And then one morning she was found dead in her apartment from the conventional overdose of veronal.

"Accidental death," said the coroner's jury, since there was no evidence to show that the overdose had been deliberately taken; but those "in the know" — people on the inside of the screen world — knew perfectly well that Mercia Landon had taken her own life. And for a good and sufficient reason. Although she was only twenty-two and in perfect health, she had known that her screen career was finished. For when her maid found her there was a deep and jagged cut on her face in the rough zigzag shape of a Z. The upper line crossed her eyebrows, the diagonal crossed her nose, and the lower horizontal gashed her mouth almost from ear to ear. No amount of plastic surgery, no miracles of skin grafting could ever have restored the famous modelling of her face or made it possible for her to smile again that quick sunny smile that had been reflected from a million screens.

"Nobody ever knew who Mercia met that night or even where she went," said Sheila Ireland, her slim white fingers nervously twisting her empty cigarette holder. "I suppose they took her away like — like they thought they were taking Beatrice. Nobody could have blackmailed Mercia. She never had any affairs, and everybody loved her. And she just laughed at the idea of being kidnapped — here in England. When they started demanding money she just laughed at it. She wouldn't even go to the police. All anybody knows about this is that she once said to her maid: 'That idiotic Z-Man who keeps phoning must be an escaped lunatic' And then—" She shivered. "Since then we've all been terrified."

"It's an old racket with a new twist," said the Saint. "The ordinary blackmailer has something on his victim. The Z-Man has nothing — except the threat that he'll disfigure them and ruin their screen careers if they don't come across. I seem to remember that some other actress recently had a nervous breakdown, exactly like Mercia Landon. The picture she was in was shelved, too, and it's still shelved. She went to Italy to recuperate. I take it that she was victim number two. She was threatened, she lost her nerve, and she paid. She saved her good looks, but her bank balance wasn't big enough to go on paying. So Beatrice is probably victim number three."

The girl shuddered.

"I know I am," she said. "During the last three weeks I've had three telephone calls — always in a thick, guttural, foreign sort of voice, asking me for ten thousand pounds. I was told to lunch at the Dorchester, and if I saw that the knives and forks formed the letter Z I was to have my lunch and then leave the package of money under my napkin. And he said if I went to the police or anything they'd know about it, and they'd do the same to me as they did to Mercia without giving me another chance to pay… Today was my last chance, and when I saw the knives and forks in the shape of a Z I think I lost my nerve. When you came to my table, Mr Templar, I thought you must be the man who was to take the money. I hardly knew what I was doing—"

"Take a look at that cunning, will you, Pat?" said the Saint. "It's a million to one that his victim won't go to the police; but he's even ready for that millionth chance. He's ready to pick up the money as soon as the girl has left the table; disguised as a gentleman, he's sitting there all the time, and as he walks past the table he collars the package. And he's got his alibi if the police should be watching and pick him up. He happened to see the young lady had left something, and he was going to hand it over to the manager. No proof at all that he's the man they're really after. It also implies that he must be somebody with a name and reputation as clean as an unsettled snowflake and as far above suspicion as the stratosphere… But who was it? There was a whole raft of people at the Dorchester, and I can't remember all of them — unless it was good old Sergeant Barrow."

"If the Z-Man was in the Dorchester today he must have seen your knightly behaviour," said Patricia thoughtfully. "And he must have seen you pocket Beatrice's last week's salary."

"But he didn't know who I was, and I expect he beetled off as soon as he saw that something had come ungummed," said the Saint, stubbing the end of his cigarette into an ash tray and lighting a fresh one. He turned. "What about the picture you're working on now, Beatrice? I'll make a guess that it's nearly finished, and if anything happened to you now the whole schedule would be shot to hell."

She nodded.

"It would be — and so should I. My contract doesn't entitle me to a penny if I don't complete the picture. That's why—"

She broke off helplessly.

Simon went to bed with plenty to think about. The Z-Man's plan of campaign was practically foolproof. Film stars are able to command colossal salaries for their good looks as well as their ability to act — sometimes even more so. All three of his guests were in the twenty-thousand-pounds-a-year class; they were young, with the hope of many more years of stardom ahead of them. Obviously it would be better for them to pay half a year's salary to the Z-Man rather than suffer the ghastly disfigurement that had been inflicted on Mercia Landon; for then they would lose not only half a year's salary but all their salaries for all the years to come.

The film world still didn't really know what was happening. Beatrice Avery had been afraid to tell even her employers about the threats she had received, for fear that the Z-Man would promptly carry out his hideous promise. Irene Cromwell and Sheila Ireland had each received one message from the Z-Man and had been similarly terrorized to silence. Only Patrica's blunt statement that the Saint had found their photographs in Raddon's pocket had made them unseal their lips after she had got them to St George's Hill.

Simon could well understand why he had never heard of the Z-Man before. Even in the film world the name was only rumoured, and then rumoured with scepticism. These three girls were the only ones who knew, apart from Mercia Landon, who was dead, and the actress who had fled to Italy.

For once in his life he spent a restless night, impatient for the chance of further developments the next day; and he walked into Chief Inspector Teal's office at what was for him the fantastic hour of eleven o'clock in the morning.

"I thought you never got up before the streets were aired," said the detective.

"I put on some woolly underwear this morning and chanced it," said the Saint briefly. "What do you know?"

Mr Teal drew a memorandum towards him.

"We've checked up on that address you gave me. I think you're right, Saint. There's no such person as Otto Zeidelmann. It's just a name. He's had the office about three or four months."

"His occupation dates from about the time Mercia Landon died," said Simon, nodding. "Anything else?"

"He never went there in the daytime apparently," answered the detective. "Always after dark. Hardly anybody can remember seeing him. The postman can't remember delivering any letters, and we didn't find a fingerprint anywhere."

"You wouldn't," said the Saint. "A wily bird like him would be just as likely to walk about naked as go out without his gloves. But talking about fingerprints, what's the report on that gun? — which, by the way, is mine."

Mr Teal opened a drawer, produced the automatic and pushed it across the desk. Chewing rhythmically, lie also handed the Saint a card on which were full face and profile photographs of one Nathan Everill.

"Know him?"

"My old college chum, Andy Gump — otherwise known as Mr Raddon," said the Saint at once. "So he has got a police record. I thought as much. What do we know about him?"

"Not very much. He's not one of the regulars." Teal consulted his memorandum, although he probably knew it by heart already. "He's only been through our hands once, and that was in 1933. From 1928 to 1933 he was private secretary to Hubert Sentinel, the film producer, and then he started making copies of Mr Sentinel's signature and writing them on Mr Sentinel's cheques. One day Mr Sentinel noticed something wrong with his bank balance, and when he went to ask his secretary about it his secretary was on his way to Dover. He was sent up for three years."

"What's he been doing since he came out?"

"He reported in the usual way, and as far as we knew he was going quite straight," replied Mr Teal. "He was doing some free-lance writing, I think. We've lost track of him during the last five or six months—"

"He's got a new job — as the Z-Man's assistant," said the Saint. "And, by the Lord, he's the very man for it! He knows the inside of the film business, and he must hate every kind of screen personality, from producers downwards, like nobody's business. It's a perfect setup… Have you seen Sentinel?"

"I'm seeing him this afternoon — he probably knows a lot more about Everill than we do. But you aren't usually interested in the small fry, are you?"

"When the small fry is in the shape of a sprat, yes," answered the Saint, rising elegantly to his feet. "You see, Claud, old dear, there might be a mackerel cruising about in the neighbouring waters… That's a good idea of yours. I think I'll push along and see Comrade Sentinel myself."

The detective's jaw dropped.

"Hey, wait a minute!" he yapped. "You can't—"

"Can't I?" drawled the Saint with his head round the door. "And what sort of a crime is it to go and have a chat with a film producer? Maybe my face is the face the world has been waiting for."

He was gone before Teal could think of a reply.

Mr Hubert Sentinel, the grand panjandrum of Sentinel Films, was not an aristocrat by birth or even a Conservative by conviction; but even he might have been slightly upset if he had heard himself referred to as "Comrade Sentinel." For he was considered a coming man in the British film industry, and obtaining an entry into his presence was about as easy as getting into Hitler's mountain chalet with one fist clenched and a red flag in the other.

But the Saint accomplished the apparently impossible at the first attempt. He simply enclosed his card in a sealed envelope with a request that it should be immediately delivered to Mr Sentinel, and he waited exactly two minutes.

Mr Sentinel was in conference. He took one look at the card, and during the next half minute one matinee idol, one prominent author, two script writers, a famous director and a covey of yes-men were swept out of the office like leaves before an autumn gale. When Simon Templar was admitted Mr Hubert Sentinel was alone, and Mr Sentinel was looking at the back of the Saint's card. On it were pencilled the words: Re the Z-Man.

"Take a pew, Mr Templar," he said, pushing forward a cigar box and inspecting his visitor out of bright and observant eyes. "I've heard about you of course."

"Who hasn't?" murmured the Saint modestly.

He accepted a cigar, carefully clipped the end, lighted it and emitted a fragrant cloud of blue smoke. It was merely an example of that theatrical timing which so pleased the Saint's heart. Sentinel waited restively, turning a pencil between his fingers. He was a thin bald-headed man with a birdlike face and an air of inexhaustible nervous vitality.

"If it had been anyone else I should have thought it was some crank with a bee in his bonnet," he said. "We get a lot of them around here. But you — Are you going to tell me that there's anything in these rumours?"

"There's everything in them," said the Saint deliberately. "They happen to be true. The Z-Man is as real a person as you are."

The producer stared at him.

"But why do you come to me?"

"For the very important reason that you once employed a man named Nathan Everill," answered the Saint directly. "I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me something useful about him."

"Good God, you're not suggesting that Everill is the Z-Man, are you?" asked the other incredulously. "He's such a poor specimen — a chinless, weak-minded fool—"

"But you employed him as your secretary for five years."

"That's true," confessed Sentinel hesitantly. "He was efficient enough — too damned efficient, as a matter of fact. But he always had a weak streak in him, and it came out in the end. He forged my name to some cheques — perhaps you know about that… But Everill! It doesn't seem possible—"

The Saint shook his head.

"I didn't say he was the Z-Man. But I know that he's very closely connected with him. So if you can help me to locate Everill you'll probably help me to get to close quarters with the Z-Man himself. And he interests me a lot."

"If you can get him, Templar, you'll not only earn my gratitude, but the gratitude of the whole film business," said Hubert Sentinel, rising to his feet and pacing up and down with undisguised agitation. "If he's a real person at least that gives us something to fight. Up to now he's just been a name that people have tried to stick onto something they couldn't explain any other way. But when we see our stars having mysterious breakdowns just when pictures are in their last scenes — getting hysterical over something you can't make them talk about — well, we have to put it down to something."

"Then you've had trouble yourself?"

"I don't know whether it's a coincidence or not," replied Sentinel carefully. "I'll only say that my production of Vanity Fair is held up while Mary Donne is recovering from a slight indisposition. She has said nothing to me, and I have said nothing to her. But that doesn't prevent me from thinking. As for the rest, Mr Templar, I believe I can tell you a great deal about Everill." He sat down again and rubbed his chin in earnest concentration. "You know, I've got some ideas of my own about the Z-Man. Can you tell me just what your interest in him is?"

"I have various interests," said the Saint, leaning back and making a series of perfect smoke rings. "The Z-Man must have collected a fair amount of boodle already, and that's always interesting. I take it that if I got rid of him nobody would mind me helping myself to a reward. And then I don't like his line of business. I think it would be rather a good idea if he was put out of the way — for keeps."

"Unless he puts you out of the way first," suggested the producer grimly. "If he's the sort of man he seems to be—"

The Saint shrugged.

"That's all in the game."

The other smiled appreciatively.

"I sincerely hope it won't be in your game," he said. "As for Everill — what do you want to know?"

"Anything you can remember. Anything that might give me a lead. What his tastes are — his amusements — his favourite haunts — his habits — why he started forging cheques—"

"Well, I suppose he's an extravagant little devil — wants to live like a rich playboy and so on. I suppose that's why lie had to increase his income. He was trying to run one of my actresses, and he couldn't keep pace with her. She had a big future ahead of her, and she knew it—"

It was as if the Saint's ears had closed up suddenly, so that he scarcely heard any more. All his senses seemed to have been arrested except the sense of sight, and that one filled his brain to the exclusion of everything else. He was staring at Hubert Sentinel's hands, watching the thin nervous fingers twiddling the pencil they held — and remembering another pair of hands…

The astounding import of it drummed through his head like the thunder of mighty waterfalls. It jeered at his credulity, and yet he knew that he must be right. It all fitted in — even if the revelation made him feel as if his mind had been hauled loose from its moorings. He sat in a kind of daze until a knock on the door brought him back to life.

Sentinel's secretary put her head in the door.

"Chief Inspector Teal is here, Mr Sentinel," she said.

"Oh yes." Sentinel stopped in the middle of a sentence. He explained: "Mr Teal made an appointment with me — is he interested in Everill too?"

"Very much," said the Saint. "In fact I was stealing a march on him. If there's any other way I can go out—"

Sentinel stood up.

"Of course — my secretary will show you. I wish we could have a longer talk, Mr Templar. The police are admirable in their way, but in a situation like this—"

He seemed to come to a snap decision. "Look here, could you dine with me tonight?"

"I'd be delighted," said the Saint thoughtfully.

"That's splendid. And then we can go into this thoroughly without any interruptions." Sentinel held out his hand. "Will you come back here at six? I'll drive you out myself — I live out at Bushey Park."

Simon nodded.

"I'll be here," he said.

He went back to Cornwall House with his head still buzzing; and for a long time he paced up and down the living room, smoking an interminable chain of cigarettes and scattering a trail of ash behind him on the carpet. At lunchtime he called Patricia.

"I've met a bird called Hubert Sentinel, and I think I know who the Z-Man is," he said. "I'm having dinner with him tonight."

He heard her gasp of amazement.

"But, boy, you can't—"

"Listen," he said. "You and Hoppy are going to be busy. I've got a lot more for you."

He talked for ten minutes that left her stunned and gave her comprehensive instructions.

Six o'clock was striking when he re-entered Sentinel's office, and the producer took down his hat at once. A large Rolls-Royce was parked outside the studio, and Sentinel himself took the wheel.

"How did you get on with Scotland Yard?" Simon enquired as they purred through the gates.

Sentinel shifted his cigar.

"I had to give him a certain amount of information, but I didn't say anything about your visit. I noticed that he kept looking at the cigarettes in the ash tray, though, so perhaps he was trying to spot your brand."

"Poor old Claud," said the Saint. "He still keeps on reading Sherlock Holmes!"

Little more was said on the swift northward run, but the Saint was not ungrateful for the silence. He had plenty to keep his mind occupied. He sat smoking, busy with his own thoughts.

The evening was cold and pitch black by the time they had left the outer suburbs behind and the Rolls turned its long nose into a private driveway. There were thick trees on either side; and after a hundred yards, before there was any sign of the house, Sentinel slowed down to take a sharp curve. As though they had materialized out of the fourth dimension two figures jumped on the car's running boards, one on either side. The Saint could see dimly in the reflection of the headlights the bloated figure and bespectacled, bearded face of the man who had swung open the driving door.

"You vill stop der car, please."

"Vell, vell, vell!" said the Saint mildly. "This is certainly great stuff."

His hand was reaching round for his automatic, but by this time his own door had opened, and the car had jerked to a standstill, for both Mr Sentinel's feet had instinctively trodden hard on the pedals. The cold rim of an automatic inserted itself affectionately into the back of Simon Templar's neck.

"Move one finger and you're dead," said Mr Rad-don unimaginatively.

"Brother, unless you're very careful you'll drive that thing out through my Adam's apple," Simon complained.

"What the devil does this mean?" spluttered Sentinel angrily; and he suddenly revved up the engine. "Look out, Templar!" he shouted. "I'm going to drive on."

The automatic that was held only a foot from Sentinel's head thudded down, and the film magnate slumped over the wheel.

"Step out, Saint," ordered Raddon.

The Saint stepped. He always knew instinctively when to resist and when not to resist. As his feet trod on hard gravel the gross figure came round the back of the car like some evil monster of the night, and gloved hands went rapidly over the Saint and deprived him of his gun. Then he was told to walk forward. Almost at once he was brought to a halt against the rear of a small delivery van parked in the darkness under a tree with its doors open. A sudden violent shove from behind sent him pitching headlong into it; and the doors slammed behind him with a heavy crash. In another moment the engine roared to life, and the truck lurched forward.

X

Simon had one compensation. The opposition had not waited to search him thoroughly or to bind his wrists and ankles in the approved style. The truck was evidently considered to be secure enough as a temporary prison. Which, in fact, it was. When the Saint heaved against the closed doors he soon came to the conclusion that they were sufficiently strong to hold him in for some time. Wherefore, with his characteristic philosophy, he made himself as comfortable as he could and set out to relieve the tedium of the journey with a cigarette. At least he had gone into the trap with his eyes open, so he had no valid grounds for whining.

He judged that the truck had driven through a hidden path between the trees and had then bumped across a field. After that it had gained a road, and now it was bowling along more smoothly. The journey proved to be comparatively short. Within ten or fifteen minutes there was no longer any sound of other traffic, and the road surface over which the truck was travelling became more rutty and uneven. Then with a giddy swing to the near side the truck left the road again and ran evenly for a few seconds on a level drive before it stopped. For a little while it backed and manoeuvred; and then the sound of the engine died away. There was a slight delay, in which he heard occasional murmurs of voices without being able to detect any recognizable

words. It was just possible that a red carpet was being laid down for him, but somehow he doubted it. Then there was a rattle at the doors, and they were flung open. Three powerful electric flashlights blazed on him.

"If I make the slightest resistance I suppose I shall be converted into a colander?" Simon remarked calmly. "I'm just trying to save you the trouble of giving the customary warnings—"

"Get out," Raddon's voice ordered shortly.

Simon obeyed. He was unable to see much of his surroundings, for the truck had been backed up against a crumbling stone doorway, and the torchlights were so concentrated on him that practically everything else was in black shadow.

Two of the men closed in on him as his feet touched the ground, ramming their guns into his sides. He was thrust on through the doorway into what seemed to be a bare and damp and uninhabited hall and halted with his face to one bleak stone wall. Then while a gun was still held against his spine swift and efficient hands went over him again. His pockets were completely emptied, even to his cigarette case, his automatic lighter and his loose change; and one of the investigating hands felt along his sleeve and removed the knife strapped to his forearm. After the demonstration he had given in Bryerby House, thought the Saint, that was only to be expected; but he would have been happier if it had been overlooked as it had been so many times before.

"So!" came the Z-Man's sneering voice. "The knife, it voss somevere, und it we find. Goot! Mit throwings you are through!"

"You've got beyond the Dennis stage now, brother," said the Saint appreciatively, although he was now without a weapon of any kind. "I can only assume that you must have been reading the Katzenjammer Kids."

A rope was pulled tightly around his wrists, pinioning them together in front of him. Again he was told to move, and he found himself ascending a spiral staircase of vertiginous steepness. Most of the treads were broken and rotting and creaked alarmingly under his weight. The staircase wound itself like a corkscrew around the inner wall of a round tower, which rose straight up from what he had first taken for a sort of hall. At one time, no doubt, there had been a guarding balustrade on the off side; but this had long since ceased to exist, and there was nothing between the climber and a sheer drop to the flagstones below. At the top he stepped off the last tread onto the floor of what might once have been a small turret room, but which was now hardly more than an unrailed ledge suspended over the black abyss. The only windows were two narrow embrasures through which he could see nothing but darkness. He was placed against the wall away from the stairs and close to the edge of the floor, and the other end of the rope around his wrists was run through a heavy iron ring set in the masonry above his head and made fast.

"I can still kick," he observed solicitously. "Are you sure you're not taking a lot of chances?"

"That will not be for long," said the Z-Man.

A block of stone weighing about a hundredweight, with a rope round it, was dragged across the floor, and the rope was tied round the Saint's ankles.

"You vill kick now?" asked the Z-Man. "Yess?"

"I fancy — no," answered the Saint.

He moved his hands experimentally. His wrists were only held by a slipknot. If he could drag a little slack out of the rope where it was tied to the ring he might be able to get them free. He wondered why he had been tied so carelessly; and the next moment he knew. As if in answer to a prearranged signal, Rad-don stepped forward and with an effort pushed the rock tied to the Saint's feet off the ledge. It dragged the Saint's legs after it; and the slipknot came tight again instantly as the pull came on it. Simon hung there, excruciatingly stretched out, with only the cord on his wrists to save him from being dragged over the edge.

The Z-Man came closer.

"You know why you are here?" he asked. "You haff interfered with my affairs."

"Considerably," Simon agreed.

In that confined space the light of the torches was reflected from the walls sufficiently to show the men behind them. Besides the Z-Man and Raddon, the third member of the party, as Simon had suspected, was Welmont, of taxicab fame. The two minor Z-Men stood a little behind and to either side of their leader.

The Z-Man put away his torch and took the Saint's own knife out of his pocket.

"You vill tell me how much you know," he said. "Tell me this, my Saint, und your fine looks vill still be yours."

He caressed the knife in his gloved hand and brought it suggestively forward so that the light glinted on the polished blade.

"So we now attempt to make the victim's blood run cold, do we?" said the Saint amusedly, although his joints felt as if they were being torn apart on the rack. "I take it that you're in the mood for one of your celebrated beauty treatments. Why don't you operate on yourself first, laddie? You look as if it would improve you."

"Tell me vot you know!" shouted the Z-Man furiously. "I giff you just one minute."

"And after I've done the necessary spilling I suppose you slit my gizzard with the grapefruit cutter and then bury my remains deeply under the fragrant sod," said the Saint sardonically. "Nothing doing, slug. It's not good enough. I've made myself a hell of a nuisance to you, and you won't be satisfied until I'm as dead as — Mercia Landon."

"You fool," screamed the Z-Man. "I mean vot I say!"

"That makes us even," said the Saint. "But I'm not a film actress, remember. Carving your alphabetical ornamentations on my face won't decrease my earning capacity by a cent. I'm surprised at your moderation. Now that you've got me in your ker-lutches I wonder you don't flay the skin off my back."

His utter indifference to the peril he was in was breath-taking. The mockery of his blue eyes and the cool insolence of his voice had something epic about it, as if he had turned back the clock to days when men lived and died with that same ageless carelessness. And yet even while he spoke his ears were listening. Events had moved faster than he had anticipated. The Z-Man's lofty eyrie, too, was a factor of the entertainment that Simon had not allowed for. Those crumbling stairs couldn't be climbed easily and quietly… Time was the essential factor now; and the Saint was beginning to realize that the support upon which he was relying was not at hand — while he was not so much at the mercy of a man as of a homicidal maniac.

The Z-Man was within arm's length of him now.

"No, I do not slit your gizzard," he said huskily. "I tell you vot I do. I only cut der rope vot hold you up. Und then der stone pulls you down, und we take off der ropes, und you haf had an accident und fallen down. Do you understand?"

The Saint understood very well. He could feel the dizzy emptiness under his dangling toes. But he still smiled.

"Well, why don't you get on with it?" he said tauntingly. "Or have you lost your nerve?"

"You crazy fool! You think you are funny! But if I take you at your word—"

"You're getting careless with that beautiful accent," mocked the Saint. "If you say 'vot', you ought to say 'vord.' The trouble with you is that you're such a lousy actor. Now if you'd been any good—"

"You asked for it," said the other in a horrible whisper and slashed at the rope from which the Saint hung.

And at the same moment the Saint made his own gamble. The fingers of his right hand strained up, closed on the iron ring from which he was suspended, tightened their grip and held it. The strain on his sinews shot red-hot needles through him; and yet he had a sense of serene confidence, a feeling of seraphic inevitability, that no pain could suppress. He had goaded the Z-Man as he had anticipated; and he had been waiting with every nerve and muscle for the one solitary chance that the fall of the cards offered — a game fighting chance to win through. And the chance had come off.

The rope no longer held him from plunging down to almost certain death, but the steel strength of his own fingers did. And as the rope parted the slipknot had loosened so that he could wrench his left hand free.

"Thanks a lot, sweetheart," said the Saint.

A hawk would have had difficulty in following the movements that came immediately afterwards. As the Z-Man gasped with sudden fear a circle of wrought steel whipped across his shoulder, swung him completely round and placed him so that his back was towards the Saint. Then the Saint's left hand snaked under his opponent's left arm, flashed up to his neck and secured a half nelson that was as solid as if it had been carved out of stone.

"We can now indulge in skylarking and song," said the Saint. "I'll do the skylarking, and you can provide the song."

To some extent he was right; but the Z-Man's song was not so much musical as reminiscent of the shriek of a lost locomotive. Some men might have got out of that half nelson, particularly as the Saint was still crucified between his precarious grip on the ring and the weight that was trying to drag him down into the black void; but the Z-Man knew nothing about wrestling, and all the strength seemed to have gone out of him. Moreover, the Saint's thumb on one side of his captive's neck and his lean brown fingers on the other were crushing with deadly effect into his victim's carotid arteries. Scientifically applied, this treatment can produce unconsciousness in a few seconds; but Simon was at a disadvantage, for half his strength was devoted to fighting the relentless drag on his ankles.

Raddon and Welmont started forward too late. The Saint's wintry laugh met them at their first step.

"If anything happens," he said with pitiless clarity, "your pal goes over first."

They checked as if they had run into an invisible wall; and Raddon's Gumpish face showed white as his torch jumped in his hand.

"For God's sake," he gasped hoarsely. "Wait—"

"Is dat you, boss?" bawled a foghorn voice far below; and the Saint's smile became a shade more blissful in spite of the wrenching agony in his right shoulder.

"This is me, Hoppy," he said. "You'd better come up quickly — and look out for someone coming down." He looked over the shuddering bundle of the Z-Man at Raddon and Welmont, still frozen in their tracks.

"There's no way out for you unless you can fly," he said. "How would you like to be a pair of angels?"

They made no attempt to graduate into a pair of angels. They stood very still as Hoppy Uniatz crashed off the stairs onto the ledge, followed by Patricia, and briskly removed their guns. A moment later an arm like a tree trunk took the weight off the Saint's hand and hauled him back to the safety of the floor.

Patricia was touching the Saint as if to make sure that he was real.

"Are you all right, boy?" she was asking tremulously. "I was afraid we'd be too late. They'd locked the outside door, and Hoppy was afraid of making a noise—"

The Saint kissed her.

"You were in plenty of time," he said and yanked the Z-Man clear of the edge of the floor. "Think you could hold him, Hoppy?"

"Wit' one finger," said Mr Uniatz scornfully.

With one swift hop that was in itself a complete justification of his nickname he heaved the Z-Man to his feet from behind and held him in a gorilla grip. The Z-Man's struggles were as futile as the wrigglings of a fly between the fingers of a small boy. And the Saint retrieved his knife and tested the point on his thumb.

"Hold him just like that, Hoppy," he said grimly, "so that his tummy occupies the centre of the stage. I want to do some surgery of my own."

With a swift movement that made Patricia catch her breath and shut her eyes quickly he thrust the knife deeply and forcefully into the Z-Man's protruding stomach. There was a loud squealing hiss, and the patient deflated like a punctured tire.

"I just wanted to see whether it would make a squashy noise or merely explode," said the Saint placidly. "You can open your eyes, darling. There's no mess on the floor. Mr Vell is mostly composed of air."

With a swift movement he yanked off his victim's hat, wig, glasses and beard.

"Miss Sheila Ireland, I believe," murmured the Saint courteously.

XI

Patricia found her voice first.

"But I thought you told me Sentinel was the Z-Man," she said weakly. "We left Orace to tie him up—"

"I didn't say so," answered the Saint. "I told you that I'd met Comrade Sentinel, and I thought I knew who the Z-Man was. But I wanted you to tell the girls about Comrade Sentinel because I knew she'd remember that he knew about her affair with Raddon, and I knew she'd be scared that he might say something that 'd start me thinking, and I knew she'd get the wind up and feel that she had to do something about it — that is, if my suspicions were right. And I was damn right!"

"I wondered why she suddenly decided that she couldn't stay away from the studio a little while after I told her the news," Patricia said slowly. "But I never thought…"

"I did," said the Saint. "I did most of my thinking in Sentinel's office. He was twiddling a pencil — and all at once I remembered that when I was in Bryerby House the Z-Man had been twiddling a pencil too. Only the Z-Man had a different twiddle. Everybody has his own distinctive nervous habits. I started thinking about the Z-Man's twiddle, wondering where else I'd seen it; and all at once it dawned on me that it was exactly like the way Sheila Ireland had been twiddling her cigarette holder last night when she was telling us her tale of woe. It nearly knocked me over backwards."

He looked across at the dishevelled girl who was still writhing hysterically in Hoppy's relentless grasp, with the smeared remains of her make-up disfiguring her face; and his eyes were hard and merciless.

"It wasn't a bad idea to make yourself up not only like a man, but like a fat, repulsive Zeidelmann," he said. "You nearly fooled me until I saw you running away from Bryerby House. There's something funny about the way a woman runs, and that started me thinking. Even then I didn't get the idea, but I was ready for it. You did the voice pretty well too; but that was your business. You only fell down on the little details like pencil-twiddling. And of course nobody would expect you to be a woman. But you were woman enough to make Andy Gump go on putting his head in the noose to try and please you even after he'd come out of stir for the cheques he forged to buy you jewelry. And you were woman enough to know what the threat of disfigurement would mean to a woman." The Saint's voice was like icy water flowing down a glacier. "You got it both ways. You put the boodle into your own bank account, and at the same time your rivals were having breakdowns and getting thrown out of the running and letting you climb higher… I wonder how you'd like it if we made the punishment fit the crime?"

The girl strained madly against Hoppy's iron hands.

"Let me go!" she screamed. "You swine! You couldn't—"

"Let her go, Hoppy," said the Saint quietly.

Mr Uniatz unlocked his fingers, and the girl tore herself free and stood swaying on the edge of the floor.

"Would Andy still love you if you had a Z carved on your face?" asked the Saint speculatively.

He moved the knife in his hand in an unmistakable gesture.

He had no intention of using it, but he wanted her to feel some of the mental agony that she had given to others before he dealt with her in the only way he could. But all the things he would have liked to do were in his voice, and the girl was too demented with terror to distinguish between fine shades of meaning. She gaped at him in stupefied horror as he took a step towards her; and then, with an inarticulate, despairing shriek, she flung herself backwards into the black pit below…

Raddon started forward with a queer animal moan, but Hoppy's gun whipped up and thrust him back. And the Saint looked at him.

"It's no use, Andy," he said with his first tinge of pity. "You backed the wrong horse."

He slid his knife back into its sheath and put an arm around Patricia.

"Where are we?" he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

"This is some sort of old ruin with a modern house built into one wing of it." She spoke mechanically, with her eyes still hypnotized by the dark silence into which Sheila Ireland had disappeared. "I suppose it belonged to her…"

The Saint buttoned his coat. Life went on, and business was still business.

"Then it probably contains a safe with some boodle in it," he said. "I know a few good causes that could use it. And then we'd better hustle back and untie Comrade Sentinel before he bursts a blood vessel. We'll have to take him back to Weybridge and add him to Beatrice and Irene for the alibi we're going to need when Claud Eustace hears about this. Let's keep moving."