The Saint In England

I

There was nothing unusual about the fact that when Simon Templar landed in England he was expecting trouble. Trouble was his chosen vocation: the last ten years of his life had held enough of it to satisfy a couple of dozen ordinary men for three or four lifetimes, and it would have been surprising if after so many hectic events he had contemplated a future of rustic quietude, enlivened by nothing more thrilling than wild gambles on the laying abilities of Leghorns. But it was perhaps more unusual that the particular trouble which he was expecting on this occasion could not be blamed on any fault of his.

He came down the gangway of the Transylvania with a light step in the summer sunlight, with a soft grey hat canted rakishly over one eye and a raincoat slung carelessly over his shoulder. There was death in his pocket and peril of an even deadlier kind under his arm; but he faced the customs officer across his well-labelled luggage with an easy smile and ran a humorous glance down the list of dutiable and prohibited articles presented for his inspection.

"Yes," he said, "I'm carrying large quantities of silk, perfume, wines, spirits, tobacco, cut flowers, watches, embroidery, eggs, typewriters, and explosives. I also have some opium and a couple of howitzers—"

"You don't have to be funny about it, anyway," grunted the official and scrawled the cryptic hieroglyphics that passed him through with his two guns into England.

He sauntered on through the bleak echoing shed, waving casual adieus to his acquaintances of the voyage. An American banker from Ohio, who had lost three thousand dollars to him over the poker table, buttonholed him without malice.

"See you look me up next time you're in Wapakoneta," he said.

"I won't forget," Simon answered gravely.

There was a girl with raven hair and deep grey eyes. She was very good to look upon, and Simon had sat out with her on the boat deck under the moon.

"Perhaps you'll be coming to Sacramento one day," she said.

"Maybe I will," he said with a quick smile; and the deep grey eyes followed him rather wistfully out of sight.

Other eyes followed the tall lean figure as it swung by, and carried their own pictures of the brown fighting face and the smile that touched the strong reckless mouth and the gay blue eyes. They belonged to a Miss Gertrude Tinwiddle, who had been seasick all the way over, and who would never have been taken onto the boat deck anyhow. "Who is that man?" she asked. "His name is Templar," said her neighbour, who knew everything. "And you mark my words, there's something queer about him. I shouldn't be surprised if he was a sort of gangster."

"He looks like a — a sort of cavalier," said Miss Tinwiddle timidly.

"Pish!" said her companion testily and returned to the grim task of trying to convince a cynical customs officer that twenty-four silk dresses would have been a beggarly allowance even for a week-end traveller.

At the end of the shed Detective Sergeant Harry Jepson, of the Southampton C. I. D., said to Police Constable Ernest Potts:

"You see the tall fellow in the grey tweeds coming this way? Handsome devil, isn't he? Well, you'd better remember that face."

"Who is he?" asked Police Constable Potts.

"That," said Sergeant Jepson, "is Mr. Simon Templar, alias the Saint; and you aren't likely to see a smarter crook than him in your time. At least, I hope not. He's committed every blooming crime there is from murder downwards, and he'll tell you so himself, but nobody's ever been able to hang a thing on him. And to look at him you'd think he had a conscience like a new-born babe."

In which utterance Detective Sergeant Harry Jepson was as close to eternal truth as he was ever likely to get; for the Saint had never been sure that he had a conscience at all, but if he had one there was certainly nothing on it. He looked the two officers shamelessly in the eye as he approached, and as he strolled past them his right hand waved a quizzical salute that had no regard whatever for the affronted majesty of the Law.

"D'you ever hear of such blooming sauce?" demanded Mr. Jepson indignantly.

But Simon Templar, who was called the Saint, neither heard nor cared. He stood on the railroad platform, tapping a cigarette on a thin platinum case, and panned a thoughtful and quietly vigilant eye along the whole length of the train. He was expecting somebody to meet him, but he knew that it would not be anyone whose welcome would be friendly; and he had the additional disadvantage of not even being able to guess what the welcomer might look like. The Saint's vocation was trouble, but he had contrived to stay alive for thirty-two years only because of an unceasing devotion to the business of divining where the trouble would come from and meeting it on his toes.

"Wantcher luggidge in the van, sir?" asked the porter who was wheeling his barrow.

The Saint's gaze travelled round to measure up two suitcases and a wardrobe trunk.

"I think so, George," he murmured. "I shouldn't be able to run very far with that load, should I?"

He took over his small overnight bag and saw the rest of his impedimenta registered through to his apartment on Piccadilly. He was still carrying the black book under his arm, and it occurred to him that there were more convenient forms of camouflage for it than the slung raincoat by which it was temporarily hidden. He paused at the bookstall and glanced over the volumes of fiction offered for the entertainment of the traveller. In the circumstances, his choice had to be dictated by size rather than subject matter.

"I'll take this," he said brazenly; and the assistant's eyes bulged slightly as he paid over three half-crowns for a copy of an opus entitled Her Wedding Secret.

A signpost adjoining the bookstall invited Gentlemen to enter and make themselves at home, and the Saint drifted through with his purchase. No other Gentlemen were availing themselves of the Southern Railway's hospitality at the time, and it was the work of a moment to slip the intriguing jacket from the volume he had just bought and transfer it to the black book from under his arm, where it fitted quite comfortably. He pitched the unknown lady's wedding secret dexterously through the skylight and went out again with the newly jacketed black book conspicuously flaunted in his hand — no one who had been watching him would have had any reason to suspect that there had been any change in the contents of that artistically suggestive wrapper.

There were several minutes left before the train was due to leave, and the Saint strolled unhurriedly along the platform with his bag, as though selecting a carriage. If the welcomer or welcomers that he expected were there, he wanted to help them in every possible way. He covered the whole length of the train before he turned back, and then made his choice of an empty smoker. Pushing his suitcase up onto the rack, and dumping his raincoat and book on a corner seat, he leaned out of the window and slid another idly thoughtful glance over the scene.

A military-looking man of about forty-five, with a strongly aquiline nose and a black guardee moustache, came slowly down the platform. He passed the window without looking round, walked on a little way, and turned. He stood there for a while, teetering toe to heel and gazing vacantly over the gallery of posters plastered on the opposite wall; then he came back, past the Saint's window again, circumnavigated a farewell party congregated outside the next carriage, and did the same thing on the other side.

The Saint's cool blue eyes never once looked directly at him; his brown keen-cut face never changed its expression from one of languid patience; but he had seen every movement of the military-looking man's manoeuvres. And Simon Templar knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that this was at least one of the welcomers whom he had been expecting.

Along the train came a bustle of belated activity, the banging of doors, the scream of the guard's whistle. Simon remained in his window, finishing his cigarette, and saw the military-looking man climb into an adjoining compartment. The engine let out a hiss of steam, and the platform began to slip back under his eyes.

Simon dropped his cigarette and settled back into his corner. He turned the pages of the black book in its new wrapper, refreshing his memory. The action was more automatic than deliberate, only different in degree from a nervous person's gesture in twiddling his thumbs while waiting on tenterhooks for some anticipated event to happen. The Saint already knew almost every line of that amazing volume by heart — he had had plenty of time to study it from cover to cover on the voyage over. The odds were about fifty to one that the military-looking man was mentioned somewhere in its pages; but it was rather difficult to decide, out of the available names, which one he was most likely to bear.

The conductor came round and collected tickets; and then fifteen minutes passed before the door of the Saint's compartment slid back again. Simon closed his book and looked up with exactly the conventional nuance of irritated curiosity which darkens the distinguished features of the railroad passenger who has contrived to secure a compartment to himself and who finds his privary illegitimately invaded at the last moment; but the military-looking man put his back to the door and stared at him with a grimness that was by no means conventional.

"Come on," he said grimly. Give me that book!"

"What, this?" said the Saint in innocent surprise, raising Her Wedding Secret. "You're welcome to it when I've finished, brother, but I hardly think it's in your line. I've only got to the part where she discovers that the man she has married is a Barbarian Lover—"

The intruder pushed the unoffending volume roughly aside.

"I don't mean that," he said shortly. "You know perfectly well what book I mean."

"I'm afraid I don't," said the Saint.

"And you know perfectly well," continued the intruder, "what I'm going to do to you if I don't get it."

Simon shook his head.

"I can't guess that one, either," he remarked mildly. "What is it — slap my wrist and tell me to stand in the corner?"

The man's mouth was working under his moustache. He came further into the compartment, past the Saint, and jerked a small automatic from his pocket. It was an almost pathetically amateurish movement — Simon could have forestalled it easily, but he wanted to see how far the other would go.

"Very well," grated the man. "I'll have to take it myself. Put 'em up!"

"Up what?" asked the Saint, doing his best to understand.

"Put your hands up. And don't think of any more of that funny stuff, or you'll be sorry for it."

Simon put his hands up lazily. His bag was on the rack directly over his head, and the handle was within an inch of his fingers.

"I suppose the keepers will be along to collect you in a minute, old fruit," he drawled. "Or do you fancy yourself as a sort of highwayman?"

"Now listen, you bastard," came the snarling answer. "I'm going to allow you five seconds to give me that book. If I haven't got it in that time, I'm going to shoot. I'll start counting now. One… two…"

There was a crazy red glare in the intruder's eyes, and although the gun was shaking unsteadily something told Simon that he had permitted the melodrama to go far enough.

"You know all the rules, don't you, brother?" he said gently; and his fingers grasped the handle of his bag and hurled it full into the other's face.

The man reeled back with the force of the impact and went crashing against the outside door. It flew open under his weight; and the Saint's blue eyes turned to sudden ice as he realized that it could not have been properly latched when he got in. For one awful instant the man's fingers clawed at the frame; and then with a choking gasp he was gone, and there was only the drab streaked wall of the cutting roaring by the door…

Simon's hand reached up instinctively towards the communication cord. And then it drew back.

The intruder, whoever he was, had asked for it: he had taken his own chances. And although Simon Templar had only done what was justified in self-defense, he knew his own reputation at Scotland Yard too well to believe for a moment that it would be a brief and simple task to impress that fact upon the suspicious hostility of the C. I. D. To stop the train would achieve nothing more helpful than his own immediate arrest; and of all the things which might happen to him while he had that black book in his possession, an interlude behind bars in Brixton Prison was the least exhilarating.

He caught the swinging door and closed it again and then restored his suitcase to the rack. The unknown casualty's gun had gone out with him — there was no other evidence that he had ever entered the compartment.

The Saint lighted a cigarette and sat down again, listening to the rhythmic thrum and rattle of the wheels pounding over the metals towards London. There was nothing unusual about the fact that he was expecting trouble when he returned to Europe, or even about the fact that a fair sample of that trouble should have greeted him within such a short time of setting foot in England.

But it was perhaps more unusual that the particular trouble he was expecting could not be blamed on any fault of his. And the queerest thing of all was that everything should hinge around the black book on his knee which was the legacy of Rayt Marius — the strangest and deadliest gift that any man ever received.

II

He was one of the first passengers to alight from the train at Waterloo, with his raincoat slung over his shoulder and the book in his hand; but he did not take the first available taxi. He allowed six to go by him, and boarded the seventh after taking a good look at it.

"Hyde Park Corner," he directed it clearly and watched the traffic out of the rear window as they drove away.

Another taxi swung in behind them, and he noted the number. Five minutes later he looked back again, and it was still there. Simon pressed the button of the telephone.

"Turn right round at Hyde Park Corner and go back the way we've come," he said.

He waited a short time after his instructions had been carried out, and looked back for the third time. The other taxi was plugging patiently along three yards behind, and the Saint's teeth gleamed in a thin smile. Coincidence of destination was one thing, but coincidence of such a radical change of direction as he had ordered his driver to carry out was quite another matter.

"Now we'll go through the Green Park and up St. James's Street," he said through the telephone.

The driver was so moved that he opened the door an inch and performed incredible contortions to yell back through it.

"Wot is this?" he demanded. "A game of ‘I’d and seek?"

"You have no idea," said the Saint.

The apartment he was heading for was on the north side of Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park. It was only one of many addresses that he had had at various times, to several of which he still owned the keys; but it was the one which had been prepared for his return, and he had no intention of being prevented from going there. The only question was how the shadowing party was to be shaken off.

As they ran up St. James's Street he looked at the meter and counted off the necessary change to pay the fare with a substantial tip. When the next traffic light reddened against them he stretched a long arm through the window and thrust the money into the driver's hand.

"I shall be leaving you any minute now, Alphonse," he said. "But don't let that stop you. Keep right on your way, and don't look back till you get to Hyde Park Corner. And have a bob on J Samovar for the Derby."

He had the door on the latch as they passed the Ritz, and his steel-blue eyes were watching the traffic intently. Three buses were taking on passengers at the stop just west of the hotel, and as they went past the leader was edging out into the stream. Simon looked back and saw it cut out close behind him, baulking the following taxi; and that was his chance. In a flash he was out of his cab, dropping nimbly to the road, and the red side of the bus thundered by a couple of inches from his shoulder. It hid him perfectly from whoever was trailing him in the other cab, which was trying to pass the obstruction and catch up again; and he stood on the sidewalk and watched the whole futile procession trundling away westwards with a relentless zeal which brought an irresponsible twinkle of sheer urchin mischief into his eyes.

A few minutes later he was sauntering into his apartment building and nodding cheerily to the janitor.

"Anybody called while I've been away, Sam?" he asked, as if he had only been away for a weekend.

Sam Outrell's beam of delight gave way to a troubled gravity. He looked furtively about him.

"There was two detectives here the other day, sir," he said.

The Saint frowned at him thoughtfully for a moment. Although Sam Outrell was nominally employed by the management of the building, he was on Simon Templar's private payroll as well; but no stipend could have bought the look of almost dog-like devotion with which he waited anxiously for the Saint's reaction. Simon looked up at him again and smiled.

"I expect they were the birds I hired to try and find a collar stud that went down the waste pipe," he said and went whistling on his way to the lift.

He let himself into his apartment noiselessly. There were sounds of someone moving about in the living room, and he only stopped to throw his hat and coat onto a chair before he went through and opened the second door.

"Hullo, Pat," he said softly. "I thought you'd be here."

Across the room, a tall slender girl with fair golden hair gazed at him with eyes as blue as his own. There was the grace of a pagan goddess in the way she stood, caught in surprise as she was by the sound of his voice, and the reward of all journeys in the quiver of her red lips.

"So you have come back," she said.

"After many adventures," said the Saint and took her into his arms.

She turned away presently, keeping his arm round her, and showed him the table.

"I got in a bottle of your favourite sherry," she said rather breathlessly, "in case you came."

"In case?" said the Saint.

"Well, after you wired me not to meet you at Southampton—"

He laughed, a quiet lilt of laughter that had rung in her memory for many weeks.

"Darling, that was because I was expecting an-other deputation of welcome at the same time, and it might have spoilt the fun for both of us. The deputation was there, too — but you shall hear about that presently."

He filled the two glasses which stood beside the bottle and carried one of them over to an arm-chair. Over the rim of his glass he regarded her, freshening the portrait which he had carried with him ever since he went away. So much had happened to him, so many things had touched him and passed on into the illimitable emptiness of time, but not one line of her had changed. She was the same as she had been on the day when he first met her, the same as she had been through all the lawless adventures that they had shared since she threw in her lot irrevocably with his. She looked at him in the same way.

"You're older," she said quietly.

He smiled.

"I haven't been on a picnic."

"And there's something about you that tells me you aren't on a picnic even now."

He sipped the golden nectar from his glass and delved for a cigarette. When she said that he was older she could not have pointed to a grey hair or a new line on his face to prove her statement. And at that moment she felt that the clock might well have been put back five years. The fine sunburnt devil-may-care face, the face of a born outlaw, was in some subtle way more keenly etched than ever by the indefinable inward light that came to it when trouble loomed up in his buccaneering path. She knew him so well that the lazy quirk of the unscrupulous freebooter's mouth told a story of its own, and even the whimsical smile that lurked on in his eyes could not deceive her.

"It isn't my fault if you develop these psychic powers, old sweetheart," he said.

"It's your fault if you can't even stay out of trouble for a week now and again," she said and sat on the arm of his chair.

He shook his head and took one of her hands.

"I tried to, Pat, but it just wasn't meant to happen. A wicked ogre with a black guardee moustache hopped through a window and said 'Boo!' and my halo blew off. If I wanted to, I could blame it all on you."

"How?"

"For just managing to catch me in Boston before I sailed, with that parcel you forwarded!"

Patricia Holm puckered her sweet brow.

"Parcel?… Oh, I think I remember it. A thing about the size of a book — it came from Monte Carlo, didn't it?"

"It came from Monte Carlo," said the Saint carefully, "and it was certainly about the size of a book. In fact, it was a book. It was the most amazing book I've ever read — maybe the most amazing book that was ever written. There it is!"

He pointed to the volume which he had put down on the table, and she stared at it and then back at him in utter perplexity.

"Her Wedding Secret?" she said. "Have you gone mad or have I?"

"Neither of us," said the Saint. "But you wouldn't believe how many other people are mad about it."

She looked at him in bewildered exasperation. He was standing up again, a debonair wide-shouldered figure against the sunlight that streamed in through the big windows and lengthened the evening shadows of the trees in the Green Park. She felt the spell of his daredevil delight as irresistible as it had always been, the absurd glamour which could even take half the sting from his moments of infuriating mysteriousness. He smiled, and his hands went to her shoulders.

"Listen, Pat," he said. "That book is a present from an old friend, and he knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. When I show it to you, you'll see that it's the most devilishly clever revenge that ever came out of a human brain. But before we go any further, I want you to know that there's more power in that book for the man who's got it than anyone else in England has today, and for that very reason—"

The sharp trill of the telephone bell cut him off. He looked at the instrument for a moment and then lifted the receiver.

"Hullo," he said.

"This is Outrell, sir," said an agitated voice. "Those two detectives I told you about — they've just bin here again. They're on their way up to you now, sir."

Simon gazed dreamily at the ceiling for a second or two, and his fingertips played a gently syncopated tattoo on the side table.

"Okay, Sam," he said. "I'll give them your love."

He replaced the instrument and stood with his hand on it, looking at Patricia. His level blue eyes were mocking and enigmatic, but this time at least she knew enough of his system to read beyond them.

"Hadn't you better hide the book?" she said.

"It is hidden," he answered, touching the gaudy wrapper. "And we may as well have a look at these sleuths."

The ringing of another bell put a short stop to further discussion, and with a last smile at her he went out to open the door. The trouble was coming thick and fast, and there were tiny chisellings at the corners of his mouth to offset the quiet amusement in his eyes. But he only stopped long enough in the little hall to transfer the automatic from his hip pocket to a pocket in his raincoat, and then he opened the door wide with a face of seraphic tranquillity.

Two men in dark suits stood on the mat outside. Both of them wore bowler hats; neither of them carried sticks or gloves.

"Mr. Simon Templar?" queried one of them, in a voice of astounding refinement.

Simon nodded, and they moved determinedly through the door with a concerted solidity which would certainly have obstructed any attempt he might have made to slam it in their faces.

"I am Inspector Nassen," said the genteel spokesman, "and I have a warrant to search your flat."

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated the Saint, with his juiciest lisp. "So you're one of our new public-school policemen. How perfectly sweet!"

The other's lips tightened.

"We'll start with searching you," he said shortly.

His hands ran over the Saint's pockets in a few efficient movements which were sufficient to assure him that Simon had no lethal weapon on his person. The Saint restrained a natural impulse to smack him on the nose and smiled instead.

"This is a great game, Snowdrop, isn't it?" he said. "Personally I'm broad-minded, but if you did these things to a lady she might misunderstand you."

Nassen's pale face flushed wrathfully, and an unholy gleam came into the Saint's eye. Of all the detectives who ought never to have called upon him, one who was so easily baited was booked for a rough passage before he ever set out.

"We'll go over the flat now," he said.

Simon led them into the living room and calmly set about refilling his sherry glass.

"Pat," he explained casually, "these are two little fairies who just popped through the keyhole. They seem to want to search the place and see if it's all cleany-weeny. Shall we let them get on with it?"

"I suppose so," said Patricia tolerantly. "Did they wipe their tootsy-wootsies before they came in?"

"I'm afraid not," said the Saint. "You see, they aren't very well-bred little fairies. But when you have a beautiful Oxford accent you aren't supposed to need manners as well. You should just hear Snowdrop talking. Sounds as if all his teeth were loose…"

He went on in the same vein throughout the search, with an inexhaustible resource of wicked glee, and it was two very red and spluttering men who faced him after they had ransacked every room under the running commentary with which he enlivened their tour.

"Get your hat," Nassen said. "You're comin along with us."

Simon put down his glass — they were back in the living room then.

"On what charge, Snowdrop?" he inquired.

"The charge is being in possession of information contrary to the Official Secrets Act."

"It sounds a mouthful," Simon admitted. "Shall I pack my powder puff as well, or will you be able to lend me one?"

"Get your hat!" Nassen choked out in a shaking voice.

The Saint put a cigarette between his lips and stroked a thumb over the cog of his lighter. He looked at Patricia through the first feather of smoke, returning the lighter to his pocket, and the carless twinkle in his eyes might or might not have been an integral part of the smile that flitted across his brown face. "It looks as if we shall have to finish our talk later, old darling," he murmured. "Snowdrop is in a hurry. Save some sherry for me, will you? — I shan't be long."

Almost incredulously, but with a sudden leap of uncomprehending fear, she watched him saunter serenely from the room, and through the open door he saw him pick up his raincoat from the hall chair and pause to adjust his soft hat to its correct piratical angle before he went out. Long after he had gone, she was still trying to make herself believe that she had seen Simon Templar, the man who had tantalized all the forces of law and order in the world for more years than any of them liked to be reminded of, arrested as easily as that.

III

Riding in a taxi between the two detectives, the Saint looked at his watch and saw that he had been in England less than four hours, and he had to admit that the pace was fairly rapid even by his exacting standards. One whiskered hold-up mer-chant, an unidentified shadower in a taxi, and two public-school detectives worked out at a reasonably hectic average for the time involved; but Simon knew that that was only a preliminary sample of the kind of attention he could expect while he remained the holder of Her Wedding Secret.

On either side of him, Nassen and the other sleuth licked their sores in silence. Whether they were completely satisfied with the course of events so far is not known, nor does the chronicler feel that posterity will greatly care. Simon thought kindly of other possible ways of adding to their martyrdom; but before he had made his final choice of the various forms of torment at his disposal the taxi was stopped by a traffic light at the corner of St. James's Street, and the Saint looked through the window from a range of less than two yards full into the chubby red face and sleepy eye' of the man without whom none of his adventures were really complete.

Before either of the other two could stop him he had slung himself forward and loosed a delighted yell through the open window.

"Claud Eustace, by the bed socks of Dr. Barnardo!" cried the Saint joyfully.

The man's drowsy optics revolved towards the source of the sound, and, having located it, widened with indescribable eloquence. For a second or two he actually stopped chewing on his gum His jaws seized up, and his portly bowler-hatted figure halted statuesquely.

There were cogent and fundamental reasons for the tableau — reasons which were carved in imperishable letters across the sluggish coagulation of emotions which Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal himself would have been much too diffident to call his soul. They were reasons which went way back through the detective's life to those almost unimaginably distant blissful days before anyone in England had ever heard of the Saint — the days when a policeman's lot had been a reasonably happy one, moving through well-ordered grooves to a stolid and methodical percentage of success, and there had been no such incalculable filibuster sweeping at intervals into the peaceful scene to tie all averages in knots and ride such rings round the wrath and vengeance of Scotland Yard as had never been ridden before. They were reasons which could have been counted one by one on Mr. Teal's grey hairs; and all of them surged out of his memory in a solid phalanx at such moments as that, when the Saint returned to England after an all-too-brief absence, and Mr. Teal saw him in London again and knew that the tale was no searer its end than it had ever been.

All these things came back to burden Mr. Teal's overloaded heart in that moment's motionless stare; and then with a sigh he stepped to the window of the taxicab and faced his future stoically.

"Hullo," he said.

The Saint's eyebrows went up in a rising slant of mockery.

"Claud!" he protested. "Is that kind? I ask you, is that a brotherly welcome? Anyone might think you weren't pleased to see me."

"I'm not," said Mr. Teal dourly. "But I shall have to see you."

The Saint smiled.

"Hop in," he invited hospitably. "We're going your way."

Teal shook his head — that is the simplest way of describing the movement, but it was such a perfunctory gesture that it simply looked as if he had thought of making it and had subsequently decided that he was too tired.

"Thanks," he said. "I've got another job to do just now. And you seem to be in good company." His baby-blue eyes, restored to their habitual affectation of sleepiness, moved over the two embarrassed men who flanked the Saint. "You know who you're with, boys," he told them. "Watch him."

"Pardon me," said the Saint hastily. "I forgot to do the honours. This specimen on my left is Snowdrop, the Rose of Peckham—"

"All right," said Teal grimly. "I know them. And I'll bet they're going to wish they'd never known you — if they haven't begun wishing it already." The traffic light was at green again, and the hooting of impatient drivers held up behind made the detective step back from the window. "I'll see you later," he said and waved the taxi on.

The Saint grinned and settled back again, as the cab turned south towards the Park. That chance encounter had set the triumphal capstone on his homecoming: it was the last familiar chord of the old opening chorus, his guarantee that the old days had finally come back in all their glory. The one jarring note was in the sinister implications of Teal's parting speech. Ever frank and open, the Saint sought to compare opinions on the subject.

"It sounds," he murmured, "almost as if Claud Eustace had something on his mind. Didn't it sound that way to you, Snowdrop?"

Nassen was wiping his forehead with a large white handkerchief; and he seemed deaf to the advance. His genteel sensitive soul had been bruised, and he had lost the spirit of such candid camaraderie. He put his handkerchief away and slipped an automatic from his pocket. Simon felt the muzzle probe into his ribs, and glanced down at it with one satirical eyebrow raised.

"You know, you could kill someone with that," he said reprovingly.

"I wish it could be you," said the Rose of Peck-ham in a tone of passionate earnestness, and relapsed into morbid silence.

Simon chuckled and lighted another cigarette. The gun in his own raincoat pocket rested comfortingly across his thigh, but he saw no need to advertise his own armoury. He watched their route with patient interest — they emerged at Parliament Square, but instead of turning down to the Embankment they circled the square and went back up Victoria Street.

"I suppose you know this isn't the way to Scotland Yard, Snowdrop?" he remarked helpfully. "This is the way you're going first," Nassen told him.

The Saint shrugged. They turned quickly off Victoria Street, and pulled up shortly afterwards outside a house in one of those almost stupefyingly sombre and respectable squares in the district known to its residents as Belgravia but to the vulgar public, less pretentiously, as Pimlico. Nassen's colleague got out and went up the steps to ring the bell, and the Saint followed under the unnecessarily aggressive propulsion of Nassen's gun.

The door was opened by one of the most magnificently majestic butlers that the Saint had ever seen. He seemed to be expecting them, for he stood aside immediately, and the Saint was led quickly through the hall into a spacious library on the ground floor.

"I will inform his lordship of your arrival," said the butler and left them there.

Simon Templar, who had been taking in his surroundings with untroubled interest, turned round as the door closed.

"You ought to have told me we were going to visit a Lord, Snowdrop," he said reproachfully.

"I'd have put on my Old Etonian suspenders and washed my neck. I know you washed your neck today, because I can see the line where you left off."

Nassen tugged at his lower lip and simmered audibly, but his woes had passed beyond the remedy of repartee. And he was still smouldering pinkly when Lord Iveldown came in.

Lord Iveldown's name will not go down to history in the company of Gladstone, Disraeli, or the Earl of Chatham. Probably it will not go down to history at all. He was a minor statesman whose work had never been done in the public eye, which was at least a negative blessing for a public eye which has far too much to put up with already. In plain language, which tradition forbids any statesman to use, he was one of those permanent government officials who do actually run the country while the more publicized politicians are talking about it. He was a big man inclined to paunchiness, with thin grey hair and pince-nez and the aura of stupendous pomposity by which the permanent government official may instantly be recognized anywhere; and the Saint, whose portrait gallery of excrescences left very little ground uncovered, recognized him at once.

He came in polishing his pince-nez and took up a position with his back to the fireplace.

"Sit down, Mr. Templar," he said brusquely and turned to Nassen. "I take it that you failed to find what you were looking for?"

The detective nodded.

"We turned the place inside out, your Lordship, but there wasn't a sign of it. He might have sewn it up inside a mattress or in the upholstery of a i: hair, but I don't think he would have had time."

"Quite," muttered Lord Iveldown. "Quite." He took off his pince-nez, polished them again, and looked at the Saint. "This is a serious matter, Mr. Templar," he said. "Very serious."

"Apparently," agreed the Saint blandly. "Apparently."

Lord Iveldown cleared his throat and wagged his head once or twice.

"That is why I have been obliged to adopt extraordinary measures to deal with it," he said.

"Such as sending along a couple of fake detectives to turn my rooms inside out?" suggested the Saint languidly.

Lord Iveldown started, peered down at him, and coughed.

"Ah-hum," he said. "You knew they were — ah — fakes?"

"My good ass," said the Saint, lounging more snugly in his armchair, "I knew that the Metropolitan Police had lowered itself a lot by enlisting Public School men and what not, but I couldn't quite believe that it had sunk so low as to make inspectors out of herbaceous borders like Snowdrop over there. Besides, I'm never arrested by ordinary inspectors — Chief Inspector Teal himself always comes to see me."

"Then why did you allow Nassen to bring you here?"

"Because I figured I might as well take a gander at you and hear what you had to say. The gander," Simon admitted frankly, "is not quite the greatest thrill I've had since I met Dietrich."

Lord Iveldown cleared his throat again and expanded his stomach, clasping his hands behind his back under his coat tails and rocking slightly in the manner of a schoolmaster preparing to deal with a grave breach of the Public School Code.

"Mr. Templar," he said heavily, "this is a serious matter. A very serious matter. A matter, I might say, of the utmost gravity. You have in your possession a volume which contains certain — ah — statements and — ah — suggestions concerning me — statements and suggestions which, I need scarcely add, are wholly without foundation—"

"As, for instance," said the Saint gently, "the statement or suggestion that when you were Undersecretary of State for War you placed an order for thirty thousand Lewis guns with a firm whose tender was sixty per cent, higher than any other, and enlarged your own bank balance immediately afterwards."

"Gross and damnable falsehoods," persisted Lord Iveldown more loudly.

"As, for instance," said the Saint, even more gently, "the gross and damnable falsehood that you accepted on behalf of the government a consignment of one million gas masks which technical experts had already condemned in the strongest language as worse than useless—"

"Foul and calumnious imputations," boomed Lord Iveldown in a trembling voice, "which can easily be refuted, but which if published would nevertheless to some degree smirch a name which hitherto has not been without honour in the annals of this nation. It was only for that reason, and not because I feared that my public and private life could not stand the light of any inquiry whatever that might be directed into it, that I consented to — ah — grant you this interview."

Simon nodded.

"Since your synthetic detectives had failed to steal that book from me," he murmured, "it was — ah — remarkably gracious of you."

His sardonic blue eyes, levelled over the shaft of a cigarette that slanted from between his lips like the barrel of a gun, bored into Lord Iveldown with a light of cold appraisal which made the nobleman shift his feet awkwardly.

"It was an extraordinary situation," repeated his lordship in a resonant voice, "which necessitated extraordinary measures." He cleared his throat, adjusted his pince-nez, and rocked on his heels again. "Mr. Templar," he said, "let us not beat about the bush any longer. For purely personal reasons — merely, you understand, because I desire to keep my name free from common gossip — I desire to suppress these base insinuations which happen to have come into your possession; and for that reason I have accorded you this personal interview in order to ascertain what — ah — value you would place on this volume."

"That's rather nice of you," said the Saint guardedly. "If, for example," said Lord Iveldown throatily,

"a settlement of, shall we say — ah — two thousand pounds—"

He broke off at that point because suddenly the Saint had begun to laugh. It was a very quiet, very self-contained laugh — a laugh that somehow made the blood in Lord Iveldown's hardened arteries run colder as he heard it. If there was any humour in the laugh, it did not reach the Saint's eyes.

"If you'd mentioned two hundred thousand," said the Saint coolly, "you would have been right on my figure."

There was a long terrific silence in which the mere rustle of a coat sleeve would have sounded like the crash of doom. Many seconds went by before Lord Iveldown's dry cough broke the stillness like a rattle of musketry.

"How much did you say?" he articulated hoarsely.

"I said two hundred thousand pounds."

Those arctic blue eyes had never shifted from Lord Iveldown's faintly empurpled face. Their glacial gaze seemed to go through him with the cold sting of a rapier blade — seemed to strip away all his bulwarks of pomposity like tissue, and hold the naked soul of the man quivering on the point like a grub on a pin.

"But that," said Lord Iveldown tremblingly," — that's impossible! That's blackmail!"

"I'm afraid it is," said the Saint.

"You sit there, before witnesses—"

"Before all the witnesses you like to bring in. I don't want you to miss the idea, your Lordship. Witnesses don't make any difference. In any ordinary case — yes. If I were only threatening to advertise your illicit love affairs, or anything like that, you could bring me to justice and your own name would quite rightly be suppressed. But in a case like this even the chief commissioner couldn't guarantee you immunity. This isn't just ordinary naughtiness. This is high treason."

Simon tapped the ash from his cigarette and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling; and once again his relentless eyes went back to Lord Iveldown's face. Nassen and the other detective, staring at the Saint in sullen silence, felt as if an icy wind blew through the room and goosefleshed their skin in spite of the warmth of the evening. The bantering buffoon who had goaded them to the verge of apoplexy had vanished as though he had never existed, and another man spoke with the same voice.

"The book you're talking about," said the Saint, in the same level dispassionate tones, "is a legacy to me, as you know, from Rayt Marius. And you know what made him a millionaire. His money was made from war and the instruments of war. All those amazing millions — the millions out of which you and others like you were paid, Lord Iveldown — were the wages of death and destruction and wholesale murder. They were coined out of blood and dishonour and famine and the agony of peaceful nations. Men — and women and children, too — were killed and tortured and maimed to find that money — the money out of which you were paid, Lord Iveldown."

Lord Iveldown licked his lips and Gpened his mouth to speak. But that clear ruthless voice went on, cleaving like a sword through his futile attempt at expostulation:

"Since I have that book, I had to find a use for it. And I think my idea is a good one. I am organizing the Simon Templar Foundation, which will be started with a capital of one million pounds — of which your contribution will be a fifth. The foundation will be devoted to the care and comfort of men maimed and crippled in war, to helping the wives and children of men killed in war, and to the endowment of any cause which has a chance of doing something to promote peace in the future. You must agree that the retribution is just."

Iveldown's bluff had gone. He seemed to have shrunk, and he was not teetering pompously on the hearth any more. His blotched face was working, and his small eyes had lost all their dominance — I hey were the mean shifty eyes of a man who was horribly afraid.

"You're mad!" he said, and his voice cracked. "I can't listen to anything like that. I won't listen to it! You'll change your tune before you leave here, by God! Nassen—"

The two detectives started forward, roused abruptly from their trance; and in the eyes of the Rose of Peckham particularly Simon saw the dawn of a sudden vengeful joy. He smiled and moved his raincoat a little to uncover the gun in his hand.

"Not just now, Snowdrop," he said smoothly, and the two men stopped. "I have a date, and you've kept me too long already. A little later, I think, you'll get your chance." His gaze roved back to Lord Iveldown's sickly features, on which the fear was curdling to a terrible impotent malevolence; and the Saintly smile touched his lips again for a moment. "I shall expect that two hundred thousand pounds by Saturday midnight," he said. "I haven't the least doubt that you'll do your best to kill me before then, but I'm equally sure that you won't succeed. And I think you will pay your share…"

IV

Simon Templar was not a light sleeper, by the ordinary definition. Neither was he a heavy one. He slept like a cat, with the complete and perfect relaxation of a wild animal, but with the same wild animal's gift of rousing into instant wakefulness at the slightest sound which might require investigation. A howling thunderstorm would not have made him stir, but the stealthy slither of a cautiously opened drawer brought him out of a dreamless untroubled slumber into tingling consciousness.

The first outward sign of awakening touched nothing more than his eyelids — it was a trick he had learned many years ago, and it had saved his life more than once. His body remained still and passive, and even a man standing close beside his bed could have detected no change in the regular rate of his breathing. He lay staring into the dark, with his ears strained to pick up and locate the next infinitesimal repetition of the noise which had awaked him.

After a few seconds he heard it again, a sound of the identical quality but from a different source — the faint scuff of a rubber sole moving over the carpet in his living room. The actual volume of sound was hardly greater than a mouse might have made, but it brought him out of bed in a swift writhing movement that made no sound in response.

And thereafter the blackness of the bedroom swallowed him up like a ghost. His bare feet crossed the floor without the faintest whisper of disturbance, and his fingers closed on the doorknob as surely as if he could have seen it. He turned the knob without a rattle and moved noiselessly across the hall.

The door of the living room was ajar — he could see the blackness ahead of him broken by a vague nimbus of light that glowed from the gap and shifted its position erratically. He came up to the door softly and looked in.

The silhouette of a man showed against the darkened beam of an electric torch with the aid of which he was silently and systematically going through the contents of the desk; and the Saint showed his teeth for a moment as he sidled through the doorway and closed the door soundlessly behind him. His fingers found the switch beside the door, and he spoke at the same time.

"Good-morrow, Algernon," he murmured.

The man swung round in the sudden blaze of light. At the very moment when he started to turn, Simon saw the gun in his hand, and thanked his immoral deities that he had not removed his fingers too promptly from the switch. In a split second he had clicked the lever up again, and the darkness fell again with blinding intensity after that one dazzling instant of luminance.

The Saint's voice floated once more out of the blackness.

"So you pack a rod, do you, Algernon? You must know that rods aren't allowed in this respectable city. I shall have to speak to you severely about that presently, Algernon — really I shall."

The beam of the intruder's torch stabbed out again, printing a white circle of light on the door; but Simon was not inside the circle. The Saint had no rooted fear of being cold-bloodedly shot down in that apartment — the chances of a clean getaway for the shooter were too remote — but he had a very sound knowledge of what a startled burglar, amateur Or professional, may do in a moment of panic; and what had been visible of the intruder's masked face as he spun round had not been tender or sentimental.

Simon heard the man's heavy breathing as the ray of the flashlight moved to left and right of the door and then began with a wilder haste to dance over the other quarters of the room. For the space of about half a minute it was a game of deadly hide-and-seek: the door appeared to be unguarded, but something told the intruder that he would be walking into a trap if he attempted to make a dash for liberty that way. At the end of that time his nerve broke and he plunged desperately for the only visible path of escape, and in so doing found that his suspicions had been almost clairvoyantly accurate.

A weight of teak-like bone and muscle landed on his back with a catlike spring; steel fingers fastened on his gun hand, and another equally strong hand closed round his throat, driving him remorselessly to the floor. They wrestled voicelessly on the carpet, but not for long. Simon got the gun away without a single shot being fired and flung himself clear of his opponent with an acrobatic twist of his body. Then he found his way to the switch and turned on the lights again.

The burglar looked up at him from the floor, breathing painfully; and Simon permitted the muzzle of the captured gun to settle into a steady aim on the centre of the man's tightly tailored torso.

"You look miserable, Algernon," he remarked affably. "But you couldn't expect to have all the fun to yourself, could you? Come on, my lad — take that old sock off your head and let's see how your face is put together."

The man did not answer or obey, and Simon stepped forward and whipped off the mask with a deft flick of his hand.

Having done which, he remained absolutely motionless for several ticks of the clock.

And then, softly, helplessly, he started to laugh.

"Suffering snakes," he wailed. "If it isn't good old Hoppy Uniatz!"

"For cryin' out loud," gasped Mr. Uniatz. "If it ain't de Saint!"

"You haven't forgotten that time when you took a dive through the window of Rudy's joint on Mott Street?"

"Say, an' dat night you shot up Angie Paletta an' Russ Kovari on Amsterdam Avenue."

"And you got crowned with a chair and locked in the attic — you remember that?"

Mr. Uniatz fingered his neck gingerly, as though the aches in it brought back memories.

"Say," he protested aggrievedly, "whaddaya t'ink I got for a memory — a sieve?" He beamed again, reminiscently; and then another thought overcast his homely features with a shadow of retrospective alarm. "An' I might of killed you!" he said in an awed voice.

The Saint smiled.

"If I'd known it was you, I mightn't have thought this gun was quite so funny," he admitted. "Well, well, well, Hoppy — this is a long way from little old New York. What brings you here?"

Mr. Uniatz scrambled up from the floor and scratched his head.

"Well, boss," he said, "t'ings never were de same after prohibition went out, over dere. I bummed around fer a while, but I couldn't get in de money. Den I hoid dey was room fer guys like me to start up in London, so I come over. But hell, boss, dese Limeys dunno what it's all about, fer God's sake. Why, I asks one mob over here what about gettin' a coupla typewriters, an' dey t'ink I'm nuts." Mr. Uniatz frowned for a moment, as if the incapability of the English criminal to appreciate the sovereign uses of machine guns was still preying on his mind. "I guess I must of been given a bum steer," he said.

Simon nodded sympathetically and strolled across to the table for a cigarette. He had known Hoppy Uniatz many years ago as a seventh-rate gunman of the classical Bowery breed and had never been able to regard him with the same distaste as he viewed other hoodlums of the same species. Hoppy's outstanding charm was a skull of almost phenomenal thickness, which, while it had protected his brain from fatal injury on several occasions, had by its disproportionate density of bone left so little space for the development of grey matter that he had been doomed from the beginning to linger in the very lowest ranks even of that unintellectual profession; but at the same time it lent to Hoppy's character a magnificent simplicity which the Saint found irresistible. Simon could understand that Hoppy might easily have been lured across the Atlantic by exaggerated rumours of an outbreak of armed banditry in London; but that was not all he wanted to know.

"My heart bleeds for you, Hoppy," he murmured. "But what made you think I had anything worth stealing?"

"Well, boss," explained MY. Uniatz apologetically, "it's like dis. I get interdooced to a guy who knows annudder guy who's bein' blackmailed, an' dis guy wants me to get back whatever it is he's bein' blackmailed wit' an' maybe bump off de guy who's got it. So I'm told to rent an apartment here, an' I got de one next door to you — it's a swell apartment, wit' a bathroom an' everyt'ing. Dat's how I'm able to come in de building wit'out de janitor stoppin' me an' askin' who I wanna see.''

Simon blew out a thoughtful streamer of smoke — he had overlooked that method of slipping through his defenses.

"Didn't they tell you my name?" he asked.

"Sure. But all dey tell me is it's a Mr. Templar, When I hear it, I feel somehow I oughta remember de name," said Mr. Uniatz, generously forgetting the indignation with which he had received a recent aspersion on his memory, "but I never knew it was you. Honest, Saint, if I'd of known it was you, it'd of been ixnay on de job, for mine. Ya wouldn't believe anyt'ing else, woujja, boss?"

The Saint shook his head.

"You know, Hoppy," he said slowly, "I don't think I would."

An idea was germinating in his mind — one of those sublimely fantastic ideas that sometimes came to him, an idea whose gorgeous simplicity, even in embryo, brought the ghost of a truly Saintly smile back to his lips. He forgot his interrupted beauty sleep.

"Could you do with a drink, old man?" he asked.

Hoppy Uniatz allowed the breath to hiss between his teeth, and a light of childlike beatitude irradiated his face.

"Boss," he replied, "what couldn't I do with a drink?"

Simon refrained from suggesting any answers to the conundrum. He poured out a liberal measure and saved his soda water. Mr. Uniatz took the glass, sniffed it, and sucked his saliva for a moment of disciplined anticipation.

"Don't get me wrong, boss," he said earnestly. "Dose t'ings I said about Limeys wasn't meant poisonal. I ain't never t'ought about you as a Limey. You been in New York, an' you know what it's all about. I know we had some arguments over dere, but over on dis side it don't seem de same. Say, I been so lonesome here it makes me feel kinda mushy just to have a little fight like we had just now wit' a guy like you, who knows what a Roscoe's for. I wish you an' me could of teamed up before, boss."

The Saint had helped himself to a more modest dose of whisky. He stretched himself out on the davenport and waved Mr. Uniatz to an armchair.

"Maybe it's not too late even now, Hoppy," he said; and he had much more to talk about, which kept him out of bed for another two hours.

V

Chief Inspector Teal arrived while the Saint was finishing a belated breakfast. Simon Templar's breakfasts were usually belated, for he had never been able to appreciate the spiritual rewards of early rising; but on this particular morning the lateness was not entirely his fault. He had already been interrupted twice during the meal, and the bell which heralded the third interruption made him finally abandon a cup of coffee which had abandoned all pretension to being even lukewarm.

"Mr. Teal is here, sir," said Sam Outrell's voice on the telephone; and the Saint sighed.

"Okay, Sam. Send him up." He replaced the microphone and turned back to Mr. Uniatz, who was engulfing quantities of toast with concentrated gusto. "I'm afraid you've got to blow again, Hoppy," he said. "I'll see you later."

Mr. Uniatz rose wearily. He had been shot out of the Saint's apartment to make room for other visitors so often that morning that he had grave fears for his digestion. There was one slice of toast left for which even his Gargantuan mouth was temporarily unable to find room. In order to eliminate any further risks of having his meal disturbed, he put the slice in his pocket and went out obediently; and he was the first thing that Teal saw when Simon opened the door.

"Hi, Claud," said Mr. Uniatz amiably and drifted on towards the sanctity of his own quarters.

"Who the deuce is that?" demanded the startled detective, staring after Hoppy's retreating rear.

The Saint smiled.

"A friend of mine," he said. "Come along in, Claud, and make yourself uncomfortable. This is just like old times."

Mr. Teal turned round slowly and advanced into the apartment. The momentary human surprise which Hoppy's greeting had given him faded rather quickly out of his rubicund features. The poise of his plump body as he came to rest in the living room, the phlegmatic dourness of his round pink face under its unfashionable bowler hat, was exactly like old times. It was Chief Inspector Teal paying an official call: Chief Inspector Teal, with the grim recollection of many such calls haunting his mind, trundling doggedly out once again to take up his hopeless duel with the smiling young freebooter before him. The sum of a score of interviews like that drummed through his head, the memory of a seemingly endless sequence of failures and the bitter presentiment of many more to come was in his brain; but there was no hint of weakness or evasion in the somnolent eyes that rested on the Saint's brown face.

"Well," he said, "I told you I'd be coming to see you."

Simon nodded pleasantly.

"It was nice of you to make it so soon, Claud," he murmured. "And what do you think is going to win the Derby?"

He knew as well as the chief commissioner himself that Mr. Teal would never have called on him to enjoy small talk and racing gossip; but it was not his business to make the first move. A faint smile of humorous challenge stayed on his lips, and under the light of that smile Teal rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

"Do you know anything about that?" he asked.

Simon took the sheet and flattened it out. It was his own notehead, and there was certainly no surprise for him in the words which were written on it; but he read the document through obligingly.

"Very lucid and attractive, I think," said the Saint politely. "What about it?" Teal took the letter back from him. "It's signed with your name, isn't it?" he asked. "Certainly," said the Saint.

"And it's in your handwriting."

"Beyond a doubt."

"So that it looks very-much as if you wrote it."

Simon nodded.

"That Sherlock Holmes brain of yours goes straight to the point, Claud," he said. "Faced with such keen deductive evidence, I can't deceive you. I did write it."

Teal folded the letter again and put it back in his pocket. His mouth settled into a relentless line. With any other man than the one who faced him. he would have reckoned the interview practically over; but he had crossed swords with the Saint too often ever to believe that of any interview-had seen too many deadly thrusts picked up like the clumsy lunges of an amateur on the rapier-like brilliance of the Saint's brain, and tossed aside with a smile that was more deadly than any riposte. But the thrust had to be made.

"I suppose you know that's blackmail," Teal said flatly.

The Saint frowned slightly.

"Demanding money with menaces?" he asked.

"If you want the technical charge," Teal said stubbornly, "yes."

And it came — the cool flick of the rapier that carried his point wide and aimless.

"Where," asked the Saint puzzledly, "are the menaces?"

Teal swallowed an obstruction in his throat. The game was beginning all over again — the futile hammering of his best blades on a stone wall that was as impalpable as ether, the foredoomed pursuit of the brigand who was easier to locate than any other lawbreaker in London, and who was more elusive than a will-o'-the-wisp even when he was most visible in the flesh. All the wrath that curdled his milk of human kindness was back in the detective at that moment, all the righteous anger against the injustice of his fate; but he had to keep it bottled up in his straining chest.

"The menaces are in the letter," he said bluntly.

Simon stroked his chin in a rendering of ingenuous perplexity that acted on Teal's blood pressure like a dose of strychnine.

"I may be prejudiced," he remarked, "but I didn't see them. It seemed a very respectable appeal to me, except for a certain unconventional familiarity at the end, where Leo's Christian name was used — but these are free-and-easy days. Otherwise I thought it was a model of restrained and touching eloquence. I have a book, of which it occurs to me that Leo might like to buy the section in which his name appears — you know what publicity hounds most of these politicians are. There-fore I offer to sell it to him, which I'm sure must be strictly legal."

"Mr. Farwill's statement," retorted Teal, "is that the part of the book you're referring to is nothing hut a collection of libellous lies."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"He must have a guilty conscience," he murmured. "But you can't put me in jail for that. I didn't say anything in my letter to give him that impression. I defy you to find one threat, one word of abuse, one questionable insinuation. The whole epistle," Simon said modestly, "is couched in the most flattering and even obsequious terms. In expecting his check to reach me before next Saturday midnight, I am, I feel sure, only anticipating his own natural urgent desire to benefit such a deserving charity. Leo may have turned out to be not quite the eager philanthropist I took him for," said the Saint regretfully, "but I still hope he'll see the light of godliness in the end; and I don't see what you've got to do with it, Claud."

Mr. Teal gulped in a breath that hurt him as it went down his windpipe.

"Oh, you don't, don't you?" he bit out.

"I'm afraid I don't, Claud," said the Saint. "Leo may have been caught in a hysterical moment, but other blokes have had the identical letter without feeling that way about it. Look at this."

He picked up a slip of tinted paper from beside the coffee pot and held it out so that the detective could read the words. It was a check on the City & Continental Bank, dated that day, and it was made out for two hundred thousand pounds.

"Sir Barclay Edingham came here at half-past nine to give me that — he was in such a hurry to do his share. Major General Sir Humboldt Quipp blew in at half-past ten — he grumbled and thundered a bit about the price, but he's gone away again to think it over, and I'm sure he'll pay it in the end. The other contributors will be coming through in the next day or two, and I wouldn't mind betting that Leo will be one of them as soon as he comes out of his tantrum. You ought to have another talk with him, Claud — it might help him to see the path of duty."

"Never you mind what I ought to do," Teal said hotly. His baby-blue eyes, with all the sleepiness knocked out of them, were goggling like young balloons at the check which Simon was dangling under his nose, as if his brain had flatly refused to believe their message and they had swollen to twice their normal size with proper indignation at the insult. With a genuine physical effort he.averted them from the astounding figures. "Sir Barclay Edingham gave you that?" he repeated incredulously.

Simon inclined his head.

"And he was glad to. Sir Barclay Edingham has a very keen appreciation of literature. The pages I sold him are now his most treasured possession, and you couldn't buy them off him for twice as much as he gave me."

He folded the check carefully and put it away in his wallet; and the detective straightened up. "Where is this book?" he demanded. The Saint's eyebrows shifted again fractionally.

It was a gesture that Teal knew better than any other of the Saint's bar one, and that almost imperceptible change of alignment carried more meaning than a thousand words of description could convey.

"It's in England," he answered.

"That's good," said Teal grimly, "because I want to see it."

The Saint picked up a cigarette, spun it into the air, and caught it in his mouth without moving his head. He snapped a flame from his lighter and blew out a long feather of smoke.

"Do you?" he murmured interestedly. "Yes, I do!" barked the detective. "And I mean to see it before I go. I mayn't be much of a critic, but I'll soon find out whether this literary work is worth two hundred thousand pounds a chapter. I'll get my own ideas about whether it's libellous. Now are you going to show me that book or am I going to look for it?"

"Where's your search warrant?" inquired Simon imperturbably.

Teal gritted his teeth.

"I don't need a search warrant. You're a suspected person—"

"Only in your wicked suspicious mind, Claud. And I'm telling you that you do need a search war-rant. Or, if you're going to take my home apart without one, you need three or four strong men with you. Because if you try to do it yourself, I shall pick you up by the scruff of your neck and the seat of your pants and throw you over the Ritz, and there's no magistrate in England who could give you a comeback!"

The Saint was smiling; but Mr. Teal had no illusions about that smile. It was not a smile of simple-hearted bonhomie and good will towards policemen. It was a smile that could have been worn by no one but that lean dangerous privateer who was never more dangerous than when he smiled.

And Mr. Teal knew that he hadn't a leg to stand on. The Saint had tied him in a knot again. There were no menaces, no threats of any kind, in the letter with which the Honourable Leo Farwill had gone to Scotland Yard — it was a pleasant polite epistle with no unlawful insinuations whatsoever, and any fairly clever advocate could have convinced a normally half-witted jury that the suspicions attached to it arose from nothing but the notorious Simon Templar's signature at the end. And without a definite charge of blackmail, there were no grounds at all for demanding an inspection of the literary work on which the whole case lunged.

Mr. Teal knew all these things as well as anyone and knew also that in spite of the strictly legal appearances no man had ever given the Saint two hundred thousand pounds except as the reward of some devilish and unlawful cunning that had been born in that gay unscrupulous brain. He knew all these things as well as he knew his own birthday; but they did not cheer him. And Simon Templar's forefinger went out and tapped him on the stomach in the Saintly gesture that Mr. Teal knew and hated best of all.

"You're too full of naughty ideas and uncharitable thoughts these days," said the Saint. "I was hoping that after I'd been away for a bit you might have got over them; but it seems as if you haven't. You're having one of your relapses into detectivosis, Claud; and it offends me. You stand there with your great stomach wobbling—"

"It doesn't wobble!" yapped the detective furiously.

"It wobbles when I poke it with my finger," said the Saint coldly and proceeded to demonstrate.

Teal struck his hand aside.

"Now listen," he brayed. "You may be able to twist the law around to suit yourself for a while—"

"I can twist the law around to suit myself as long as I like," said the Saint cheerfully; "and when I fall down on it will be soon enough for you to come and see me again. Now you've completely spoiled my breakfast; and I've got an important appointment in ten minutes, so I can't stop to play with you any more. Drop in again next time you wake up, and I'll have some more to say to you."

Chief Inspector Teal settled his bowler hat. The wrath and righteous indignation were steaming together under his waistcoat; but with a terrific effort he recovered his pose of torpid weariness.

"I'll have some more to say to you," he replied curtly, "and it'll keep you out of trouble for several years."

"Let me know when you're ready," murmured the Saint and opened the door for him with Old World courtesy.

A couple of minutes later, with his wide-brimmed felt hat tipped challengingly over his right eye, he was knocking at the door of the adjoining apartment.

"Come along, Hoppy," he said. "We've left it late enough already — and I can't afford to miss this date."

Mr. Uniatz put down a bottle of whisky regretfully and took up his hat. They left the building by the entrance in Stratton Street; and as they came out onto the pavement a shabby and ancient touring car pulled away from the curb and went past. Simon felt as if a gust of wind plucked at his swashbuckling headgear and carried it spinning: the crack that went with the gust of wind might have been only one of the many backfires that a big city hears every hour.

VI

Simon collected his hat and dusted it thoughtfully. The bullet hole made a neat puncture in the centre of the crown — the only mistake in the aim had been the elevation. The attack surprised him seriously. He had allowed himself to believe that during his possession of Her Wedding Secret his life at least was safer than it had ever been — that while the opposition would go to any lengths to obtain that classic work, they would be extraordinarily solicitous about his own bodily health. He turned to Mr. Uniatz, and had a sudden spasm of alarm when he saw that enterprising warrior standing out on the edge of the sidewalk with an automatic waving towards the retreating car. Simon made a grab at the gun and whipped it under his coat.

"You everlasting fathead!" he said. "Where the blazes d'you think you are?"

Mr. Uniatz scratched his head and looked around him.

"I t'ink we're in Stratton Street, boss," he said anxiously. "Ain't dat right? I can't seem to find my way around dis town. Why ja grab de Betsy off of me? I could of plugged dat guy easy."

The Saint sighed. By some miracle the street had been practically deserted, and no one appeared to have noticed the brief flourish of gangland armaments.

"Because if you'd plugged that guy you'd have had us both in the hoosegow before you knew what had happened, you poor sap," he said tersely and slipped the lethal weapon cautiously back into its owner's pocket. "Now keep that Betsy of yous buttoned up until I tell you to let it out — and try to remember which side of the Atlantic you're on, will you?"

They walked round to the garage where Simon kept his car, with Mr. Uniatz preserving a silence of injured perplexity. The ways of the Old World were strange to him; and his brain had never been geared to lightning adaptability. If one guy could lake a shot at another guy and get away with it, but the other guy couldn't take a shot back at the first guy without being clapped in the hoosegow, what the hell sort of a country was this England, for God's sake? There was just no percentage in trying to hold down a racket in those parts, reflected Hoppy Uniatz, and laboured over the subtleties of this sociological observation for twenty minutes, while Simon Templar whisked the huge purring Hirondel through the traffic to the southwest.

Simon had a difficult problem to ponder, and he was inclined to share it.

"Tell me, Hoppy," he said. "Suppose a bloke had some papers that he was blackmailing you with — papers that would be the end of you if they ever came out. Suppose he'd got your signed confession to a murder, or something like that. What would you do about it?"

Mr. Uniatz rubbed his nose.

"Dat's easy, boss. I'd bump de guy off, sure."

"I'm afraid you would," said the Saint. "But suppose you did bump him off — those papers would still be around somewhere, and you wouldn't know who was going to get hold of them next."

This had not occurred to Mr. Uniatz. He frowned gloomily for a while; and then he brightened again as the solution struck him like a ray of sunshine.

"Why, boss," he said, "I know what I'd do. After I'd bumped him off, I'd look for de papers."

"And where would you look for them?" asked the Saint.

"In de guy's pocket," said Mr. Uniatz promptly.

"And suppose they weren't there?" Hoppy sighed. The corrugations of worried thought returned to his brow. Thinking had never been his greatest talent — it was one of the very few things that were capable of hurting his head.

Simon shot the Hirondel between a lorry and an omnibus with the breadth of a finger to spare, on either side and tried to assist.

"I mean, Hoppy," he said, "you might have thought: 'Suppose I bump this guy off. Suppose he isn't carrying the papers in his pocket. Well, when a guy's bumped off, one of the first things; the cops want to know is who did it. And one of the ways of finding that out is to find out who might have had a reason to do it. And one of the ways of finding that out is to go through his letters and everything else like that that you can get hold of.' So if you'd thought all that out, Hoppy, you might have decided that if you bumped him off, the cops might get hold of the papers, and that wouldn't be too healthy for you."

Mr. Uniatz ruminated over this point for two or three miles, and finally he shrugged.

"I dunno," he said. "It looks like we better not bump off dis guy, at dat. Whadda you t'ink, boss?"

Simon realized that he would have to be content with his own surmises, which were somewhat disturbing. He had been prepared to bank heavily on his immunity from death, if not from organized discomfort, so long as the ungodly were in doubt about the concurrent fate of Her Wedding Secret; but the recent episode was a considerable discouragement to his faith. Leaving aside the possibility that Lord Iveldown had gone completely and recklessly berserk, it meant that the ungodly were developing either a satanic cunning or a denseness of cranium equalled only by that of Hoppy Uniatz.

He made a rough summary of the opposition. They had been five in number originally, and it was only to be expected that out of those five a solid percentage would have been nonresisters; Sir Barclay Edingham had paid. Major General Sir Humbolt Quipp would pay. The active dissenters consisted of Lord Iveldown, who had already declared his hand, a certain Mr. Neville Yorkland, M.P., with whom the Saint was going to have an interview, and perhaps the Honourable Leo Farwill, who might jump either way. But none of these three gentlemen, undesirable citizens though they might be, could lightly be accused of excessive denseness of cranium. Neither, as a matter of fact, had the Saint been prepared to credit them with talents of satanic cunning; but on that score it was dawning on him that he might do well to maintain an open mind.

The inevitable triangle possessed a third corner — if anything so nearly spherical could be described as a corner — in the rotund shape of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal. Whatever his other errors may have been, Simon Templar was not guilty of kidding himself that he had finally and eternally disposed of that menace in the brief tete-a-tete they had enjoyed that morning.

The Saint, it must be confessed, had sometimes been guilty of deceiving Chief Inspector Teal. He, had not always unbosomed all his secrets as Mr. Teal had liked him to. At times, even, he had deliberately and grievously misled that persistent en-forcer of the law — a breach of the Public School Code which all English Gentlemen will undoubtedly deplore.

He had misled Mr. Teal that morning, when telling him that he had an appointment in ten minutes. As a matter of fact, the Saint's appointment was not until that evening, and he had merely been promising himself an idle day in the country on the way, with which he did not propose to allow Scotland Yard to interfere. It was a casual and almost pointless untruth; but he might have thought more about it if he had foreseen its results.

Mr. Teal brooded all day over his problem. In the course of the afternoon he had a second interview with the Honourable Leo Farwill; and that estimable politician's reaction to his report, far from consoling him, made him still more uneasy.

Later that evening he saw the assistant commissioner.

There's something darned funny going on, sir," he summarized his conclusions tentatively.

The assistant commissioner sniffed. He had a sniff which annoyed Mr. Teal almost as much as Simon Templar's irreverently prodding forefinger.

"I, in my humble way, had reached the same conclusion," said the commissioner sarcastically. "Has Farwill said any more?"

"He was just wooden," said Teal. "That's what I don't like about it. If he'd gone off the deep end and ranted about the inefficiency of the police and the questions he was going to ask in Parliament — all the usual stuff, you know — I'd have felt happier about it. That was what I was expecting him to do, but he didn't do it. He seemed to go hack into a sort of shell."

"You mean you got the impression that he was rather regretting having gone to the police with that letter?"

Teal nodded.

"It did seem like that. I've seen it happen before, when the Saint's on a job. The fellow may kick up a fuss at first, but pretty soon he shuts down like a clam. Either he pays, or he tries to deal with the Saint on his own. He doesn't ask us to interfere again."

"And yet you haven't the faintest idea why solid and respectable people — public men like Farwill, for instance — crumple up like frightened babies just because this man writes them a letter," remarked the assistant commissioner acidly.

The detective twiddled a button on his coat.

"I have got the faintest idea, sir," he said redly. "I've got more than a faint idea. I know why they do it. I know why they're doing it now. It's blackmail."

"Do you know, I really believe you've solved the mystery," said the commissioner, with a mildness that singed the air.

"If I've done that, I've done more than anyone else in this building," retorted Teal heatedly. "But there are plenty of people sitting in their offices criticizing me who couldn't have got half as far as I have, even if that isn't saying much." He glared at his chief stubbornly, while all the ac-cumulated wrath and resentment of a score of such conferences rose up recklessly in his breast and strangled his voice for a moment. "Everybody knows that it's some kind of blackmail, but that doesn't help. We can't prove it. When I produced that letter, Templar simply laughed at me. And he was right. There wasn't a line of blackmail in it — except to anyone who knew what was in that book he mentions."

"Which you failed to find out," said the commissioner.

"Which I failed to find out," agreed Teal feverishly, "because I'm not a miracle worker, and I never said I was."

The assistant commissioner picked up his pen.

"Do you want a search warrant — is that what all these hysterics are about?" he inquired icily.

Teal gulped.

"Yes, I want a search warrant!" he exploded defiantly. "I know what it means. The Saint'll probably get around that somehow. When I get there, the book will have disappeared, or it'll turn out to be a copy of Fairy Tales for Little Children, or something. And Edingham and Quipp will get up and swear it was never anything else." Goaded beyond endurance though he was, the detective checked for an instant at the horrific potentialities of his prophecy; but he plunged on blindly: "I've seen things like that happen before, too. I've seen the Saint turn a cast-iron conviction into a cast-iron alibi in ten seconds. I'm ready to see it happen again. I'm ready to see him give the newspapers a story that'll make them laugh themselves sick for two months at my expense. But I'll take that search warrant!"

"I'll see that you have it in half an hour," said the assistant commissioner coldly. "We will discuss your other remarks on the basis of what you do with it."

"Thank you, sir," said Chief Inspector Teal and left the room with the comfortless knowledge that the last word on that subject was a long way from having been said.

VII

"Gents," announced Mr. Uniatz, from a chest swelling with proper pride, "dis here is my pal Mr. Orconi. Dey calls him Pete de Blood. He's de guy youse guys is lookin' for. He'll fix t'ings…"

From that moment, with those classic words, the immortal gorgeousness of the situation was established for all time. Simon Templar had been in many queer spots before, had cheerfully allowed his destiny to be spun giddy in almost every conceivable whirlpool of adventure; but never before had he entered such a portentous conclave to discuss solemnly the manner in which he should assassinate himself; and the sheer ecstatic pulchritude of the idea was prancing balmily through his insides in a hare-brained saraband which only a delirious sense of humour like the Saint's could have appreciated to the full.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying the two other members of the conference with very clear blue eyes and allowing the beatific fruitiness of scheme which Mr. Uniatz had made possible to squirm rapturously through his system. "Pleased to meet ya," he drawled, with a perfect gangster intonation that had been learned in more perilous and unsavoury surroundings than a fireproof air-conditioned movie theatre.

Mr. Neville Yorkland, M.P., fidgeted with his tie and looked vaguely about the room. He was a broad tubby little man, who looked something like a cross between a gentleman farmer and a dilettante artist — an incongruous souffle of opposites, with a mane of long untidy hair crowning a vintage-port complexion.

"Well," he said jerkily, "let's sit down. Get to business. Don't want to waste any time."

The Honourable Leo Farwill nodded. He was as broad as Yorkland, but longer; and he was not fussy. His black brows and heavy moustache were of almost identical shape and dimensions, so that his face had a curiously unfinished symmetry, as if its other features had been fitted quite carelessly into the decisive framework of those three arcs of hair.

"An excellent idea," he boomed. "Excellent. Perhaps we might have a drink as well. Mr. — ah — Orconi—"

"Call me Pete," suggested the Saint affably, "and let's see your liquor."

They sat, rather symbolically, on opposite sides of the long table in Farwill's library. Hoppy Uniatz gravitated naturally to the Saint's elbow, while Yorkland pulled up a chair beside Farwill.

The Honourable Leo poured sherry into four glasses from a crystal decanter.

"Mr. — er — Uniatz gives us to understand that you are what is known as a — ah — gunman, Mr. Orconi."

"Pete," said the Saint, sipping his drink.

"Ah — Pete," Farwill corrected himself, with visible distaste.

Simon nodded gently.

"I guess that's right," he said. "If there's anyone horning in on your racket, you've come to the guy who can stop him."

"Sure," echoed Hoppy Uniatz, grasping his opportunity and swallowing it in one gulp. "We'll fix him."

Farwill beamed laboriously and produced a box of cigars.

"I presume that Mr. Uniatz has already acquainted you with the basic motives of our proposition," he said.

"Hoppy told me what you wanted — if that's what you mean," said the Saint succinctly, stripping the band from his selected Corona. "This guy Templar has something on you, an' you want him taken off."

"That — ah — might be a crude method of expressing it," rumbled the Honourable Leo. "However, it is unnecessary to go into the diplomatic niceties of the dilemma. I will content myself with suggesting to you that the situation is one of, I might almost say, national moment."

"Tremendous issues involved," mattered Mr. Neville Yorkland helpfully. "World-wide catastrophe. The greatest caution is called for. Tact. Secrecy. Emergency measures."

"Exactly," concluded Farwill. "Emergency measures. The ordinary avenues are closed to us by the exigencies of the crisis. You would, in fact, find yourself in the position of an unofficial secret service agent — taking your own risks, fighting your own battles, knowing that in the event of failure you- will be disowned by your employers. The situation, in short, calls for a man who is able to take care of himself, who is prepared to endanger his life for a reasonable reward, who — who—"

"I get it," said the Saint blandly. "This guy Templar has something on you, an' you want him taken off."

Farwill compressed his lips.

"At this stage of developments, I feel called upon neither to confirm that statement nor repudiate it," he said with the fluency of many years in Parliament. "The points at issue are, first, whether you are a suitable man for the mission—"

"Nuts," said the Saint tersely. "You want a guy like me, an' I'm the guy you want. When do you cut the cackle an' come to the hosses?"

The Honourable Leo glanced despairing at Yorkland, as if appealing to the Speaker on a point of order. Yorkland twiddled his thumbs.

"Should be all right," he mumbled. "Looks the type. Vouched for by Mr. Uniatz. Been to America myself. Can't pick and choose. Got to decide."

"Ah, yes," admitted Farwill despondently, as if the very idea violated all his dearest principles. "We have got to decide." He inflated his chest again for the only outlet of oratory that was left to him. "Well, Mr. Orconi — ah — Pete, you are doubtless familiar with the general outline of the engagement. This book, of which Mr. Uniatz must have told you, must be recovered — whether by guile or force is immaterial. Nothing must be permitted to obstruct a successful consummation of the undertaking. If, in the course of your work, it should prove necessary to effect physical injuries upon this man Templar, or even to — er — expedite his decease, humanitarian considerations must not influence our firmness. Now I would suggest that a fee of two hundred pounds—"

Simon straightened up in his chair and laughed rudely.

"Say, whaddaya think I'm lookin' for?" he demanded. "Chicken feed?"

The Honourable Leo drew further breath for eloquence, and the argument was on. It would scarcely be profitable to record it in detail. It went on for a long time, conducted on the Parliamentary side in rounded periods which strayed abstractly to every other subject on earth except the one in hand and nearly sent the Saint to sleep. But Simon Templar had a serene determination of his own which could even survive the soporific flatulence of Farwill's long-winded verbiage; he was in no hurry, and he was still enjoying himself hugely. Hoppy Uniatz, endowed with a less vivid appreciation of the simple jests of life, did actually fall into a doze.

At long last a fee of two thousand pounds was agreed on; and the Saint helped himself to a fifth glass of sherry.

"Okay, boys," he murmured. "We'll get that guy."

"Sure," echoed Mr. Uniatz, rousing with a snort. "We'll get him."

Yorkland shuffled about on the edge of his seat, buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, and got up.

"Very well," he stuttered. "That's settled. Glad it's all fixed up. Now I must get back to town. Late already. Important meetings." His restless eyes glanced at the other member of his side. "Count on me for my share, Farwill."

The Honourable Leo nodded.

"Certainly," he reverberated. "Certainly. You may leave it to me to arrange the details." He drew the sherry decanter towards him and replaced the stopper unobtrusively but firmly. "I think we owe a vote of thanks to Mr. Uniatz for the — er — introduction."

Simon Templar surveyed him dispassionately over a second Corona.

"You owe more than that, fella," he said.

Farwill coughed.

"I thought the — er — honorarium was payable when the commission had been — ah — executed."

"Half of it is," agreed the Saint pleasantly. "The first half is payable now. I done business with politicians before. You make so many promises in your job, you can't expect to remember 'em all."

"Sure," seconded Hoppy Uniatz heartily. "Cash wit' order is de rule in dis foim."

Farwill drew out his wallet grudgingly; but it was stocked with a supply of currency which indicated that some such demand had not been unforeseen. He counted out a number of banknotes with reluctant deliberation; and Yorkland watched the proceeding with a hint of hollowness in his round face.

"Well," he said with a sigh, "that's done. Send you a check tonight, Farwill. Thanks. Really must be off now. Excuse me. Good-bye."

He shook hands all round, with the limp perfunctory grip of the professional handshaker, and puttered out of the room; and they heard his car scrunching away down the drive.

The Saint smiled to himself and raked in the money. He counted it into two piles, pushed one towards Hoppy Uniatz, and folded the other into his pocket. There were five hundred pounds in his own share — it was a small enough sum as the Saint rated boodle, but there were circumstances in which he could take a fiver with just as much pleasure as he would have taken five thousand. It was not always the amount of the swag, it was the twists of the game by which it was collected; and beyond all doubt the twist by which that five hundred had been pulled in ranked high in the scale of pure imponderable delights. On such an occasion even a nominal allowance of loot was its own reward; but still the Saint had not achieved everything that had been in his mind when he set out on that soul-satisfying jag.

One other riddle had been working in his brain ever since he left his apartment that morning, and he led up to it with studied casualness.

"The job's as good as done, Leo," he said.

"Sure," echoed the faithful Mr. Uniatz. "De guy is dead an' buried."

"Excellent," responded Farwill formally."Ah — excellent."

He had almost got the decanter away when Simon reached it with a long arm. Farwill winced and averted his eyes.

"This ain't such bad stuff, Leo," the Saint commented kindly, emptying his glass and refilling it rapidly. He spilt an inch of ash from his cigar onto the carpet and cocked one foot on to the polished table with a callous disregard for his host's feeling which he felt would go well with the imaginary character of Pete de Blood, and which soothed his own sleepless sense of mischief at the same time. "About this guy Templar," he said. "Suppose I do have to rub him out?"

"Rub him out?" repeated Farwill dubiously. "Ah — yes, yes. Suppose you have to kill him." His eyes shifted for a moment with the hunted look of the politician who scents an attempt to commit him to a definite statement. "Well, naturally it is understood that you will look after yourself."

"Aw, shucks," said the Saint scornfully. "I can look after myself. That ain't what I mean. I mean, suppose he was rubbed out, then there wouldn't be any way to find out where the book was, an' the cops might get it."

Farwill finally collared the decanter and transported it in an absent-minded way to the cellaret, which he locked with the same preoccupied air. He turned round and clasped his hands under his coattails.

"From our point of view, the problem might be simplified," he said.

The Saint rolled his cigar steadily between his finger and thumb. The question with which he had taxed the imagination of Mr. Uniatz had been propounded again where it might find a more positive reply; but the Saint's face showed no trace of his eagerness for a solution. He tipped the dialogue over the brink of elucidation with a single impassive monosyllable:

"How?"

"The Saint has a — ah — confederate," said Far-will, looking at the ceiling. "A young lady. We understand that she shares his confidence in all his — ah — enterprises. We may therefore assume that she is cognizant of the whereabouts of the volume in question. If the Saint were — ah — removed, therefore," Farwill suggested impersonally, "one would probably have a more — ah — tractable person with whom to deal."

A flake of ash broke from the Saint's cigar and trickled a dusty trail down his coat; but his eyes did not waver.

"I get you," he said.

The simplicity of the argument hit him between the eyes with a force that almost staggered him. Now that it had been put forward, he couldn't understand how he had failed to see it himself from the beginning. It was so completely and brutally logical. The Saint was tough: everyone knew it, everyone admitted it. And he held the whip hand. But he could be — ah — removed; and the whip would pass into the hands of one lone girl. Undoubtedly the problem might be simplified. It would be reduced to an elementary variant of an old game of which the grim potentialities were still capable of sending a cold trickle down his spine. He should have seen it at once. His hat hung in the hall with a bullet-punched ventilation through the crown which was an enduring testimony that the opposition had neither gone berserk nor sunk into the depths of imbecility; without even charting the pinnacles of satanic cunning, they had merely grasped at the elusive obvious — which he himself had been too wooden-headed to see.

"That's a great idea," said the Saint softly. "So after we've rubbed out this guy Templar, we go after his moll."

"Ah — yes," assented Farwill, staring into the opposite corner as if he were not answering the question at all. "If that should prove necessary-ah — yes."

"Sure," chirped Mr. Uniatz brightly, forestalling his cue. "We'll fix de goil."

The Saint silenced him with a sudden lift of ice-blue eyes. His voice became even softer, but the change was too subtle for Farwill to notice it.

"Who thought of that great idea?" he asked.

"It was jointly agreed," said the Honourable Leo evasively. "In such a crisis, with such issues at stake, one cannot be sentimental. The proposition was received with unanimous approval. As a matter of fact, I understand that an abortive attempt has already been made in that direction — I should perhaps have explained that there is another member of our — er — coalition who was unfortunately unable to be present at our recent discussion. I expect him to arrive at any moment, as he is anxious to make your acquaintance. He is a gentleman who has already done valuable independent work towards this — ah — consummation which we all desire."

The Saint's eyebrows dropped one slow an gentle quarter-inch over his steady eyes.

"Who is he?"

Farwill's mouth opened for another elaborate paragraph; but before he had voiced his preliminary "Ah" the headlights of a car swept across the drawn blinds, and the gravel scraped again outside the windows. Footsteps and voices sounded in the hall, and the library door opened to admit the form of the Honourable Leo's butler. "Lord Iveldown," he announced.

VIII

Simon Templar's cigar had gone out. He put it down carefully in an ashtray and took out his cigarette case. It stands as a matter of record that at that moment he did not bat an eyelid, though he knew that the showdown had arrived.

"Delighted to see you, Iveldown," the Honourable Leo was exclaiming. "Yorkland was unfortunately unable to stay. However, you are not too late to make the acquaintance of our new — ah — agents. Mr. Orconi…"

Farwill's voice trailed hesitantly away. It began to dawn on him that his full-throated flow of oratory was not carrying his audience with him. Something, it seemed, was remarkably wrong.

Standing in front of the door which had closed behind the retiring butler, Lord Iveldown and Mr. Nassen were staring open-mouthed at the Saint with the aspect of a comedy unison dance team arrested in midflight. The rigidity of their postures, the sag of their lower jaws, the glazed bulging of their eyes, and the suffusion of red in their complexions were so ludicrously identical that they might have been reflections of each other. They looked like two peas who had fallen out of their pod and were still trying to realize what had hit them; and the Honourable Leo looked from them to the Saint and back again with a frown of utter bewilderment.

"Whatever is the matter?" he demanded, startled into uttering one of the shortest sentences of his life; and at the sound of his question Lord Iveldown came slowly and painfully out of his paralysis.

He turned, blinking through his pince-nez.

"Is that — that — the American gunman you told me about?" he queried awfully.

"That is what I have been — ah — given to understand," said Farwill, recovering himself. "We are indebted to Mr. Uniatz for the introduction. I am informed that he has had an extensive career in the underworld of — ah — Pittsburgh. Do you imply that you are already acquainted?"

His lordship swallowed.

"You bumptious blathering ass!" he said.

Simon Templar uncoiled himself from his chair with a genial smile. The spectacle of two politicians preparing to speak their minds candidly to one another was so rare and beautiful that it grieved him to interrupt; but he had his own part to play. It had been no great effort to deny himself the batting of an eyelid up to that point — the impulse to bat eyelids simply had not arisen to require suppressing. Coming immediately on the heels of Leo Farwill's revelation, he was not sorry to see Lord Iveldown.

"What ho, Snowdrop," he murmured cordially. "Greetings, your noble Lordship."

Farwill gathered himself together.

"So you are already acquainted!" he rumbled with an effort of heartiness. "I thought—"

"Do you know who that is?" Iveldown asked dreadfully.

Some appalling intuition made Farwill shake his head; and the Saint smiled encouragingly.

"You tell him, Ivelswivel," he urged. "Relieve the suspense."

"That's the Saint himself!" exploded Iveldown.

There are times when even this talented chronicler's genius stalls before the task of describing adequately the reactions of Simon Templar's victims. Farwill's knees drooped, and his face took on a greenish tinge; but in amplification of those simple facts a whole volume might be written in which bombshells, earthquakes, dynamite, mule-kicks, and other symbols of devastating violence would reel through a kaleidoscope of similes that would still amount to nothing but an anaemic ghost of the sight which rejoiced Simon Templar's eyes. And the Saint smiled again and lighted his cigarette.

"Of course we know each other," he said. "Leo and I were just talking about you, your Lordship. I gather that you're not only the bird who suggested bumping me off so that you'd only have Patricia Holm to deal with, but your little pal Snowdrop was the bloke who tried it on this morning and wrecked a perfectly good hat with his rotten shooting. I shall have to add a fiver onto your account for that, brother; but the other part of your brilliant idea isn't so easily dealt with."

Farwill's face was turning from green to grey.

"I seem to have made a mistake," he said flabbily.

"A pardonable error," said the Saint generously. "After all, Hoppy Uniatz didn't exactly give you an even break. But you didn't make half such a big mistake as Comrade Iveldown over there—"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nassen make a slight movement, and his hand had flashed to his pocket before he remembered that he had set out to enjoy his joke with so much confidence that he had not even gone heeled. But even if there had been a gun there, he would have reached it too late. Nassen had a hand in his coat pocket already; and there was a protuberance under the cloth whose shape Simon knew only too well.

He looked round and saw the reason for it. The ponderous thought processes of Hoppy Uniatz had at last reduced the situation to terms which he could understand. In his slow but methodical way, Mr. Uniatz had sifted through the dialogue and action and arrived at the conclusion that something had gone amiss. Instinct had made him go for his gun; but the armchair in which he was ensconced had impeded his agility on the draw, and Nassen had forestalled him. He sat with his right hand still tangled in his pocket, glaring at the lanky stillness of Iveldown's private defective with self-disgust written all over his face.

"I'm sorry, boss," he growled plaintively. "De guy beat me to it."

"Never mind," said the Saint. "It's my fault." Iveldown came forward, with his mouth twitching.

"The mistake could have been worse," he said. "At least we have the Saint. Where is Yorkland?"

Farwill chewed his lower lip.

"I believe he could be intercepted. When he first arrived, he told me that he had meant to call on Lady Bredon at Camberley on his way down, but he had not had time. He intimated that he would do so on his way back—"

"Telephone there," snapped Iveldown.

He strode about the room, rubbing his hands together under his coattails, while Farwill made the call. He looked at the Saint frequently, but not once did he meet Simon's eyes. Simon Templar never made the mistake of attributing that avoidance of his gaze to fear; at that moment, Iveldown had less to fear than he had ever had before. Watching him with inscrutable blue eyes, the Saint knew that he was looking at a weak pompous egotistical man whom fear had turned into jackal at bay.

"What message shall I leave?" asked Farwill, with his hand over the transmitter.

"Tell them to tell him — we've caught our man," said Iveldown.

The Saint blew a smoke ring.

"You seem very sure about that, brother," he remarked. "But Snowdrop doesn't look too happy about that gun. He looks as if he were afraid it might go off — and do you realize, Snowdrop, that if it did go off it'd burn a hole in your beautiful Sunday suit, and Daddy would have to smack you?"

Nassen looked at him whitely.

"Leave him to me," he said. "I'll make him talk."

Simon laughed shortly.

"You might do it if you're a ventriloquist," he said contemptuously. "Otherwise you'd be doing good business if you took a tin cent for your chance. Get wise to yourself, Snowdrop. You've lost your place in the campaign. You aren't dealing with a girl yet. You're talking to a man — if you've any idea what that means."

Lord Iveldown stood aside, with his head bowed in thought, as if he scarcely heard what was going on. And then suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at the Saint again for the first time in a long while; and, meeting his gaze, Simon Templar read there the confirmation of his thoughts. His fate lay in the hands of a creature more ruthless, more vindictive, more incalculable than any professional killer — a weak man, shorn of his armour of pomposity, fighting under the spur of fear.

"The mistake could have been worse," Iveldown repeated.

"You ought to be thinking about other things," said the Saint quietly. "This is Friday evening; and the sun isn't standing still. By midnight tomorrow I have to receive your contribution to the Simon Templar Foundation — and yours also, Leo. And I'm telling you again that whatever you do and whatever Snowdrop threatens, wherever I am myself and whether I'm alive or dead, unless I've received your checks by that time Chief Inspector Teal will get something that at this moment he wants more than anything else you could offer him. He'll get a chance to read the book which I wouldn't let him see this morning."

"But meanwhile we still have you here," said Lord Iveldown, with an equal quietness that contrasted strangely with the nervous flickers that jerked across his mottled face. He turned to his host. "Farwill, we must go to London at once. Miss Holm will be — ah — concerned to hear the news."

"She has a great sense of humour," said the Saint metallically, but his voice sounded odd in his own ears.

Iveldown shrugged.

"That remains to be seen. I believe that it will be comparatively easy to induce her to listen to reason," he said thoughtfully; and the Saint's blood went cold.

"She wouldn't even listen to you," he said and knew that he lied.

Lord Iveldown must have known it, too, for he paid no attention. He turned away without answering, gathering his party like a schoolmaster rallying a flock of boys.

"Nassen, you will remain here and guard these two. When Mr. Yorkland arrives, explain the developments to him, and let him do what he thinks best… Farwill, you must find some pretext to dismiss your servants for the night. It will avoid difficulties if Nassen is compelled to exercise force. We will leave the front door open so that York-land can walk in…"

"Mind you don't catch cold," said the Saint in farewell.

He smoked his cigarette through and listened to the hum of Lord Iveldown's car going down the drive and fading away into the early night.

Not for a moment since Iveldown walked into the room had he minimized his danger. Admittedly it is easier to be distantly responsible for the deaths of ten thousand unknown men than to order directly the killing of one; yet Simon knew that Lord Iveldown, who had done the first many years ago, had in the last two days slipped over a borderline of desperation to the place where he would be capable of the second. The fussiness, the pretentious speech, the tatters of pomposity which still clung to him and made him outwardly ridiculous made no difference. He would kill like a sententious ass; but still he would kill. And something told the Saint that the Rose of Peckham would not be unwilling to do the job at his orders.

He lighted another cigarette and paced the room with the smooth nerveless silence of a cat. It was queer, he thought, how quickly and easily, with so little melodrama, an adventurer's jest could fall under the shadow of death; and he knew how utterly false to human psychology were the ranting bullying villains who committed the murders in fiction and films. Murder was so rarely done like that. It was done by heavy, grandiose, flabby, frightened men — like Lord Iveldown or the Honourable Leo Farwill or Mr. Neville Yorkland, M.P. And it made no difference that Simon Templar, who had often visualized himself being murdered, had a futile angry objection to being murdered by pettifogging excrescences of that type.

They would have no more compunction in dealing with Patricia. Perhaps less.

That was the thought which gnawed endlessly at his mind, infinitely more than any consideration of his own danger. The smooth nerveless silence of his own walking was achieved only by a grim effort of will. His muscles strained against it; a savage helplessness tore at his nerves while the minutes went by. Farwill and Iveldown had seventy-five miles to go; and with every minute his hope of overtaking them, even with his car and brilliant driving, was becoming more and more forlorn.

He glanced at Hoppy Uniatz. Mr. Uniatz was sitting hunched in his chair, his fists clenched, glowering at Nassen with steady unblinking malevolence. In Hoppy's philosophy there could be only one outcome to what had happened and his own failure on the draw. There was no point in revolving schemes of escape: the chance to put them into practice was never given. The only question to be answered was — how long? His wooden nerves warping under the strain of the long silence, he asked it.

"Well," he growled, "when do we go for dis ride?"

"I'll tell you when the time comes," said Nassen.

The Saint pitched away his cigarette and lighted yet another. Nassen was alone. There were two of them; and nobody had thought to take Hoppy's gun away. If Hoppy could only get a second chance to draw — if Nassen's nerves could be played on, skilfully and relentlessly, until It be-came a question of which side could outlast the other…

"What does it feel like to be monarch of all you survey, Snowdrop?" he asked. "Doesn't it make your little heart go pit-a-pat? I mean, suppose Hoppy and I suddenly decided we didn't love you any more, and we both jumped up together and slapped you?"

"You'd better try," said Nassen. "I'd be glad of the excuse."

He spoke with a cold stolidity that made the Saint stop breathing for a moment. Not until then, perhaps, had he admitted to himself how hopeless was the idea which had crossed his mind — hopeless, at least, to achieve any results in time for it to be worth the effort.

He halted in front of Nassen, gazing at him over the gun between them. So there was only one way left. Nassen could not possibly miss him; but he might be held long enough to give Hoppy Uniatz a chance. And after that, Hoppy would have to carry the flag…

"You know that would be murder, don't you, Snowdrop?" he said slowly, without a flinch of fear in his bleak watchful eyes.

"Would it?" said Nassen mincingly. "For all anyone would ever know, you're a couple of armed burglars caught red-handed. Your record at Scotland Yard will do the rest. Don't forget whose house this is—"

He broke off.

Another pair of headlights had flashed across the windows; and a car, frantically braked, skidded on the gravel outside. A bell rang in the depths of the house; the knocker hammered impatiently; then came the slight creak of the front door opening. Every movement of the man outside could be pictured from the sounds. The unlatched door moved when he plied the knocker: he looked at it for a moment in indecision — took the first hesitant step into the hall — hurried on…

Nassen was listening, too. And suddenly the Saint realized that the chance he had never looked for, the chance he had never thought of, had been given him. Nassen's attention was distracted — he, too, had been momentarily fascinated by the imaginary picture that could be deduced from the sequence of sounds. But he recovered less quickly than the Saint. And Simon's fist had already been clenched for a desperate blow when the interruption came.

The Saint launched it. Snowdrop, the Rose of Peckham, was never very clear in his mind about what happened. He was not by nature addicted to physical violence of the cruder sort; and no experience of that kind had ever come his way before to give him a standard of comparison. He saw a bony fist a few inches from his face, travelling towards him with appalling speed; and his mouth opened. The fist shut it again for him, impacting on the point of his chin with a crack that seemed to jar his brain against the roof of his skull. And beyond that there was nothing but a great darkness filled with the hum of many dynamos…

Simon caught him by the coat lapels and eased him silently to the floor, gathering up the automatic as he did so. As he did so, the door burst open and the rounded rabbit features of Mr. Neville Yorkland looked into the room.

"Hullo," he stuttered. "What's happened? Got Lord Iveldown's message. Said he'd caught our man." His weak blinking eyes travelled all over the room and came to rest on the prostrate form of the slumbering Nassen. He pursed his lips. "Oh. I see. Is this—"

The Saint straightened up; and a slow godless gleam came into his blue gaze.

"That's the guy," he said, in the accents of Pete the Blood. "Hoppy an' me was just waitin' to see ya before we scram. We gotta get on to London — Lord Iveldown wants us there!"

IX

Patricia Holm was waiting for the Saint when the telephone bell rang to announce the penultimate round of that adventure.

"It's that detective again, miss," said Sam Outrell hoarsely. "Mr. Teal. An' he's got another detective with him. They wouldn't wait for me to ask if they could go up."

The girl's heart missed a beat; and then she answered quite quietly:

"All right, Sam. Thanks. Tell Mr. Templar as soon as you see him — if they haven't gone before he comes in."

She put down the receiver and picked up the cigarette which she had been about to light. She looked about the room while she put a match to it — her hand was steady, but her breath was coming a little faster. She had walked with Simon Templar in the ways of lawlessness too long to be flung into panic; but she knew that she was on trial. The Saint had not come back, and he had sent no message: his habits had always been too erratic for a thing like that to frighten her, but this time she was left to hold the fort alone, with no idea of what he had done or was doing or what his plans might be. The only thing she could be sure of was that Chief Inspector Teal had not! arrived for the second time that day, bringing another detective with him, on a purely social call. The book, Her Wedding Secret, lay on the table. Patricia picked it up. She had to think — to think quickly and calmly, building up deduction and prophecy and action, as the Saint himself would have done. Simon had left the book there. He had not troubled to move it when Hassen came. But Teal — Teal and another man… The bell of the apartment rang while she was still trying to reach a conclusion. There was an open bookcase beside the fireplace, and with a sudden tightening of her lips she thrust the book in among the row of novels on the bottom shelf. She had no time to do anything more; but she was desperately conscious of the inadequacy of what she had done.

Chief Inspector Teal did not know it. He looked across the threshold with affectedly weary eyes at the slim startling beauty of the girl who even to his phlegmatic unimpressionable mind was more like a legendary princess than any other woman he had ever seen, who for reasons not utterly beyond his understanding had chosen to give up the whole world that she might have queened to become the companion in outlawry of a prince of buccaneers; and he saw in her blue eyes, so amazingly like the Saint's own, the same light of flickering steel with which Simon Templar had greeted him so many times.

"Good-evening, Miss Holm," he said sleepily. "I think you know me; and this is Sergeant Barrow. We have a warrant to search this apartment."

He held out the paper; and she glanced at it and handed it back.

"Mr. Templar isn't in," she said coolly. "Hadn't you better call back later?"

"I don't think so," said Mr. Teal and walked past her into the hall.

She closed the door and followed the two detectives into the living room. Mr. Teal took off his bowler hat and put it on the table — it was the only concession he made to her presence.

"We may as well start here," he said to Barrow. "Go over the usual places first."

"Would you like to borrow the vacuum cleaner," inquired Patricia sweetly, "or will you just use your heads?"

"We'll manage," said Teal dourly.

He was more keyed up than he would have cared to admit. The assistant commissioner's parting speech still rang in his ears; the resentment of many other similar interviews rang carillons through his brain. He was a man of whom Fate had demanded many martyrdoms. In doing his duty he had to expose himself to the stinging shafts of Saintly irreverence; and afterwards he had to listen to the acidulated comments of the assistant commissioner; and there were days when he wondered whether it was worth it. Sometimes he wished that he had never been a policeman.

Patricia stood around and watched the progress of the search with a triphammer working under her ribs and a sinking sensation in her stomach. And in a frightful hopeless way she realized that it was not going to fail. It was not a hurried haphazard ransacking of drawers and cupboards such as Nassen and his colleague had conducted. It was thorough, systematic, scientific, ordered along the rigid lines of a training that had reduced hiding places to a tabulated catalogue. It would not glance at the cover of a book and pass on… She knew that even before Barrow came to the bookcase and began to pull out the books one by one, opening them and flicking over the pages without looking at the titles…

What would the Saint have done?

Patricia didn't know. Her face was calm, almost unnaturally calm; but the triphammer under her ribs was driving her into the clutches of a maddening helplessness that had to be fought off with all her willpower. There was an automatic in the bedroom: if she could only put over some excuse to reach it… But the Saint would never have done that. Teal had his warrant. He was within his rights. Violence of any kind would achieve nothing — nothing except to aggravate the crash when it came.

Barrow had reached the second row of books. He was halfway through it. He had finished it. The first two shelves were stripped, and the books were heaped up untidily on the floor. He was going on to the third.

What would the Saint have done?

If only he could arrive! If only the door would open, and she could see him again, smiling and unaccountable and debonair, grasping the situation with one sweep of lazy blue eyes and finding the riposte at once! It would be something wild and unexpected, something swift and dancing like sunlight on open water, that would turn every-thing upside down in a flash and leave him mocking in command with his forefinger driving gaily and unanswerably into Teal's swelling waistcoat; she knew that, but she could not think what it would be. She only knew that he had never been at a loss — that somehow, madly magnificently, he could always retrieve the lost battle and snatch victory from under the very scythe of defeat.

Barrow was down to the third shelf.

On the table were the bottle of beer and the glass which she had set out ready for him — the glass over which the Saint's eyes should have been twinkling while he harried the two detectives with his remorseless wit. Her hands went out and took up the bottle and the opener, as she would have done for the Saint if he had walked in.

"Would you care for a drink?" she asked huskily.

"No, thank you, Miss Holm," said Teal politely, without looking at her.

She had the opener fitted on the crown cap. The bottle opened with a soft hiss before she fully realized that she had done it. She tried to picture the Saint standing on the other side of the table — to make herself play the scene as he would have played it.

"Excuse me if I have one," she said.

The full glass was in her hand. She sipped it. She had never cared for beer, and involuntarily she grimaced…

Teal heard a gasp and a crash behind him and whirled round. He saw the glass in splinters on the table, the beer flowing across the top and pattering down onto the carpet, the girl clutching her throat and swaying where she stood, with wide horrified eyes.

"What's the matter?" he snapped.

She shook her head and swallowed painfully before she spoke.

"It… burns," she got out in a whisper. "Inside… Must have been something in it… Meant for… Simon…"

Then her knees crumpled and she went down.

Teal went to her with surprising speed. She was writhing horribly, and her breath hissed sobbingly through her clenched teeth. She tried to speak again, but she could not form the words.

Teal picked her up and laid her on the chesterfield.

"Get on the phone," he snarled at Barrow with unnatural harshness. "Don't stand there gaping. Get an ambulance."

He looked about him awkwardly. Water — that was the first thing. Dilute the poison — whatever it was. With a sudden setting of his lips he lumbered out of the room.

Patricia saw him go.

Sergeant Barrow was at the telephone, his back towards her. And the bookcase was within a yard of her. Writhing as she was, the sound of one movement more or less would not be noticed. There was no need for stealth — only for speed.

She rolled over and snatched Her Wedding Secret from its place in the bottom shelf. Barrow had been too practical — too methodical. He had not looked at titles. With a swift movement she lifted the first three volumes of one of the inspected piles which he had stacked on the floor, and thrust the book underneath…

"Thank you," said Teal's drowsy voice.

He was standing in the doorway with a grim gleam of triumph in his eyes; and he had not even got a glass of water in his hand. She realized that he had never gone for one. He had thought too fast.

Barrow was gaping at him stupidly.

"You can cancel that call," said Teal shortly.

Patricia sat up and watched him cross the room and pick the book out of the pile. The trip hammer under her ribs had stopped work abruptly; and she knew the fatalistic quiet of ultimate defeat. She had played and lost. There was no more to do.

Mr. Teal opened the book with hands that were not quite steady. The realization of success made him fumble nervously — it was a symptom which amazed himself. He learned then that he had never really hoped to succeed; that the memory of infinite failures had instilled a subconscious presentiment that he never could succeed. Even with the book in his hands, he could not quite believe that the miracle had happened.

It was in manuscript — he saw that in a moment. Manuscript written in a minute pinched hand that crowded an astonishing mass of words onto the page. Methodically he turned to the beginning.

The first page was in the form of a letter:

Teal read the letter through and looked up with an incredulous half-puzzled frown. Then, without speaking, he began to read it through again. Patricia stood up with a little sigh, straightened her dress, and began to comb out her hair. Sergeant Barrow shifted from one foot to the other and compared his watch with the clock on the mantelpiece — it would be the fourth consecutive night that he had been late home for dinner, and his wife could scarcely be blamed for beginning to view his explanations with suspicion.

Mr. Teal was halfway through his second reading when the telephone rang. He hesitated for a moment and then nodded to the girl.

"You can answer it," he said.

Patricia took up the instrument.

"There are two gentlemen here to see you, miss," said Sam Outrell. "Lord Iveldown and Mr. Farwill."

"Send them up," she said recklessly.

She had no idea why those two should have called to see her, but she was also beyond caring.

"Lord Iveldown and the Home Secretary are on their way," she told Teal, as she put down the telephone. "You're holding quite a gathering here, aren't you?"

The detective blinked at her dubiously. He was Unable to accept her statement at its face value, and he was unable for the moment to discover either an insulting witticism or the opening of another trap in it. He returned to his reading with only half his mind on it; and he had just finished when the buzz of the doorbell took her from the room.

He closed the book and changed his position so that he could see the hall.

"…so unceremoniously, Miss Holm," Lord Iveldown was saying, as he entered the room. "But the matter is urgent — most urgent." He stopped as he saw Teal. "And private," he added. "I did not know that you were entertaining."

"It must have been kept a secret," said the girl ironically.

She moved aside to shut the door; and as she did so, Mr. Teal and the Honourable Leo Farwill saw each other at the same time. There was a moment's dead silence; and then Farwill coughed.

"Ah — Inspector," he said heavily. "I hope we are not — ah — disturbing you."

"No, sir," said Teal, looking at him curiously. He added: "I think you'll be glad to know, sir, that as far as I can see we've got all the evidence we need."

Farwill's hand went to his moustache. His face had gone puffy and grey, and there was a dry hoarseness in his voice.

"Ah — evidence," he repeated. "Ah — quite. Quite. Ah — evidence. That book—"

"Have you read it?" asked Iveldown raspingly.

"Only the first page, my lord," said Teal. "The first page is a letter — it's rather involved, but I think the book will turn out to be the one we were looking for."

His heavy-lidded china-blue eyes were fixed on the Home Secretary perplexedly and with a trace of subconscious hostility. There was a kind of gritty strain in the atmosphere which he could not understand; and, not understanding it, it bothered him. His second reading of the letter had definitely been distracted, and he had not yet clearly sorted its meaning out of the elaborate and unfamiliar phrases in which it was worded. He only knew that he held triumph in his hands, and that for some unaccountable reason the Honourable Leo Farwill, who had first put him on the trail, was not sharing his elation.

"Let me see the book," said Farwill.

More or less hypnotized, Teal allowed it to be taken out of his hand; and when it was gone, a kind of wild superstitious fear that was beyond logic made him breathe faster, as if the book had actually dissolved into thin air between his fingers.

Farwill opened the book at the first page and read the letter.

"Ah — quite," he said short-windedly. "Quite. Quite."

"Mr. Farwill was going to say," put in Lord Iveldown, "that we came here for a special purpose, hoping to intercept you, Inspector. Critical international developments—"

"Exactly," boomed Farwill throatily. "The matter is vital. I might almost say — ah — vital." He tucked the book firmly under his arm. "You will permit me to take complete charge of this affair, Inspector. I shall have to ask you to accompany Lord Iveldown and myself to Scotland Yard immediately, where I shall explain to the chief commissioner the reasons of state which obviously cannot be gone into here — ah — and your own assiduous efforts, even if misdirected, will be suitably recognized—"

The gentle click of a latch behind him made everyone spin round at once; and Patricia gave a little choking cry.

"Well, well, well!" breathed the smiling man who stood just inside the door. "That's great stuff, Leo — but how on earth do you manage to remember all those words without notes?" It was the Saint.

X

He stood with his hands in his pockets and a freshly lighted cigarette tilting between his lips, with his hair blown awry by the sixty miles an hour he had averaged and the sparkle of the wind in his eyes; and Hoppy Uniatz stood beside him. According to their different knowledge, the others stared at him with various emotions registering on their dials; and the Saint smiled on them all impartially and came on in.

"Hullo, Pat," he murmured. "I didn't know you'd asked the Y. M. C. A. to move in. Why didn't you tell me?" His keen blue eyes, missing nothing, came to rest on the gaudily covered volume that Farwill was clutching under his arm. "So you've taken up literature at last, Leo," he said. "I always thought you would."

To say that Farwill and Iveldown were looking at him as if they had seen a ghost would be a trite understatement. They were goggling at him as if he had been the consolidated incarnation of all the spooks and banshees that ever howled through a maniac's nightmare. Their prosperous paunches were caving in like rubber balloons punctured with a sharp instrument; and it seemed as though all the inflation that escaped from their abdomens was going straight into their eyeballs. There was a sick blotchy pallor in their faces which suggested that they had been mentally spirited away onto the deck of a ship that was wallowing through all the screaming furies of the Horn.

It was Farwill who first found his voice, It was not much of a voice — it was more like the croak of a strangling frog — but it produced words.

"Inspector," it said, "arrest that man."

Teal's somnolent eyes opened a little, and there was a gleam of tentative exhilaration in them. So, after all, it seemed as if he had been mistaken. He was not to be cheated of his triumph. His luck had turned.

"I was going to," he said and started forward.

"On what charge?" asked the Saint.

"The same charge," said Teal inexorably. "Blackmail."

The Saint nodded.

"I see," he said and shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well — no game can go on for ever, and we've had lots of fun." His gaze watched the advancing detective with a hint of wicked banter in it that belied the rueful resignation of his features; but Teal did not see that at once. "It'll be a sensational case," said the Saint. "Let me give you an idea."

And without warning, with a flow of movements too swift to follow, he took a couple of paces sideways and aimed a punch at what was left of the Honourable Leo's prosperous corporation. Far-will instinctively jerked up his hands; and with a quick smile Simon turned the feint into a deft reach of his hand that caught Her Wedding Secret as it fell.

Barrow and Teal plunged towards him simultaneously; and the Saint moved rapidly back — past the automatic that had appeared like magic in the hand of a Mr. Uniatz who this time had not been artificially obstructed on the draw.

"Stay back, youse guys!" barked Hoppy, in a voice quivering with exultation at his achievement; and involuntarily the two detectives checked.

The two politicians, equally involuntarily taking the lead in any popular movement, went farther. They went back as far as the confines of the room would allow them.

"You know your duty, Inspector," said the Home Secretary tremblingly. "I order you to arrest those men!"

"Don't order a good man to commit suicide," said the Saint curtly. "Nobody's going to get hurt — if you'll all behave yourselves for a few minutes. I'm the bloke who's being arrested, and I want to enjoy it. Readings by the public prosecutor of extracts from this book will be the high spot of the trial, and I want to have a rehearsal."

He turned the pages and quickly found a place.

"Now here's a juicy bit that'll whet your appetites," he remarked. "It must have something to do with those reasons of state which you were burbling about, Leo. "On May 15th I dined again with Farwill, then Secretary of State for War. He was inclined to agree with me about the potentialities of the Aix-la-Chapelle incident for increasing the friction between France and Germany; and on my increasing my original offer to £30,000 he agreed to place before the Cabinet—"

"Stop!" shouted Farwill shrilly. "It's a lie!"

The Saint closed his book and put it down; and very slowly the smile returned to his lips.

"I shouldn't be so melodramatic as that," he said easily. "But of course it's a joke. I suppose it's really gone a bit too far."

There was another long silence; and then Lord Iveldown cleared his throat.

"Of course," he said in a cracked voice. "A joke."

"A joke," repeated Farwill hollowly. "Ah — of course."

Simon flicked his cigarette through the open window, and a rumble of traffic went by in the sudden quiet.

"And not, I'm afraid," he murmured, "in the best of taste."

His eyes strayed back to the staring gaze of Chief Inspector Teal.

Of all those persons present, Mr. Teal did not seem the most happy. It would be inaccurate to say that he realized exactly what was going on. He didn't. But something told him that there was a catch in it. Somewhere in the undercurrents of that scene, he knew, there was something phony-something that was preparing to gyp him of his triumph at the very moment of victory. He had only the dimmest idea of how it was being worked; but he had seen it happen too many times before to mistake the symptoms.

"What the heck is this joke?" he demanded.

"Leo will tell you," said the Saint.

Farwill licked his lips.

"I — ah — the joke was so — ah — silly that I — ah… Well, Inspector, when Mr. Templar approached us with the offer of this — ah — literary work, and — ah — knowing his, if I may say so, notorious — ah — character, I — ah — that is, we — thought that it would be humorous to play a slight — ah — practical joke on him, with your — ah — unwitting assistance. Ah—"

"Whereas, of course, you meant to buy it all the time," Simon prompted him gently.

"Ah — yes," said the Honourable Leo chokingly. "Buy it. Ah — of course."

"At once," said Lord Iveldown quaveringly, taking out his checkbook.

"Ah — naturally," moaned the Honourable Leo, feeling for his pen. "At once."

"Two hundred thousand pounds, was it not, Mr. Templar?" said Lord Iveldown.

The Saint shook his head.

"The price has gone up a bit," he said. "It'll cost you two hundred and fifty thousand now — I need a new hat, and the Simon Templar Foundation isn't intended to pay for that."

With his head swimming and the blood drumming in his ears, Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal watched the checks being made out and blotted and handed over. He would never really know how the trick was turned. He only knew that Simon Templar was back; and anything could happen…

The parting words with which the Saint shepherded the gathering out of the door did nothing to enlighten him.

"By the way, Leo," said the Saint, "you must remember to tell Neville to send on his share. If you toddle straight back home you'll find him waiting for you. He's standing guard over the Rose of Peckham with a great big gun — and for some reason or other he thinks Snowdrop is me."

"Sir Humbolt Quipp came in and left a check," said Patricia Holm uncertainly.

Simon took it and added it to his collection. He fanned out the four precious scraps of paper and brought the Honourable Leo Farwill's contribution to the top. Then he removed this one from the others and gazed at it for a long time with a rather rueful frown.

"I'm afraid we let Leo off too lightly," he said.

"When I begin to think what a splendiferous orgy of Teal-baiting we could have had with the Home Secretary permanently under our thumb, I almost wonder whether the Simon Templar Foundation is worth it."

But later on he brightened.

"It would have made life damned dull," he said.