06 Alias the Saint

This, then, was the secret. A comprehensive tour revealed nothing more, and Simon, his objective accomplished, prepared to go. He lighted a cigarette and hesitated over his departure for a few moments, but he could think of nothing that a longer stay might achieve, and presently he accepted the inevitable with a shrug. Yet that delay had certain consequences--he was so absorbed with his problem that he did not visualize those consequences that night.

He returned to his own room as stealthily as he had left it, but the house remained shrouded in unbroken silence. The Saint's careful and expert examination had revealed a neat and inconspicuous burglar alarm attached to the door of the locked room. This, he had divined immediately, worked a buzzer under Raxel's own pillow, and therefore Raxel would have no fear that the Saint would be able to make an attempt to discover his secret without automatically calling the attention of the whole house to his nocturnal prowling. In which comfortable belief Professor Bernhard Raxel was beautifully and completely wrong.

Simon climbed into bed, and for the first time in his life failed to fall asleep immediately. He wanted to know what sinister secret lay behind the mysterious laboratory in that house, and most of all he wanted to know why Betty Tregarth should spend most of her time there. Betty Tregarth wasn't likely to be a willing associate of a man like the Professor --he was ready to swear to that. Was it possible that she had some special knowledge of chemistry, and had been blackmailed or coerced into assisting the Professor? . . . And then Simon Templar suddenly remembered the curious feeling that had come over him when he was peering at the apparatus in the locked room, and gasped aloud in a blinding blaze of understanding.

7

He was up early next morning, and the first thing he did was to go down to the village post office. He got a call through to London, to a friend who could help to answer some of the questions that were bubbling through his brain. And what he heard fascinated him.

It was on his way back to the Beacon that he suddenly recalled a detail of his delay the previous night, and therefore the immediate development failed to surprise him.

He had just finished breakfast when Raxel, Marring, and Crantor entered the dining room, and Simon saw at once from their bearing that they had already made an interesting discovery. Raxel came straight over to his table and the other two followed.

'' Good-morning,'' said the Saint, in his cheerful way.

"Good-morning, Mr. Smith," said the Professor. "I am sorry to hear that you walk in your sleep."

Simon looked blank.

"So am I," he said. "Do I?"

"I think so," said the Professor, and an automatic pistol showed in his hand. "Please put your hands up, Mr. Smith--I have just seen your cigarette ash on the floor of the laboratory."

Simon rose, yawning, with his arms raised.

"Anything to oblige," he murmured. "Have you put it under the microscope and discovered the brand of tobacco?"

"That is not what is puzzling me just now," said the Professor blandly. "Search him, Marring. We have already ransacked your room, Mr. Smith, and the letter which I was expecting to find was not there, so that if you have written it, it is likely to be on your person."

Simon submitted to the search without protest, and smiled at the look of savagely restrained consternation that broke momentarily through Raxel's mask of suavity when the search proved fruitless.

"Rather jumping to conclusions, weren't you?" the Saint suggested mildly.

Basher Tope stood in the doorway.

"I saw him go out before breakfast," said Tope clamorously. "He went down to the village. He must have used the telephone."

For a moment Simon thought Raxel would shoot, and keyed himself up for a desperate grab at the gun the Professor carried. But with a tremendous effort the man controlled himself, and the Saint

smiled again.

"That's where you're stung, isn't it, dear one?" he drawled. "And now let me tell you the tragic story of the mutilated onion, which never fails to melt the iciest eye. Or are tears a tender subject with you?"

The Professor shrugged, and bowed gracefully, but his eyes were flaming with fury.

"It is certainly your point, Mr. Smith," he said in an icily level voice.

Without another word he turned and went on to his own table, the other two following, and then Simon knew that the hours in which he would be able to bet on remaining at the Beacon in safety were numbered.

Immediately the three men were seated, a buzz of low-voiced guttural argument broke out. Both Crantor and Marring seemed to be advancing suggestions. They spoke in a language which was included in the Saint's extensive repertoire, and he could follow the whole of their discussion. From the glances of baffled hate that were flung in his direction from time to time, he reckoned that he had been more popular in his day than he was at that moment.