The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

"Think it out from the angle of Comrade Jones. He knows I was in a position to know something-he knows my reputation-and he knows I'm just the man to pry into his business without saying a word to the police. Therefore he figures I'd be better out of the way. He's a wise guy, Pat-but just a little too wise. A real professional would have bumped me off and said nothing about it. If he failed the first time he'd 've just tried again-and still said nothing. But instead of that he had to phone me and tell me about it. Believe it or not, Pat, the professional only does that sort of thing in story books. Unless --"

"Unless what?" prompted the girl.

The Saint picked up his cigarette from the edge of the ashtray and fell into his chair again with a slow laugh.

"I wonder! If there's anything more dangerous than being just that little bit too clever, it's being in too much of a hurry to say that very thing of the other man. There's certainly some energetic vendetta going on against the Quell family, and since I've been warned to keep out I shall just naturally have to be there."

"Not today, if you don't mind," said the girl calmly. "I met Marion Lestrange in Bond Street yesterday, and I promised to drop in for a cocktail this evening."

Simon looked at her.

"I think it might happen about then," he said. " Don't be surprised if you hear my melodious voice on the telephone."

"What are you going to do?" she asked; and the a Saint smiled.

"Almost nothing," he said.

He kept her in suspense for the rest of the afternoon, while he smoked innumerable cigarettes and tried to build up a logical story out of the snatches of incoherent explanation that Brian Quell had babbled before he died. It was something about a man called Binks, who could make gold. . . . But no consecutive sense seemed to emerge from it. Dr. Sylvester Quell might have been interested-and he had disappeared. The Saint could get no further than his original idea.

He told Patricia Holm about it at teatime. It will be remembered that in those days the British government was still pompously deliberating whether it should take the reckless step of repealing an Act of 1677 which no one obeyed anyhow, and the Saint's feelings on the matter had been finding their outlet in verse when the train of his criminal inspiration faltered. He produced the more enduring fruits of his afternoon's cogitation with some pride.

"Wilberforce Egbert Levi Gupp Was very, very well brought up, Not even in his infant crib Did he make messes on his bib, Or ever, in his riper years, Forget to wash behind his ears.

Trained from his rawest youth to rule (At that immortal Public School Whose playing fields have helped to lose Innumerable Waterloos), His brains, his wit, his chin, were all Infinitesimal, But (underline the vital fact) He was the very soul of tact.

And never in his innocence Gave anyone the least offense: Can it be wondered at that he Became, in course of time, M.P.?"

"Has that got anything to do with your Mr. Jones?" asked Patricia patiently.

"Nothing at all," said the Saint. "It's probably far more important. Posterity will remember Wilberforce Gupp long after Comrade Jones is forgotten. Listen to some more:

"Robed in his faultless morning dress They voted him a huge success.

The sober drabness of the garb Fittingly framed the pukka sahib; And though his many panaceas Showed no original ideas, Gupp, who could not be lightly baulked, Just talked, and talked, and talked, and talked, Until the parliamentary clan Prophesied him a coming man."

"I seem to have heard something in the same strain before," the girl remarked.

"You probably have," said the Saint. "And you'll probably hear it again. So long as there's ink in my pen, and I can make two words rhyme, and this country is governed by the largest collection of soft-bellied halfwits and doddering grandmothers on earth, I shall continue to castigate its imbecilities-whenever I have time to let go tankard of old ale. I have not finished with Wilberforce."

"Shall I be seeing you after I leave Marion's?" she asked; and the Saint was persuaded to put away the sheet of paper on which he had been scribbling and tell her something which amazed her.

He expounded a theory which anyone else would have advanced hesitantly as a wild and delirious guess with such vivid conviction that her incredulity wavered and broke in the first five minutes. And after that she listened to him with her heart beating a little faster, helplessly caught up in the simple audacity of his idea. When he put it to her as a question she knew that there was only one answer.

"Wouldn't you say it was worth trying, old Pat? We can only be wrong-and if we are it doesn't cost a cent. If we're right --"

"I'll be there."