The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

She went out at six o'clock with the knowledge that if his theory was right they were on the brink of an adventure that would have startled the menagerie of filleted young men and sophisticated young women whom she had promised to help to entertain. It might even have startled a much less precious audience, if she had felt disposed to talk about it; but Patricia Holm was oblivious of audiences-in which attitude she was the most drastic possible antithesis of Simon Templar. Certainly hone of the celebrated or nearly celebrated prodigies with whom it pleased Marion Lestrange to crowd her drawing room once a month would have believed that the girl who listened so sympathetically to their tedious autobiographies was the partner in crime of the most notorious buccaneer of modern times.

The cocktail party ploughed on through a syrupy flood of mixed alcohols, mechanical compliments, second-hand scandal, vapid criticism, lisps, beards, adolescent philosophy, and personal pronouns. Patricia attended with half her mind, while the other half wondered why the egotism which was so delightful and spell-binding in the Saint should be so nauseatingly flatulent in the assorted hominoids around her. She watched the hands of her wrist watch creep round to seven and seven-thirty, and wondered if the Saint could have been wrong.

It was ten minutes to eight when her hostess came and told her that she was wanted on the telephone.

"Is that you, Pat?" said the Saint's voice. "Listen- I've had the most amazing luck. I can't tell you about it now. Can you get away?"

The girl felt a cold tingle run up her spine.

"Yes-I can come now. Where are you?"

"I'm at the May Fair. Hop into a taxi and hurry along-I'll wait for you in the lounge."

She pulled on her hat and coat with a feeling some­where between fear and elation. The interruption had come so exactly as the Saint had predicted it that it seemed almost uncanny. And the half-dozen bare and uninformative sentences that had come through the receiver proved beyond doubt that the mystery was boiling up for an explosion that only Simon Templar would have gone out of his way to interview at close quarters. As she ran down the stairs, the fingers of her right hand ran over the invisible outlines of a hard squat shape that was braced securely under her left arm, and the grim contact gave her back the old confidence of other dangerous days.

A taxi came crawling along the curb as she stepped out into Cavendish Square, and she waved to it and climbed in. The cab pulled out again with a jerk; and it was then that she noticed that the glass in the windows was blackened, and protected against damage from the inside by a closely woven mesh of steel wire.

She leaned forward and felt around in the darkness for a door handle. Her fingers encountered only a smooth metal plate secured over the place where the handle should have been; and she knew that the man who called himself Jones was no less fast a thinker, and not one whit less efficient, than Simon Templar had diagnosed him to be.

CHAPTER V SIMON TEMPLAR refuelled his duofold and continued with the biography of the coming politician:

"And down the corridors of fame Wilberforce Egbert duly came.

His human kindness knew no bounds: Even when hunting with the hounds He always had a thought to spare For the poor little hunted hare, But manfully he set his lips And did the bidding of the Whips; And though at times his motives would Be cruelly misunderstood, Wilberforce plodded loyally on Like a well-bred automaton Till 1940, when the vote Placed the Gupp party in the boat, And Wilberforce assumed the helm And laboured to defend the realm."

Simon glanced at his watch, meditated for a few moments, and continued: "And through those tense and tedious days Wilberforce gambolled (in his stays); The general public got to know That Gupp, who never answered 'No,'

Could be depended on to give Deft answers in the negative; And Royal Commissions by the score Added to Wisdom's bounteous store: The Simple Foods Commission found That turnips still grow underground; The Poultry Farms Commission heard That turkeys were a kind of bird; While in an office in the City The famous Vicious Drugs Committee Sat through ten epic calendars To learn if women smoked cigars; And with the help Gupp's party gave Britannia proudly ruled the wave.

(Reported to be wet-but see Marine Commission, Section D.)"

It was nearly seven o'clock when the Saint started his car and cruised leisurely eastwards through the Park. He had a sublime faith in his assessment of time limits, and his estimate of Mr. Jones's schedule was almost uncannily exact. He pulled up in the southwest corner of Cavendish Square, from which he could just see the doorway of the Lestranges' house, and prepared himself for a reasonable wait.