The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

"Doubtless. But there it is. Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is on his way, and we have one or two things to settle before he comes. Before we start, may I congratulate you?"

"I don't want any congratulations."

"Never mind. You deserve them." The Saint fished out his cigarette case with his left hand. Quite naturally he extracted and lighted a cigarette, and stole a glance at his wrist watch while he did so. His brain worked like a taximeter, weighing out miles and minutes. "I think I've got everything taped, but you can check me up if I go wrong anywhere. Somehow or other-we won't speculate how-you got to know that Dr. Quell had just perfected a perfectly sound commercial method of transmuting metals. It's been done already, on a small scale, but the expense of the process ruled it right out as a get-rich-quick proposition. Quell had worked along a new line, and made it a financial cinch."

"You must have had a long talk with him," said the big man sardonically.

"I did. . . . However-your next move, of course, was to get the process for yourself. You're really inter­esting, Jones-you work on such original lines. Where the ordinary crook would have tried to capture the professor and torture him, you thought of subtler methods. You heard of Quell's brother, a good-for-nothing idler who was always drunk and usually broke. You went over to Paris and tried to get him in with you, figuring that he could get Sylvester's confidence when no one else could. But Brian Quell had a streak of honesty in him that you hadn't reckoned with. He turned you down-and then he knew too much. You couldn't risk him remembering you when he sobered up. So you shot him. I was there. A rotten shot, Jones-just like the one you took at me this evening, or that other one last night. Gunwork is a gift, brother, and you simply haven't got it."

The big man said nothing.

"You knew I knew something about Brian Quell's murder, so you tried to get me. That talk about an 'envoy' of yours was the bunk-you were playing the hand alone, because you knew there wasn't a crook on earth who could be trusted on a thing as big as this." The Saint never paused in his analysis; but his eyes were riveted to the prisoner's face, and he would have known at once if his shot in the dark went astray. Not the faintest change of expression answered him, and he knew he was right. Jones was alone. "By the way, I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me exactly how you knew something had gone wrong in Paris ?"

"If you want to know, I thought I heard someone move in the corridor outside, and I went out to make sure. The door blew shut behind me, on an automatic lock. I had to stand outside and listen. Then someone really did come along the passage --"

"And you had to beat it," Simon nodded. "But I don't think you rang me up this morning just to make out how much I heard. What you wanted was to hear my voice, so that you could imitate it."

"He did it perfectly," said Patricia.

The Saint smiled genially.

"You see, Jones? If you couldn't have made your fortune as a gun artist, you might have had a swell career as a ventriloquist. But you wouldn't have it. You wanted to be a Master Mind, and that's where the sawdust came out. My dear old borzoi, did you think we'd never heard of that taxi joke before ? Did you think poor little Patricia, with all her experience of sin, was falling for a gag like that? Jones, that was very silly of you-quite irreparably silly. We let you have your little joke just because it seemed the easiest way to get a close-up of your beautiful whiskers. If you'd left us your address before you rang off this morning we'd have been saved the trouble, but as it was --"

"Well, what are you getting at?" grated the big man..

"Just checking up," said the Saint equably. "So you know how we got here. And I found that King's Messenger in the other room-that's what first con­firmed what we were up against. Anyone making gold is one of the things the Secret Service sits and waits for all year round: one day the discovery is going to be genuine, and the first news of it would send the international exchanges crazy. There'd be the most frightful panic in history, and any government has got to be watching for it. That King's Messenger had the news- you were lucky to get him."

The big man was silent again, but his face was pale and pasty.

"Two murders, Jones, that were your very own handiwork," said the Saint. "And then-the professor. Accidental, of course. But very unfortunate. Because it means that you're the only man left alive who knows this tremendous secret."