The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

It was different at the Battersea branch of the Metropolitan Bank, which the same men held up the following midday. A cashier attempted to reach for a gun under the counter, and was shot dead where he stood. The gang escaped with over two thousand pounds in cash.

While officialdom was still humming with that out­rage, another bank in Edmonton was similarly held up; but with the warning of the Metropolitan Bank murder fresh in their memories, the staff showed no resistance.

Conferences were held, and special reserves of armed men in plain clothes were called out to cover as many likely spots as possible. But the police were again out­guessed. The next day, an excess of confidence on the part of the management concerned allowed a private car bearing the week's pay envelopes for half a dozen branches of a popular library to leave a bank in the City. It was intercepted at its first stop, the messenger sandbagged, and fifteen hundred pounds in cash stolen. A constable on point duty saw the incident and tried to pursue the bandits' car on the running board of a commandeered taxi. He was shot off it by the fugitives and seriously injured, but it was expected that he would live.

The tale went through a sequence of barefaced brigandage that was staggering.

"We're getting 'em scared," Tex Goldman said. "That's the only way to do it. Hit 'em, and keep on hitting. Don't give 'em time to think. In a month or two they'll be begging for mercy."

"You bet," said Orping.

He had automatically become Goldman's aide-de­camp, and held his position by his own audacity. It was he who had shot the Metropolitan Bank cashier- in a week he had become a confirmed killer, with two notches on his gun and the bravado of experience. "Basher" Tope, who had shot the policeman, ran him a fair second.

Ted Orping poured out a dose of brandy from a silver hip flask. He had learned that trick too, and he used it often. Alcohol braced his recklessness up to a point at which murder meant nothing.

"The guy I'm wantin' to see again is the Saint," he said.

"You'll get your chance," said Goldman. "We'll know about it the minute he comes home. I'd like to see him myself."

He might or might not have been pleased to know that Simon Templar shared that wish with him in no uncertain manner.

As far as the Saint was concerned, the desired opportunity came his way with a promptness for which he had only a stretch of coincidence to thank. On the night when some of the events already mentioned were told to Simon they had dined at a favourite restaurant of theirs in Beak Street, a quiet little Spanish eating-house where the food was good and cheap and the crowd neither fashionable nor pseudo-Bohemian. It was some time after eleven o'clock when they left, and wandered through side streets towards Shaftesbury Avenue with the vague idea of having another cup of coffee some­where before going home. They were just turning a corner when Simon saw the man from St. Louis emerg­ing from a doorway. In a flash Simon had caught Patricia's arm and jerked her back into the narrow lane from which they had just been turning. He leaned against the wall, covering her with his body, with his broad back turned to the Yankee gunman.

"Tex himself!" he said. "Pretend to be powdering your nose-get out a mirror."

His ambition to see Tex Goldman again included a time and place of his own choosing, with the circum­stances carefully reviewed and his plan of campaign completely polished-not a chance encounter in a back street that would do little more than advertise his return.

In the girl's mirror, he saw Goldman step into a taxi and drive off. Patricia saw the gunman for the first time.

"That's the boy who's causing all the trouble. And I wonder what he's doing around here tonight?"

They walked on, and Simon studied the doorway that had exhaled the new menace to the peace of London. A small illuminated sign over the lintel announced it as the Baytree Club. The door was open, but all that could be seen was a short passage leading to a flight of stairs, from beyond which came subdued sounds of music. It appeared to be one of those centres of furtive gaiety which one passes almost without noticing in daylight, and which suddenly become attractive when the neon signs wake up and the unprepossessing street outside is hidden in a kindly gloom.

The Saint stood on the opposite pavement with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth and surveyed the premises in a contemplative silence. A private car turned into the street and drew up outside the doorway to exude two men who went down the passage and up the stairs.

"Feel like a spot of night life, Pat?" queried the Saint.

There was a promise of mischief in his gaze. It might have come to anything or nothing, as the Fates decreed, but he felt that he would like to know more about a place where Tex Goldman descended to common or garden frivolity.

She nodded.

"O.K., boy."