The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

Simon slid out a cigarette case. His own eyes were just as steady as Teal's-perhaps even steadier-and he shook his head with a slow motion of great sorrow.

"The way I figure it out, Claud," he said, "I think you'll find he must have had some sort of bomb on board, in case the rifle didn't work. It must have short-circuited, or something, and gone off. It's just too bad about him."

CHAPTER V SIMON took Patricia back to the hotel where he had booked a suite. They went there with the comforting feeling that they were not being followed, since at that moment there was no one available to follow them, and had a cocktail in the lounge with the knowledge that it would be sheer bad luck if any of the ungodly hap­pened to come upon them there. Temporarily they had disappeared into the wide world, so far as Tex Gold­man's information was concerned.

This hotel was the Dorchester, where the Saint had taken two small but luxurious rooms, with bath, overlooking Hyde Park. They were commended by the fact that they were faced by no other buildings from which shots might be fired; and although they cost twelve pounds a day Simon was untroubled by the thought of what the Sunday-night orators a short distance away at Marble Arch might say about his extravagance if they knew. The accommodation satisfied that instinct in him which demanded the best of everything at any price; and he was not proposing to pay for it himself.

"It is a fascinating thought," said the Saint, nibbling a potato chip, "that there are well over forty million living souls in this great England. If every one of them gave me sixpence, none of them would really miss it, and I should be a millionaire."

''You'd better start collecting," said Patricia.

"I'm afraid it would take too long," said the Saint regretfully. "Especially when we got north of the Tweed. No-we shall have to muck along with what we can collect in lumps from just a few people. Which reminds me that it must be nearly three months since we last thought of Mr. Nilder."

It was quite true that Simon Templar's memory had almost lost hold of that natty and unsavoury little gentleman. Three months ago he had sent him through the post a polite intimation that a gift of about ten thousand pounds to the Actors' Orphanage would be in order, but that had been rather more of a derisive gesture to Mr. Teal than a proposal of serious dimen­sions. The other exciting things that had happened about that time had driven the idea out of his head, but now it came back to him out of the blue.

He felt that a brief interlude of change from the some­what strenuous circumstances of his war with Tex Goldman would do him good. Ordinary gang wars, after all, were not strictly in his line. They provided a definite interest in life, and a plentiful supply of sky­larking and song, but taken continuously they were a heavy diet. Simon Templar required his share of the lighter things as well.

No one knew better than the Saint that Scotland Yard was perfectly capable of taking care of the ordinary and open forms of law-breaking. In the Saint's various arguments with the Tex Goldman mob, he had done very little more than could have been done by any detective with an original turn of mind and an equal freedom from responsibility to the stolidly un­imaginative Powers who draw princely salaries for encumbering with red tape and ballyhoo the perfectly simple process of locating ungodliness and smacking it on the nose. His self-appointed mission was far more concerned with those ugly twists of ungodliness which rarely come within the ken of Scotland Yard at all- and which, if they do come within that myopic ken, are usually found to be so studiously legal that officialdom can find nothing to do about them.

The profession of Mr. Nilder came very fairly into that category.

At that moment Simon Templar knew little about him. A word of information had come his way through one of the mysterious channels by which such words reached his ears. It was a word that would have meant nothing to Scotland Yard, but to the Saint it opened up an avenue of fascinating speculation which he knew he would have to explore some day. Three months ago he had seized on it blindly for a passing need, and now it seemed to him that the time was ripe for investigating it further.

"We ought to know more about Ronald," said the Saint.

It was quite natural for him to turn aside like that to such a comparatively trivial affair, though his life had been called for twice in the last few days and the Green Cross boys were still combing London for him with their message of death. Numbers of beefy men were drawing their weekly pay envelopes for looking after the Green Cross boys, but he was not included in the distribution.