The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

He read the typewritten sheet three times before he had fully absorbed all the implications of it, and then he grabbed the telephone and put through a sulphurous call to the department responsible.

"Why the devil didn't you send me this report before?" he demanded.

"We only received it half an hour ago, sir," explained the offending clerk. "You know what these country police are."

Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal slammed back the receiver and kept his opinion of those country police to himself. He knew very well what they were. The jealousy that exists between the provincial C.I.D.'s and Scotland Yard is familiar to anyone even remotely connected with matters of criminal investigation: on the whole, Teal could have considered himself fortunate in that the provincial office concerned had condescended to communicate with him at all on its own initiative, instead of leaving him to learn the news from a late evening paper.

He sat on in his tiny office for another hour, staring at the message which had filtered the last ray of sunshine out of his day. It informed him that a certain Mr. Wolseley Lormer had been held up in broad daylight in his office at Southend that afternoon and robbed of close on two thousand pounds by an intruder whom he never even saw. It would not have been a particularly remarkable crime by any standards if the caretaker who discovered the outrage had not also discovered a crude haloed figure chalked on the outer door of Mr. Lormer's suite. And the one immutable fact which Chief Inspec­tor Teal could add to the information given him was that at the very time when the robbery was committed the Saint was safely locked up in Newhaven police station-and Mr. Teal was talking to him.

CHAPTER III ONE of the charms of London, as against those of more up-to-date and scientific cities, is the multitude of queer little unscientific dwellings which may be found by the experienced explorer who wanders a mere hundred yards out of the broad regular thoroughfares and pries into the secrets of dilapidated alleys and unpromising courtyards. At some time in the more recent history of the city there must have been many adventurous souls who felt the urge to escape from the creeping development of modern steam-heated apart­ments planned with Euclidean exactitude and geo­metrically barren of all individuality. Wherever a few rooms with an eccentric entrance could be linked up and made comfortable, a home was established which in the days when there came a boom in such places was to repay a staggering percentage to the originality of its creators.

With his infallible instinct for these things, Simon Templar had unearthed this very type of ideal home within a matter of hours after he returned to London.

His old stronghold in Upper Berkeley Mews, which he had fitted up years ago with all the expensive gadgets essential to a twentieth-century robber baron, had been the centre of an undue amount of official curiosity just before he embarked on his last hurried trip abroad. It no longer had any ingenious secrets to conceal from the inquisitive hostility of Scotland Yard; and the Saint felt in the mood for a change of scene. He found a suit­able change in a quiet cul-de-sac off the lower end of Queen's Gate, that broad tree-lined avenue which would be a perfect counterpart of the most Parisian boulevard if its taxis and inhabitants were less antique and moth-eaten. The home of his choice was actually situated in a mews which ran across the end of the cul-de-sac like the cross-bar of a T, but some earlier tenant had arranged to combine respectability with a garage on the premises, and had cut a street door and windows through the blank wall that closed the cul-de-sac, so that the Saint's new home was actually an attractive little two-storied cottage that faced squarely down between the houses, while the garage and mews aspect was discreetly hidden at the rear. It was almost per­fectly adapted to the Saint's eccentric circumstances and strategic requirements; and it is a notable fact that he was able to shift so much lead out of the pants of the estate agents concerned that he was fully installed in his new premises within forty-eight hours of finding that they were to let, which anyone who has ever had anything to do with London estate agents will agree was no mean piece of lead-shifting.

Simon was personally supervising the unpacking of some complicated electrical apparatus when Mr. Teal found him at home on the third day. He had not noti­fied his change of address, and it had taken Mr. Teal some time to locate him; but the Saint's welcome was ingenuous cordiality itself.

"Make yourself at home, Claud," he murmured. "There's a new packet of gum in the sitting room, and I'll be with you in two minutes."