The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

'What's the next?'

'You remember the Portsmouth Road murder?'

'Yes.'

'Wilbey had worked for the Scorpion, and he was a possible danger. If you'll consult your records, you'll find that Wilbey was acquitted on a charge of felonious loitering six days before he died. It was exactly the same with the bird who came to see me last night. He had also worked for the Scorpion, and he was discharged at Bow Street only two days before the Scor­pion sent for him. Does that spell anything to you?'

Teal crinkled his forehead.

'Not yet, but I'm trying.'

'Let me save you the trouble.'

'No—just a minute. The Scorpion was in court when the charges were dismissed——'

'Exactly. And he followed them home. It's obvious. If you or I wanted someone to do a specialised bit of crime—say burglary, for instance—in thirty hours we could lay our hands on thirty men we could commission. But the genuine aged-in-the-wood amateur hasn't got those advantages, however clever he may be. He simply hasn't got the connections. You can't apply for cracksmen to the ordinary labour exchange, or adver­tise for them in The Times, and if you're a respectable amateur you haven't any among your intimate friends. What's the only way you can get hold of them?'

Teal nodded slowly.

'It's an idea,' he admitted. 'I don't mind telling you we've looked over all the regulars long ago. The Scorpion doesn't come into the catalogue. There isn't a nose on the pay-roll who can get a whiff of him. He's something right outside our register of established clients.'

The name of the Scorpion had first been mentioned nine months before, when a prominent Midland cotton-broker had put his head in a gas-oven and forgotten to turn off the gas. In a letter that was read at the inquest occurred the words: 'I have been bled for years, and now I can endure no more. When the Scorpion stings, there is no antidote but death.'

And in the brief report of the proceedings:

The Coroner: Have you any idea what the deceased meant by that reference to a scorpion?

Witness: No.

Is there any professional blackmailer known to the police by that name?—I have never heard it before.

And thereafter, for the general run of respectable citizens from whom the Saint expressly dissociated Teal and himself, the rest had been a suavely expanding blank. . . .

But through that vast yet nebulous area popularly called 'the underworld' began to voyage vague rumours, growing more and more wild and fantastic as they passed from mouth to mouth, but still coming at last to the respective ears of Scot­land Yard with enough credible vitality to be interesting. Kate Allfield, 'the Mug', entered a railway carriage in which a Member of Parliament was travelling alone on a flying visit to his constituency: he stopped the train at Newbury and gave her in charge, and when her counter-charge of assault broke down under ruthless cross-examination she 'confessed' that she had acted on the instigation of an unknown accomplice. Kate had tried many ways of making easy money, and the fact that the case in question was a new one in her history meant little. But round the underworld travelled two words of comment and explanation, and those two words said simply 'The Scor­pion'.

'Basher' Tope—thief, motor-bandit, brute, and worse—was sent for. He boasted in his cups of how he was going to solve the mystery of the Scorpion, and went alone to his appoint­ment. What happened there he never told; he was absent from his usual haunts for three weeks, and when he was seen again he had a pink scar on his temple and a surly disinclination to discuss the matter. Since he had earned his nickname, ques­tions were not showered upon him; but once again the word went round. . . .

And so it was with half a dozen subsequent incidents; and the legend of the Scorpion grew up and was passed from hand to hand in queer places, unmarked by sensation-hunting jour­nalists, a mystery for police and criminals alike. Jack Wilbey, ladder larcenist, died and won his niche in the structure; but the newspapers noted his death only as another unsolved crime on which to peg their perennial criticisms of police efficiency, and only those who had heard other chapters of the story linked up that murder with the suicide of a certain wealthy peer. Even Chief Inspector Teal, whose finger was on the pulse of every unlawful activity in the Metropolis, had not visualized such a connecting link as the Saint had just forged before his eyes; and he pondered over it in a ruminative silence before he resumed his interrogation.

'How much else do you know?' he asked at length, with the mere