The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

'What's the idea?' he demanded suspiciously.

The Saint looked perplexed.

'What idea, brother?'

'Is your clock fast, or haven't you been to bed yet?'

Simon grinned.

'Neither. I'm going to travel, and Pat and I have got to push out and book passages and arrange for international overdrafts and all that sort of thing.' He waved towards Patri­cia Holm, who was smoking a cigarette over The Times. 'Pat, you have met Claud Eustace, haven't you? Made his pile in Consolidated Gas. Mr. Teal, Miss Holm. Miss Holm, Mr. Teal. Consider yourselves divorced.'

Teal picked up the packet of spearmint that sat sedately in the centre of the table, and put it down again uneasily. He produced another packet from his own pocket.

'Did you say you were going away?' he asked.

'I did. I'm worn out, and I feel I need a complete rest—I did a couple of hours' work yesterday, and at my time of life . . .'

'Where were you going?'

The Saint shrugged.

'Doubtless Thomas Cook will provide. We thought of some nice warm islands. It may be the Canaries, the Balearic or Little by Little ——'

'And what about the Scorpion?'

'Oh yes, the Scorpion . . . Well, you can have him all to yourself now, Claud.'

Simon glanced towards the mantelpiece, and the detective followed his gaze. There was a raw puncture in the panelling where a stiletto had recently reposed, but the papers that had been pinned there were gone. The Saint took the sheaf from his pocket.

'I was just going to beetle along and pay my income tax,' he said airily. 'Are you walking Hanover Square way?'

Teal looked at him thoughtfully, and it may be recorded to the credit of the detective's somnolently cyclopean self-control that not a muscle of his face moved.

'Yes, I'll go with you—I expect you'll be wanting a drink,' he said; and then his eyes fell on the Saint's wrist.

He motioned frantically at it.

'Did you sprain that trying to get the last drops out of the barrel?' he inquired.

Simon pulled down his sleeve.

'As a matter of fact, it was a burn,' he said.

'The Scorpion?'

'Patricia.'

Teal's eyes descended one millimetre. He looked at the girl, and she smiled at him in a seraphic way which made the detective's internal organs wriggle. Previously, he had been wont to console himself with the reflection that that peculiarly exasperating kind of sweetness in the smile was the original and unalienable copyright of one lone face out of all the faces in the wide world. He returned his gaze to the Saint.

'Domestic strife?' he queried, and Simon assumed an expres­sion of pained reproach.

'We aren't married,' he said.

Patricia flicked her cigarette into the fireplace and came over. She tucked one hand into the belt of her plain tweed suit, and laid the other on Simon Templar's shoulder. And she continued to smile seraphically upon the detective.

'You see, we were being buried alive,' she explained simply.

'All down in the—er—what's-its of the earth,' said the Saint.

'Simon hadn't got his knife, but he remembered his cigarette-lighter just in time. He couldn't reach it himself, so I had to do it. And he never made a sound—I never knew till afterwards ——''

'It was a minor detail,' said the Saint.

He twitched a small photograph from his pocket and passed it to Teal.

'From the Scorpion's passport,' he said, 'I found it in a drawer of his desk. That was before he caught me with as neat a trick as I've come across—the armchairs in his study will repay a sleuth-like investigation,