stomach.
If there had been a football at that point of impact, a rag of shredded leather might reasonably have been expected to come to earth somewhere north of the Aberdeen Providential Society Buildings. And the effect upon the human target, colossus though it was, was just as devastating, even if a trifle less spectacular.
Simon heard the juicy
Simon jerked open one of the rear doors of the car, picked the bearded man lightly off the ground, heaved him upon the cushions, and slammed the door again.
Five seconds later he was behind the wheel, and the self-starter was whirring over the cold engine.
The headlights carved a blazing chunk of luminance out of the dimness as he touched a switch, and he saw the negro bucking up on to his hands and knees. He let in the clutch, and the car jerked away with a spluttering exhaust. One running-board rustled in the long grass of the banking as he lashed through the narrow gap; and then he was spinning round into the wide main road.
Ten yards ahead, in the full beam of the headlights a uniformed constable tumbled off his bicycle and ran to the middle of the road with outstretched hands; and Simon almost gasped.
Instantaneously he realised that the scream which had woken him must have been audible for some considerable distance—the policeman's attitude could not more clearly have indicated a curiosity which the Saint was at that moment instinctively disinclined to meet.
He eased up, and the constable guilelessly fell around to the side of the car.
And then the Saint revved up his engine, let in the clutch again with a bang, and went roaring on through the dawn with the policeman's shout tattered to futile fragments in the wind behind him.
Chapter II
It was full daylight when he turned into Upper Berkeley Mews and stopped before his own front door, and the door opened even before he had switched off the engine.
'Hullo, boy!' said Patricia. 'I wasn't expecting you for another hour.'
'Neither was I,' said the Saint.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, and stood there with his cap tilted rakishly to the back of his head and his leather coat swinging back from wide square shoulders, peeling off his gloves and smiling one of his most cryptic smiles.
'I've brought you a new pet,' he said.
He twitched open the door behind him, and she peered puzzledly into the back of the car. The passenger was still unconscious, lolling back like a limb mummy in the travelling rug which the Saint had tucked round him, his white face turned blankly to the roof.
'But—who is he?'
'I haven't the faintest idea,' said the Saint blandly. 'But for the purposes of convenient reference I have christened him Beppo. His shirt has a Milan tab on it—Sherlock Holmes himself could deduce no more. And up to the present, he hasn't been sufficiently compos to offer any information.'
Patricia Holm looked into his face, and saw the battle glint in his eye and a ghost of Saintliness flickering in the corners of his smile, and tilted her sweet fair head.
'Have you been in some more trouble?'
'It was rather a one-sided affair,' said the Saint modestly. 'Sambo never had a break—and I didn't mean him to have one, either. But the Queensberry Rules were strictly observed. There was no hitting below belts, which were worn loosely round the ankles——'
'Who's this you're talking about now?'
'Again, we are without information. But again for the purposes of convenient reference, you may call him His Beatitude the Negro Spiritual. And now listen.'
Simon took her shoulders and swung her round.
'Somewhere between Basingstoke and Wintney,' he said, 'there's a gay game being played that's going to interest us a lot. And I came into it as a perfectly innocent party, for once in my life—but I haven't got time to tell you about it now. The big point at the
