The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

'You must be potty,' said his lady, for the second time; and the Saint nodded blandly.

'I am. That was the everlasting fact with which we started the day's philosophy and meditation. If you remember——'

Patricia looked at the calendar on the wall, and her sweet lips came together an the obstinate little line that her man knew so well.

'Exactly six months ago,' she said, 'Teal was in here giving such a slick imitation of the sorest man on earth that anyone might have thought it was no impersonation at all. Two of his best men have been hanging around outside for twenty-four hours a day ever since. They're out there now. If you think six months is as far as his memory will go——'

'I don't.'

'Then what are you thinking?'

The Saint lighted his second cigarette, and blew a streamer of smoke towards the ceiling. His blue eyes laughed.

'I think,' he answered carefully, 'that Claud Eustace is just getting set for his come-back. I think he's just finished nursing the flea I shot into his ear last time so tenderly that it's now big and bloodthirsty enough to annihilate anything smaller than an elephant—and maybe that plus. And I'm darned sure that if we lie low much longer, Claud Eustace will be getting ideas into his head, which would be very bad for him indeed.'

'But——'

'There are,' said the Saint, 'no buts. I had a look at my pass-book yesterday, and it seems to be one of the eternal verities of this uncertain life that I could this day write a cheque for ninety-six thousand, two hundred and forty-seven pounds, eleven shillings, and fourpence—and have it honoured. Which is very nice, but just not quite nice enough. When I started this racket, I promised myself I wasn't coming out with one penny less than a hundred thousand pounds. I didn't say I'd come out even then, but I did think that when I reached that figure I might sit down for a bit and consider the possible advantages of respectability. And I feel that the time is getting ripe for me to have that think.'

This was after a certain breakfast. Half a dozen volumes might be written around nothing else but those after-break­fast seances in Upper Berkeley Mews. They occupied most of the early afternoon in days of leisure, for the Saint had his own opinions about the correct hours for meals; and they were the times when ninety per cent, of his coups were schemed. Towards noon the Saint would arise like a giant refreshed, robe himself in furiously patterned foulard, and enter with an immense earnestness of concentration upon the task of shatter­ing his fast. And after that had been accomplished in a prop­erly solemn silence, Simon Templar lighted a cigarette, slanted his eyebrows, shifted back his ears, and metaphorically rolled up his sleeves and looked around for something to knock sideways. A new day—or what was left of it—loomed up on his horizon like a fresh world waiting to be conquered, and the Saint stanced himself to sail into it with an irrepressible im­petuosity of hair-brained devilment that was never too tired or short-winded to lavish itself on the minutest detail as cheer­fully and generously as it would have spread itself over the most momentous affair in the whole solar system.

And in those moods of reckless unrepentance he smiled with shameless Saintliness right into that stubborn alignment of his lady's mouth, challenged it, teased it, dared it, laughed it into confusion, kissed it in a way that would have melted the mouth of a marble statue, and won her again and again, as he always would, into his own inimitable madness. As he said then. . . .

'There's money and trouble to be had for the asking,' said the Saint, when it was all over. 'And what more could anyone want, old dear? . . . More trouble even than that, maybe. Well, I heard last night that Claud Eustace was also interested in Isadore, though I haven't the foggiest idea how much he knows. Tell me, Pat, old sweetheart, isn't it our cue?'

And Patricia sighed.

When Frankie Hormer landed at Southampton, he figured that his arrival was as secret as human ingenuity could make it. Even Detective Inspector Peters, who had been waiting for him for years, on and off, knew nothing about it—and he was at Southampton at the time. Frankie walked straight past him, securely hidden behind a beard which had sprouted to very respectable dimensions since he last set foot in England, and showed a passport made out in a name that his godfathers and godmother had never thought of. Admittedly, there had been a little difficulty with the tall dark man who had entered his life in Johannesburg and followed him all the way to Durban —inconspicuously, but not quite inconspicuously enough. But Frankie had dealt with that intrusion the night before he sailed. He carried two guns, and knew how to use them both.

And after that had been settled, the only man who should have known anything at all was Elberman, the genial little fellow who had financed the expedition at a staggering rate of interest, and who had