The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

A small avalanche of men launched themselves at him out of the gloom. Simon hacked one of them on the shins and se­cured a crippling grip on the nose of another; and then some­one found the switch and put the light on again, and the Saint looked along his arm and found that his fingers were firmly clamped on the proboscis of Chief Inspector Teal himself.

'Why, it's Claud Eustace!' cried the Saint, without moving.

Teal shook the hand savagely off his nose, and wiped his streaming eyes.

'What the hell are you doing here?' he brayed.

'Playing dingbat through the daisies,' said the Saint.

All the debonair gay impudence that he possessed was glim­mering around his presence like a sort of invisible aurora borealis, and the perception of it made something seethe up through the detective like a gush of boiling lava. His brows knitted down over a glare of actual malevolence.

'Yes? And where's Perrigo?'

'He's upstairs.'

'Since when?'

'About half an hour.'

'And when did you arrive?'

'Roughly simultaneous, I should say.'

'What for?'

'Well, if you must know,' said the Saint, 'I heard a rumour that Perrigo had discovered the second rhyme to 'Putney', which I wanted for a limerick I was trying to compose. I thought of an old retired colonel of Putney, who lived on dill pickles and chutney, till one day he tried chilis boiled with carbide, tiddy dum tiddy dum didy utney. It's all very difficult.'

Teal unfastened his coat and signed to one of the men who were with him.

'Take him,' he ordered curtly.

Simon put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall with an air of injury.

'In your own words—what for?' he inquired; and a little of Chief Inspector Teal's old pose of heavy sleepiness returned. It was an affectation on which the detective had lately been losing a lot of his grip.

'A man named Hormer, a diamond smuggler, was murdered on the train between Southampton and Waterloo this evening. Perrigo was seen at Waterloo. I want him on suspicion of having committed the murder, and I'm going to take you on suspicion of being an accessory.'

'Sorry,' said the Saint; and something about the way he said it made Teal's baby blue eyes go dark and beady.

'Going to tell me you've got another alibi?'

'I am.'

'I'll hear about that later.'

'You'll hear about it now.' The arrogant forefinger which Teal had learned to hate as personally as if it had a separate individual existence prodded into the gibbosity of his waistline with unequivocal emphasis. 'From seven o'clock till eight-fifteen I was having dinner at Dorchester House—which in­cludes the time that train got in. I had two friends with me. I talked to the head waiter, I discussed vintages with the wine waiter, and I gave the maitre d'hotel a personal lesson in the art of making perfect crepes suzette. Go and ask 'em. And ask your own flat-footed oaf outside my house what time he saw me come in'

Teal champed grimly on his gum.

'I didn't accuse you of committing the murder,' he said. 'I'm having you for an accessory, and you can prove you were Nova Scotia at the time for all that'll help you. Tell me you're going to prove you're in Nova Scotia right now, and perhaps I'll listen.'

The Saint's brain functioned at racing speed.

A neat handful of spiky little facts prickled into its machin­ery, graded themselves, and were dealt with. One—that Perrigo had still got the diamonds. Two—that the diamonds must be detached from Perrigo. Three—that the detaching must not be done by Claud Eustace Teal. Four—that the Saint must there­fore remain a free agent. Five—that the Saint would not remain a free agent if Claud Eustace Teal could help it.