Item five was fairly crackling about in the subtler undertones of the detective's drowsy voice, and it was that item which finally administered the upward heave to the balloon. The Teal-Templar feud was blowing up to bursting-point, and nobody knew it better than the Saint. But he also knew something else, which was that the burst was going to spray out into the maddest and merriest rodeo that ever was. Simon Templar proposed personally to supervise the spray.
He slipped his hands out of his pockets, and a very Saintly smile touched his lips.
'I might even prove something like that,' he said.
And then he pushed Teal backwards and went away in one wild leap.
He had reached the foot of the stairs before the detectives had fully grasped what was happening, and he took the steps in flights of four at a pace that no detective in England could have approached. He made the upper landing before they were properly started. There was a big oak chest on that landing—Simon had noticed it on his way down—and he hulked it off the wall and ran it to the top of the stairs.
'Watch your toes, boys,' he sang out, and shoved.
The three men below looked up and saw the chest hurtling down upon them. Having no time to get from under, they braced themselves and took the shock. And there they stuck, half-way up and half-way down. The huge iron-bound coffer tobogganed massively into them, two hundredweight of it if there was an ounce, and jammed them in their tracks. They couldn't go round, they couldn't go over, and it was several seconds before some incandescent intellect conceived the idea of going back.
Which was some time after the Saint had renewed his hectic acquaintance with Gunner Perrigo.
He found the gangster on his feet by a side table, cramming some papers into a shabby wallet. Perrigo's face was still contorted with agony, but he turned and crouched for a fight as the Saint burst in. As a matter of fact, the Saint was the last person he had ever expected to see again that night, and his puzzled amazement combined with the gesture of the Saint's upraised hand to check him where he was.
'Hold everything, Beautiful,' said the Saint. 'The police are in, and you and I are pulling our freight together.'
He locked the door and strode coolly past the dumbfounded hoodlum. Flinging the window wide, he looked down into the private gardens that adjoined Gloucester Terrace and the park beyond. He saw shadows that moved, and knew that the house was surrounded. Simon waved a cheery hand to the cordon and closed the window again.
He turned back to Perrigo.
'Is there a way over the roof, or a back staircase?' he asked.
The man looked him his underlip jutting.
'What's the idea, Templar?'
'The idea is to get to hell out of here,' said the Saint crisply. 'Tell me what you know—and tell it quick!'
Perrigo glowered at him uncertainly, and in the silence they heard Teal's invading contingent arriving profanely on the landing.
And Perrigo made up his mind.
'There's no way out,' he said.
He spoke the truth as far as he knew it; but the Saint laughed.
'Then we'll go out that way.'
The door-handle rattled, and the woodwork creaked under an impacting weight; and Elberman suddenly roused out of his long retirement. ——
'And vot happens to me?' he squeaked, with his labouriously cultivated accent scattering to the four winds. 'Vot do I say ven dey com' in?'
Simon walked to the mantelpiece and picked up a large globular vase, from which he removed the artificial flowers.
'You stay here and sing,' he said, and forced the pot down firmly over the receiver's ears.
Outside, Chief Inspector Teal settled his hat and stepped back a pace. The casket that had delayed him was at the bottom of the stairs then, but if Teal could have had his way with it would have been at the bottom of the nethermost basement in Gehenna.
'All together,' he snapped.
Three brawny shoulders moved as one, and the door splintered inwards.
Except for Isadore Elberman, struggling like a maniac to shake the porcelain cowl off his head, the room was empty of humanity.
