He left Perrigo with those cheering thoughts to chew over, and went out, bolting the iron bar into place and securing it with a steel staple.
A silver-noted buzzer was purring somewhere above him as he ran up the stairs, and he knew that the next development was already on its way. He was not surprised-—he had been expecting it—but the promptitude with which his expectations had been realised argued a tenacious implacability on the part of Chief Inspector Teal that would have unsettled the serenity of anyone but a Simon Templar. But the Saint was lining up to the starting-gate of an odyssey quite different from that of Mr. Teal. He let himself through the linen cupboard of the first-floor bathroom into No. 1, Upper Berkeley Mews, and went quickly down the runway to No. 7; and he was smiling as he stepped out of it into his own bedroom and slid the mirror panel shut behind him.
Patricia was waiting for him there.
'Teal's on his way,' she said.
'Alone?'
'He was talking to his sleuth-hound when I gave you the signal. There wasn't anyone else with him.'
'Splendid.'
His coat off, the Saint was over at the dressing-table, putting a lightning polish on his hair with brush and comb. Under Patricia's eyes, the traces of his recent rough-and-tumble in the car disappeared miraculously. In a matter of seconds he was his old spruce self, lean and immaculate and alert, a laughing storm-centre of hell-for-leather mischief, flipping into a blue velvet smoking-gown. . . .
'Darling—'
She stopped him, with a hand on his arm. She was quite serious.
'Listen, boy. I've never questioned you before, but this time there's no Duke of Fortezza to frame you out.'
'Maybe not.'
'Are you sure there isn't going to be real trouble?'
'I'm sure there is. For one thing, our beautiful little bolt-hole has done its stuff. Never again will it make that sleuth-hound outside my perfect alibi. After tonight, Claud Eustace will know that I've got a spare exit, and he'll come back with a search warrant and a gang of navvies to find it. But we'll have had our money's worth out of it. Sure, there's going to be trouble. I asked for it—by special delivery!'
'And what then?'
Simon clapped his hands on her shoulders, smiling the old Saintly smile.
'Have you ever known any trouble that I couldn't get out of?' he demanded. 'Have you ever seen me beaten?'
She thrilled to his madcap buoyancy—she did not know why.
'Never!' she cried.
Downstairs, the front door bell rang. The Saint took no notice. He held her with his eyes, near to laughing, vibrant with impetuous audacity, magnificently mad.
'Is there anything that can put me down?'
'I can't imagine it.'
He swept her to him and kissed her red lips.
The bell rang again. Simon pointed, with one of his wide gestures.
'Down there,' he said, 'there's an out-size detective whose one aim in life is to spike the holiday that's coming to us. Our own Claud Eustace Teal, with his mouth full of gum and his wattles crimsoning, paying us his last professional call. Let's go and swipe him on the jaw.'
Chapter VII
In the sitting-room, Patricia closed her book and looked up as Chief Inspector Teal waddled in. Simon followed the visitor. It was inevitable that he should dramatise himself—that he should extract the last molecule of diversion from the scene by playing his part as strenuously as if life and death depended on it. He was an artist. And that night the zest of his self-appointed task tingled electrically in all his fibres. Teal, chewing stolidly through a few seconds' portentous pause, thought that he had never seen the Saint so debonair and dangerous.
'I hope I don't intrude,' he said at last, heavily.
'Not at all,' murmured the Saint. 'You see before you a scene of domestic repose. Have some beer?'
Teal took a tight hold on himself. He knew that there was a toe-to-toe scrap in front of him, and he wasn't going to put himself at a
