The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

Teal snorted.

'Perjury, eh? I thought something cleverer than that was coming from you, Saint.'

'You needn't be disappointed.'

'Got a speech that you think'll let you out?'

'I have, Claud. I've got a peach of a speech. Put me in the dock, and I'll lie like a newspaper proprietor. Any idea what that means?'

The detective shrugged.

'That's your affair,' he grunted. 'If you want to be run for perjury as well as other things, I'm afraid I can't stop you.'

Simon leaned forward, his left hand on his hip and his right hand on his knee. The deep-blue danger lights were glinting more brightly than ever in his eyes, and there was fight in every line of him. A back-to-the-wall, buccaneering fight, rol­licking out to damn the odds.

'Claud, did you think you'd got me at last?'

'I did. And I still think so.'

'Thought that the great day had dawned when my name was coming out of the Unfinished Business ledger, and you were going to sleep nights?'

'I did.'

'That's too bad, Claud,' said the Saint.

Teal pursed his lips tolerantly, but there were pinpoints of red luminance darting about in his gaze.

'I'm still waiting to hear why,' he said flatly.

Simon stood up.

'O.K.,' he said, and a new indefinable timbre of menace was pulsing into his easy drawl. 'I'll tell you why. You asked for a showdown. I'll tell you what you've been thinking. There was a feather you wanted for that hat of yours: you tried all manner of ways to get it, but it wasn't having you. You were too dumb. And then you thought you'd got it. Tonight was your big night. You were going to collect the Saint on the most footling break he ever made. I've got away with every­thing from murder downwards under your bloodshot eyes, but you were going to run me for stealing fourpence out of the Bank of England.'

'That's not what I said.'

'It goes for what you meant. You get what you asked for, Claud. Thought I was the World's Wet Smack, did you? Fig­ured that I was so busy crashing the mountains that I'd never have time to put a tab on all the molehills? Well, you asked for something. Now would you like to know what I've really been doing tonight?'

'I'll hear it.'

'I've been entertaining a dozen friends, and I'll give you from now till Kingdom Come to prove it's a lie!'

The detective glared.

'D'you think I was born yesterday?' he yelped.

'I don't know,' said the Saint lazily. 'Maybe you weren't born at all. Maybe you were just dug up. What's that got to do with it?'

Teal choked. His restraint split into small pieces, and the winds of his wrath began to twitch the bits out of his grasp, one by one.

'What's the idea?' he demanded heatedly; and the Saint smiled.

'Only the usual alibi, old corpuscle. Like it?'

'Alibi?' Teal rent the words with sadistic violence. 'Oh, yes, you've got an alibi! Six men saw you at Regent's Park alone, but you've got twelve men to give you an alibi. And where was this alibi?'

'In the house that communicates with this one by the secret passage you wot of.'

'You aren't going to change your mind about that passage?'

'Why should I? It may be eccentric, but there's nothing in the Statute Book to say it's illegal.'

'And that's the alibi you're going to try and put over on me?'

'It's more,' said the Saint comfortably. 'It's the alibi that's going to dish you.'