The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

'Is it?'

Simon dropped his cigarette into an ashtray and put his hands in his pockets. He stood in front of the detective, six feet two inches of hair-trigger disorder—with a smile.

'Claud,' he said, 'you're missing the opportunity of a life­time. I'm letting you in on the ground floor. Out of the kindness of my heart I'm presenting you with a low-down on the organisation of a master criminal that hundreds would give their ears to get. I'm not doing it without expense to myself, either. I'm giving away my labyrinth of secret passages, which means that if I want to be troublesome again I shall have to look for a new headquarters. I'm showing you the works of my emergency alibi, guaranteed to rescue anyone from any predicament: there are four lords, a knight and three officers of field rank in it—they've taken me years to collect, and now I shall have to fossick around for a new bunch. But what are trifles like that between friends? Now be sensible, Claud. It becomes increasingly evident that some one is imper­sonating me.'

'Yes, and I know who it is!'

'But it was bound to happen, wasn't it?' said the Saint, continuing in that philosophically persuasive strain under which the razor-keen knife-edges were gliding about like hungry sharks in a smooth tropical sea. 'In my misguided efforts to do good, I once made myself so notorious that someone or other was bound to think of hanging his sins on me. The wonder is that it wasn't thought of years ago. Now look at that recent affair in Hampstead——'

'I don't want to know any more about that affair in Hamp­stead,' said Teal torridly. 'I want to know how you're going to swing it on me this time. Come on. Let me have the names and addresses of these twelve liars. I'll run them for perjury at the same time as I'm running you.'

'You won't. But I'll tell you what I'll do——'

The Saint's forefinger shot out. Teal struck it aside.

'Don't do that!' he yapped.

'I have to,' said the Saint. 'I love the way your tummy dents in and pops out again. Talking of tummies——'

'You tell me what you think you're going to do.'

'I'll run you for bribery, corruption, and blackmail!' said the Saint.

His languid voice tightened up on the sentence with a sud­den crispness that had the effect of a gunshot. It rocked the atmosphere like an exploding bomb. And it was followed by a silence that was ear-splitting.

The detective gaped at him with goggling eyes, while a substratum of dull scarlet sapped up under the skin of his face. It was the most flabbergasting utterance that Chief Inspec­tor Teal had listened to. He blinked as if he had been smitten with doubts of his own sanity.

'Have you gone off your head?' he hooted.

'Not that I know of.'

'And who's supposed to have been bribing me?'

'I have.'

'You?'

'Yeah.' The Saint took another cigarette from the box, and lighted it composedly. 'Haven't seen your pass-book lately, have you? You'd better ask for it tomorrow morning. You'll discover that in the last six weeks alone you've taken eight hundred and fifty pounds off me. Two hundred pounds on February the sixteenth, two-fifty on March the sixth, four hundred on March the twenty-second—apart from smaller regu­lar payments extending over the previous six months. All the cheques have got your endorsement on 'em, and they've all been passed through your account: they're back in my bank now, available for inspection by any authorised person. It's quite a tidy little sum, Claud—eighteen hundred quid alto­gether. You'll have a grand time explaining it away.'

Some of the colour ebbed slowly out of Teal's plump cheeks, and he seemed to sag inside his overcoat. Only the expression in his eyes remained the same—a stare of blank, frozen, incred­ulous stupefaction.

'You framed me for that?' he got out.

'I'm afraid I did.' Simon inhaled, and blew a smoke-ring. 'It was just another of my brilliant ideas. Are you thinking you can deny the endorsements? It won't be easy. Eight hundred and fifty pounds in six weeks is real money. I wrote it off as insurance, but I still hated parting with it. And how many juries would believe that I paid a detective eighteen hundred pounds inside six months just with the idea of being funny? It'd be a steep gamble for you if we had to go through the courts, old dear. I admit it was very naughty of me to bribe you, but there it is. ...