The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

I must have been half­witted. It wasn't coats he'd swapped—it was trousers. Those diamonds are sewn up somewhere in Bertie's leg draperies!'

Patricia come over to the table.

'Have you thought any more about Teal?' she asked.

Simon strode across to a book-case and took down a small leather-bound volume. There were months of painstaking work in its unassuming compass—names, addresses, personal data, means of approach, sources of evidence, all the la­boriously perfected groundwork that enabled the Saint's raids upon the underworld to be carried through so smoothly and made their meteoric audacity possible.

'Pat,' said the Saint, 'I'm going to make Teal a great man. It may be extravagant, but what the hell? Can you have the whole earth for ten cents? This party has already cost us our home, our prize alibi, and one of our shrewdest counter-attacks —but who cares? Let's finish the thing in style. I'm the clever­est man in the world. Can't I find six more homes, work out fourteen bigger and better alibis, and invent seventy-nine more stratagems and spoils? Can't I fill two more books like this if I want to?'

Patricia put her arms round his neck.

'Are you going to give Teal that book?'

The Saint nodded. He was radiant.

'I'm going to steal Perrigo's pants, Claud Eustace is going to smile again, and you and I are going away together.'

Chapter IX

The Saint was in a thaumaturgical mood. He performed a minor sorcery on a Pullman attendant that materialised seats where none had been before, and ensconced himself with the air of a wizard taking his ease. After a couple of meditative cigarettes, he produced a pencil and commenced a metrical composition in the margins of the wine list.

He was still scribbling with unalloyed enthusiasm when Pa­tricia got up and went for a walk down the train. She was away for several minutes; and when she returned, the Saint looked up and deliberately disregarded the confusion in her eyes.

'Give ear,' he said. 'This is the Ballad of the Bold Bad Man, another Precautionary Tale:

Daniel Dinwiddie Gigsworth-Glue

Was warranted by those who knew

To be a perfect paragon

With or without his trousers on;

An upright man (the Gigsworths are

Peerlessly perpendicular)

Staunch to the old morality,

Who would have rather died than be

Observed at Slumpton-under-Slop

In bathing drawers without the top.'

'Simon,' said the girl, 'Perrigo isn't on the train.' The Saint put down his pencil.

'He is, old darling. I saw him when we boarded it at Water­loo, and I think he saw me.'

'But I've looked in every carriage——'

'Did you take everyone's finger-prints?'

'A man like Perrigo wouldn't find it easy to disguise himself.'

Simon smiled.

'Disguises are tricky things,' he said. 'It isn't the false whiskers and the putty nose that get you down—it's the little details. Did I ever tell you about a friend of mine who thought he'd get the inside dope about Chelsea? He bought a pink shirt and a velvet coat, grew a large semicircular beard, rented a studio, and changed his name to Prmnlovcwz; and he had a great time until one day they caught him in an artist's colourman's trying to buy a tube of Golder's Green. . . . Now you must hear some more about Daniel:

How lovely, oh, how luminous

His spotless virtue seemed to us

Who sat among the cherubim

Reserving Daniel's pew for him!