11 The Brighter Buccaneer

'There are two poplars there, Mr. Vallance,' Simon ven­tured to point out, when he had got his bearings on the pic­ture, and the artist turned to him with an exasperated glare.

'My dear sir, what people like you want isn't an artist-it's a photographer. There are millions of blades of grass on that lawn, and you'd like me to draw every one of them. What I paint,' said Spencer Vallance magnificently, 'is the Impression of Poplar. The Soul of all Poplars is expressed in this picture, if you had the eyes to see it.'

Mr. Vallance himself was the very antithesis of his art, being a small straggly man with straggly hair and a thin straggly beard. His clothes hung about him shapelessly; but his scrawny frame was obviously capable of so much superb indignation under criticism that Simon thought it best to accept the rebuke in all humility. And then Chief Inspector Teal took the Saint's arm and urged him firmly down the slope away from tempta­tion.

'I'd better tell you what happened from our point of view,' said the detective. 'At twenty minutes to four the constable who was out here turned around and started to walk back towards the house. He had been watching the tennis for about a quarter of an hour. You might remember that all this time both the back and the front of the house had been covered, and nothing larger than a field mouse could have come through the plantation at the sides without making a noise that would certainly have attracted attention.

'The constable noticed that Vallance was not at his easel, and the windows of Whipplethwaite's study behind were open -he couldn't remember if they had been open before. Of course, he thought nothing of that. I don't think I mentioned that Vallance is also staying here as a guest. Then, just as the constable reached the top of the slope, Vallance came stagger­ing out of the study, holding his head and bellowing that he'd been sandbagged. He was working at his painting, it appeared, when he was hit on the head from behind and stunned; and he remembered nothing more until he woke up on the floor of the study.

'The constable found a sandbag lying on the terrace just behind Vallance's stool. He went into the study and found the safe wide open. The theory, of course, would be that the rob­ber dragged Vallance inside so that his body would not attract attention if the constable looked around.'

Teal's voice was as detached and expressionless as if he had been making his statement in court. But once again that un­canny premonition flashed through the Saint's mind, rising ridiculously from that odd-sounding subjunctive in the detec­tive's last sentence. Simon lighted a cigarette.

'I gather that Vallance is Lady Whipplethwaite's guest,' he said presently.

Teal was only slightly surprised. 'That is correct. How did you know?'

'His art fits in too perfectly with the house-and you said she was very progressive. I suppose he's been investigated?'

'This is Lady Whipplethwaite's statement,' he said, taking out a notebook. 'I'll read it to you.'

' 'I first met Mr. Vallance in Brisbane fifteen years ago. He fell in love with me and wanted to marry me, but I refused him. For five years after that he continued to pester me, al­though I did my best to get rid of him. When I became en­gaged to Sir Joseph he was insanely jealous. There was never anything between us that could have given him the slightest grounds for imagining that he had a claim on me. For a few years after I was married he continued to write and implore me to leave Sir Joseph and run away with him, but I did not answer his letters.

' 'Six months ago he wrote to me again in London, apolo­gizing humbly for the past and begging me to forgive him and meet him again, as he said he was completely cured of his ab­surd infatuation. I met him with my husband's consent, and he told me that he had been studying art in Paris and was getting quite a name among the Moderns. I liked his pictures, and when he begged me to let him paint me a picture of our house to give me I asked him down to stay, although Sir Joseph was very much against it. Sir Joseph has never liked him. They have had several heated arguments while he has been staying with us.' '

Teal closed the notebook and put it away. 'As soon as the theft was discovered,' he said, 'Sir Joseph wanted me to arrest Vallance at once, and I had a job to make him see that we couldn't possibly do that without any evidence.'

They had reached a rustic seat at the end of the tennis-court, Teal rested his weight on it gingerly, and produced a fresh packet of chewing gum.

'Our problem,' he said, gazing intently at the tennis players, 'is to find out how the man who opened the safe got in here-and got out again.'

Simon nodded quietly. 'The tennis players would hardly make any difference,' he remarked. 'They'd be so intent on their game that they wouldn't notice anything else.'

'And yet,' said Teal, 'the man who did it had to pass the constable in front or the constable at the back-and either of them should have seen him.'

'It sounds impossible,' said the Saint; and the man beside him put a slip of gum in his mouth and masticated stolidly.

'It does,' Teal said, without moving a muscle.

At that moment the fantastic idea that had been creeping round the Saint's mind sprang into incredulous life. 'Good God! Teal-you don't mean --'

'I don't mean anything,' said Teal in the same toneless voice. 'I can't possibly tell you any more than I've told you already. If I mentioned that Whipplethwaite was badly hit in the Doncaster Steel Company's crash three months ago-that a Cabinet Minister's salary may be a large one, but you need a lot more than that to keep up the style that the Whipple­thwaites like to live in-I should only be mentioning things that have nothing to do with the case. If I said that the man who could open that safe without damaging it in any way would be a miracle worker, I'd only be theorizing.'

Simon's cigarette had gone out, but he did not notice it.

'And I suppose,' he said, in a slightly strained voice-'just taking an entirely mythical case-I suppose that if the details of that treaty got about, the Powers would know that there'd been a leakage? I mean, if there was only one man through whom the leakage could have occurred, he'd have to cover himself by staging some set of circumstances that would ac­count for it without hurting his reputation?'

'I suppose so,' agreed Teal formally. 'Unfortunately there's no Third Degree in this country, and when you get into high places you have to walk very carefully. Sometimes we're set almost impossible tasks. My orders are to avoid a scandal at any cost.'

The Saint sat quietly, taking in the full significance of that astounding revelation that was so much more momentous for having been made without any direct statement. And, as he looked up at the house in a kind of