13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

that time Lieut-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon was beyond taking offence.

'We've got him,' he said gleefully.

'I hope so,' said Mr. Immelbern, more cautiously.

'I know what I'm talking about, Sid,' said the Colonel stubbornly. 'He's a serious young fellow, one of these con­servative chaps like myself—but that's the best kind. None of this dashing around, keeping up with the times, going off like a firework and fizzling out like a pricked balloon. I'll bet you anything you like, in another hour he'll be looking around for a thousand pounds to give us to put on tomorrow's certainty. His kind starts slowly, but it goes a lot further than any of you fussy Smart Alecs.'

Mr. Immelbern made a rude noise.

Simon Templar bought a Star at Devonshire House and turned without anxiety to the stop press. Greenfly had won the two o'clock at five to one.

As he strolled back towards Clarges Street he was smiling. It was a peculiarly ecstatic sort of smile; and as a matter of fact he had volunteered to go out and buy the paper, even though he knew what the result would be as certainly as Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern knew it, for the sole and sufficient reason that he wanted to give that smile the freedom of his face and let it walk around. To have been compelled to sit around any longer in Uppingdon's apartment and sustain the necessary mask of gravity and sober interest without a breathing spell would have sprained every muscle within six inches of his mouth.

'Hullo, Saint,' said a familiar sleepy voice beside him.

A hand touched his arm, and he turned quickly to see a big baby-faced man in a bowler hat of unfashionable shape, whose jaws moved rhythmically like those of a ruminating cow.

'Hush,' said the Saint. 'Somebody might hear.'

'Is there anybody left who doesn't know?' asked Chief In­spector Teal sardonically.

Simon Templar nodded.

'Strange as it may seem, there is. Believe it or not, Claud Eustace, somewhere in this great city—I wouldn't tell you where, for anything—there are left two trusting souls who don't even recognise my name. They have just come down from their hermits' caves in the mountains of Ladbroke Grove, and they haven't yet heard the news. The Robin Hood of modern crime,' said the Saint oratorically, 'the scourge of the ungodly, the defender of the faith—what are the newspaper headlines?—has come back to raise hell over the length and breadth of England—and they don't know.'

'You look much too happy,' said the detective suspiciously. 'Who are these fellows?'

'Their names are Uppingdon and Immelbern, if you want to know—and you've probably met them before. They have special information about racehorses, and I am playing my usual role of the Sucker who does not Suck too long. At the moment they owe me five hundred quid.'

Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal's baby blue eyes looked him over thoughtfully. And in Chief Inspector Teal's mind there were no illusions. He did not share the ignorance of Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern. He had known the Saint for many years, and he had heard that he was back. He knew that there was going to be a fresh outbreak of buc­caneering through the fringes of London's underworld, exactly as there had been so many times before; he knew that the feud between them was going to start again, the endless battle between the gay outlaw and the guardian of the Law; and he knew that his troubles were at the beginning of a new lease of life. And yet one of his rare smiles touched his mouth for a fleeting instant.

'See that they pay you,' he said, and went on his portly and lethargic way.

Simon Templar went back to the apartment on Clarges Street. Uppingdon let him in; and even the melancholy Mr. Immelbern was moved to jump up as they entered the living-room.

'Did it win?' they chorused.