Simon raised his eyebrows and regarded himself solemnly in the driving mirror.
'Oho,' he remarked to his reflection. 'Likewise aha. As Mr. Templar arrives, Mr. Inselheim departs. We seem to have arrived in the nick of time.'
At any rate, the reason for the burly lounger's presence was disposed of, and it was not what the Saint had thought at first. He realized immediately that after the stirring events of the last twenty-four hours the police, with their inspired efficiency in locking the stable door after the horse was stolen, would have naturally posted a guard at the Inselheim residence; and the large-booted idler was acquitted of any sinister intentions.
The guilelessness of Mr. Inselheim was less clearly established, and Simon was frowning thoughtfully as he slipped the roadster back into gear and watched Inselheim entering the limousine. For a few moments, while the limousine's engine was warming up, he debated whether it might not have been a more astute tactical move to remain on the spot where Mr. Inselheim's offspring might provide a centre of more urgent disturbances. And then, as the limousine pulled out from the curb, he flicked an imaginary coin in his mind, and it came down on the memory of a peculiar brown-paper package. With a slight shrug he pulled out a cigarette case and juggled it deftly with one hand as he stepped on the gas.
'The hell with it,' said the Saint to his attractive reflection. 'Ezekiel is following his nose, and there may be worse landmarks.'
The limousine's taillight was receding northwards, and Simon closed up until he was less than twenty yards behind, trailing after it through the traffic as steadily as if the two cars had been linked by invisible ropes.
* * *
After a while the dense buildings of the city thinned out to the quieter, evenly spaced dwellings of the suburbs. There the moon seemed to shine even more brightly; the stars were chips of ice from which a cool radiance came down to freshen the summer evening; and the Saint sighed gently. In him was a certain strain of the same temperament which blessed our Mr. Theodore Bungstatter of Brooklyn: a night like that filled him with a sense of peace and tranquillity that was utterly alien to his ordinary self. He decided that in a really well-organized world there would have been much better things for him to do on such an evening than to go trailing after a bloke who boasted the name of Inselheim and looked like it. It would have been a very different matter if the mysterious and beautiful Fay Edwards, who had twice passed with such surprising effect across the horizons of that New York venture, had been driving the limousine ahead. . . .
He thrust a second cigarette between his lips and struck a match. The light revealed his face for one flashing instant, striking a rather cold blue light from thoughtfully reckless eyes —a glimpse of character that might have interested Dutch Kuhlmann not a little if that sentimentally ruthless Teuton had been there to see it. The Saint had his romantic regrets, but they subtracted nothing from the concentration with which he was following the job in hand.
His hand waved the match to extinction, and in his next movement he reached forward and switched out all the lights in the car. In the closer traffic of the city there was no reason why he should not legitimately be following on the same route as the limousine, but out on the less populated thoroughfares his leech-like devotion might cause a nervous man some inquisitive agitation which Simon Templar had no wish to arouse. His left arm swung languidly over the side as the roadster ripped round a turn in the road at an even sixty and roared on to the northwest.
The road was a level strip of concrete laid out like a silver tape under the sinking moon. He steered on in the wake of the limousine's headlight, soothing his ears with the even purr of tires swishing over the macadam, his nerves relaxed and resting. Above the hum of the engines rose a faint and not unmelodious sound. Simon Templar was serenading the stars. . . .
The song ended abruptly.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye—something jerky and illuminating like an electric torch. It flashed three times, with the precision of a lighthouse; and then the darkness settled down again.
Simon's hands steadied on the wheel, and he shut off the engine and declutched with two swift simultaneous movements. His foot shifted to the brake and brought the roadster to a standstill as quickly as it could be done without giving his tires a chance to scream a protest.
In the last mile or two, out on the open road, he had fallen behind a bit, and now he was glad that he had done so. The red taillight of the limousine leapt into redder brilliance as Inselheim jammed on the brakes, pulling it over to the side of the road as it
