porridge came back into his larynx.
'Are you trying to tell me you're in the clear because I came in and found you bending over the body ?' he yawped. 'Well, this is once when you're wrong! Perhaps I haven't done it before. But I've done it now. I've got you, Saint.' The superb, delirious conviction grew upon him. 'This is the one time you've made a mistake, and I've got you.' Chief Inspector Teal drew himself up in the full pride of his magnificent climactic moment. 'Simon Templar, I shall take you into custody on a charge of——'
'Wait a minute,' said the Saint quietly.
The porridge bubbled underneath Teal's collar stud.
'What for?' he exploded.
'Because,' said the Saint kindly, 'in spite of all the rude ideas you've got about me, Claud, I like you. And it hurts me to see you going off like a damp squib. Didn't you hear the landlady say that she found the body about half an hour ago?'
'Well?'
'Well, I should think we could safely give her the full half-hour—she could hardly have got to a telephone and got you here with all your stooges in much less than that. And we've been talking for some minutes already. And if I murdered this body, you must give me a few minutes to spare at the other end. Let's be very conservative and say that I could have murdered him forty minutes ago.' Simon consulted his watch. 'Well, it's now exactly a quarter to three.'
'Are you starting to give me another of your alibis?'
'I am,' said the Saint. 'Because at twelve minutes past one I left the Golden Fleece in Anford, which is ninety-five miles from here. Quite a number of the natives and several disinterested visitors can vouch for that—including a member of the local police whose name, believe it or not, is Reginald. And I know I'm the hell of a driver, but even I can't drive ninety-five miles in fifty-three minutes over the antediluvian cart tracks that pass for roads in this country.'
Over Chief Inspector Teal's ruddy features smeared the same expression that must have passed over the face of Sisyphus when, having at last heaved his rock nearly to the top of the hill, it turned round and rolled back again to the bottom. In it was the same chaotic blend of dismay, despair, agonized weariness and sickening incredulity.
He knew that the Saint must be telling the truth. He didn't have to take a step to verify it although that would be done later as a matter of strict routine. But the Saint had never wasted time on an alibi that couldn't be checked to the last comma. How it was done, Teal never knew; if he had been a superstitious man he would have suspected witchcraft. But it was done, and had been done, too often for him not to recognize every brush stroke of the technique. And once again he knew that his insane triumph had been premature—that the Saint was slipping through his fingers for what seemed like the ten thousandth time. . . .
He bent his pathetically weary eyes on the body again, as if that at least might take pity on him and provide him with the inspiration for a comeback. And a sudden dull flare of breathless realization went through him.
'Look!' he almost yelped.
The Saint looked.
'Messy sort of business, isn't it ?' he said chattily. 'Some of these hoodlums have no respect for the furniture. There ought to be a correspondence course in Good Manners for Murderers.'
'That blood,' Teal said incoherently. 'It's drying . . .'
He went down clumsily on his knees beside the body, fumbled over it, and peered at the stain on the carpet. Then he got slowly to his feet, and his hot, resentful eyes burned on the Saint with a feverish light.
'This man has been dead for from three, to six hours,' he said. 'You could have gone to Anford and come back in that time!'
