through with it. For an hour he had been preparing himself, wrestling with his soul, facing in prospect all the gibes and banter and infuriating mockery that he knew he would have to endure, drilling himself to the fulfilment of the vow that he would be calm, that he would be rocklike and masterful, that for this one lone historic occasion he would not let the Saint get under his skin and cut the suspenders of his self-control, as the Saint had done with fateful facility so often in the past; and the soul of Claud Eustace Teal had emerged tried and tempered from the annealing fires. Or nearly. He would triumph in the ordeal even though blood oozed from his pores.
'No,' he said. 'Nobody saw you do it. The men don't say it was you. They say they don't know who it was. But I know it was you!'
'Do you ?' At that moment the Saint was as sleek as a seal. 'What makes you think so?'
'I know it because Luker was one of the guests at that country-house fire that you were meddling in, where John Kennet was killed; and I should think of you in connection with anything that happened to Luker now. Besides that, two of these men are Frenchmen. When I saw you at that place where Ralph Windlay was murdered, you read me two cuttings from French newspapers and talked about something called the Sons of France. Red, white and blue are the French national colours. Painting those men like that and leaving them outside Luker's doorstep is just the sort of thing I'd expect of you. There's one connecting link all the way through, and you're it!'
Simon regarded him like a spot on the carpet.
'And that's your evidence, is it?'
Teal swallowed, but he nodded stubbornly.
'That's it.'
'That's the collection of barefaced balderdash that's supposed to authorize you to take me into custody and lug me off to Vine Street. That's the immortal excretion of the best brains of Scotland Yard. Or have I misjudged you, Claud ? Have you taken a pill and woken up to find you've got a genius for publicity? You'll certainly get a bale of it over this. Let's go on with it. What will the charge be? Wait a minute, I can see it all—'That he did feloniously and with malice aforethought assault the complainants with an unlawful instrument, to wit, a paintbrush——' '
'Did I say that ?' asked Mr Teal.
It was quite a moment for Mr Teal. For the first time that he could remember he stopped the Saint short.
The Saint looked at him in wary surmise. A hundred disjointed ideas rocketed through his head, but they all arrived by devious paths at the same mark. And that was something compared with which a seven-headed dragon pirouetting on its tail would have been a perfectly commonplace phenomenon.
'Do you mean,' he said foggily, 'that you didn't come here to arrest me?'
'You ought to know enough about the law to know that I can't do anything if these men won't make a complaint.'
Simon felt a trifle lightheaded.
'You didn't come here to congratulate me by any chance?'
'No.'
'And you didn't come here for breakfast.'
'No.'
'Well, what the devil did you come for?'
'I thought you might like to tell me something about it,' Teal said woodenly. 'What is all this about, and what has Luker got to do with it?'
The Saint reached for a cigarette.
'Quite apart from the fact that I don't see why I should be supposed to
