know, haven't you thought of asking him ?'
'I have asked him. He said he'd never seen these men before; and they say they've never heard of him.'
The Saint lighted his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs under the table.
'Then it certainly does look very mysterious,' he said, but his blue eyes were quiet and searching.
Chief Inspector Teal turned his venerable bowler on his blue-serge knees. He had got his spearmint nicely into condition now—a plastic nugget, malleable and yet resistant, still flavorous, crisp without being crumbly, glutinous without adhesion, obedient to the capricious patterning of his mobile tongue working in conjunction with the clockwork reciprocation of his teeth, polymorphous, ductile. It was a great comfort to him. He would have been lost without it. What he had to do was not easy.
'I know,' he said. 'That's why I came to see you. I thought you might be able to give me a lead.'
The Saint stared at him for several moments in a silence of gull-winged eyebrows and wide absorbent eyes, while that cataclysmic statement sank through the diverse layers of his comprehension.
'Well, I will be a cynocephalic mandrill scratching my blue bottom on the ramparts of Timbuctoo,' he said finally. 'Or am I one already? I thought I'd seen every kind and sample of human nerve in my time, but this is the last immortal syllable. You treat me as a suspicious character; you habitually accuse me of every crime that's committed in England that you're too thickheaded to solve; you threaten me three times a week with penal servitude and bodily violence; you persecute me at every conceivable opportunity; you disturb my slumbers and hound me at my own breakfast table; and then you have the unmitigated gall to sit there, with your great waistcoat full of stomach, and ask me to help you!'
It was a bitter draught for Mr Teal to get past his uvula, but he managed it, even though his gorge threatened to suffocate him. Perhaps it was one of the most prodigious victories of self-discipline that he had ever achieved in his life.
'That's what I want,' he said, with a superhuman effort of carelessness that made him look as if he was about to lapse into an apoplectic coma. 'Why should we go on fighting each other? We're both really out for the same thing, and this is a case where we could work together and you could save yourself getting into trouble as well. I'll be quite frank with you. I remembered everything you said at Windlay's place, and I made some inquiries on my own responsibility. I've seen a verbatim report of the Kennet inquest, and I've talked with one of the reporters who was there. I agree with you that it was conducted in a very unsatisfactory way. I put it to the chief commissioner that we ought to consider reopening the case. He agreed with me then, but yesterday evening he told me I'd better drop it. I'm pretty sure there's pressure being put on him to leave well alone—the kind of pressure he can't afford to ignore. But I don't like dropping cases. If there's anything fishy about this it ought to come out. Now, you said something to me about the Sons of France, didn't you?'
'I may have mentioned them,' Simon admitted cautiously. 'But——'
Chief Inspector Teal suddenly opened his baby-blue eyes and they were not bored or comatose or stupid, but unexpectedly clear and penetrating in the round placidity of his face.
'Well, that's why I came to see you. You may have something that puts the whole puzzle together. Bravache and Dumaire are Frenchmen.' Mr Teal paused. He fashioned his gum once into the shape of a spindle, and then clamped his teeth destructively down on it. 'And I happen to have found out that John Kennet was a member of the Sons of France,' he said.
VI
