that's what's the matter with you. I know all about it. So all you've got to do is to go to Lady Valerie and say, 'Where's that stuff that Kennet gave you?' Well, you try it. I have.'
'But if she's concealing evidence——'
'Who said she was? She did. To me alone—without witnesses. If you pulled her into court, she could deny every word of it, and you couldn't prove anything different.'
'But what is she doing it for?'
'Champagne coupons.'
'What?'
'Dough. Geetus. Mazuma. Boodle. Crackle paper. She's in business for the money, the same as I used to be. And she knows that that evidence is worth cash to Fairweather and Co. The only way you could break her down would be to talk her language, which means putting up more cash than the others will, which personally I don't propose to do and you in your job couldn't do.' The Saint shook his head. 'It's no good, Claud. You still aren't in the running. You can't even go after her and batter her with your sex appeal —not with a figure like yours. You're sunk. Why don't you pack up and go home to chivvying the poor little street bookmakers in Soho, where you can't go wrong?' .
Chief Inspector Teal's ruminant jaws continued their monotonous mastication. The logic of the Saint's argument was irrefutable, but there was in Mr Teal an ineradicable scepticism, founded on years of bitter disappointment, that fought obstinately against the premises from which that logic took its flying start. The Saint might for once be telling the truth, but there had been many other occasions when he had been no less plausible when he was lying. All of Mr Teal's prejudices fought back from the dead end to which credulity inevitably led.
'That's all very well,' he said doggedly. 'But you're still working on something. And when did you stop thinking about money? Suppose you get this evidence—what's going to happen?'
'I wouldn't turn it over to you. I don't imagine it would help you. I only want it to make perfectly sure—to find out just how much there is behind this racket. I could deal with Luker and Company today without it. Mind you I don't want to put any ideas into your head, although there must be lots of room for them, but if Luker for instance should meet with a minor accident, such as falling off the roof of his house into Grosvenor Square——'
The telephone bell rang while the Saint was speaking.
He went over and picked it up while Teal watched him with broody eyes.
Simon said 'Hullo,' and then his eyebrows lifted. He said: 'Speaking. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . .'
Darkness gathered on Teal's face. Something leaden crept into his light blue eyes, like clear skies filling with thunder. Sudden brilliance flashed across them like the snap of lightning as a storm breaks. He came out of his chair like a whale breaking the surface. Surprisingly quick for his adipose dimensions, he plunged across the intervening space and snatched the phone out of Simon's hand.
'Hullo!' he bawled. 'Chief Inspector Teal speaking. . . . No, that wasn't me before. . . . Never mind that, go on. . . . What? . . . What's that? . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . .'
An indistinguishable mutter droned on from the receiver, and as Teal listened to it his cherubic round face grew hard and strained. His eyes stayed fixed upon the Saint, hot and jagged with a seethe of violent emotions of which the most accurately identifiable one was wrath rising to the temperature of incandescence. His mouth was a clenched trap in the lurid mauve of his face, which now and again opened just sufficiently to eject a sizzling monosyllable like a blob of molten quartz.
'All right,' he bit out at last. 'Stay there. I'll be round presently.'
He slammed the instrument
