Fairweather said, with solemn and unshakable pomposity: 'He was a guest in my house. I think that should be sufficient answer.'
Teal nodded implacably.
'You've pulled the wool over my eyes often enough, Templar, but you can't do it this time. What's the use of bluffing? There's enough circumstantial evidence already to put you away for a long time. If you want to be smart you won't make things any worse for yourself. Tell me what's happened to Lady Valerie Woodchester, and you may get off with eighteen months.'
The Saint looked at him for several seconds. And then he laughed out loud.
'You poor pin-brained boob,' he said.
The detective's face did not change.
'That won't——'
'Won't do me any good?' Simon completed the sentence for him. 'Well, I'm not interested. I'm not trying to do myself good—I don't have to. I'm trying to do you some. You need it. Have you gone so completely daft that you've lost your memory? Have you ever known me to threaten, beat up, bump off, or otherwise raise hell with women? Have you ever had even the slightest reason to suspect me of it? But because you're too bat-eyed and pigheaded to see any further than the pimples on the end of your own nose you want to believe that I've turned myself into an ogre for Lady Valerie's special benefit. What you need ——'
'I don't need any of——
'You need plenty.' The Saint was cool, unflurried, but his curt sentences were edged like knives. 'According to some ancient law which it doesn't look as if you'd ever heard of, a man in this country is presumed innocent until he can be proved guilty. Why don't you try being just half as credulous with me as you are with Algy? Because he was once a member of His Majesty's immortal government. You pitiful cretin! In other words, he made his living for years out of making lies sound like sententious platitudes. Have you even started to criticize what he's just told you? Lady Valerie wasn't home, and hadn't been home, when he phoned to check up on a lunch date. 'Knowing that this was an extraordinary departure from her normal habits——' '
'I heard what Mr Fairweather said.'
'And you gulped it down! This is the guy who knew Lady Valerie well. He didn't just assume that she'd been out on an all-night party and forgotten to come home. He 'puzzled over it with some seriousness.' Well, I don't want to be unkind about the girl, and I don't even ask you to believe me, but I'll bet you five thousand quid to fourpence that if you check back on her record you'll find that she's often done things like that before. Algy never thought of that. His 'anxieties at once became graver'—so grave that he dropped in here to ask me, a comparative stranger, what I thought about it. And while we're on the subject of lunch dates I'll give you something else. Algy tells you that he had this date with Lady Valerie, and naturally you believe him. Well, he's got his ideas mixed. He didn't have this date—I had it. Now would you like to think that over for yourself, or shall I go on helping you?'
There was a candour, an ardent sincerity in the Saint's voice that would have arrested most listeners. Mr Teal was visibly shaken. In spite of himself a new doubt joined the mad saraband that was taking place in his fevered brain. Certainly he found it hard to believe that the Saint had done any harm to Lady Valerie: even he had to admit that such a crime would have been out of character. On the other hand, he found it equally hard to believe that such obviously respectable members of society as Luker and Fairweather could be involved in any sinister motives. If he arrested the Saint after a speech that carried such conviction, experience indicated that he would probably end up by making himself look highly ridiculous; but on the other hand experience also indicated that he usually ended up by looking quite ridiculous enough when he left the Saint at large. It was one of those situations in which Mr Teal habitually felt himself drowning in the turgid waves of an unfathomable
He glowered at Simon with a smouldering malevolence which he hoped helped to disguise: the sinking foundations, of his assurance.
'You're wasting your time,' he said, but a keen ear could have detected the first loss of dominance in his voice, like the flattening note of a bell that has begun to crack. 'Mr Fairweather's suspicions sound quite reasonable to me.'
'Suspicions?'
