'Not quite so fast, brother,' he said. 'You might think of calling up your boss again and having another chat with him before you went to bed, and I'd hate him to get worried at this hour of the night. You stay right where you are and get some of that beauty sleep which you need so badly, because after what I'm going to do tomorrow your boss may be looking for you with a gun!'
VII
EARLY RISING had never been one of the Saint's favourite virtues, but there were times when business looked more important than leisure. It was eleven o'clock the next morning—an hour at which he was usually beginning to think drowsily about breakfast—when he sauntered into the apothecarium of Mr Henry Osbett.
In honour of the occasion, he had put on his newest and most beautiful suit, a creation in pearl-grey fresco over which his tailor had shed tears of ecstasy in the fitting room; his piratically tilted hat was unbelievably spotless; his tie would have humbled the gaudiest hues of dawn. He had also put on, at less expense, a vacuous expression and an inanely chirpy grin that completed the job of typing him to the point where his uncle, the gouty duke, loomed almost visible in his background.
The shifty-eyed young assistant who came to the counter might have been pardoned for keeling over backwards at the spectacle; but he only recoiled half a step and uttered a perfunctory 'Yes, sir?'
He looked nervous and preoccupied. Simon wondered whether this nervousness and preoccupation might have had some connection with a stout and agitated-looking man who had entered the shop a few yards ahead of the Saint himself. Simon's brightly vacant eyes took in the essential items of the topography without appearing to notice anything—the counter with its showcases and displays of patent pills and liver salts, the glazed compartment at one end where presumably prescriptions were dispensed, the dark doorway at the other end which must have led to the intimate fastnesses of the establishment. Nowhere was the stout man visible; therefore, unless he had dissolved into thin air, or disguised himself as a bottle of bunion cure, he must have passed through that one doorway.. . . The prospects began to look even more promising than the Saint had expected. . . .
'This jolly old tea, old boy,' bleated the Saint, producing a package from his pocket. 'A friend of mine—chappie named Teal, y'know, great detective and all that sort of thing—bought it off you last night and then he wouldn't risk taking it. He was goin' to throw it down the drain; but I said to him 'Why waste a perfectly good half-dollar, what?' I said. 'I'll bet they'll change it for a cake of soap, or something,' I said. I'll take it in and change it myself,' I told him. That's right, isn't it? You will change it, won't you?'
The shifty-eyed youth was a bad actor. His face had gone white, then red, and finally compromised by remaining blotchy. He gaped at the packet as if he was really starting to believe that there were miracles in Miracle Tea.
'We—we should be glad to change it for you, sir,' he gibbered.
'Fine!' chortled the Saint. 'That's just what I told jolly old Teal. You take the tea, and give me a nice box of soap. I expect Teal can use that, but I'm dashed if I know what he could do with tea——'
He was talking to a vanishing audience. The youth, with a spluttered 'Excuse me, sir,' had grabbed the package off the counter and was already making a dive for the doorway at the far end; and the imbecile grin melted out of the Saint's face like a wax mould from a casting of hot bronze.
One skeleton instant after the assistant had disappeared, he was over the counter with the swift silence of a cat.
But even if he had made any noise, it is doubtful whether the other would have noticed it. The shifty-eyed youth was so drunk with excitement that his brain had for the time being practically ceased to function. If it hadn't he might have stopped to wonder why Mr Teal should have handed the tea to a third party; or why the third party, being so obviously a member of the idle rich, should have even bothered about exchanging it for a box of soap. He might have asked himself a great many inconvenient questions; but he didn't. Perhaps the peculiarly fatuous and guileless character which the Saint had adopted for the interview had something to do with that egregious oversight—at least, that was what Simon Templar had hoped for. . . . And it is at least certain that the young man went blundering up the stairs without a backward glance, while the Saint glided like a ghost into the gloomy passage-way at the foot of the stairs. , . .
In the
