Follow the Saint

and investigated the room into which he had dodged when he followed the shifty-eyed youth up the stairs. He remembered it as having had the air of a storeroom of some kind, and he was right. It contained various large jars, packing cases, and cardboard cartons labelled with assorted names and cryptic signs, some of them prosaically familiar, stacked about in not particularly methodical piles. But the whole rear half of the room, in contrasting orderliness, was stacked from floor to ceiling with mounds of small yellow packages that he could recognize at a glance.

He looked around again, and on one wall he found in a cheap frame the official certificate which announced to all whom it might concern that Mr Henry Osbett had dutifully complied with the Law and registered the fact that he was trading under the business name of The Miracle Tea Com­pany.

'Well, well, well!' said the Saint dreamily. 'What a small world it is after all. . . .'

He fished out his cigarette case and smoked part of the way through a cigarette while he stood gazing abstractedly over the unilluminating contents of the room, and his brain was a whirlpool of new and startling questions.

Then he pulled himself together and went back to the office.

The three men he had left there were all awake again by then and squirming ineffectually. Simon shook his head at them.

'Relax, boys,' he said soothingly. 'You're only wearing yourselves out. And think what a mess you're making of your clothes.'

Their swollen eyes glared at him mutely with three indivi­dual renderings of hate and malevolence intensified by different degrees of fear; but if the Saint had been susceptible to the cremating power of the human eye he would have been a walking cinder many years ago.

Calmly he proceeded to empty their pockets and examine every scrap of paper he found on them; but except for a driving licence which gave him Mr Nancock's name and address in Croydon he was no wiser when he had finished.

After that he turned his attention to the filing cabinet; but as far as a lengthy search could tell it contained nothing but a conventional collection of correspondence on harmless matters concerned with the legitimate business of the shop and the marketing of Miracle Tea. He sat down in Mr Os­bett's swivel chair and went systematically through the drawers of the desk, but they also provided him with no enlightenment. The net result of his labours was a magnifi­cent and symmetrically rounded zero.

The Saint's face showed no hint of his disappointment. He sat for a few seconds longer, tilting himself gently back and forth; and then he stood up.

'It's a pity you don't keep more money on the premises, Henry,' he remarked. 'You could have saved yourself a stamp.'

He picked up a paperknife from the desk and tested the blade with his thumb. It was sharp enough. The eyes of the bound men dilated as they watched him.

The Saint smiled.

'From the way you were talking when I first came in, it looks as if you know my business,' he said. 'And I hope you've realized by this time that I know yours. It isn't a very nice business; but that's something for you to worry about. All I'm concerned with is to make sure that you pay the proper luxury tax to the right person, which happens to be me. So will you attend to it as soon as possible, Henry? I should think about ten thousand pounds will do for a first instalment. I shall expect it in one-pound notes, delivered by messenger before two-thirty pm tomorrow. And it had better not be late.' The Saint's blue eyes were as friendly as frozen vitriol. 'Because if it is, Chief Inspector Teal will be calling here again—and next time it won't be an accident.... Mean­while'—the knife spun from his hands like a whirling white flame, and the three men flinched wildly as the point buried itself with a thud in the small space of carpet centrally between them—'if one of you gets to work with that, you ought to be up and about again in a few minutes. Goodbye, girls; and help yourself to some sal volatile when you get down stairs.'

It was nearing one o'clock by his watch when he reached the street; and Patricia was ordering herself a second Martini when he strolled into the cocktail room at Quaglino's.

She leaned back and closed her eyes.