Follow the Saint

core of grey matter which formed a sort of glutinous marrow inside his skull. He cleared his throat, producing a noise like a piece of sheet iron getting between the blades of a lawn mower, and gave the fruit of his travail to the world.

'Boss,' he said, 'I dunno how dese mugs t'ink dey can get away wit' it.'

'How which mugs think they can get away with what?' asked the Saint somewhat vacantly.

'Dese mugs,' said Mr Uniatz, 'who are tryin' to take us for a ride, like ya tell me in de pub.'

Simon had to stretch his memory backwards almost to breaking point to hook up again with Mr Uniatz's train of thought; and when he had finally done so he decided that it was wisest not to start any argument.

'Others have made the same mistake,' he said casually, and hoped that would be the end of it.

Mr Uniatz nodded sagely.

'Well, dey all get what's comin' to dem,' he said with philo­sophic complacency. 'When do I give dis punk de woiks ?'

'When do you——What?'

'Dis punk,' said Mr Uniatz, waving his Betsy at the prisoner. 'De mug who takes a shot at us.'

'You don't,' said the Saint shortly.

The equivalent of what on anybody else's face would have been a slight frown carved its fearsome corrugations into Hoppy's brow.

'Ya don't mean he gets away wit' it after all ?'

'We'll see about that.'

'Dijja hear what he calls us ?'

'What was that?'

'He calls us washouts.'

'That's too bad.'

'Yeah, dat's too bad,' Mr Uniatz glowered disparagingly at the captive. 'Maybe I better go over him wit' a paddle foist. Just to make sure he don't go to sleep.'

'Leave him alone,' said the Saint soothingly. 'He's young, but he'll grow up.'

He was watching the striped blazer with more attention than a chance onlooker would have realized. The young man stood glaring at them defiantly—not without fear, but that was easy to explain if one wanted to. His knuckles tensed up involuntarily from time to time; but a perfectly understandable anger would account for that. Once or twice he glanced at the strangely unreal shape of the dead girl half hidden in the shadows, and it was at those moments that Simon was studying him most intently. He saw the almost conventionalized horror of death that takes the place of practical thinking with those who have seen little of it, and a bitter disgust that might have had an equally conventional basis. Beyond that, the sullen scowl which disfigured the other's face steadily refused him the betraying evidence that might have made everything so much simpler. Simon blew placid and meditative smoke rings to pass the time; but there was an irking bafflement behind the cool patience of his eyes.

It took fifteen minutes by his watch for the police to come, which was less than he had expected.

They arrived in the persons of a man with a waxed mous­tache, in plain clothes, and two constables in uniform. After them, breathless when she saw the striped blazer still inha­bited by an apparently undamaged owner, came Rosemary Chase. In the background hovered a man who even without his costume