'Are they real?'
'There isn't a doubt of it.'
'Maybe you've got away with Teal's life savings.'
'Maybe. But he has got a bank account. And can you really see Claud Eustace hoarding his worldly wealth in packets of patent tea ?'
'Then it must be evidence in some case he's working on.'
'It could be. But again, why keep it in this box ?' Simon turned the yellow packet over in his supple hands. 'It was perfectly sealed before I opened it. It looked as if it had never been touched. Why should he go to all that trouble? And suppose it was evidence just as it stood, how did he know what the evidence was without opening it ? If he didn't know, he'd surely have opened it on the spot, in front of witnesses. And if he did know, he had no business to take it home. Besides, if he did know that he was carrying dangerous evidence, he wouldn't have had to think twice about what motive there might be for slugging him on his way home; but he didn't seem to have the slightest idea what it was all about.'
Patricia frowned.
'Could he be taking graft ? This might be a way of slipping him the money.'
Simon thought that over for a while; but in the end he shook his head.
'We've said a lot of rude things about Claud Eustace in our time, but I don't think even we could ever have said that seriously. He may be a nuisance, but he's so honest that it runs out of his ears. And still again, he'd have known what he was carrying, and known what anybody who slugged him might have been after, and the first thing he did when he woke up would have been to see if he's still got the dough. But he didn't. He didn't even feel in his pockets.'
'But wasn't he knocked silly ?'
'Not that silly.'
'Perhaps he was quite sure what had happened, and didn't want to give himself away.'
'With me sitting beside him ? If he'd even thought he'd lost something valuable, it wouldn't have been quite so easy for me to convince him that I wasn't the warrior with the gaspipe. He could have arrested me himself and searched me on the spot without necessarily giving anything away.'
The girl shrugged despairingly.
'All right. So you think of something.'
The Saint lighted a cigarette.
'I suppose I'm barmy, but there's only one thing I can think of. Claud Eustace didn't have the foggiest idea what was in the packet. He had a pain in his tum-tum, and he just bought it for medicine on the way home. It was meant to be handed to someone else, and the fellow in the shop got mixed up. As soon as Teal's gone out with it, the right man comes in, and there is a good deal of commotion. Somebody realizes what's happened, and goes dashing after Teal to get the packet back. He bends his blunt instrument over Teal's head, and is just about to frisk him when I arrive and spoil everything, and he has to lam. I take Teal home, and Teal has something else to think about besides his tummy-ache, so he forgets all about his Miracle Tea, and I win it. And is it something to win!'
The Saint's eyes were kindling with an impish excitement that had no direct connection with the windfall that had just dropped into his lap. Patricia did not need him to say any more to tell her what was going on in his mind. To the Saint, any puzzle was a potential adventure; and the Saint on the trail of adventure was a man transformed, a dynamic focus of ageless and superhuman forces against which no ordinary mortal could argue. She had known him so well for so many years, had known so long that he was beyond her power to change, even if she had wished to change him.
She said slowly: 'But what is the racket?'
