The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

himself Jones was no less fast a thinker, and not one whit less efficient, than Simon Templar had diagnosed him to be.

CHAPTER V SIMON TEMPLAR refuelled his duofold and continued with the biography of the coming politician:

'And down the corridors of fame Wilberforce Egbert duly came.

His human kindness knew no bounds: Even when hunting with the hounds He always had a thought to spare For the poor little hunted hare, But manfully he set his lips And did the bidding of the Whips; And though at times his motives would Be cruelly misunderstood, Wilberforce plodded loyally on Like a well-bred automaton Till 1940, when the vote Placed the Gupp party in the boat, And Wilberforce assumed the helm And laboured to defend the realm.'

Simon glanced at his watch, meditated for a few moments, and continued: 'And through those tense and tedious days Wilberforce gambolled (in his stays); The general public got to know That Gupp, who never answered 'No,'

Could be depended on to give Deft answers in the negative; And Royal Commissions by the score Added to Wisdom's bounteous store: The Simple Foods Commission found That turnips still grow underground; The Poultry Farms Commission heard That turkeys were a kind of bird; While in an office in the City The famous Vicious Drugs Committee Sat through ten epic calendars To learn if women smoked cigars; And with the help Gupp's party gave Britannia proudly ruled the wave.

(Reported to be wet-but see Marine Commission, Section D.)'

It was nearly seven o'clock when the Saint started his car and cruised leisurely eastwards through the Park. He had a sublime faith in his assessment of time limits, and his estimate of Mr. Jones's schedule was almost uncannily exact. He pulled up in the southwest corner of Cavendish Square, from which he could just see the doorway of the Lestranges' house, and prepared himself for a reasonable wait.

He was finishing his third cigarette when a brand-new taxi turned into the square and snailed past the doorway he was watching. It reached the northeast corner, accelerated down the east side and along the south, and resumed its dawdling pace as it turned north again. The Saint bent over a newspaper as it passed him; and when he looked up again the blue in his eyes had the hard glitter of sapphires. Patricia was standing in the doorway; and he knew that Mr. Jones was be­yond all doubt a fast mover.

Simon sat and watched the girl hail the taxi and climb in. The cab picked up speed rapidly; and Simon touched his self-starter and hurled the great silver Hirondel smoothly after it.

The taxi swung away to the north and plunged into the streaming traffic of the Marylebone Road. It had a surprising turn of speed for a vehicle of its type; and the Saint was glad that his car could claim to have the legs of almost anything on the road. More than once it was only the explosive acceleration of its silent hun­dred horsepower that saved him from being jammed in a tangle of slow-moving traffic which would have wrecked his scheme irretrievably. He clung to the taxi's rear number plate like a hungry leech, snaking after it past buses, drays, lorries, private cars of every size and shape under the sun, westwards along the main road and then to the right around the Baker Street crossing, following every twist of his unconscious quarry as faithfully as if he had been merely steering a trailer linked to it by an invisible steel coupling. It was the only possible method of making certain that no minor accident of the route could leave him sandwiched behind while the taxi slipped round a corner and van­ished forever; and the Saint concentrated on it with an ice-cold singleness of purpose that shut every other thought out of! his head, driving with every trick of the road that he knew and an inexorable determination to keep his radiator nailed to a point in space precisely nine inches aft of the taxi's hind quarters.

There was always the risk that his limpet-like attach­ment would attract the attention of the driver of the taxi, but it was a risk that had to be ignored. Fortu­nately it was growing dark rapidly after a dull and rainy afternoon; they raced up the Finchley Road in a swiftly deepening dusk, and as they passed Swiss Cottage Underground the Saint took the first chance of the chase-fell far behind the taxi, switched on his lights, tore after it again, and picked up the red glow­worm eye of its tail light after thirty breathless seconds. That device might have done something to allay any possible suspicions; and the lights of one car look very much like the lights of any other when the distinctive features of its coachwork are hidden behind the diffused rays of a few statutory candlepower.

So far the procession had led him through familiar highways; but a little while after switching on his lights he was practically lost. His bump of locality told him that they were somewhere to the east of the Finchley Road and heading roughly north; but the taxi in front of him whizzed round one corner after another until his bearings were boxed all round the compass, and the names of streets which occasionally flashed past the tail of his eye were unknown to him.

Presently they were running down a broad avenue of large houses set well back from the road, and the taxi ahead was slowing up. In a moment of intuitive understanding, the Saint held his own speed and shot past it: keeping the cab in his driving mirror, he saw it turning in through a pair of gates set in a high garden wall twenty yards behind him.

Simon locked his wheels round the next corner and pulled up dead. In a second he was out of the car and walking quickly back towards the driveway into which the taxi had disappeared.

He strolled quietly past the gates and took in as much of the lie of the land as he could in one searching survey under the slanted brim of his hat. The house was a massively gloomy three-storied edifice in the most pompous