The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

'How's the window in there?'

'There's a sort of cage over it-I couldn't reach the glass. The taxi was the same. There's a divan bed and a couple of wicker armchairs. The table's very low-the legs wouldn't reach through the bars. He's thought of everything. Washbasin and jug of water on the floor-some towels-cigarettes --'

'What happened to the taxi driver?'

'That was Mr. Jones.'

The Saint drew a thoughtful breath.

'Phew! And what a solo worker! . . . Can you hold on for a bit? I'd like to explore the rest of the establish­ment before I start any trouble.'

'Go ahead, old chap. I'm fine.'

'Still got your gun?'

'Sure.'

'So long, lass.'

The Saint tiptoed along the landing and prowled up the second flight of stairs.

CHAPTER VI THERE were no lights burning on the tipper gallery, but a dull glimmer of twilight filtered up from the lamps below and relieved the darkness sufficiently for him to be able to move as quickly as he wanted to. With his slim electric flash in his hand he went around the story from room to room, turning the door handles with infinite care and probing the apartments with the dancing beam of his torch. The first one he opened was plainly but comfortably furnished as a bedroom: it was evidently occupied, for the bed had not been made since it was last slept in, and a shaving brush crested with a mound of dried lather stood on the mantelpiece. The second room was another bedroom, tidier than the first, but showing the ends of a suit of silk pyjamas under the pillow as proof that it also was used. The door of the third room was locked; and Simon delved in his pocket again for a skeleton key. The lock was of the same type as that on the back door by which he had entered the house-one of those ponderously useless contraptions which any cracksman can open with a bent pin-and in a second or two it gave way.

Simon pushed the door ajar and saw that the room was in darkness. He stepped boldly in, quartering the room with his weaving pencil of light. The flying disk of luminance danced along the walls and suddenly stopped, splashing itself in an irregular pool over the motionless form of a man who lay quietly on the floor as if asleep. But the Saint knew that he was dead.

He knelt down and made a rapid examination. The man had been dead about forty-eight hours-there was no trace of a wound, but with his face close to the dead man's mouth he detected the unmistakable scent of prussic acid. It was as he was rising to go that he accidentally turned over the lapel of the dead man's coat, and saw the thin silver badge underneath-the silver greyhound of a King's Messenger.

The Saint came to his feet again rather slowly. The waters were running deeper than he had ever expected, and he felt an odd sense of shock. That slight silver badge had transformed the adventure at one glance from a more or less ordinary if still mysterious criminal problem to an intrigue that might lead anywhere.

As he left the room he heard the man called Jones coming up the stairs again. Peeping over the wooden balustrade, he saw that the man carried a tray-the catering arrangements in that house appeared to be highly commendable, even if nothing else was.

Simon slipped along the gallery without a sound. He opened two more rooms and found them both empty; then he paused outside another and saw a narrow line of light under the door.

He stood still for a few seconds, listening. He heard an occasional faint chink of glass or metal, and the shuffling of slippered feet over the carpet; but there were no voices. Almost mechanically he tried the door, and had one of the biggest surprises of his life when he felt it opening.

The Saint froze up motionless, with a dry electric tingle glissading over the surface of his skin. The way the door gave back under his light touch disintegrated the very ground from under his nebulous theory about the occupant of that room. In the space of four seconds his brain set up, surveyed, and bowled over a series of possible explanations that were chiefly notable for their complete uselessness. In the fifth second that ultimate fact impressed itself unanswerably on his consciousness, and he acknowledged it with a wry shrug and the decimal point of a smile. Theories were all very well in their place; but he had come to the house of Mr. Jones on a quest for irrefutable knowledge, and an item of irrefutable knowledge was awaiting his atten­tion inside that room. It remained for him to go in and get introduced-and that was what he had given up a peaceful evening in his own home to do.

He glanced downwards into the hall. There was no sound or movement from below. For a minute or two he might consider he had the field to himself-if he was quick and quiet about taking it over.

The door of the lighted room opened further, inch by inch, against the steady persuasion of his fingers, while his nerves were keyed up to check its swing at the first faint hint of a squeak out of the hinges. Gradually the strip of light at the edge widened until he could see part of the room. A grotesque confusion of metal and glass, tangled up with innumerable strands and coils of wire, was heaped over all the floor space that he could see like the scrap heap of one of those nightmare laboratories of the future which appear in every magazine of pseudo-scientific fiction. The Saint's unscientific mind could grasp nothing but the bare visual impression of it-an apparently aimless conglomeration of burnished steel spheres and shining crystal tubes that climbed in and out of each other like a futurist sculptor's rendering of two all-in wrestlers getting acquainted. Back against the far wall ran a long workbench of wood and porcelain surmounted by racks and shelves of glass vessels and bottles of multi­coloured mixtures. It was the most fantastic collection of incomprehensible apparatus that Simon Templar had ever seen; and yet in some ridiculously conven­tional way it seemed to have its perfect focus and presiding genius in the slender white-haired man in a stained and grimy white overall who stood at the bench with his back to the open door.

Simon Templar walked very quietly into the room and closed the door noiselessly behind him. He stood with his back leaning against it and his right hand circling comfortably round the butt of the automatic in his pocket, and cleared his throat apologetically.

'Hullo,' he said.

The figure at the bench turned round sharply. He was a mild-faced man with a pair of thick gold-rimmed pince- nez perched slantwise on the end of a long fleshy nose; and his response was pitched in the last key on earth that the Saint had expected to hear.