The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

'Don't talk to me like a fourth-rate newspaper,' snarled Teal. 'What have they done with him?'

'On the instructions of the chief constable, he is being detained pending advice from London.'

Teal put the receiver carefully back on its bracket.

'Well, sir, the Saint has come back,' he said glumly,'

CHAPTER II THE assistant commissioner did not head a deputation of welcome to Newhaven. Teal went down alone, with mixed feelings. He remembered that the Saint's last action before leaving England had been to present him with a sheaf of information which had enabled him to clean up several cases that had been racking the brains of the C.I.D. for many months. He remembered also that the Saint's penultimate action had been to threaten him with the most vicious form of blackmail that can be applied to any police officer. But Chief Inspector Teal had long since despaired of reconciling the many contradictions of his endless feud with the man who in any other path of life might have been his closest friend.

He found Simon Templar dozing peacefully on the narrow bed of a cell in Newhaven police station. The Saint rolled up to a sitting position as the detective entered, and smiled at him cheerfully.

'Claud Eustace himself, by the tum-tum of Tut­ankhamen! I thought I'd be seeing you.' Simon looked the detective over thoughtfully. 'And I believe you've put on weight,' he said.

Teal sank his teeth in a well-worn lump of chewing gum.

'What have you come back for?' he asked shortly.

On the way down he had mapped out the course of the interview minutely. He had decided that his attitude would be authoritative, restrained, distant, perfectly polite but definitely warning. He would tolerate no more nonsense. So long as the Saint was prepared to behave himself, no obstacles would be placed in his way; but if he was contemplating any further misdeeds . . . The official warning would be delivered thus and thus.

And now, within thirty seconds of his entering the cell, in the first sentence he had uttered, the smooth control of the situation which he had intended to usurp from the start was sliding out of his grasp. It had always been like that. Teal proposed, and the Saint disposed. There was something about the insolent self-possession of that scapegrace buccaneer that goaded the detective into faux pas for which he was never afterwards able to account.

'As a matter of fact, old porpoise,' said the Saint, 'I came back for some cigarettes. You can't buy my favourite brand in France, and if you've ever endured a week of Marylands- '

Teal took a seat on the bunk.

'You left England in rather a hurry two months ago, didn't you?'

'I suppose I did,' admitted the Saint reflectively. 'You see, I felt like having a good bust, and you know what I am. Impetuous. I just upped and went.'

'It's a pity you didn't stay.'

The Saint's blue eyes gazed out banteringly from under dark level brows.

'Teal, is that kind? If you want to know, I was expecting a better reception than this. I was only thinking just now how upset my solicitor would be when he heard about it. Poor old chap-he's awfully sensitive about these things. When one of his respectable and valued clients comes home to his native land, and he isn't allowed to move two hundred yards into the interior before some flat-footed hick cop is lugging him off to the hoosegow for no earthly reason--'

'Now you listen to me for a minute,' Teal cut in bluntly. 'I didn't come here to swap any funny talk of that sort with you. I came down to tell you how the Yard thinks you'd better behave now you're home. You're going loose as soon as I've finished with you, but if you want to stay loose you'll take a word of advice.'

'Shall I?'

'That's up to you.' The detective was plunging into his big speech half an hour before it was due, but he was going to get it through intact if it was the last thing he ever did. It was an amazing thing that even after the two months of comparative calm which he had enjoyed since the Saint left England, the gall of many defeats was as bitter on his tongue as it had ever been before. Perhaps he had a clairvoyant glimpse of the future, born out of the deepest darkness of his sub­conscious mind, which told him that he might as well have lectured a sun spot about its pernicious influence on the weather. The bland smiling composure of that lean figure opposite him was fraying the edges of his nerves with all the accumulated armoury of old associ­ations. 'I'm not suggesting,' Teal said tersely. 'I'm prophesying.'

The Saint acknowledged his authority with the faint­est possible flicker of one eyebrow-and yet the sar­donic mockery of that minute gesture was indescribable.

'Yeah?'

'I'm telling you to watch your step. We've put up with a good deal from you in the past. You've been lucky. You even earned a free pardon, once. Anyone would have thought you'd have been content to retire gracefully after that. You had your own ideas. But a piece of luck like that doesn't come twice in any man's lifetime. You'd made things hot enough for yourself when you went away, and you needn't think they've cooled off just because you took a short holiday. I'm not saying they mightn't cool off a bit if you took a long one. We aren't out for any more trouble.'

'Happy days,' drawled the Saint, 'are here again. Teal, in another minute you'll have me crying.'

'You shouldn't have much to cry about,' said the detective aggressively. 'There's some excuse for the sneak thief who goes on pulling five-pound jobs. He hasn't a chance to retire. You ought to have made a pretty good pile by this time --'

'About a quarter of a million,' said the Saint modestly. 'I admit it sounds a lot, but look at Rockefeller. He could spend that much every day.'

'You've had a good run. I won't complain about it. You've done me some good turns on your way, and the commissioner is willing to set that in your favour. Why not give the game a rest ?'

The bantering blue eyes were surveying Teal steadily all the time he was speaking. Their expression was almost seraphic in its innocence-only the most captious critic, or the most overwrought inferiority complex, could