The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

Simon ran faster. Looking back, Orping saw him only a yard behind, running easily, and groped for his gun. But he had thought of that too late. Simon clipped his heels together and dropped on him heavily. He twisted Orping's right wrist up between his shoulder blades and kept one bony knee in the small of the man's back.

'Lemme up,' Orping whimpered. 'You can't hold me for nothing.'

'Only for wilful murder,' said the Saint unctuously, and watched Chief Inspector Teal lumbering ponderously across the road towards them.

PART III THE DEATH PENALTY

CHAPTER I

THEY hanged Galbraith Stride at eight o'clock on the morning of the 22nd of November.

They came in and strapped his hands together, and led him out to the narrow whitewashed shed that was to be his last glimpse of the world-walking very fast, like a man who has made up his mind to see an un­pleasant appointment through as quickly as possible. They stood him on the chalked T in the centre of the trap, and drew the white cap down over his bald head and his pale frightened eyes, till the only feature of his face that could be seen was the thin twitching mouth under his little grey moustache. They settled the rope round his neck, with the knot just under his left ear; and the executioner stepped back to the lever that would send him into eternity.

They asked him if he had anything to say before he paid the extreme penalty of the law, and the tip of his tongue slipped once over those twitching lips.

'Get it over,' he said; and with that they dropped him.

All this was after many other things had happened, and a lady had thanked the Saint for assistance.

CHAPTER II

LAURA BERWICK came into the Saint's life unasked, un­invited, and unintroduced; which was what one might have expected of her. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a chin that was afraid of no dragons-not even of an outlaw so notorious and unpopular as Simon Temp­lar. And as far as the Saint was concerned, any girl with her face and figure could have come into his life unasked, uninvited, and unintroduced every day of the week, and he would have had nothing but praise for the beneficence of a Providence that provided surprises of such quality. He was able to frame that appraisement of her physical perfections within a bare few minutes of meeting her for the first time- which in this case hap­pens to be a far more respectable statement than it sounds.

Simon Templar had left London. The wanderlust that would never let him be still for long had filled him again with dreams of wild adventurous voyaging after an exceptionally short rest in the city that was as near home to him as anywhere else in the world. Partly be cause his rest had been so extraordinarily unrestful. In a very few months, London had loaded down his life with such a plentiful supply of excitement that he had made up his mind to take wing again promptly, before the standard of lawlessness and unrest depreciated. The house that he had chosen when he first returned was still in the hands of interior decorators who were struggling to repair the damage that can only be done by a powerful bomb exploded in a small room, and after viewing the progress of their efforts he had decided to terminate his lease and take up residence at the Dor­chester for the remainder of his stay. An expensive luxury, but one which he considered he had earned. Or, if he hadn't earned it, he would doubtless contrive to do so before he left. . . . And then-since this was in that memorable year when the sun shone upon England- the thermometer hopped back on top of the ninety mark, and after two days of it the Saint tore off his coat and tie and went forth into the West End swearing a quiet sirocco of wrath whose repercussions were recorded at Kew.

'Civilization be damned,' said the Saint, in one of his few lucid moments. 'I saw an English Gentleman in Piccadilly yesterday. With great daring he had re­moved his coat, waistcoat, collar, and tie, and he was walking about in a flannel shirt and a hideous pair of braces striped with his old school colours. Under the neck of his shirt and the roll-up of his sleeves you could see the edges of his abominable woollen vest. I refuse to discuss in detail the occult reasonings which may have made him ever put on the superfluous garments that he was carrying over his arm. But when you consider the abysmal chasms of imbecility personified in that perspiring oaf, and then realize that he was only a pale pink renegade-that a real English Gentleman and Public School Man would have died before he removed a single garment-then you know that the next deluge is long overdue.'

He had a lot more to say, much of which would have made certain seaside borough councillors who spend most of their time deliberating on the minimum length of sleeve that may without peril to the public morality be permitted on bathing costumes foam at the mouth with indignation. He said it all very forcefully, using much of the language which by similarly coherent standards is judged to be harmless to an audience of three thousand men, women, and children congregated in a theatre, but definitely corrupting to the same audience if they happen to be congregated in a cinema. Also he travelled as fast and far as he possibly could on the strength of it, which perhaps has more to do with this story.

The Scilly Islands are not quite at the end of the world; but Simon Templar went there because a letter came to him which quite innocently told him some­thing that he could scarcely ignore.

'We have about the usual number of visitors for the time of year,' wrote Mr. Smithson Smith. 'They disappear just as they always do, and St. Mary's still seems uncrowded. . . , The Scillonian went aground in a fog the other day, but they got her off quite safely at high tide. . . . They caught some Frenchmen picking up their pots inside the three-mile limit on Sunday, and fined them L80, . .. . There are a couple of fine yachts anchored over at Tresco-one of them belongs to an Egyptian, a man called Abdul Osman. I've been wondering if he's the man I heard about once when I was in Assuan. . . .'

There were six pages of local gossip and general reminiscence, of the kind that Mr. Smithson Smith felt moved to write about three times a year. They had met in a dispute about a camel many years ago outside Ismailia; and the Saint, who was no letter writer, re­sponded at equally vague intervals. But the name of Abdul Osman was not strange to him, and he had no doubts about its associations.

There was a glint in his eye when he had finished reading.

'We're going to the Isles of Scilly, where the puffins go to breed,' he said poetically; and Patricia Holm looked at him with an air of caution.

'I'm not a puffin,' she said.

'Nevertheless, we'll go,' said the Saint.

It may sound flippant to say that if Simon Templar had not shared some of the dim instincts of the puffin, Laura Berwick would undoubtedly have been drowned; but that is nothing but the truth.