The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

have come up against his back had been opened noiselessly behind him, and he was stepping backwards over the threshold.

He opened his mouth to cry out, turning his head as he did so; but the cry rattled voicelessly in his throat. A brown shirt-sleeved arm whipped round his neck from behind and strangled him in the crook of its elbow, while fingers like bars of steel fastened on his wrist just behind the gun. His head was dragged back so that he looked up into the inverted vision of twin blue eyes that were as clear and cold as frozen ultramarines; and then the intruder's mouth spoke against his ear.

'Come and pay calls with me, Galbraith,' he heard; and then he fainted.

CHAPTER VII

ABDUL OSMAN had also been drinking, but with him it had been almost a festive rite. He had put on a dinner suit, with a red tarboosh; and his broad soft stomach, swelling out under the sloping expanse of a snowy shirt front, gave him the appearance of a flabby pyramid walking about on legs, as if a bloated frog had been dressed up in European clothes. His wide sallow face was freshly shaved and had a slightly greasy look around the chin. Although he wore Western clothes, cut by the best tailors in London, the saloon of his yacht, in which he was walking about, was decorated entirely in the Oriental style, which was the only one in which he felt truly comfortable. The rugs on the floor were Bokhara and Shiraz, virtually priceless; the tables ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the couches low, covered with dark silk brocades, heavily strewn with cushions. Even the prosaic portholes were framed with embroidered hangings and barred with iron grilles so that they should not clash with the atmosphere, and the dim concealed lights left corners full of shadows. Osman, in his dinner jacket and white starched shirt front, fitted into those surroundings with a paradoxical effect, like an ardent nudist clinging to his straw hat and pince-nez; but he was incapable of perceiving the incongruity.

He was preening himself before a mirror, a half emptied glass in one hand, the other smoothing an imperceptible crease out of his bow tie, a thin oval cigarette smouldering between his lips, when he heard the approaching sputter of a motor launch. He listened in immobile expectancy and heard the engine cut off and the sound of voices. Then the Arab seaman, Ali, knocked on the door and opened it, and Laura Berwick stood in the entrance.

Abdul Osman saw her in the mirror, from which he had not moved; and for a second or two he did not stir. His veins raced with the sudden concrete knowledge of triumph. Cold-blooded ? The corners of his mouth lifted fractionally, wrinkling up his eyes. At their very first meeting, the formal touch of her hand had filled him with a hunger like raging furnaces: now, seeing her gloriously modelled face and shoulders standing out brilliantly pale in the dark doorway, his heart pounded molten flame through his body.

He turned slowly, spreading out one arm in a grandi­ose gesture.

'So you have come-my beautiful white rose!'

Laura Berwick smiled hesitantly. The room was full of the peculiarly dry choky scent of sandalwood. Every­thing in her recoiled in disgust from its ornately exotic gloom. It seemed unhealthy, suffocating, heavy with an aura of horribly secret indulgence, like the slack puffy body of the man who was feeding his eyes on her. She was glad that Toby had come with her-his clear-cut Spartan cleanness was like an antiseptic.

'Mr. Stride asked me to bring a note over to you,' she said.

He held out his hand, without taking his eyes from her face. Unhurriedly he ripped open the envelope-it contained nothing but a blank sheet of paper. Deliber­ately he tore it into four pieces and laid them on a table.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'it was more important that a note should bring you over to me.'

Then for the first time he saw Toby Halidom, and his face changed.

'What are you doing here?' he inquired coldly.

The young man was faintly taken aback.

'I just buzzed over with Miss Berwick,' he said. 'Thought she might like some company, and all that.'

'You may go.'

There was an acid, drawling incisiveness in Osman's voice that was too dispassionate to be rude. It staggered Halidom with the half-sensed menace of it.

'I asked Mr. Halidom to come with me,' said Laura, striving to keep a sudden breathlessness out of her voice. 'We shall be going back together.'

'Did-er-your stepfather suggest that arrange­ment ?'

'No. Toby just thought he'd come.'

'Really!' Osman laughed softly, an almost in­audible chuckle that made the girl shiver unaccount­ably. 'Really!' He turned away, a movement that came after his temporary motionlessness with a force that was subtly sinister. 'Really!' The joke seemed to amuse him. He strolled away down the room, the cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and turned again at a place where the dim lights left him almost in darkness. The cigarette end glowed like a hot ruby against the grey smudge of his shirt front in the gloom -they could not see his thick fingers touching bells that had men always waiting to answer them. 'How very romantic, my dear Halidom! The perfect knight- errant!'

Toby Halidom flushed dully at the sneer. Something in the atmosphere of the interview was getting under his skin, in spite of the healthy unimaginativeness of his instincts.

'Well, Laura, let's be getting along,' he said, and heard the note of strain in his own assumed heartiness.

Osman's ghostly chuckle whispered again out of the shadows, but he said nothing. Halidom turned abruptly to the door, opened it, and stopped dead. There were three of Osman's crew outside, crowded impassively across the opening.

Toby faced the Egyptian with clenched fists.

'What's the idea, Osman?' he demanded bluntly.

Abdul moved an inch or two from his position, so that his broad fleshy face stood out like a disembodied mask of evil under one of the rose-shaded light globes.

'The idea, Halidom, is that Laura is staying here with me-and you are not.'