The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

Claud should be encouraged to prod his nose into my private correspondence? If we let him run amok like that, one day he might go too far. We have warned him off for his own good.'

They celebrated suitably; and it was late that night when they returned home for a final plate of bacon and eggs before calling it a day. Simon paid off the taxi in Queen's Gate, and they walked up to the house together. The watcher at the corner of the road had gone---the Saint had not expected that Teal would urge him to stay on after that home-made gramophone record had been played.

It was so soon after he had finished installing his electric safety devices that Simon had not even started to anticipate results from them-they were provided for the more strenuous days which he hoped to enjoy before very long-when his return became more widely known and many more guilty consciences began to ask themselves whether their subterranean industries might prosper better if Simon Templar were removed from the catalogue of risks which no insurance company would cover. He had the front-door key in his hand before he remembered that the latest product of his defense genius was now in full working order. Quite casually he slid up a small metal panel under the knocker; and then his face went keen and hard. A tiny bulb set in the woodwork under the panel was glowing red.

Simon dropped the shutter over it again and drew Patricia aside.

'We've had a visitor,' he said. 'I didn't think the fun would begin quite so soon.'

There was nothing to show whether the visitor had taken his departure. Only one thing was certain-that someone or something had passed across the barrage of invisible alarms that Simon had arranged to cover every door and window in the place. The visitor might have left, but Simon was not disposed to bet on it.

He stood well to the side of the doorway, sheltered by the solid brickwork of the wall, while he reached round and slipped his key soundlessly into the lock at arm's length. Still keeping out of sight, he pushed the door softly back and felt under the jamb for the electric light switch. There was a flicker of fire and a deafening re­port; and then the light came on and Simon leapt through into the hall. He heard a patter of feet and the slam of a door, and raced through the kitchen to the back entrance on the mews. He got the door open in time to see a running figure fling itself into the back of an open car which was already speeding towards the street, and a second shot came from it before it turned out of the mews. The bullet flew wide and smacked into the wall; and Simon grinned gently and went back to Patricia Holm.

'There's one gunman in London who loses his nerve rather easily, which is just as well for us,' he remarked. 'But I wonder who it was?'

Curiously enough, he had almost forgotten the man named Jones, who had done such an unfriendly thing to Brian Quell that night in Paris.

CHAPTER IV THERE were no further demonstrations of disapproval that night, although the Saint paid particular attention to the setting of his gadgets before he went to bed, and slept with one ear cocked. He came down to breakfast late the next morning, and was confronted by a shining little cylinder of brass in the middle of his plate. For a moment he stared at it puzzledly, and then he laughed.

'A souvenir?' he murmured, and Patricia nodded.

'I found it in the hall, and I thought you might like to put it in your museum.'

Simon spread his napkin cheerfully.

'More 'Weapons I Have Not Been Killed With'?' he suggested. 'There must be quite a trunkful of them.' He reached out a hand towards the cartridge case, and then drew it back. 'Wait a minute-just how did you pick this thing up ?'

'Why-I don't know. I --'

'Surely you can remember. Think for a minute. I want you to show me exactly how you took hold of it, how you handled it, everything that happened to it between the time when you saw it on the carpet and the time when it reached this plate. . . . No-don't touch it again. Use a cigarette.'

The girl took up the cigarette endways between her thumb and forefinger.

'That's all I did,' she said. 'I had the plate in my other hand, and I brought it straight in. Why do you want to know ?'

'Because all clever criminals wear gloves when they open safes, but very few of them wear gloves when they're loading a gun.' Simon picked up the shell delicately in his handkerchief, rubbed the base carefully where the girl's thumb had touched it, and dropped it into an empty matchbox. 'Thanks to your fastidious handling, we probably have here some excellent finger-prints of a rotten marksman-and one never knows when they might come in handy.'

He turned to a plate of sizzling bacon and eggs with the profound gusto of a man who has slept like a child and woken up like a lion. Patricia allowed him to eat and skim through his morning paper in peace. Whatever schemes and theories were floating through his mercurial imagination, he would never have expounded them before his own chosen time; and she knew better than to try and drag them out of him before he had dealt satisfactorily with his fast.

He was stirring his second cup of coffee when the telephone bell roused him from a fascinating description of the latest woman Atlantic flier's underwear. He reached out a long arm, lifted the receiver, and ad­mitted fearlessly that he was Mr. Simon Templar. 'I trust you are well,' said the telephone. The Saint raised his eyebrows and felt around for a cigarette.

'I'm very fit, thanks,' he said. 'How are you? And if it comes to that, who are you?'

A deep chuckle reached him from the other end of the line.

'So long as you don't interfere with me, that need not concern you. I'm sorry that you should have had such an unpleasant shock last night, but if my envoy had kept his head you would have felt nothing at all. On the other hand, his foolishness might still encourage you to accept a friendly warning.'

'That's very kind of you,' said the Saint thoughtfully. 'But I've already got someone to see that my socks are aired, and I always take care not to get my feet wet --'

'I'm talking about more dangerous things than colds, Mr. Templar.'

Simon's gaze fell on the sheet of newspaper which he had been reading. Two columns away from the inven­ tory of the lady aviator's wardrobe he saw a headline that he had not noticed before; and the germ of an in­