that wouldn't be too healthy for you.'
Mr. Uniatz ruminated over this point for two or three miles, and finally he shrugged.
'I dunno,' he said. 'It looks like we better not bump off dis guy, at dat. Whadda you t'ink, boss?'
Simon realized that he would have to be content with his own surmises, which were somewhat disturbing. He had been prepared to bank heavily on his immunity from death, if not from organized discomfort, so long as the ungodly were in doubt about the concurrent fate of Her Wedding Secret; but the recent episode was a considerable discouragement to his faith. Leaving aside the possibility that Lord Iveldown had gone completely and recklessly berserk, it meant that the ungodly were developing either a satanic cunning or a denseness of cranium equalled only by that of Hoppy Uniatz.
He made a rough summary of the opposition. They had been five in number originally, and it was only to be expected that out of those five a solid percentage would have been nonresisters; Sir Barclay Edingham had paid. Major General Sir Humbolt Quipp would pay. The active dissenters consisted of Lord Iveldown, who had already declared his hand, a certain Mr. Neville Yorkland, M.P., with whom the Saint was going to have an interview, and perhaps the Honourable Leo Farwill, who might jump either way. But none of these three gentlemen, undesirable citizens though they might be, could lightly be accused of excessive denseness of cranium. Neither, as a matter of fact, had the Saint been prepared to credit them with talents of satanic cunning; but on that score it was dawning on him that he might do well to maintain an open mind.
The inevitable triangle possessed a third corner --if anything so nearly spherical could be described as a corner--in the rotund shape of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal. Whatever his other errors may have been, Simon Templar was not guilty of kidding himself that he had finally and eternally disposed of that menace in the brief tete-a-tete they had enjoyed that morning.
The Saint, it must be confessed, had sometimes been guilty of deceiving Chief Inspector Teal. He, had not always unbosomed all his secrets as Mr. Teal had liked him to. At times, even, he had de-| liberately and grievously misled that persistent en-forcer of the law--a breach of the Public School Code which all English Gentlemen will un- doubtedly deplore.
He had misled Mr. Teal that morning, when telling him that he had an appointment in ten| minutes. As a matter of fact, the Saint's appointment was not until that evening, and he had merely been promising himself an idle day in the country on the way, with which he did not propose to allow Scotland Yar$ to interfere. It was a casual and almost pointless untruth; but he might have thought more about it if he had foreseen its results.
Mr. Teal brooded all day over his problem. In the course of the afternoon he had a second interview with the Honourable Leo Farwill; and that estimable politician's reaction to his report, far f rom consoling him, made him still more uneasy.
Later that evening he saw the assistant commissioner.
There's something darned funny going on, sir,' he summarized his conclusions tentatively.
The assistant commissioner sniffed. He had a sniff which annoyed Mr. Teal almost as much as Simon Templar's irreverently prodding forefinger.
'I, in my humble way, had reached the same conclusion,' said the commissioner sarcastically. 'Has Farwill said any more?'
'He was just wooden,' said Teal. 'That's what I don't like about it. If he'd gone off the deep end and ranted about the inefficiency of the police and the questions he was going to ask in Parliament-- all the usual stuff, you know--I'd have felt happier about it. That was what I was expecting him to do, but he didn't do it. He seemed to go hack into a sort of shell.'
'You mean you got the impression that he was rather regretting having gone to the police with that letter?'
Teal nodded.
'It did seem like that. I've seen it happen before, when the Saint's on a job. The fellow may kick up a fuss at first, but pretty soon he shuts down like a clam. Either he pays, or he tries to deal with the Saint on his own. He doesn't ask us to interfere again.'
'And yet you haven't the faintest idea why solid and respectable people--public men like Farwill, for instance-- crumple up like frightened babies just because this man writes them a letter,' remarked the assistant commissioner acidly.
The detective twiddled a button on his coat.
'I have got the faintest idea, sir,' he said redly. 'I've got more than a faint idea. I know why they do it. I know why they're doing it now. It's blackmail.'
'Do you know, I really believe you've solved the mystery,' said the commissioner, with a mildness that singed the air.
'If I've done that, I've done more than anyone else in this building,' retorted Teal heatedly. 'But there are plenty of people sitting in their offices criticizing me who couldn't have got half as far as I have, even if that isn't saying much.' He glared at his chief stubbornly, while all the ac-cumulated wrath and resentment of a score of such conferences rose up recklessly in his breast and strangled his voice for a moment. 'Everybody knows that it's some kind of blackmail, but that doesn't help. We can't prove it. When I produced that letter, Templar simply laughed at me. And he was right. There wasn't a line of blackmail in it--except to anyone who knew what was in that book he mentions.'
'Which you failed to find out,' said the commissioner.
'Which I failed to find out,' agreed Teal feverishly, 'because I'm not a miracle worker, and I never said I was.'
The assistant commissioner picked up his pen.
'Do you want a search warrant--is that what all these hysterics are about?' he inquired icily.
Teal gulped.
'Yes, I want a search warrant!' he exploded defiantly. 'I know what it means. The Saint'll probably get around that somehow. When I get there, the book will have disappeared, or it'll turn out to be a copy of Fairy Tales for Little Children, or something. And Edingham and Quipp will get up and swear it was never anything else.' Goaded
