The Saint rolled his cigar steadily between his finger and thumb. The question with which he had taxed the imagination of Mr. Uniatz had been propounded again where it might find a more positive reply; but the Saint's face showed no trace of his eagerness for a solution. He tipped the dialogue over the brink of elucidation with a single impassive monosyllable:
'How?'
'The Saint has a--ah--confederate,' said Far-will, looking at the ceiling. 'A young lady. We understand that she shares his confidence in all his --ah--enterprises. We may therefore assume that she is cognizant of the whereabouts of the volume in question. If the Saint were--ah--removed, therefore,' Farwill suggested impersonally, 'one would probably have a more--ah--tractable person with whom to deal.'
A flake of ash broke from the Saint's cigar and trickled a dusty trail down his coat; but his eyes did not waver.
'I get you,' he said.
The simplicity of the argument hit him between the eyes with a force that almost staggered him. Now that it had been put forward, he couldn't understand how he had failed to see it himself from the beginning. It was so completely and brutally logical. The Saint was tough: everyone knew it, everyone admitted it. And he held the whip hand. But he could be--ah--removed; and the whip would pass into the hands of one lone girl. Undoubtedly the problem might be simplified. It would be reduced to an elementary variant of an old game of which the grim potentialities were still capable of sending a cold trickle down his spine. He should have seen it at once. His hat hung in the hall with a bullet-punched ventilation through the crown which was an enduring testimony that the opposition had neither gone berserk nor sunk into the depths of imbecility; without even charting the pinnacles of satanic cunning, they had merely grasped at the elusive obvious-- which he himself had been too wooden-headed to see.
'That's a great idea,' said the Saint softly. 'So after we've rubbed out this guy Templar, we go after his moll.'
'Ah--yes,' assented Farwill, staring into the opposite corner as if he were not answering the question at all. 'If that should prove necessary-ah--yes.'
'Sure,' chirped Mr. Uniatz brightly, forestalling his cue. 'We'll fix de goil.'
The Saint silenced him with a sudden lift of ice-blue eyes. His voice became even softer, but the change was too subtle for Farwill to notice it.
'Who thought of that great idea?' he asked.
'It was jointly agreed,' said the Honourable Leo evasively. 'In such a crisis, with such issues at stake, one cannot be sentimental. The proposition was received with unanimous approval. As a matter of fact, I understand that an abortive attempt has already been made in that direction--I should perhaps have explained that there is another member of our--er--coalition who was unfortunately unable to be present at our recent discussion. I expect him to arrive at any moment, as he is anx- I ious to make your acquaintance. He is a gentleman who has already done valuable independent work towards this--ah--consummation which we all desire.'
The Saint's eyebrows dropped one slow an gentle quarter-inch over his steady eyes.
'Who is he?'
Farwill's mouth opened for another elaborate paragraph; but before he had voiced his preliminary 'Ah' the headlights of a car swept across the drawn blinds, and the gravel scraped again outside the windows. Footsteps and voices sounded in the hall, and the library door opened to admit the form of the Honourable Leo's butler. 'Lord Iveldown,' he announced.
VIII
Simon Templar's cigar had gone out. He put it down carefully in an ashtray and took out his cigarette case. It stands as a matter of record that at that moment he did not bat an eyelid, though he knew that the showdown had arrived.
'Delighted to see you, Iveldown,' the Honourable Leo was exclaiming. 'Yorkland was unfortunately unable to stay. However, you are not too late to make the acquaintance of our new--ah-- agents. Mr. Orconi . . .'
Farwill's voice trailed hesitantly away. It began to dawn on him that his full-throated flow of oratory was not carrying his audience with him. Something, it seemed, was remarkably wrong.
Standing in front of the door which had closed behind the retiring butler, Lord Iveldown and Mr. Nassen were staring open-mouthed at the Saint with the aspect of a comedy unison dance team arrested in midflight. The rigidity of their postures, the sag of their lower jaws, the glazed bulging of their eyes, and the suffusion of red in their complexions were so ludicrously identical that they might have been reflections of each other. They looked like two peas who had fallen out of their pod and were still trying to realize what had hit them; and the Honourable Leo looked from them to the Saint and back again with a frown of utter bewilderment.
'Whatever is the matter?' he demanded, startled into uttering one of the shortest sentences of his life; and at the sound of his question Lord Iveldown came slowly and painfully out of his paralysis.
He turned, blinking through his pince-nez.
'Is that--that--the American gunman you told me about?' he queried awfully.
'That is what I have been--ah--given to understand,' said Farwill, recovering himself. 'We are indebted to Mr. Uniatz for the introduction. I am informed that he has had an extensive career in the underworld of--ah--Pittsburgh. Do you imply that you are already acquainted?'
His lordship swallowed.
'You bumptious blathering ass!' he said.
Simon Templar uncoiled himself from his chair with a genial smile. The spectacle of two politicians preparing to speak their minds candidly to one another was so rare and beautiful that it grieved him to interrupt; but he had his own part to play. It had been no great effort to deny himself the batting of an eyelid up to that point--the impulse to bat eyelids simply had not arisen to require suppressing. Coming immediately on the heels of Leo Farwill's revelation, he was not sorry to see Lord Iveldown.
'What ho, Snowdrop,' he murmured cordially. 'Greetings, your noble Lordship.'
