'I'm afraid you'll have to be the consolation prize, Theobald,' he remarked and stooped to remove the square emerald from the cursing consolation's shirtfront. 'You won't mind if I borrow this, will you? I've got a friend who likes this sort of thing.'
With only one other stop, which he made in Sloane Square to rekindle the rear light from which he had thoughtfully removed the bulb some time before, he drove the creaking taxi to Abbot's Yard. The tears were rolling down his cheeks, and from time to time his body was shaken by one of those racking sobs which Mr. Teal had so grievously misunderstood. It is given to every man to enjoy just so many immortal memories and no more; and the Saint liked to enjoy them when they came.
Ten minutes later he stopped the palpitating cab in Abbot's Yard, outside the door of No. 26. Anyone else would have driven it twenty miles out of London and buried it in a field before going home, in his frantic desire to eliminate all trace of his association with it; but Simon Templar's was an inspired simplicity which amounted to genius. He knew that if the cab was found in Abbot's Yard by any prowling sleuth who could identify it, then Abbot's Yard was the last place on earth where the same sleuth would look for him and he was still smiling as he climbed down and opened the door.
'Will you come out, fair lady?' he said.
She got out, staring at him uncertainly; and he indicated the door of the house.
'This is where I live--sometimes,' he explained. 'Don't look so surprised. Even cab drivers can be artists. I draw voluptuous nudes with engine oil on old cylinder blocks--it's supposed to be frightfully modern.'
Abbot's Yard, Chelsea, is one of those multitudinous little lanes which open off the King's Road. To say that not twenty years ago it had been a row of slum cottages would be practising a bourgeois suppressio veri: it had certainly been a slum, but it still was. If anything, Simon was inclined to think that the near-artists and synthetic Bohemians who now populated it had lowered the tone of the neighbourhood; but the studio which he rented in No. 26 had often served him well as an emergency address, and in his irregular life it was sometimes an advantage to have quarters in a district where eccentric goings-on attracted far less attention than they would have in South Kensington.
He steered the girl up the dark narrow stairs with a hand on her arm and felt that she was trembling--he was not surprised. From the studio, as they drew near, came the sounds of a melancholy voice raised in inharmonious song; and the Saint grinned. He opened the door, passing the girl in and closing it again behind them, and surveyed Mr. Uniatz reprovingly.
'I see you found the whisky,' he said.
'Sure,' said Mr. Uniatz, rising a trifle unsteadily, but beaming an honest welcome none the less. 'It was in de pantry, jus' like ya tole me, boss.'
The Saint sighed.
'It'll never be there again,' he said, 'unless you lose your way.' He was stripping off his taxi driver's overcoat and peaked cap; and as he did so, in the full light, the girl recognized him, and he saw her eyes widen. 'This bloke with the skinful is Mr. Hoppy Uniatz, old dear--a handy man with a Roscoe but not so hot on the Higher Thought. If I knew your name I'd introduce you.'
'I'm Annette Vickery,' said the girl. 'But I don't even know who you are.'
'I'm Simon Templar,' he said. 'They call me the Saint.'
She caught her breath for an instant; and suddenly she seemed to see him again for the first time, and the flicker of fear came and went in her brown eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, lean and dark and dangerous and debonair, smiling at her with a cigarette between his lips and a wisp of smoke curling past his eyes; and it is only fair to say that he enjoyed his moment. But still he smiled, at himself and her.
'Well, I'm not a cannibal,' he murmured, 'although you may have heard rumours. Why don't you sit down and let's finish our talk?' She sat down slowly.
'About--pillows?' she said, with the ghost of a smile; and he began to laugh. 'Or something.'
He sent Hoppy Uniatz out to the kitchen to brew coffee and gave her a cigarette. She might have been twenty- two or twenty-three, he saw-- the indifferent lighting of Bond Street had had no need to be kind to her. He was more sure than ever that her red mouth would smile easily and there would be mischief in the brown eyes; but he would have to lift more than a corner of the shadow to see those things.
'I told you the Barnyard Club was no place to go,' he said, drawing up a chair. 'Why wouldn't you take my advice?'
'I didn't understand.'
All at once he realized that she was crediting him with having known that the raid was going to take place; but he showed nothing in his face.
'You've got hold of it now?'
She shrugged helplessly.
'Some of it. But I still don't know why you should have--bothered to get me out of the mess.'
'That's a long story,' he said cheerfully. 'You ought to ask Chief Inspector Teal about it some day--he'll be able to tell you more. Somehow, we just seem to get in each other's way. But if you're * thinking that you owe me something for it, I'm afraid you're right.'
He saw the glimmer of fear in her eyes again; and yet he knew that she was not afraid of him. She had no reason to be. But she was afraid.
'You--kill people--don't you?' she said after a long silence.
The question sounded so startlingly naive that he wanted to laugh; but something told him not to. He drew at his cigarette with a perfectly straight face.
'Sometimes even fatally,' he admitted, with only the veiled mockery in his eyes to show for that glint of humour. 'Why--is there anyone you'd like to see taken off? Hoppy Uniatz will do it for you if I haven't time.'
'What do you kill them for?'
