as heavy as a steam roller.
'Is that all you've got to say?' he demanded hoarsely.
'It'll do for the time being,' said the Saint calmly. 'That's what I say we've been doing; and what the hell does it matter to you?'
The detective appeared, somehow, in spite of his mountainous immobility, to approach the verge of gibbering. It may seem unkind of the chronicler to mention this, but he is conscientiously concerned to deal only with the bare facts, without apology or decoration. And yet he must admit that Mr. Teal had lately suffered much.
'Now listen,' Mr. Teal got out through his teeth. 'About half-past eleven tonight the watchman at Hawker's factory, down at Brooklands, was knocked on the head by someone he found prowling around the sheds. When he woke up and raised the alarm, one of the hangars had been forced open and an aeroplane had been stolen!'
Simon tapped his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. His brain was starting to turn over like an electric motor responding to the touch of a switch, but no hint of that sudden mental commotion could have been seen in his face. His gaze went back to the detective from under quizzically slanting eyebrows.
'It sounds pretty ambitious,' he remarked. 'But what makes you think I'd be interested?'
'I don't kave to think--'
'1 know, Claud. You just chew a thistle and your ears flap.'
'I don't have to think,' Teal said grimly, 'when you leave your mark behind you.'
The Saint raised one eyebrow a little further.
'Meaning?'
'When the watchman woke up, there was a piece of paper pinned to his coat. There was a drawing on it. It was the same drawing that was found in the pocket of that dead airman last night --Manuel Enrique, It was your mark!'
'Dear me!' said the Saint.
The detective's china-blue eyes were as hard and bright as porcelain. His mouth had disappeared altogether--it was a mere slit in the hardened round chubbiness of his face.
'I suppose you can explain that away,' he snapped.
'Of course I can,' said the Saint easily. 'The same low criminal who was taking my name in vain on the Brighton road last night------'
'Is that all the alibi you've got this time?' Teal asked, with a kind of saw-edged note in his voice.
'More or less,' said the Saint. He watched the detective take a second grip on himself, watched a glimmer of tentative relief and triumph creep hesitantly into the angry baby-blue eyes, watched the thinned mouth begin to open for an answer-- and added, with a seraphically apologetic smile, at the very last and most devastating instant: 'Oh, yes, there was something I forgot to mention. On the way from St. Paul's to the Haymarket I did stop at the Lex Garage off Piccadilly to collect my car; and now I come to think of it, Claud, it must have been exactly half-past eleven.'
Mr. Teal blinked. It was not the nervous bashful blink of a gentle botanist being rudely confronted with the facts of mammalian reproduction : it was the dizzy blink of a bather who has made unwary contact with an electric eel. His chest appeared to deflate; then it swelled up again to a point where his coat was straining on its seams.
'You expect me to believe that?' he blared.
'Of course not,' said the Saint. 'You haven't enough intelligence to save yourself that much time. But you can verify it. Go to the garage and find out. Their records'll show what time I checked out. The night staff'll remember me. Go and ask 'em. Push off and amuse yourself. But if that's all that's on your mind tonight, I'm going to bed.'
' 'You can wait a little longer,' retorted Teal. 'Half-past eleven isn't the only time I want you to account for.'
The Saint sighed.
'What's the rest of it?'
'You seemed rather interested in Sir Hugo Renway last night,' Teal said waspily, 'so I asked the police down there to keep an eye on his place. I know your methods pretty well by now, and I had an idea you might go there. At half-past one this morning the constable was cycling round the estate when he saw your car--and him!'
'What, Brother Uniatz?' drawled Simon. 'Did you see a cop, Hoppy?'
Mr. Uniatz, who had been trying to unlock the cellaret with a piece of bent wire, turned round vacantly.
'Yes, boss,' he said.
'Ha!' barked Mr. Teal. It may sound improbable, but that is a close approximation to the noise he made.
'I see one only yesterday,' Hoppy elaborated hastily, with the Saint's blue stare scorching through him. 'In de Haymarket.'
Chief Inspector Teal did not burst. Perhaps it is not actually possible for the human organism to become so inflated with spleen that it explodes into small fragments--the chronicler is inclined to take this as the only plausible reason why his favourite detective did not stand there and pop. But there was something about him which suggested that even the point of a joke might have punctured him into the power of performing that impossible disintegration. He glared at the Saint again with reddening eyes.
'This constable was also knocked on the head,' he went on, getting the words out somehow through his contracting larynx; 'and when he woke up----'
'The garden gate had been forced open and March House had been stolen,' murmured Simon. 'I know. The bloke flew off with it in the aeroplane.'
