that the Saint was putting up, to consider the items of it soberly and seriously. And he was sure he was making a fool of himself. He gulped down the ridiculous impulse and plunged into defensive sarcasm.
'Of course I didn't know all that,' he almost purred. 'Is Einstein going to prove it for you, or will Renway admit it himself?'
'Renway will admit it himself,' said the Saint grimly. 'But even that won't be necessary. Did you know that these ten tons of gold were being shipped on aeroplane G-EZQX, which took off from Croydon at seven?' He ripped the top sheet off the memorandum block on the desk and thrust it out. 'Do you know that that's his handwriting, or will you want his bank manager to tell you?'
Teal looked at the sheet.
'It doesn't matter much whether it's his writing or your version of it,' he said, with an almost imperceptible break in the smoothness of his studied purr. 'As a Treasury official, Renway has a per-fect right to know anything like that.'
'Yeah?' Simon's voice was suddenly so soft that it made Teal's laboured suaveness sound like the sreech of a circular saw. 'And I suppose he had a perfect right to know Manuel Enrique, and not say anything about it when he brought him into the police station at Horley?'
'Who says he knew Enrique?'
The Saint smiled.
'Not me, Claud. If I tell you he did, it'll just make you quite sure he didn't. This is what says so.'
He put his hand in his pocket and took out the letter which he had found in the safe. 'Or maybe I faked this, too?' he suggested mildly.
'You may have done,' said Teal dispassionately; but his baby-blue eyes rested with a rather queer intensity on Simon's face.
'Come for a walk, Claud,' said the Saint gently, 'and tell me I faked this.'
He turned aside quite calmly under the muzzle of Teal's gun and walked to the door. For no earthly reason that he could have given in logical terms, Mr. Teal followed him. And all the time he had a hot gnawing fear that he was making a fool of himself.
Sergeant Barrow followed Mr. Teal because that was his job. He was a fool anyway, and he knew it. Mr. Teal had often told him so.
In the billiard room, Simon pointed to the panel sagging loose on its hinges as he had torn it off-- the hole he had chipped through the wall, the wooden stairway going steeply down into the chalk.
'That's where those six men have been living, so that the ordinary servants never knew there was anything going on. You'll find their beds and everything. That's where I was shut up when they got wise to who I was; and that's where I've just got out of.'
Teal said nothing for several seconds. And then the most significant thing was, not what he said, but what he did.
He put his gun back in his pocket and looked at the Saint almost helplessly. No one will ever know what it cost him to be as natural as that. But whatever his other failings may have been, Chief Inspector Teal was a kind of sportsman. He could take it, even when it hurt.
'What else do you know?' he asked.
'That the submarine is out in the Channel now, waiting for the aeroplane to come down. That Renway's up over here in that Hawker ship, with loaded machine guns to shoot down the gold transport, and a packet of bombs to drop on any boat that tries to go to the rescue. That all the telephone lines to Croydon Aerodrome, and between the coast and London, have been cut. That there's a radio transmitter somewhere in this place--I haven't found it yet--which is just waiting to carry on signalling when the transport plane stops. That there isn't a hope in hell of getting a warning through to anywhere in time to stop the raid.'
Teal's pink face had gone curiously pale.
'Isn't there anything we can do?' he said.
'There's only one thing,' answered the Saint. 'Down on the landing field you probably saw a Tiger Moth warming up. It's mine. It's the ship I came here in--but that's another story. With your permission, I can go up in it and try to keep Renway off. Don't tell me it's suicide, because I know all that. But it's murder for the crew of that transport plane if I don't try.'
The detective did not answer for a moment. He stared at the floor, avoiding the Saint's straight blue gaze.
'I can't stop you,' he said at last; and Simon smiled.
'You can forget about Hoppy hitting that policeman, if you're satisfied with the other evidence,' he said. He had a sudden absurd thought of what would shortly be happening to a certain George Wynnis, and a shaft of the old mockery touched his smile like sunlight. 'And next time I tell you that some low criminal is putting his stuff onto me, Claud,' he said, 'you mayn't be so nasty and disbelieving.'
His forefinger prodded Mr. Teal's stomach in the old maddening way; but his smile was only reminiscent. And without another word he went out of the billiard room, down the long dark corridor to the open air.
As he climbed into the cockpit of his ship he looked back towards the house and saw Mr. Teal standing on the terrace, watching him. He waved a gay arm, while the mechanic dragged away the chocks from under the wheels; and then he settled down and opened the throttle. The stick slid forward between his knees, the tail lifted, and he went roaring down the field to curve upwards in a steep climbing turn over the trees.
He had left it late enough; and if the wind had been in the north instead of in the south he might have been too late. Winding up the sky in smoothly controlled spirals, he saw the single wide span of a big monoplane coming up from the northern horizon, and knew that it must be the transport plane for which Renway was waiting--no other ship of that build would have been flying south at that hour. He looked for Renway and saw a shape like a big square-tipped seagull swinging round in a wide circle over the Channel, six thousand feet up in the cloudless blue. . . .
Renway! The Saint's steady fingers moved on the stick, steepening the angle of climb by a fraction; and his lips
