'One.'
His brows sloped up in a hair-line of devil-may-care delight that she knew only too well-a contour of impenitent Saintliness that had made trouble-hunting its profession too long to be disturbed when the trouble came unasked.
'Not poor old Claud Eustace again?' he said.
'No. It's that new fellow-the Trenchard product. I've been waiting here three quarters of an hour to catch you as you came along and tell you. Sam Outrell gave me the wire.'
VI The Saint was unperturbed. He had removed the walrus moustache which had whiffled so realistically before Miss Weagle, and with it the roseate complexion and melancholy aspect on which it had bloomed with such lifelike aptness. The costume which he had worn on that occasion had also been put away, in the well-stocked wardrobe of another pied-a-terre which he rented under another of his multitudinous aliases for precisely those skilful changes of identity. He had left the plodding inconspicuous gait of his character in the same place. In a light grey suit which looked as if it had only that morning been unpacked from the tailor's box, and a soft hat canted impudently over one eye, he had a debonair and disreputable elegance which made the deputation of welcome settle into clammily hostile attention.
'I was waiting for you,' said Junior Inspector Pryke damply.
'No one would have thought it,' said the Saint, with a casual smile. 'Do I look like your fairy godmother?'
Pryke was not amused.
'Shall we go up to your rooms?' he suggested; and Simon's gaze rested on him blandly.
'What for, Desmond?' He leaned one elbow on the desk at his side, and brought the wooden-faced janitor into the party with a shift of his lazy smile. 'You can't shock Sam Outrell-he knew me before you ever did. And Miss Holm is quite broad-minded, too. By the way, have you met Miss Holm? Pat, this is Miss Desdemona Pryke, the Pride of the Y.W.C.A.-----'
'I'd rather see you alone, if you don't mind,' said the detective.
He was beginning to go a trifle white about the mouth; and Simon's eyes marked the symptom with a wicked glitter of unhallowed mischief. It was a glitter that Mr. Teal would have recognised only too easily, if he had been there to see it; but for once that long-suffering waist-line of the Law was not its victim.
'What for?' Simon repeated, with a puzzled politeness that was about as cosy and reliable as a tent on the edge of a drifting iceberg. 'If you've got anything to say to me that this audience can't hear, I'm afraid you're shinning up the wrong leg. I'm not that sort of a girl.'
'I know perfectly well what I want to say,' retorted Pryke chalkily.
'Then I hope you'll say it,' murmured the Saint properly. 'Come along, now, Desmond-let's get it over with. Make a clean breast of it-as the bishop said to the actress. Unmask the Public School Soul. What's the matter?'
Pryke's hands clenched spasmodically at his sides. 'Do you know a man called Enderby?' 'Never heard of him,' said the Saint unblushingly. 'What does he do-bore the holes in spaghetti, or something?'
'At about ten minutes to three this afternoon,' said Pryke, with his studiously smooth University accent burring jaggedly at the edges, 'a man entered his office, falsely representing himself to be an agent of the Southshire Insurance Company, and took away about twenty-seven thousand pounds' worth of precious stones.'
Simon raised his eyebrows.
'It sounds like a tough afternoon for Comrade Enderby,' he remarked. 'But why come and tell me? D'you mean you want me to try and help you recover these jools?'
The antarctic effrontery of his innocence would have left nothing visible in a thermometer but a shrunken globule of congealed quicksilver. It was a demonstration of absolute vacuum in the space used by the normal citizen for storing his conscience that left its audience momentarily speechless. Taking his first ration of that brass-necked Saintliness which had greyed so many of the hairs in Chief Inspector Teal's dwindling crop, Desmond Pryke turned from white to pink, and then back to white again.
'I want to know what you were doing at the time,' he said.
'Me?' Simon took out his cigarette-case. 'I was at the Plaza, watching a Mickey Mouse. But what on earth has that got to do with poor old Enderby and his jools?'
Suddenly the detective's hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist.
'That's what you've got to do with it. That scar on your forearm. Miss Weagle-Mr. Enderby's secretary-saw it on this fake insurance agent's arm when he picked up the parcel of stones. It was part of the description she gave us!'
Simon looked down at his wrist in silence for a moment, the cigarette he had chosen poised forgotten in mid- air, gazing at the tail of the furrowed scar that showed beyond the edge of his cuff. It was a souvenir he carried from quite a different adventure, and he had usually remembered to keep it covered when he was disguised. He realised that he had underestimated both the eyesight of Miss Weagle and the resourcefulness of Junior Inspector Pryke; but when he raised his eyes again they were still bantering and untroubled.
'Yes, I've got a scar there-but I expect lots of other people have, too. What else did this Weagle dame say in her description?'
'Nothing that couldn't be covered by a good disguise,' said Pryke, with a new note of triumph in his voice. 'Now are you coming along quietly?'
'Certainly not,' said the Saint.
The detective's eyes narrowed.
'Do you know what happens if you resist a police officer?'
'Surely,' said the Saint, supple and lazy. 'The police officer gets a thick ear.'
