plenty of those mistakes before. There's no evidence and nothing we can charge him with, but if those stones that were stolen weren't stolen property already, I'll eat my hat. And if Enderby isn't hand in glove with the High Fence, even if he isn't the High Fence himself, I'll eat yours as well.'
Pryke shook his head.
'I don't know that I agree. Fasson was shot as he was running out of Abbot's Yard, and when we made a house-to-house inquiry we found out that Templar had a place there under one of his aliases--------'
'Well, what about it? I've never believed that the Saint didn't have something to do with it. I don't believe he killed Fasson; but I do believe that he got the body away from the flat where Fasson was shot, and that Fasson wasn't dead. I believe that he made Fasson talk; and that Fasson wasn't really killed until either the Saint let him go, or he ran away. I think Fasson told him something that made him go after Enderby, and'
Pryke shook his head again, with an increase of confidence and patronising self-satisfaction that made Teal stop short with his gorge rising under the leaven of undutiful thoughts of murder.
'I think you're wrong,' he said.
'Oh, I am, am I?' said Mr. Teal malevolently. 'Well, what's the right answer?'
The smug shaking of Junior Inspector Pryke's head continued until Teal could have kicked him.
'I have a theory of my own,' he said, 'which I'd like to work on-unless you've got something definite that you want me to do.'
'You go ahead and work on it,' replied Teal blisteringly. 'When I want something definite done, I shan't ask you. In another minute you'll be telling me that the Assistant Commissioner is the High Fence.'
The other stood up, smoothing down the points of his waistcoat. In spite of the situation for which he was responsible, his uncrushable superciliousness was reviving outwardly untouched; but Teal saw that underneath it he was hot and simmering.
'That wouldn't be so wild as some of your guesses,' he said mysteriously. 'I'd like to get the Saint-if anyone can be made a Chief Inspector for failing to catch him, they'd have to make a Superintendent of anyone who did it.'
'Make you a Superintendent?' jeered Teal. 'With a name like yours?'
'It's a very good name,' said his junior tartly. 'There was a Pryke at the Battle of Hastings.'
'I'll bet he was a damn good cook,' snarled Mr. Teal.
VIII For Simon Templar there was an indefinite period of trackless oblivion, from which he was roused now and again to dream curious dim dreams. Once the movement of the cab stopped, and he heard voices; then a door slammed, and he sunk back into the dark before his impression had more than touched the fringe of consciousness. Once he seemed to be carried over a gravel path: he heard the scrunch of stones, and felt the grip of the hands that were holding him up, but there was no power of movement in his limbs. It was too much trouble to open his eyes, and he fell asleep again almost immediately. Between those momentary stirrings of awareness, which were so dull and nebulous that they did not even stimulate a desire to amplify them, stretched a colourless void of languorous insensibility in which time had no landmarks.
Then there was the feeling of a hard chair under him, a constriction of cords about his wrists and ankles, and a needle that stabbed his forearm. His eyelids felt weighted down almost beyond his power to lift, but when he dragged them up once he could see nothing. He wondered vaguely whether the room was in darkness, or whether he was blind; but he was too apathetic to dwell earnestly on a choice between the alternatives. There was a man who talked softly out of the blackness, in a voice that sounded hazily familiar, asking him a lot of questions. He had an idea that he answered them, without conscious volition and equally without opposition from his will. Afterwards, he could never remember what he said.
Presently the interval of half-consciousness seemed to merge back without a borderline into the limitless background of sleep.
When he woke up again his head ached slightly with a kind of empty dizziness, and his stomach felt as if it had been turned inside out and spun round on a fly-wheel till it was raw and tender. It was an effort to open his eyes, but not such a hopeless and unimportant feat as it had seemed before. Once open, he had more difficulty at first in focusing them. He had an impression of bare grey boards, and his own feet tied together with strands of new rope. The atmosphere was warm and close, and smelt nauseatingly of paint and oil. There was a thrumming vibration under him, coupled with a separate and distinct swaying movement: after a while he picked an irregular splash and gurgle of water out of the background of sound, and induced his eyes to coordinate on a dark circular window framed in tarnished brass.
'So you're waking up for a last look round, are you?' growled a voice somewhere to his left.
Simon nodded. Shifting his gaze gingerly about, he made out more details. There was an unshaded electric bulb socketed into the low ceiling which gave a harsh but sufficient light. He was in the cabin of a boat-a small craft, by the look and motion of it, either a canal tug or a scrap-heap motor cruiser. From the rows of orderly lights that drifted past the portholes on both sides of the cabin, he deduced that they were running down the Thames.
The man who had spoken sat on an old canvas sack spread out on the bare springs of a bunk. He was a thickset prognathous individual with thin reddish hair and a twisted mouth, most unnautically clad in a striped suit, a check cap, and canary-yellow shoes.
'Where are we off to?' Simon asked.
The man chuckled.
'You're going to have a look at some fishes. I don't know whether they'll like you, but they'll be able to go on lookin' at you till they get used to it.'
'Is that the High Fence's joke?' inquired Simon sardonically.
'It's the High Fence you're talkin' to.'
The Saint regarded him contemptuously.
'Your name is Quincey. I believe I could give you a list of all your convictions. Let me see. Two for robbery with violence, one for carrying firearms without a licence, one for attempted'
