'I don't know what I think,' said the Saint impatiently. 'I'm just trying to sort things out. Ripwell hasn't disinherited him yet, has he? Well, who'd make the biggest profit out of Rip-well's death? . . . But even that hasn't anything to do with the rest of it. There are two mysteries tangled up, and I'm trying to make them tie. The hell with it!'
He picked up a glass and subsided with it into a chair, frowning savagely. Odd loose ends out of the tangle kept on linking up and matching, tantalising him with a deceptive hope that the rest of the pattern was just about to follow on and fall neatly into place; but at the climax there was always one clashing colour, some shape or other that did not fit. Somewhere in the web there must be a thin tortuous thread that would hold it all together, but the thread was always dancing just beyond his grasp.
'If-if you're not quite sure,' Irelock was saying hesitantly, 'have you got to say anything to Teal? I mean, unless Lord Ripwell-unless everybody's got to know that Kenneth funked...'
He broke off at the sound of a footstep on the path outside, but his bright eyes continued the appeal. Simon moved his head noncommittally, but he had no immediate intention of making Chief Inspector Teal a free gift of the wear and tear on his own valuable grey matter.
'I've posted the constable outside, under the bedroom window,' said the detective, and looked at the glass which Irelock was offering him. 'No, thank you-fat men didn't ought to drink. It's had for the heart. The doctor hasn't been able to get hold of a nurse yet, so we'd better take it in turns to sit up.'
Irelock nodded, and took the first sip at his highball.
'I don't mind taking the-----'
His voice wrenched into a ghastly retching sound, and they stared at him in momentary paralysis. And then, as Simon started to his feet, he lurched forward and knocked the glass spinning out of the Saint's hand with a convulsive sweep of his arm.
'For God's sake!' he gasped. 'Don't drink. . .. Poison!'
VII SIMON sprang forward and caught him before Teal's lumbering movement in the same direction had more than started, but Irelock flung him off with demented energy and went staggering to the window. They heard him vomiting painfully outside.
'Get on the 'phone for a doctor,' snapped the Saint, as he dashed after him.
Irelock reeled into his arms in the darkness.
'Get me back,' he panted huskily. 'May be-all right.. . . Get . . . mustard and water', Simon brought him back into the room and laid him down on the sofa-he was curiously black about the eyes and the perspiration was streaming off him. Teal came in with the emetic almost at once, having gone out and found it on his own initiative; and there was a further period of unpleasantness. . . .
'All right-thanks.'
Irelock lay back at last with a groan. His breathing was still laboured, but the spasmodic twitching of his limbs was reduced to a faint trembling.
'I'm feeling--better. . . . Think we-got rid of it-in time. . . . That would have been-another mystery-for you!'
To Simon Templar there was no mystery. His glance flashed from the whisky decanter to the still open French door through which Teal had come in, and he looked up to find Mr. Teal's somnolent eyes following the same route. His gaze crystallised thoughtfully.
'While you were outside posting your cop under the window, Claud Eustace! Is that organisation and is that nerve, or what is it?'
He took up the untouched glass which Mr. Teal had declined, and moistened his mouth from it, holding the liquid only for a moment. There was a distinctive sweet oily taste in it which might have passed unnoticed under the sharper bite of the spirit unless he had been looking for it, and he retained a definition of the savour in his memory after he had spat out the sip.
Teal's eyes were wide open.
'Then they still can't be far away,' he said.
The Saint's lips stirred in an infinitesimal reckless smile.
'One day you'll be a detective after all, Claud,' he murmured. Teal was starting to move ponderously towards the window, but Simon passed him with his long easy stride and stopped him. 'But I'm afraid you'll never be a night hunter. Let me go out.'
'What can you do?' asked Teal suspiciously.
'I can't arrest him,' Simon admitted. 'But I can be a good dog and bring you the bone. We missed a trick last time- crashing out like a mob of blasted red-faced fox-hunting squires after a poacher. You wouldn't catch anyone but a damn fool that way, on a dark night like this. But I know the game. I'll go out and be as invisible as a worm, and if anyone steps inside these grounds again I'll get him. And I think somebody will be coming!'
The detective hesitated. His memories of the Assistant Commissioner floated bogeyly across his imagination; the memory of all the deceptions he had suffered from the Saint narrowed his eyes. But he knew as well as anyone what amazing things Simon Templar could do in the dark, and he knew his own limitations.
'If you do catch anyone, will you promise to bring him in?'
'He's yours,' said the Saint tersely; but he made a mental reservation about the exact time at which that transfer of property would come into effect.
He went out alone, dissolving noiselessly into the night like a wandering shadow. From the blackness outside the window he watched Teal using the telephone, and presently saw the lights of a car drive up and stop outside the gate. The doctor walked up the short drive and was challenged on his way by the police guard; and Simon took that opportunity of introducing himself.
'This is a funny business, sir, isn't it?' said the constable, when the doctor had gone on into the house.
He was a middle-aged beefy man who kept shaking himself down uncomfortably in his plain clothes, as if he
