'My dear hog,' said the Saint, 'are you deaf or something?
I said'
It has already been mentioned that the ginger-haired man was incapable of perceiving his own foolishness. Otherwise he could not possibly have been tempted as he was by the half-glass of gin and angostura which Simon Templar was poising in his left hand while he talked. Even though he might have known the toughness of his own two-hundred-pound frame, and might have guessed that the debonair young man in front of him weighed no more than a hundred and seventy-five pounds, he need not have allowed his undisciplined temper to make him such a sempiternal sap. But he did.
His hand smacked up in an insolent swipe; and the glass of pink gin was knocked up through the Saint's fingers to splash its contents over Simon's face and the front of his coat.
Simon glanced at the mess, and started to take out his handkerchief. He was smiling again; and the Saint was as dangerous as a Turk when he smiled.
'That was rather rash of you,' he said; and suddenly his fist shot out like a bullet from a gun.
The ginger-haired man never even saw it coming. Something that was more like a lump of brown rock than a human fist leapt towards him through the intervening space and collided smashingly with his nose in a punch that sent him reeling back in a blind gush of agony to fetch up jarringly against the wall behind him. Hauling himself forward again with a strangled oath, he saw the Saint's gentle smile again through a crimson mist, and launched a vicious swing at it that would have been worth all his trouble if it had connected. But in some unaccountable way the smile omitted to keep the appointment. It swayed unhurriedly aside at the very moment when the swing should have met it; and the violence with which his fish bludgeoned the empty air threw the ginger-haired man off his balance. In technical language, he led off for the next blow with his chin, and that same astonishingly hard fist was there in exactly the right place to meet his lead. The only difference was that on this encounter he felt no pain. His teeth scrunched shudderingly together under the impact; and then every raw and vengeful thought in his head was wiped out by a ringing of heavenly bells and a vast soothing darkness that merged indistinguishably into dreamless sleep. . . .
Simon picked up his handkerchief again and quietly mopped the sticky dampness off his clothes. Jeffroll had come through into the bar again, and he realised that the girl Mia was standing in the low archway that connected with the hall. But it was not until he noticed how silently they were staring at the recumbent slumber of the ginger-haired man that he realised that the delightful episode which had just taken place had an implication for them that he would never have suspected.
III JEFFROLL was the first to look up.
'What happened?' he asked.
The Saint shrugged.
'I haven't the faintest idea,' he replied blandly. 'The bloke seemed a bit excited, and I think he banged his head on something. It doesn't look like a very exhilarating pastime, but I suppose there's no accounting for tastes. Was he a pal of yours?'
Jeffroll let himself out from behind the bar and dropped on one knee beside the prostrate ginger-clad body, without answering. Simon's coolly observant eyes noticed that his hands were trembling again, and that his actions contained an essence of something more than the natural solicitude of a conventional innkeeper whose premises have been desecrated by an ordinary breach of the peace. The Saint put away his sodden handkerchief and considered whether he had left anything undone that might improve the shining hour; and then he saw that startled face of Hoppy Uniatz peering over Julia Trafford's shoulder, and went across to him.
Mr. Uniatz's mouth hung open-and, hanging open, it was an amazingly large mouth. The light of battle was peeping tentatively out of his eyes like spring sunshine through a cloud.
'What ya hit him wit', boss?' he asked wistfully. And then, as the merest afterthought: 'Who is dat guy?'
'The guy we ditched near Sidmouth,' explained the Saint under his breath. He grasped Hoppy firmly by the arm. 'And now shut your face for a bit, will you? I guess I'm about ready to eat.'
The dining-room was a low raftered room looking out on to a tiny garden cut out of the sheer hillside. Simon steered Mr. Uniatz briskly into it before that unrivalled maestro of tactlessness could drop any heavier bricks in the hearing of the chief protagonists, but when he reached his sanctuary he found that it was considerably less invulnerable than he had hoped it would be. The room only held four tables, and it was so small that the four of them might have been joined together in one communal board for all the privacy they afforded. Moreover, one of the tables was already occupied by a party of four men who fell curiously silent at the Saint's entrance.
They were in their shirtsleeves, and their shapeless trousers had an air of grubby masculine comfort, as if they were placidly prepared to crawl about on their knees or sit down on a heap of loose earth without any qualms about its effect on their appearance. At first sight they might easily have been taken for a quartet of hikers; and yet, if that was what they were, they must have started on their pilgrimage very recently, for their bare forearms were practically untouched by the sun. Their hands, in contrast to that unexpected whiteness of arm, were coarsened with the unmistakable rough griminess of manual labour, which could hardly overtake the average holiday tramper before exposure had left its mark on his skin. It was that minor contradiction of make-up, perhaps, rather than their unfriendly silence, which made Simon Templar pay particular attention to them; but there was no outward and visible sign of his interest. He took them in at one casual glance, with all their individual oddities-a big black-haired man who had not shaved, a thin fair-haired man with a weak chin, a bald burly man with a vintage-port complexion, and an incongruously small and nondescript man with a grey moustache and pince-nez. And beyond that one sweeping survey there was nothing to show that he had taken any more notice of their existence than he had of the typical country-hotel wallpaper adorned with strips of pink ribbon and bouquets of unidentifiable vegetation with which some earlier landlord had endeavoured to improve his property. He dumped Mr. Uniatz in a seat at a corner table, taking for himself the chair which commanded a full view of the room, and cast a pessimistic eye over the menu.
It offered one of those seductive bilingual repasts with which the traveller in England, whatever he may have to put up with during the day, is so richly compensated at eventide.
Potage Birmingham Boiled Cod au Beurre Leg de Mouton r?ti Pommes Chips Spinach Suet Pudding Fromage-Biscuits Simon put down the masterpiece with a faint sigh, and opened his cigarette-case.
