Pryke nibbled his thumb-nail.
'I believe that if we could account for the Saint, the rest of the mystery would be settled,' he said.
'Mr. Teal has been trying to account for the Saint for several years,' the Assistant Commissioner reminded him acrimoniously.
What Mr. Teal wanted to say would have reduced Scotland Yard to a small pool of steaming lava.
III SIMON TEMPLAR sauntered around the corners of a couple of blocks, and presently waited by the kerb while a big grey saloon cruised slowly up towards him. As it came level, he stepped neatly on to the running-board, opened the nearest door, and sank into the seat beside the driver. As if the upholstery on which he deposited his weight had had some direct connection with the accelerator, the car picked up speed again and shot away into the traffic with its engine purring so smoothly that the leap of the speedometer needle seemed an absurd exaggeration.
With her small deft hands on the steering wheel nosing a way through the traffic stream where no one else but the Saint himself would have seen a way visible, Patricia Holm took her eyes momentarily from the road to glance at him helplessly.
'What on earth,' she inquired, 'are we playing at?'
The Saint chuckled.
'Is the game puzzling you, old darling?'
'It's doing its best.' She took his cigarette away from be tween his fingers while she thrust the murmuring grey car under the snout of a speeding lorry with the other hand. 'You come down this way to see Fasson about some diamonds. You and Hoppy go in to see him. After a while Hoppy comes out with a body; and a long time after that you come out yourself, looking as if you'd just heard the funniest story of your life. Naturally I'm beginning to wonder what we're playing at.'
Simon took out his cigarette-case and replaced his stolen smoke.
'I suppose you aren't so wide of the mark, with the funny story angle,' he admitted. 'But I thought Hoppy would have put you on the trail.'
He slewed round to cock an eyebrow at the passenger who rode in the back seat; but the passenger only gazed back at him with troubled blankness and said: 'I dunno what de game is, neider, boss.'
Hoppy Uniatz had never been really beautiful, even as a child, and the various contacts which his face had had with blunt instruments since then had not improved it. But it has sometimes been known for such faces to be lighted with a radiance of spirituality and intellect in which their battered irregularity of contour is easily forgotten.
The physiognomy of Mr. Uniatz was illuminated by no such light. Reluctant as Simon Templar always was to disparage such a faithful friend, he could never honestly claim for Mr. Uniatz any of those intellectual qualities which might have redeemed his other failings. A man of almost miraculous agility on the draw, of simple and unquestioning loyalties, of heroic appetite, and of a tank-like capacity for absorbing incredible quantities of every conceivable blend of alcohol- yes, Mr. Uniatz possessed all those virtues. But a strenuous pursuit of most of the minor rackets of the Bowery had never left him time to develop the higher faculties of that curious organisation of reactions which can only apologetically be called his brain. Simon Templar perceived that Mr. Uniatz could not have enlightened anybody. He was in painful search of enlightenment himself.
Simon dropped an arm over the back of the seat and hauled up another hitherto invisible passenger, on whom Mr. Uniatz had been thoughtlessly resting his feet.
'This is Sunny Jim, Pat,' he explained.
'Hoppy did manage to tell me that much,' said Patricia Holm with great patience. 'But did you really have to bring him away?'
'Not really,' said the Saint candidly, allowing the passenger to drop back again on to the floor. 'But it struck me as being quite a good idea. You see, Sunny Jim is supposed to be dead.'
'How do you know he isn't?'
Simon grinned.
'There might be some argument about it,' he conceded. 'At any rate, he's among the Saints.'
'But what was it all about?'
The Saint lighted his cigarette and stretched himself out.
'Well, it was this way. Hoppy and I blew up the fire-escape, as arranged, and went in through the bathroom window. When we got inside, what should we hear but the voice of good old Claud Eustace Teal, holding converse with Sunny Jim. Apparently Claud was just on the point of getting a squeak out of him, and I was just getting down to the keyhole to take a look at the seance and hear what Sunny had to say, when a gun went off and broke up the party. As far as I've been able to make out, somebody opened the front door and took a pot at Sunny Jim at the crucial moment, and Teal went chasing the assassin down the stairs, along with a perfectly twee little policebody from Eton that he had with him.'
Simon drew at his cigarette with a reminiscent smile, while the grey car whirled around Piccadilly Circus and plunged down the Haymarket.
'Anyway, Hoppy and I beetled in while they were away, and took a gander at Sunny Jim. And as a matter of fact, he isn't dead; though he's had the narrowest shave that any man ever had, and his head's going to ring carillons when he wakes up. He's been creased as neatly as I've ever seen it done-the bullet just parted his hair in a new place and knocked him out, but his skull hasn't any holes in it. That's when I had my brilliant idea.'
'I was hoping we'd get to that,' said the girl.
'But haven't you seen it already?' Simon demanded. 'Look at what I've told you! Here's Sunny Jim preparing to squeal, and somebody tries to rub him out. Why? Squealers don't get bumped off, not in this country, just because they may have a little tit-bit to give away. Sunny Jim must have known something worth knowing; and there he was, sitting in his chair, out to the world, and nobody to get in our way. The bumper-offer can't be sure what's happened to him, and Claud Eustace is probably quite sure he's dead. But nobody knows. . . . Isn't it all pretty obvious?'
