"But Sir George!" wailed Mr. Immelbern.
"Dammit, will you stop whining 'But Sir George!'?" exploded the Colonel. "That settles it. Make it three hundred—-that will be a hundred on for Mr. Templar. And if the horse doesn't win, I'll stand the loss myself."
A somewhat strained silence prevailed after the last bet had been made. Mr. Immelbern sat down again and chewed the unlighted end of a cigar in morbid meditations. The Colonel twiddled his thumbs as if the embarrassment of these recurrent disputes was hard to shake off. Simon Templar lighted a cigarette and smoked calmly.
"Have you been doing this long?" he inquired. "For about two years," said the Colonel. "By Gad, though, we've made money at it. Only about one horse in ten that we back doesn't romp home, and most of 'em are at good prices. Sometimes our money does get back to the course and spoil the price, but I'd rather have a winner at evens than a loser at ten to one any day. Why, I remember one race meeting we had at Delhi. That was the year when old Stubby Featherstone dropped his cap in the Ganges—he was the fella who got killed at Cambrai. . . ."
He launched off on another wandering reminiscence, and Simon listened to him with polite attention. He had some thinking to do, and he was grateful for the gallant Colonel's willingness to take all the strain of conversation away from him. Mr. Immelbern chewed his cigar in chronic pessimism until half an hour had passed; and then he glanced at his watch again, started up, and broke into the middle of one of his host's rambling sentences.
"The result ought to be through by now," he said abruptly. "Shall we go out and get a paper?"
Simon stood up unhurriedly. He had done his thinking.
"Let me go," he suggested.
"That's awfully good of you, my dear boy. Mr. Immelbern would have gone. Never mind, by Gad. Go out and see how much you've won. I'll open another bottle. Damme, we must have a drink on this, by Gad!"
Simon grinned and sauntered out; and as the door dosed behind him the eyes of the two partners met.
"Next time you say 'damme' or 'by Gad,' George," said Mr. Immelbern, "I will knock your block off, so help me. Why don't you get some new ideas?"
But by that time Lieut-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon was beyond taking offence.
"We've got him," he said gleefully.
"I hope so," said Mr. Immelbern, more cautiously.
"I know what I'm talking about, Sid," said the Colonel stubbornly. "He's a serious young fellow, one of these conservative chaps like myself—but that's the best kind. None of this dashing around, keeping up with the times, going off like a firework and fizzling out like a pricked balloon. I'll bet you anything you like, in another hour he'll be looking around for a thousand pounds to give us to put on tomorrow's certainty. His kind starts slowly, but it goes a lot further than any of you fussy Smart Alecs."
Mr. Immelbern made a rude noise.
Simon Templar bought a Star at Devonshire House and turned without anxiety to the stop press. Greenfly had won the two o'clock at five to one.
As he strolled back towards Clarges Street he was smiling. It was a peculiarly ecstatic sort of smile; and as a matter of fact he had volunteered to go out and buy the paper, even though he knew what the result would be as certainly as Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern knew it, for the sole and sufficient reason that he wanted to give that smile the freedom of his face and let it walk around. To have been compelled to sit around any longer in Uppingdon's apartment and sustain the necessary mask of gravity and sober interest without a breathing spell would have sprained every muscle within six inches of his mouth.
"Hullo, Saint," said a familiar sleepy voice beside him.
A hand touched his arm, and he turned quickly to see a big baby-faced man in a bowler hat of unfashionable shape, whose jaws moved rhythmically like those of a ruminating cow.
"Hush," said the Saint. "Somebody might hear."
"Is there anybody left who doesn't know?" asked Chief Inspector Teal sardonically.
Simon Templar nodded.
"Strange as it may seem, there is. Believe it or not, Claud Eustace, somewhere in this great city—I wouldn't tell you where, for anything—there are left two trusting souls who don't even recognise my name. They have just come down from their hermits' caves in the mountains of Ladbroke Grove, and they haven't yet heard the news. The Robin Hood of modern crime," said the Saint oratorically, "the scourge of the ungodly, the defender of the faith—what are the newspaper headlines?—has come back to raise hell over the length and breadth of England—and they don't know."
"You look much too happy," said the detective suspiciously. "Who are these fellows?"
"Their names are Uppingdon and Immelbern, if you want to know—and you've probably met them before. They have special information about racehorses, and I am playing my usual role of the Sucker who does not Suck too long. At the moment they owe me five hundred quid."
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal's baby blue eyes looked him over thoughtfully. And in Chief Inspector Teal's mind there were no illusions. He did not share the ignorance of Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern. He had known the Saint for many years, and he had heard that he was back. He knew that there was going to be a fresh outbreak of buccaneering through the fringes of London's underworld, exactly as there had been so many times before; he knew that the feud between them was going to start again, the endless battle between the gay outlaw and the guardian of the Law; and he knew that his troubles were at the beginning of a new lease of life. And yet one of his rare smiles touched his mouth for a fleeting instant.
"See that they pay you," he said, and went on his portly and lethargic way.
Simon Templar went back to the apartment on Clarges Street. Uppingdon let him in; and even the melancholy Mr. Immelbern was moved to jump up as they entered the living-room.
"Did it win?" they chorused.
The Saint held out the paper. It was seized, snatched from hand to hand, and lowered reverently while an exchange of rapturous glances took place across its columns.
"At five to one," breathed Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon.
"Five thousand quid," whispered Mr. Immelbern.
"The seventh winner in succession."
"Eighty thousand quid in four weeks."
The Colonel turned to Simon.
"What a pity you only had a hundred pounds on," he said, momentarily crestfallen. Then the solution struck him, and he brightened. "But how ridiculous! We can easily put that right. On our next coup, you shall be an equal partner. Immelbern, be silent! I have put up with enough interference from you. Templar, my dear boy, if you care to come in with me next time—"
The Saint shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mind a small gamble now and again, but for business I only bet on certainties."
"But this is a certainty!" cried the Colonel.
Simon frowned.
"Nothing," he said gravely, "is a certainty until you know the result. A horse may drop dead, or fall down, or be disqualified. The risk may be small, but it exists. I eliminate it." He gazed at them suddenly with a sober intensity which almost held them spellbound. "It sounds silly," he said, "but I happen to be psychic."
The two men stared back at him.
"Wha—what?" stammered the Colonel.
"What does that mean?" demanded Mr. Immelbern, more grossly.
"I am clairvoyant," said the Saint simply. "I can foretell the future. For instance, I can look over the list of runners in a newspaper and close my eyes, and suddenly I'll see the winners printed out in my mind, just as if I was looking at the evening edition. I don't know how it's done. It's a gift. My mother had it."
The two men were gaping at him dubiously. They were incredulous, wondering if they were missing a joke and ought to laugh politely; and yet something in the Saint's voice and the slight uncanny widening of his eyes sent a cold supernatural draught creeping up their spines.