They were sitting opposite one another at Sheridan's bare mahogany dining table, and at the Saint's back was the open door leading out onto the veranda and commanding an uninterrupted view of the approach to the bungalow.
"Start the thing here and now and anyhow you like," said Sheridan, and he was looking past the Saint's shoulder towards the veranda steps.
Simon Templar settled back a little more lazily into his chair, and a very Saintly meekness was spreading over his face.
"Name?" he inquired laconically.
"Shannet himself."
The Saint's eyes were half closed.
"I will compose a little song about him immediately," he said.
Then a shadow fell across the table, but the Saint did not move at once. He appeared to be lost in a day-dream.
"Buenos dias, Shannet," said Archie Sheridan. "Also, as soon as possible, adios. Hurry up and say what you've got to say before I kick you out."
"I'll do any kicking out that's necessary, thanks," said Shannet harshly. "Sheridan, I've come to warn you off for the last time. The Andalusia berthed this morning, and she sails again on the evening tide. You've been nosing around here too long as it is. Is that plain enough?"
"Plainer than your ugly face," drawled Sheridan. "And by what right do you kick me out? Been elected President, have you?"
"You know me," said Shannet. "You know that what I say here goes. You'll sail on the Andalusia-either voluntarily or because you're put on board in irons. That's all. . . . What's this?"
The Saint, perceiving himself to be the person thus referred to, awoke sufficiently to open his eyes and screw his head round so that he could view the visitor.
He saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of indeterminate age, clad in a soiled white suit of which the coat was unbuttoned to expose a grubby singlet. Shannet had certainly not shaved for two days; and he did not appear to have brushed his hair for a like period, for a damp, sandy lock drooped in a tangle over his right eye. In one corner of his mouth a limp and dilapidated cigarette dangled tiredly from his lower lip.
The Saint blinked.
"Gawd!" he said offensively. "Can it be human?"
Shannet's fists swept back his coat and rested on his hips.
"What's your name, Cissy?" he demanded.
The Saint flicked some ash from his cigarette and rose to his feet delicately.
"Benito Mussolini," he answered mildly. "And you must be one of the corporation scavengers. How's the trade in garbage?" His gentle eyes swept Shannet from crown to toe. "Archie, there must have been some mistake. The real scavenger has gone sick, and one of his riper pieces of refuse is deputizing for him. I'm sorry."
"If you--"
"I said I was sorry," the Saint continued, in the same smooth voice, "because I'm usually very particular about the people I fight, and I hate soiling my hands on things like you."
Shannet glowered.
"I don't know who you are," he said, "and I don't care. But if you're looking for a fight you can have it."
"I am looking for a fight, dear one," drawled the Saint. "In fact, I'm looking for a lot of fights, and you're the first one that's offered. 'Cissy' is a name I particularly object to being called, O misbegotten of a pig!"
The last words were spoken in colloquial Spanish, and the Saint made more of them than it is possible to report in printable English. Shannet went white, then red.
"You--"
His answering stream of profanity merged into a left swing to the Saint's jaw, which, if it had landed, would have ended the fight there and then. But it did not land.
Simon Templar swayed back, and the swing missed by a couple of inches. As Shannet stumbled, momentarily off his balance, the Saint reached round and took the jug of ice water off the table behind him. Without any appearance of effort or haste, he sidestepped and poured most of the contents of the jug down the back of Shannet's neck.
Shannet swung again. The Saint ducked, and sent the man flying with a smashing jab to the nose.
"Look out, Saint!" Sheridan warned suddenly.
"Naughty!" murmured the Saint, without heat.
Shannet was getting to his feet, and his right hand was drawing something from his hip pocket.
The Saint took two steps and a flying leap over Shannet's head, turning in the air as he did so. Shannet had only got to his knees when the Saint landed behind him and caught his opponent's throat and right wrist in hands that had the strength of steel cables in their fingers. Shannet's wrist was twisted behind his back with an irresistible wrench. . . .
The gun cluttered to the floor simultaneously with Shannet's yelp of agony, and the Saint picked up the gun and stepped away.
"A trophy, Archie!" he cried, and tossed the weapon over to Sheridan. "Guns I have not quite been shot with-there must be a drawer full of them at home. . . . Let's start, sweet Shannet!"
Shannet replied with a chair, but the Saint was ten feet away by the time it crashed into the opposite wall.
Then Shannet came in again with his fists. Any one of those whirling blows carried a kick that would have put a mule to sleep, but the Saint had forgotten more about ringcraft than many professionals ever learn. Shannet never came near touching him. Every rush Shannet made, somehow, expended itself on thin air, while he always seemed to be running his face slap into the Saint's stabbing left.
"Want a rest?" the Saint asked kindly.
"If you'd come in and fight like a man," gasped Shannet, his tortured chest heaving, "I'd kill you!"
"Oh, don't be silly!" said the Saint in a bored voice, as though he had no further interest in the affair. "Hurry up and get out-I'm going to be busy."
He turned away, but Shannet lurched after him.
"Get out yourself!" snarled the man thickly. "D'you hear? I'm going right down to fetch the police--"
The Saint sat down.
"Listen to me, Shannet," he said quietly. "The less you talk about police when I'm around, the better for you. I'm telling you now that I believe you murdered a man named McAndrew not so long ago, and jumped his claim on a forged partnership agreement. I'm only waiting till I've got the proof. And then-well, it's too much to hope that the authorities of this benighted republic will execute the man who pays half their salaries, and so in the name of Justice I shall take you myself and hang you from a high tree."
For a moment of silence the air seemed to tingle with the same electric tension as heralds the breaking of a thunder storm, while the Saint's ice-blue eyes quelled Shannet's reawakening fury; and then, with a short laugh, the Saint relaxed.
"You're a pawn in the game," he said, with a contrasting carelessness which only emphasized the bleak implacability of his last speech. "We won't waste good melodrama on you. We reserve that for clients with really important discredit accounts. Instead, you shall hear the epitaph I've just composed for you. It commemorates a pestilent tumour named Shannet, who disfigured the face of this planet. He started some fun, but before it was done he was wishing he'd never began it. That otherwise immortal verse is marred by a grammatical error, but I'm not expecting you to know any better. . . . Archibald-the door!"
Archie Sheridan had no reason to love Shannet, and the kick with which he launched the man into the garden was not gentle, but he seemed to derive no pleasure from it.
He came back with a grave face and resumed his chair facing the Saint.
"Well," he said, "you've done what you wanted. Now shall we sit down and make our wills, or shall we spend our last hours of life in drinking and song?"
"Of course, we may be shot," admitted the Saint calmly. "That's up to us. How soon can we expect the army?"
"Not before five. They'll all be asleep now, and an earth quake wouldn't make the Pasala policeman break off his siesta. Much less the army, who are inclined to give themselves airs. We might catch the Andalusia," he added hope fully.