VII
Early rising had never been one of the Saint's favourite virtues, but there were times when business looked more important than leisure. It was eleven o'clock the next morning — an hour at which he was usually beginning to think drowsily about breakfast — when he sauntered into the apothecarium of Mr Henry Osbett.
In honour of the occasion, he had put on his newest and most beautiful suit, a creation in pearl-grey fresco over which his tailor had shed tears of ecstasy in the fitting room; his piratically tilted hat was unbelievably spotless; his tie would have humbled the gaudiest hues of dawn. He had also put on, at less expense, a vacuous expression and an inanely chirpy grin that completed the job of typing him to the point where his uncle, the gouty duke, loomed almost visible in his background.
The shifty-eyed young assistant who came to the counter might have been pardoned for keeling over backwards at the spectacle; but he only recoiled half a step and uttered a perfunctory "Yes, sir?"
He looked nervous and preoccupied. Simon wondered whether this nervousness and preoccupation might have had some connection with a stout and agitated-looking man who had entered the shop a few yards ahead of the Saint himself. Simon's brightly vacant eyes took in the essential items of the topography without appearing to notice anything — the counter with its showcases and displays of patent pills and liver salts, the glazed compartment at one end where presumably prescriptions were dispensed, the dark doorway at the other end which must have led to the intimate fastnesses of the establishment. Nowhere was the stout man visible; therefore, unless he had dissolved into thin air, or disguised himself as a bottle of bunion cure, he must have passed through that one doorway… The prospects began to look even more promising than the Saint had expected…
"This jolly old tea, old boy," bleated the Saint, producing a package from his pocket. "A friend of mine — chappie named Teal, y'know, great detective and all that sort of thing — bought it off you last night and then he wouldn't risk taking it. He was goin' to throw it down the drain; but I said to him 'Why waste a perfectly good half-dollar, what?' I said. 'I'll bet they'll change it for a cake of soap, or something,' I said. I'll take it in and change it myself,' I told him. That's right, isn't it? You will change it, won't you?"
The shifty-eyed youth was a bad actor. His face had gone white, then red, and finally compromised by remaining blotchy. He gaped at the packet as if he was really starting to believe that there were miracles in Miracle Tea.
"We — we should be glad to change it for you, sir," he gibbered.
"Fine!" chortled the Saint. "That's just what I told jolly old Teal. You take the tea, and give me a nice box of soap. I expect Teal can use that, but I'm dashed if I know what he could do with tea—"
He was talking to a vanishing audience. The youth, with a spluttered "Excuse me, sir," had grabbed the package off the counter and was already making a dive for the doorway at the far end; and the imbecile grin melted out of the Saint's face like a wax mould from a casting of hot bronze.
One skeleton instant after the assistant had disappeared, he was over the counter with the swift silence of a cat.
But even if he had made any noise, it is doubtful whether the other would have noticed it. The shifty-eyed youth was so drunk with excitement that his brain had for the time being practically ceased to function. If it hadn't he might have stopped to wonder why Mr Teal should have handed the tea to a third party; or why the third party, being so obviously a member of the idle rich, should have even bothered about exchanging it for a box of soap. He might have asked himself a great many inconvenient questions; but he didn't. Perhaps the peculiarly fatuous and guileless character which the Saint had adopted for the interview had something to do with that egregious oversight — at least, that was what Simon Templar had hoped for… And it is at least certain that the young man went blundering up the stairs without a backward glance, while the Saint glided like a ghost into the gloomy passage-way at the foot of the stairs…
In the dingy upper room which was the young man's destination, Mr Osbett was entertaining the stout and agitated man. That is to say, he was talking to him. The agitated man did not look very entertained.
"It's no good cursing me, Nancock," Osbett was saying, in his flustered old-maidish way. "If you'd been on time last night—"
"I was on time!" yelped the perspiring Mr Nancock. "It was that young idiot's fault for handing the package over without the password — and to Teal, of all people. I tell you, I've been through hell! Waiting for something to happen every minute — waiting, waiting… It isn't even safe for me to be here now—"
"That's true," said Osbett, with one of his curiously abrupt transformations to deadly coldness. "Who told you to come here?"
"I came here because I want my money!" bawled the other hysterically. "What do you think I've done your dirty work for? Do you think I'd have taken a risk like this if I didn't need the money? Is it my fault if your fool of an assistant gives the money to the wrong man? I don't care a damn for your pennydreadful precautions, and all this nonsense about signs and countersigns and keeping out of sight. What good has that done this time? I tell you, if I think you're trying to cheat me—"
"Cheat you?" repeated the chemist softly. The idea seemed to interest him. "Now, I wonder why you should be the first to think of that?"
There was a quality of menace in his voice which the stout man did not seem to hear. His mouth opened for a fresh outburst; but the outburst never came. The first word was on his lips when the door opened and the shifty-eyed youth burst in without the formality of a knock.
"It's Teal's — packet!" he panted out. "A man just came in and said he wanted to change it! He said — Teal gave it to him. It hasn't been opened!"
Nancock jumped up like a startled pig, with his mouth still open where the interruption had caught it. An inarticulate yelp was the only sound that came out of it.
Osbett got up more slowly.
"What sort of man?" he snapped, and his voice was hard and suspicious.
The youth wagged his hands vaguely.
"A silly-ass sort of fellow — Burlington Bertie kind of chap — I didn't notice him particularly—"
"Well, go back and notice him now!" Mr Osbett was flapping ditherily again. "Keep him talking. Make some excuse, but keep him there till I can have a look at him."
The assistant darted out again and went pelting down the stairs — so precipitately that he never noticed the shadow that faded beyond the doorway of the stockroom on the opposite side of the landing.
Osbett had seized the packet of tea and was feeling it eagerly. The suspicious look was still in his eyes, but bis hands were shaking with excitement.
"It feels like it!" he muttered. "There's something funny about this—"
"Funny!" squeaked Nancock shrilly. "It's my money, isn't it? Give it to me and let me get out of here!"
"It will be lucky for you if it is your money," Osbett said thinly. "Better let me make sure." He ripped open the package. There was no tea in it — only crumpled pieces of thin white paper. "Yes, this is it. But why… My God!"
The oath crawled through his lips in a tremulous whisper. He looked as if he had opened the package and found a snake in his hands. Nancock, staring at him, saw that his face had turned into a blank grey mask in which the eyes bulged like marbles.
Osbett spread out the piece of paper which he had opened. It was not a banknote. It was simply a piece of perforated tissue on which had been stamped in red the drawing of a quaint little figure with straight lines for body and legs and arms and an elliptical halo slanted over his round featureless head… Osbett tore open the other papers with suddenly savage hands. Every one of them was the same, stamped with the same symbolic figure…