He had told Patricia that the next move was up to the ungodly, and it had come faster than he had expected. But it had also fulfilled all his other hopes.
"Claud," he said softly, "how would you like to make the haul of a lifetime?"
Teal sat and looked at him.
"I'll trade it," said the Saint, "for something that'll hardly give you any trouble at all. I was thinking of asking you to do it for me anyhow, in return for saving your life last night. There are certain reasons why I want to know the address where they have a telephone number Berkeley 3100. I can't get the information from the telephone company myself, but you can. I'll write it down for you." He scribbled the figures on a piece of paper. "Let me know where that number lives, and I'll give you your murderer and a lot more."
Teal blinked suspiciously at the memorandum.
"What's this got to do with it?" he demanded,
"Nothing at all," said the Saint untruthfully. "So don't waste your time sleuthing around the place and trying to pick up clues. It's just some private business of my own. Is it a sale?"
The detective's eyes hardened.
"Then you do know something about all this!"
"Maybe I'm just guessing. I'll be able to tell you later. For once in your life, will you let me do you a good turn without trying to argue me out of it?"
Mr Teal fought with himself. And for no reason that he could afterwards justify to himself, he said grudgingly: "All right. Where shall I find you?"
"I'll stay home till I hear from you." Simon stood up, and suddenly remembered for the first time why he was there at all. He pulled a yellow package out of his pocket and dropped it in the detective's lap. "Oh yes. And don't forget to take some of this belly balm as soon as you get the chance. It may help you to get back that sweet disposition you used to have, and stop you being so ready to think unkind thoughts about me."
On the way home he had a few qualms about the ultimate wisdom of that parting gesture, but his brain was too busy to dwell on them. The final patterns of the adventure were swinging into place with the regimented precision that always seemed to come to his episodes after the most chaotic beginnings, and the rhythm of it was like wine in his blood.
He had made Teal drive slowly past Cornwall House with him in a police car, in case there were any watchers waiting to see whether the attempt to saddle him with Nancock's murder would be successful. From Cannon Row police station, which is also a rear exit from Scotland Yard, he took a taxi back to his apartment, and stopped at a newsagent's on the way to buy a copy of a certain periodical in which he had hitherto taken little interest. By the time he got home it had given him the information he wanted.
Sam Outrell, the janitor, came out from behind the desk as he entered the lobby.
"Those men was here, sir, about two hours ago, like you said they would be," he reported. "Said you'd sent 'em to measure the winders for some new curtains. I let 'em in like you told me, an' they went through all the rooms."
"Thanks a lot, Sam," said the Saint, and rode up in the lift with another piece of his mosaic settled neatly into place,
He came into the living-room like a ray of sunshine and spun his hat over Patricia's head into a corner.
"Miracle Tea is on the air in about ten minutes," he said, "with a program of chamber music. Could anything be more appropriate?"
Patricia looked up from her book.
"I suppose you've heard about our curtain measurers."
"Sam Outrell told me. Do I get my diploma in advanced prophetics? After the party I had this morning, I knew it wouldn't be long before someone wanted to know what had happened to Comrade McGuire. Did you get him to Weybridge in good condition?"
"He didn't seem to like being locked in the trunk of the Daimler very much."
The Saint grinned, and sat down at the desk to dismantle his automatic. He opened a drawer and fished out brushes and rags and cleaning oil.
"Well, I'm sure he preferred it to being nailed up in a coffin," he said callously. "And he's safe enough there with Orace on guard. They won't find him in the secret room, even if they do think of looking down there… Be a darling and start tuning in Radio Calvados, will you?"
For a short while she was busy with the dials of the radiogram; and then she came back and watched him in silence while he went over his gun with the loving care of a man who knew how much might hang on the light touch of a trigger.
"Something else has happened," she said at last. "And you're holding out on me."
Simon squinted complacently up a barrel like burnished silver, and snapped the sliding jacket back into place. There was a dynamic exuberance in his repose that no artist could have captured, an aura of resilient swiftness poised on a knife-edge of balance that sent queer little feathery ripples up her spine.
"A lot more is going to happen," he said. "And then I'll tell you what a genius I am."
She would have made some reply; but suddenly he fell into utter stillness with a quick lift of his hand.
Out of the radio, which had been briefly silent, floated the opening bars of the Spring Song. And his watch told him that it was the start of the Miracle Tea Company's contribution to the load that the twentieth-century ether has to bear.
Shortly the music faded to form a background for a delicate Oxford accent informing the world that this melody fairly portrayed the sensations of a sufferer from indigestion after drinking a nice big cup of Miracle Tea. There followed an unusually nauseating dissertation on the manifold virtues of the product, and then a screeching slaughter of the Grand March from Tannhäuser played by the same string quartet. Patricia got up pallidly and poured herself out a drink.
"I suppose we do have to listen to this?" she said.
"Wait," said the Saint.
The rendition came to its awful end, and the voice of Miracle Tea polluted the air once again.
"Before we continue our melody programme, we should like to read you a few extracts from our file of unsolicited letters from sufferers who have tried Miracle Tea. Tonight we are choosing letters one thousand and six, one thousand and fourteen, and one thousand and twenty-seven…"
The unsolicited letters were read with frightful enthusiasm, and the Saint listened with such intentness that he was obviously paying no attention to the transparently bogus effusions. He sat with the gun turning gently in his hands and a blindingly beatific smile creeping by hesitant degrees into the lines of his chiselled fighting mouth, so that the girl looked at him in uncomprehending wonderment.
"… And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have the opinions of the writers whose letters are numbered one thousand and six, one thousand and fourteen, and one thousand and twenty-seven in our files," said the voice of the announcer, speaking with tedious deliberation. "These good people cured themselves by drinking Miracle Tea. Let me urge you to buy Miracle Tea — tonight. Buy Miracle Teal… And now the string quartet will play Drink to Me Only—"
There were two more short numbers and the broadcast was over. Simon switched off the radio as the next advertiser plunged into his act.
"Well," said Patricia mutinously, "are you going to talk?"
"You heard as much as I did."
"I didn't hear anything worth listening to."
"Nor did I. That's the whole point. There wasn't anything worth listening to. I was looking for an elaborate code message. An expert like me can smell a code message as far off as a venerable gorgonzola — there's always a certain clumsiness in the phrasing. This was so simple that I nearly missed it."
Patricia gazed into the depths of her glass.
She said: "Those numbers—"
He nodded.
"The 'thousand' part is just coverage. Six, fourteen, and twenty-seven are the operative words. They have to buy Miracle Tea — tonight. Nothing else in the programme means a thing. But according to that paper I brought in, Miracle Tea broadcasts every night of the week; and that means that any night the Big Shot wants to he can send out a call for the men he wants to come and get their orders or anything else that's waiting for them. It's the last perfect touch of organization. There's no connecting link that any detective on earth could trace between a broadcast and any particular person who listens to it. It means that even if one of his operatives should be under suspicion, the Big Shot can contact him without the shadow of a chance of transferring suspicion to himself. You could think of hundreds of ways of working a few numbers into an advertising spiel, and I'll bet they have a new one every time."