The Saint's eyebrows slowly lifted.
"But why?" he persisted.
Eventually Mr Teal told him.
XIII
Simon Templar sat on the desk in Chief Inspector Teal's office a fortnight later. The police court proceedings had just concluded after a remand, and Baron Inescu, alias Henry Osbett, had been committed for trial in company with some three dozen smaller cogs in his machine. The report was in the evening paper which Simon had bought, and he pointed it out to Teal accusingly.
"At least you could have rung me up and thanked me again for making you look like a great detective," he said.
Mr Teal stripteased a slice of chewing gum and fed it into his mouth. "I'm sorry," he said. "I meant to do it, but there was a lot of clearing-up work to do on the case. Anyway, it's out of my hands now, and the Public Prosecutor is pretty satisfied. It's a pity there wasn't enough direct evidence to charge Inescu with the murder of Nancock, but we haven't done badly."
"You're looking pretty cheerful," said the Saint.
This was true. Mr Teal's rosy face had a fresh pink glow, and his cherubic blue eyes were clear and bright under his sleepily drooping lids.
"I'm feeling better," he said. "You know, that's the thing that really beats me about this case. Inescu could have made a fortune out of Miracle Tea without ever going in for espionage —"
The Saint's mouth fell open.
"You don't mean to say—" he ejaculated, and couldn't go on. He said: "But I thought you were ready to chew the blood out of everyone who had anything to do with Miracle Tea, if you could only have got away from—"
"I know it was rather drastic," Teal said sheepishly. "But it did the trick. Do you know, I haven't had a single attack of indigestion since I took that packet; and I even had roast pork for dinner last night!"
Simon Templar drew a long deep breath and closed his eyes. There were times when even he felt that he was standing on holy ground.
Part 2: The invisible millionaire
I
The girl's eyes caught Simon Templar as he entered the room, ducking his head instinctively to pass under the low lintel of the door; and they followed him steadily across to the bar. They were blue eyes with long lashes, and the face to which they belonged was pretty without any distinctive feature, crowned with curly yellow hair. And besides anything else, the eyes held an indefinable hint of strain.
Simon knew all this without looking directly at her. But he had singled her out at once from the double handful of riverside weekenders who crowded the small bar-room as the most probable writer of the letter which he still carried in his pocket — the letter which had brought him out to the Bell that Sunday evening on what anyone with a less incorrigibly optimistic flair for adventure would have branded from the start as a fool's errand. She was the only girl in the place who seemed to be unattached; there was no positive reason why the writer of that letter should have been unattached, but it seemed likely that she would be. Also she was the best looker in a by no means repulsive crowd; and that was simply no clue at all except to Simon Templar's own unshakeable faith in his guardian angel, who had never thrown any other kind of damsel in distress into his buccaneering path.
But she was still looking at him. And even though he couldn't help knowing that women often looked at him with more than ordinary interest, it was not usually done quite so fixedly. His hopes rose a notch, tentatively; but it was her turn to make the next move. He had done all that had been asked of him when he walked in there punctually on the stroke of eight.
He leaned on the counter, with his wide shoulders seeming to take up half the length of the bar, and ordered a pint of beer for himself and a bottle of Vat 69 for Hoppy Uniatz, who trailed up thirstily at his heels. With the tankard in his hands, he waited for one of those inevitable moments when all the customers had paused for breath at the same time.
"Anyone leave a message for me?" he asked.
His voice was quiet and casual, but just clear enough for everyone in the room to hear. Whoever had sent for him, unless it was merely some pointless practical joker, should need no more confirmation than that… He hoped it would be the girl with the blue troubled eyes. He had a weakness for girls with eyes of that shade, the same colour as his own.
The barman shook his head.
"No, sir. I haven't had any messages."
Simon went on gazing at him reflectively, and the barman misinterpreted his expression. His mouth broadened and said: "That's all right, sir, I'd know if there was anything for you."
Simon's fine brows lifted puzzledly.
"I've seen your picture often enough, sir. I suppose you could call me one of your fans. You're the Saint, aren't you?"
The Saint smiled slowly.
"You don't look frightened."
"I never had the chance to be a rich racketeer, like the people you're always getting after. Gosh, though, I've had a kick out of some of the things you've done to 'em! And the way you're always putting it over on the police — I'll bet they'd give anything for an excuse to lock you up…"
Simon was aware that the general buzz of conversation, after starting to pick up again, had died a second time and was staying dead. His spine itched with the feel of stares fastening on his back. And at the same time the barman became feverishly conscious of the audience which had been captured by his runaway enthusiasm. He began to stammer, turned red, and plunged confusedly away to obliterate himself in some unnecessary fussing over the shelves of bottles behind him.
The Saint grinned with his eyes only, and turned tranquilly round to lean his back against the bar and face the room.
The collected stares hastily unpinned themselves and the voices got going again; but Simon was as oblivious of those events as he would have been if the rubber-necking had continued. At that moment his mind was capable of absorbing only one fearful and calamitous realization. He had turned to see whether the girl with the fair curly hair and the blue eyes had also been listening, and whether she needed any more encouragement to announce herself. And the girl was gone.
She must have got up and gone out even in the short time that the barman had been talking. The Saint's glance swept on to identify the other faces in the room — faces that he had noted and automatically catalogued as he came in. They were all the same, but her face was not one of them. There was an empty glass beside her chair, and the chair itself was already being taken by a dark slender girl who had just entered.
Interest lighted the Saint's eyes again as he saw her, awakened instantly as he appreciated the subtle perfection of the sculptured cascade of her brown hair, crystallized as he approved the contours of her slim yet mature figure revealed by a simple flowered cotton dress. Then he saw her face for the first time, and held his tankard a shade tighter. Here, indeed, was something to call beautiful, something on which the word could be used without hesitation even under his most dispassionate scrutiny. She was like—"Peaches in autumn," he said to himself, seeing the fresh bloom of her cheeks against the russet shades of her hair. She raised her head with a smile, and his blood sang carillons. Perhaps after all…
And then he saw that she was smiling and speaking to an ordinarily good-looking young man in a striped blazer who stood possessively over her; and inward laughter overtook him before he could feel the sourness of disappointment.
He loosened one elbow from the bar to run a hand through his dark hair, and his eyes twinkled at Mr Uniatz.
"Oh, well, Hoppy," he said. "It looks as if we can still be taken for a ride, even at our age."