"Oh!" she sobbed. "I–I hate you!"
"You break my heart," said the Saint. "I thought it was the dawn of love."
She took a lot of holding: her slim body was strongly built and her muscles were in excellent condition. In the struggle her hair had become disordered, and her breath came quickly between parted lips that were too close to his for serenity.
The Saint smiled and kissed her.
She stopped struggling. Her breasts were tight against him; her lips were moist and desirous under his. One of her arms slid behind his neck.
The kiss lasted for some time. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and moved her gently away.
"I'm sorry about that," he said. "I didn't really mean to force my vile attentions on you, but you asked for it."
"Did I?" she said.
She turned away from him towards a mirror and began to pat her hair into place.
"You are a cad, aren't you?" she said.
Her eyes, seen in the mirror, held the same baffling expression that had puzzled him in the car; but now there was mockery with it. Her lips were stirred by a little smile of almost devilish satisfaction. She had a pleased air of feeling that she had done something very clever.
"I think you're a dangerous woman," he said with profound conviction.
She yawned delicately and rubbed her eyes like a sleepy kitten.
"I don't know what you mean," she said. "Anyway, I'm too tired to argue. But you'll have to go on being nice to me now, won't you? I mean, what would Patricia do if I told her?"
"She'd write your name on the wall," said the Saint, "where we keep all the others. We're making a mural of them."
"Would she? Well, don't forget that I know what you've done with Bravache and those other men. When they've been bumped off, or whatever you call it, I shan't want you to get hanged for it if I go on liking you."
The Saint was grinning as he went out and locked the door. It was the first piece of unalloyed fun that had enriched the day.
At 4 A.M. that morning a young policeman on his beat noticed a suspicious cluster of shapes in a doorway in Grosvenor Square. He flashed his light on them and saw that they were the bodies of three men, with adhesive tape over their mouths and their hands fastened somehow behind them, sprawled against the door in grotesque attitudes. They were stripped to the waist and horrid red stains were smeared across their torsos.
Blood!… The young policeman's heart skipped a beat. In a confused vision he saw himself gaining fame and promotion for unravelling a sensational murder mystery, becoming in rapid succession an inspector, a superintendent, and a chief commissioner.
He ran up the steps, and as he did so he became aware of a pungent odour that seemed oddly familiar. Then one of the bodies moved painfully and he saw that they were not dead. Their bulging eyes blinked at his light and strange nasal grunts came from them. And as he bent over them he discovered the reason for the red stains that had taken his breath away, and at the same time located the source of that hauntingly familiar perfume. It was paint. From brow to waist they were painted in zebra stripes of gaudy red and blue, with equal strips of their own white skins showing in between to complete the pattern. The decorative scheme had even been carried over the tops of their heads, which had been shaved for the purpose to the smoothness of billiard balls.
Hanging over them, on the door handle, was a card inscribed with hand-printed letters:
4
Simon Templar was having breakfast in Cornwall House when a call on the telephone from the watchful Sam Outrell at his post in the lobby heralded the arrival of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal a few seconds before the doorbell sounded under his pudgy finger.
Simon went to the door himself. The visitation was no surprise to him — as a matter of fact, he had been fatalistically expecting it for some hours. But he allowed his eyebrows to go up in genial surprise when the opening door revealed Teal's freshly laundered face like a harvest moon under a squarely planted bowler hat.
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit," he greeted the detective breezily. "I was wondering where you'd been hiding all these days. Come in and tell me all the news."
Teal came in like an advancing tank. There was an aura of portentous somnolence about him, as if he found the whole world so boring that it was hardly worth while to keep awake. Simon knew the signs like the geography of his own home. When Chief Inspector Teal looked as if he might easily fall asleep in a standing position at any moment it meant that he had something more than usually heavy weighing on his mind; and on this particular morning it was not insuperably difficult for the Saint to guess what that load was. But his manner was seraphically conscience free as he steered the detective into the living room.
"Have some breakfast," he suggested convivially.
"I had my breakfast at breakfast time," Teal said with dignity.
He stood rather stiffly and sluggishly, holding his sedate black derby over his navel.
Simon lifted his shoulders in regret.
"There are times when you have an almost suburban smugness," he said deploringly. "Never mind. You'll excuse me if I go on with mine, won't you? Sit down, Claud. Take off your boots and make yourself at home. Why should these little things come between us?"
Teal sank heavily into a chair.
"I suppose you were up late last night," he said ponderously. "Is that why you're having breakfast so late this morning?"
"I don't know." The Saint punctured his second egg. "That wouldn't be a bad excuse; but why should I make excuses?" The Saint waved his fork oratorically. "One of the many troubles of this cockeyed age is the glorification of false virtues. The bank clerk gets up early because he has to. And consequently dozens of fortunate people who don't need to get up early drag themselves out of bed at insanitary hours because it makes them feel as virtuous as a bank clerk. Instead of aspiring towards freedom and emancipation, we make a virtue of assuming unnecessary restrictions. A man spends his life working to the position where he doesn't have to get to the office at nine o'clock, and then he boasts that he still gets up at seven-thirty every morning. Well, then, what was he working for? Why didn't he save his energy and remain a clerk? You might build an indictment of all our accepted values on that. Poor men nibble a crust of bread because that's all they've got, and millionaires go on a diet of dry crusts and soda water—"
"What were you doing last night?" asked the detective implacably.
Simon looked shocked.
"Really, Claud! Have you no discretion? Or have you by any chance become a gossip writer?"
"I just want to know where you were last night," Teal said immovably. "I know you've got one of your usual alibis, but I'd like to hear it. And then perhaps you'll tell me why you did it."
"Did what?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
"I wish I did. It sounds so intriguing."
"What were you doing last night?"
Simon buttered a slice of toast.
"So far as I recollect, I spent a classically blameless evening. An archbishop could have followed in my footsteps without getting a single speck of mud on his reverend gaiters. Preceded by massed choirs in white surplices, and marshalled by a fatigue party from the Salvation Army—"
"Let me tell you some of the things you did," Teal interrupted stolidly. "You dined at the Berkeley with Lady Valerie Woodchester. She left at about half-past ten, and you went to the Cafe Royal. You got back here towards twelve-fifteen, and at five minutes past one you went out again. Your friends Quentin and Uniatz were with you, and you were careful to see that you weren't followed. At twenty-five minutes past two Miss Holm left here in another of your cars, and she was also very careful to see that she wasn't followed. At four-thirty this morning you came in alone. I want to know what you were doing between one-five and four-thirty."