“Yes.”
“They gave you a fine record. All your most celebrated successes. The only big thing they didn’t mention, for some reason, was how you never succeeded in catching me. But I suppose you gave them the information.” Simon surveyed him with affectionate appraisal. “You certainly look wonderful, for an old man, Claud. I’d certainly have recognized you anywhere. The hair a little thinner, perhaps. The jowls a little fuller. The stomach—”
“Just for once,” Teal said grimly, “let’s leave my stomach out of this.”
“By all means,” said the Saint generously. “And it’ll leave a lot of room. After all, how much more convex can a thing be than convex?”
Like a man struggling to hold down a paroxysm of seasickness, Chief Inspector Teal felt all the frustrated bitterness of the old days welling up in him again, all the hideous futility of a score of humiliations brought on by his dutiful efforts to put that impudent Robin Hood behind the bars where every law said that he belonged; and enriching it was the gall of a hundred interviews such as this, in each one of which he had not only been thwarted but made farcically ridiculous. He never could understand how it happened, it was as if the Saint could actually put some kind of Indian sign on him, but it was a black magic that never failed. Normally a man of no small presence and dignity, impressive to his subordinates and respected even by the underworld, Mr Teal could be reduced by a few minutes of the Saint’s peculiar brand of baiting to the borders of screaming imbecility.
But now he would not, he must not, let it happen again…
“Yes, I’m retiring,” he said doggedly. “Next week. And since you’ve been away this long, you could have stayed away just a few days longer.”
“But I had to be in on your last performance, Claud. And as soon as you heard I was on this passenger list, bless your old fallen arches, you hurried out here to welcome me and—”
“And tell you, whatever you’re thinking of doing here, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll put if off for at least a week!”
The speech, which had a certain breathlessness built right into it, ended on something like a yelp. Teal had not meant it to. He had meant to speak firmly and masterfully, but somehow it had not come out like that.
“You yelped,” said the Saint.
“I did not!” Teal stopped, and cleared his throat with a violence that almost choked him. “I’m just warning you to behave yourself, and we’ll let bygones be bygones. Is that clear?”
“Of course,” said the Saint earnestly. “In fact, just to prove how forgiving I am, I’m only here to make sure that your career ends in a blaze of glory. I’m going to make sure that you solve your last case — even if I have to do it for you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Why, is it going that well?”
“Quite satisfactorily, thank you.”
“You’ve got the goods on him already?”
“It isn’t my business to get the goods on anyone,” Teal said ponderously. “Just the evidence, if there has been a crime.”
“But you’re reasonably sure the guy is guilty?”
“I think so. But proving it is another matter. These Bluebeards are pretty tricky to… But what the devil,” Teal blared suddenly, “do you know about the case?”
“Nothing,” said the Saint blandly. “Except what you’re telling me.”
The detective glared at him suspiciously.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You pain me, Claud. Do you think I’m a liar?”
“I’ve known it for twenty years,” Teal said hotly. “And let me tell you something else. You’re not coming back and getting away with any more of your private acts of what you call justice. If anything happens to Clarron, I’ll know damn well who—”
“Clarron?”
“Or Smith, or Jones, or Tom, or Dick, or Harry!” shouted Teal, and knew just how lame a recovery it was.
Simon lighted a cigarette.
“Clarron,” he murmured. “Well, well. Where is he living right now?”
“I suppose you want me to believe you don’t know that too.”
“Once again,” said the Saint reproachfully, “a more sensitive soul might take offense at your delicate insinuations that I fib.”
Mr Teal made a last frantic clutch at a self-possession which had already assumed some of the qualities of a buttered eel.
“Just let me tell you,” he said in a labored voice, “that if I catch you going anywhere near Maidenhead—”
“Maidenhead?” mused the Saint. “A charming spot. I’ve been wanting to see it again for years. And somebody told me only the other day that an old pal of mine is now running the famous pub there on the river. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the first places I was planning to visit. I might even drive straight out there, and skip London entirely.”
“If you do,” yammered Teal apoplectically, “I’ll—”
His voice strangled incoherently as the Saint’s mocking brows lifted over clear cerulean eyes.
“What will you do, Claud? It’s still a free country, isn’t it? Maidenhead hasn’t been made a Forbidden City. Hundreds of tourists go there without being arrested. I don’t see why you should pick on me… I don’t even see why you should keep me here any longer, if you feel so unfriendly. So may I get my bag from the Customs and breeze along?” The Saint hitched himself lazily off the corner of the desk where he had rested one hip for a while. “But if you do think of some crime to charge me with, I hope you’ll run down and make the pinch yourself. It’ll give the natives a laugh. You’ll find me at Skindle’s.”
2
“You must forgive the wop kind of welcome,” Giulio Trapani said, releasing Simon from an uninhibited bear-hug. “But it is so good to see you again!”
“It’s good to see you,” said the Saint. “And as a contrast with the Scotland Yard treatment I got at the airport, I wouldn’t care if you kissed me.”
He sat at the bar, and Trapani went behind it and brushed the bartender aside.
“I mix it myself,” he said ebulliently. “Whatever you’d like.”
“At this hour, just a pint from the barrel — warm, flat, nourishing, and British. I was thinking about it all the way over on the plane. It may be an acquired taste, but it’s still the only beer in the world that tastes like a meal.”
“It still isn’t the same as before the war,” Trapani said, setting a tankard before him. “But this is the best you can get.”
“Nothing is ever the same, after enough years,” said the Saint.
He drank deeply and contentedly. The brew still tasted good, without its forebears near enough for easy comparison.
“You’ve made a change too,” he said. “This is a lot more pub than the old Bell at Hurley.”
“Skindle’s, Mr Templar, is a hotel.”
“A good hotel should also be a good pub.”
“I try to make it a good pub too — with trimmings.”
Simon nodded, and glanced out for a moment over the river. It was still early in the season, but it was one of those warm sunny days of almost unbelievable balminess which the climate of Britain can produce as capriciously as it will inevitably snatch them back under a mantle of rain, cold, or fog; and on that pleasant reach of the Thames the skins and punts were moving up and down, drifting with their own portable radio or phonograph music or propelled by vigorous and slightly exhibitionistic young males with girls in bathing suits or print dresses reclining on gay cushions as luxuriously as any Cleopatra on the Nile, exactly as they had done when he was last there; and he thought that some things like that might survive all changes.