He went up to the counter and propped his elbows on the flat of the telegraph section. He wanted to send a cable to Umpopo in British Bechuanaland; but before he sent it he wanted to know all about the comparative merits of the various word rates. He was prepared, according to the inducements offered, to consider the relative attractions of Night Letters, Weed-end Letters, or Deferreds; and he wanted to know everything there was to know about each. Naturally, this took time. The official behind the grille, although he claimed a sketchy familiarity with the whereabouts of British Bechuanaland, had never heard of Umpopo; which is not surprising, because the Saint had never heard of it either before he set out to invent a difficult place to want to send a cable to. But with that indomitable zeal which is the most striking characteristic of post-office officials, he applied himself diligently to the necessary research, while Simon Templar lighted another cigarette and waited patiently for results.
He was wearing a brown tweed cap of a pattern which would never ordinarily have appealed to him, and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and a black military moustache completed the job of disguising him sufficiently to be overlooked on a casual glance even by anyone who knew him. As the last man on earth whom the High Fence would be expecting to meet, he was as well hidden as if he had been buried under the floor. . . . The official behind the counter, meanwhile, was getting buried deeper and deeper under a growing mound of reference books.
"I can't seem to find anything about Umpopo," he complained peevishly, from behind his unhelpful barricade. "Are you sure there is a telegraph office there?"
"Oh, yes," said the Saint blandly. "At least," he added, "there's one at Mbungi, which is only half a mile away."
The clerk went back through his books in a silence too frightful to describe; and the Saint put his cigarette back between his lips, and then suddenly remained very still.
Another early customer had entered the office. Simon heard his footsteps crossing the floor and passing behind him, but he did not look round at once. The footsteps travelled along to the Poste Restante section, a couple of yards away, and stopped there.
"Have you anything for Pond?"
The soft voice came clearly to Simon's ears, and he lifted his eyes sidelong. The man was leaning on the counter, like himself, so that his back was half turned; but the Saint's heart stopped beating for a moment.
"What is the first name?" asked the clerk, clearing out the contents of one of the pigeon-holes behind him.
"Joshua."
Rather slowly and dreamily, the Saint hitched himself up off his elbow and straightened up. Behind his heaped breakwater of reference books, the steaming telegraph official was muttering something profane and plaintive; but the Saint never heard it. He saw the cardboard box which he had posted pushed over to its claimant, and moved along the counter without a sound. His hand fell on the man's shoulder.
"Would you like to see a good-looking ghost?" he drawled, with a throb of uncontrollable beatitude in his voice.
The man spun round with a kind of gasp that was almost a sob. It was Junior Inspector Desmond Pryke.
X
THE writer, whose positively Spartan economy of verbiage must often have been noted and admired by every cultured student, recoils instinctively from the temptation to embellish the scene with a well-chosen anthology of those apt descriptive adjectives with which his vocabulary is so richly stocked. The pallor of flabbergasted faces, the glinting of wild eyes, the beading of cold perspirations, the trembling of hands, the tingling of spines, the sinking of stomachs, the coming and going of breath in little short pants-all those facile cliches which might lure less ruggedly disciplined scribes into the pitfall of endeavouring to make every facet of the situation transparent to the most nit-witted reader-none of these things, on this occasion at least, have sufficient enticement to seduce him. His readers, he assures himself, are not nit-wits: they are highly gifted and intelligent citizens, of phenomenal perspicacity and acceleration on the uptake. The situation, he feels, stated even in the baldest terms, could hide none of its facets from them.
It hid none of them from Simon Templar, or from Junior Inspector Pryke. But Simon Templar was the first to speak again.
"What are you doing here, Desmond?" he asked gently.
Pryke licked his lips, without answering. And then the question was repeated, but Simon Templar did not repeat it.
Chief Inspector Teal stepped out from behind a screen which cut off the Savings Bank section of the counter, and repeated it. His hands were in the pockets of his unnecessary raincoat, and his movement had the same suggestion of weary and reluctant effort that his movements always had; but there was something in the set of his round plump jaw and the narrowness of his sleepy-lidded eyes which explained beyond any need of words that he had watched the whole brief incident from beginning to end, and had missed none of the reactions which a police officer on legitimate business need not have shown.
"Yes-what are you doing?" he said.
Pryke's head jerked round again, and his face went another shade greyer. For a further interval of thrumming seconds he seemed to be struggling to find his voice; and the Saint smiled.
"I told you the High Fence would be here to collect his boodle, Claud," he said; and looked at Pryke again. "Qnincey told me," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Pryke had got some kind of control over his throat, but there was a quiver in his breathing which made odd little breaks in the sentence. "I heard that there were some stolen jewels here-----"
"Who from?" Teal asked quietly.
"From a man I found on the theory I was working on. You told me I could------"
"What was his name?"
"That's a long story," said Pryke hoarsely. "I met him . . ."
Probably he knew that the game was over-that the bluff was hopeless except as a play for time. The attack was too overwhelming. Watching him with smiling lips and bleak blue eyes, the Saint knew that there wasn't a man living who could have warded it off-whose brain, under the shock, could yet have moved fast enough to concoct a story, instantaneously and without reflection, that would have stood the light of remorseless investigation which must have been directed into it.
"I met him last night," said Pryke. "I suppose you have some reason-"
Simon nodded.
"We have," he said gently. "We came here to play the grand old parliamentary game of Sitting on the Fence; and it looks as if you are what might be called the sittee."
"You're crazy," said Pryke harshly.
His hand was sliding towards his hip, in a casual movement that should have been merely the conventional search for a cigarette-case; and Simon saw it a fraction of a second late.
He saw the flash of the nickel-plated gun, and the shot blasted his eardrums as he flung himself aside. Pryke swerved frantically, hesitated an instant, and turned his automatic on the broad target of Chief Inspector Teal; but before he could touch the trigger again the Saint's legs had swung round in a flailing scissor-sweep that found its marks faultlessly on knee-joint and ankle-bone. Pryke cursed and went down, clean and flat as a dead fish, with a smack that squeezed half the breath out of his body; and the Saint rolled over and held him in an ankle lock while the local men who had been posted outside poured in through the doors.
And that was approximately that.
The Saint continued to lie prostrate on the floor after Pryke had been handcuffed and taken away, letting the profound contentment of the day sink into his soul and make itself gorgeously at home. Misunderstanding his stillness, Mr. Teal bent over him with a shadow of alarm on his pink face.
"Are you hurt?" he asked gruffly; and the Saint chuckled.