"Why should I deny it? I lunched there."
"And you spoke to Miss Beatrice Avery?"
"We had a few brief words, yes. Of course I suppose that was very wicked of me, because we hadn't been introduced—"
"You took a package from her."
"No."
"You deny taking a package from her?" shouted Mr Teal.
"I do. She thrust the package into my hand and breezed off before I could even examine it—"
Teal's face turned a shade redder.
"You're not going to save yourself by quibbling like that," he snarled. "It's no good, Templar. You can try it on the jury. You're under arrest."
He took his right hand out of his pocket for the first time in that interview; and a pair of handcuffs clinked in it.
Simon glanced at them without moving.
"Hadn't you better think again, old dear?" he suggested quietly. "I don't know why I should go out of my way to save your hide, but I suppose I'm funny that way. Perhaps it's because life wouldn't be the same if you got chucked out of Scotland Yard on your ear and couldn't bring your tummy round to see me any more. Perhaps it's because I object to being marched into Piccadilly with bracelets over my wrists. But somehow or other I've got to save you from yourself."
"You don't have to worry—"
"But I do, Claud. I can't help it. it'd keep me awake at night, thinking of you sleeping out in the cold gutters with no one to even buy you a piece of spearmint. And it's all so obvious. The whole trouble is that you're jumping to too many conclusions. Just because I'm the Saint, and you never found any other criminals, you think I must be all of them. Then you hear of some guy called the Z-Man, so you think I must be him too. Well, who the hell is this Z-Man, and why haven't I heard of him before?"
Chief Inspector Teal bit on his gum in a supercharged effort of self-control that threatened to boil over at any moment. It was only by straining his will power to the limit that he succeeded in recovering the pose of mountainous boredom that he usually struggled in vain to maintain in the Saint's maddeningly nonchalant presence.
"I don't know what you hope to gain by all this, Templar, but you're wasting your breath," he said, shifting his lump of worn-out spearmint from one side of his mouth to the other. "I'm acting on facts that even you can't get away from. You may as well know that Sergeant Barrow was in the Dorchester at the time."
"Keeping a fatherly eye on me?"
"No; he was looking for someone else that we're interested in. But that's neither here nor there. Barrow happened to sec Miss Avery, and for reasons which I'm not going to explain he kept his eye on her."
"I only hope his thoughts were pure," said the Saint piously.
"Barrow saw you take a package from Miss Avery, and immediately afterwards he saw her leave the restaurant," continued Mr Teal coldly. "He accosted her in the foyer—"
"Disgusting, I call it," said the Saint. "What these policemen get away with—"
"He showed her his authority—"
"She must have been thrilled," murmured Simon.
"She refused to say anything, and Barrow rang me up," went on Teal, his self-control gradually slipping and his voice taking on its old familiar blare. "I got hold of these warrants, but I went to Miss Avery's flat first. She denied knowing anything about the Z-Man, but I'd been expecting that. What I did make her admit was that the package she handed you contained a large sum of money."
"Ten thousand pounds," said the Saint lazily. "I counted it."
Teal glowered at him, popeyed.
"I want that package—"
"Sorry, old dear," said the Saint regretfully. "I haven't got it."
"You haven't got it!" brayed Mr Teal.
"Calm yourself, sweetheart," drawled the Saint. "Much as I hate parting with perfectly good boodle when it's pushed right into my hand, I realized that a mistake had been made. Always the perfect gentleman, I immediately took steps to correct the error. On my way home I stopped at a District Messenger office and bunged the package back to Miss Avery, with contents intact. So you see, Claud, old thing, you'll have to tear those warrants up and go back to the assistant commissioner and let him flay you alive. And now that that's all cleared up, what about a smoke and a drink?"
He flicked open his cigarette case with one hand and indicated the whisky decanter with the other. Hoppy Uniatz, aware of the decanter's presence for the first time, moved mechanically towards it, licking his dry lips. Mr Teal, who had been unravelling his tonsils from his epiglottis, lumbered forward like a migrating volcano.
"You're not getting away like that this time, Templar," he said thickly. "You're coming with me! We've been after the Z-Man for a long time, and now we've got him. Are you coming quietly?"
"About as quietly as a brass band," answered the Saint succinctly. "But you needn't blow your whistles and bring in a troop of rozzers. I'm not going to pull a gun on you or start any roughhouse. I know it's a serious thing to interfere with an officer of the law in the execution of his duty — even when he's a mahogany-headed dope with barnacles all over his brain like you are. You say you're armed to the molars with warrants, or else I'd just bounce you out on your fat stomach and call it a day." His blue eyes rested on Mr Teal like twinkling icicles. "So instead of that I'll give you a chance to save your bacon. Before you commit the unmitigated asininity of arresting me and thereby get yourself slung out of a perfectly good job don't you think you'd better take the one obvious step?"
Nothing was obvious to Mr Teal except that he had got Simon Templar where he wanted him at last. But there was a mocking, buccaneering challenge in the Saint's voice that could not go unanswered.
"What obvious step?" he asked scorchingly. "I've got all the evidence I need—"
"I'm sorry; I forgot for the moment that you're only a detective," Simon apologized. "Let me put it into simple words. My answer to you is that Miss Avery gave me the ten thousand quid by mistake, and I rectified the mistake by immediately sending the money back to her. She's bound to have received it by now — and I know she's on the telephone. Since she seems to be the only important witness against me wouldn't it be rather a good idea to make quite certain that all this beautiful evidence of yours is really in the bag?"
He indicated his own instrument and his meaning was clear enough. But Chief Inspector Teal merely grunted and opened the handcuffs.
"That's an old one, isn't it?" he said contemptuously. "While I'm fooling about with the telephone you make your getaway. I'm surprised that you should suggest such a whiskery—"
He was interrupted by the shrill ringing of the twin bells of the telephone, and the Saint automatically reached for the instrument.
"No, you don't!" barked Mr Teal. "I'll take it."
Simon couldn't help smiling, for the detective was doing the very thing he had just been sneering at. But the Saint had no desire to make a getaway. He had a hunch that he knew where that call was coming from.
"Hullo!" said Mr Teal in a carefully controlled, Saintly voice.
"Is that Mr Simon Templar?"
"Yes," replied Mr Teal untruthfully; and he experienced a sudden awful feeling as though somebody had removed his stomach in one piece, leaving a wide open space; for the voice at the other end of the wire belonged unmistakably to Beatrice Avery. Mr Teal went to the movies often enough to know that.
"I owe you a humble apology, Mr Templar, for making such a stupid mistake," said Beatrice Avery, and Mr Teal heard the words through a kind of infernal tantara, in which the assistant commissioner's eloquent sniff was the most easily recognizable sound. "Thank you a thousand times for sending the money back so promptly. It was all a silly joke. Please forgive me."