"It must have been kept a secret," said the girl ironically.
She moved aside to shut the door; and as she did so, Mr. Teal and the Honourable Leo Farwill saw each other at the same time. There was a moment's dead silence; and then Farwill coughed.
"Ah — Inspector," he said heavily. "I hope we are not — ah — disturbing you."
"No, sir," said Teal, looking at him curiously. He added: "I think you'll be glad to know, sir, that as far as I can see we've got all the evidence we need."
Farwill's hand went to his moustache. His face had gone puffy and grey, and there was a dry hoarseness in his voice.
"Ah — evidence," he repeated. "Ah — quite. Quite. Ah — evidence. That book—"
"Have you read it?" asked Iveldown raspingly.
"Only the first page, my lord," said Teal. "The first page is a letter — it's rather involved, but I think the book will turn out to be the one we were looking for."
His heavy-lidded china-blue eyes were fixed on the Home Secretary perplexedly and with a trace of subconscious hostility. There was a kind of gritty strain in the atmosphere which he could not understand; and, not understanding it, it bothered him. His second reading of the letter had definitely been distracted, and he had not yet clearly sorted its meaning out of the elaborate and unfamiliar phrases in which it was worded. He only knew that he held triumph in his hands, and that for some unaccountable reason the Honourable Leo Farwill, who had first put him on the trail, was not sharing his elation.
"Let me see the book," said Farwill.
More or less hypnotized, Teal allowed it to be taken out of his hand; and when it was gone, a kind of wild superstitious fear that was beyond logic made him breathe faster, as if the book had actually dissolved into thin air between his fingers.
Farwill opened the book at the first page and read the letter.
"Ah — quite," he said short-windedly. "Quite. Quite."
"Mr. Farwill was going to say," put in Lord Iveldown, "that we came here for a special purpose, hoping to intercept you, Inspector. Critical international developments—"
"Exactly," boomed Farwill throatily. "The matter is vital. I might almost say — ah — vital." He tucked the book firmly under his arm. "You will permit me to take complete charge of this affair, Inspector. I shall have to ask you to accompany Lord Iveldown and myself to Scotland Yard immediately, where I shall explain to the chief commissioner the reasons of state which obviously cannot be gone into here — ah — and your own assiduous efforts, even if misdirected, will be suitably recognized—"
The gentle click of a latch behind him made everyone spin round at once; and Patricia gave a little choking cry.
"Well, well, well!" breathed the smiling man who stood just inside the door. "That's great stuff, Leo — but how on earth do you manage to remember all those words without notes?" It was the Saint.
X
He stood with his hands in his pockets and a freshly lighted cigarette tilting between his lips, with his hair blown awry by the sixty miles an hour he had averaged and the sparkle of the wind in his eyes; and Hoppy Uniatz stood beside him. According to their different knowledge, the others stared at him with various emotions registering on their dials; and the Saint smiled on them all impartially and came on in.
"Hullo, Pat," he murmured. "I didn't know you'd asked the Y. M. C. A. to move in. Why didn't you tell me?" His keen blue eyes, missing nothing, came to rest on the gaudily covered volume that Farwill was clutching under his arm. "So you've taken up literature at last, Leo," he said. "I always thought you would."
To say that Farwill and Iveldown were looking at him as if they had seen a ghost would be a trite understatement. They were goggling at him as if he had been the consolidated incarnation of all the spooks and banshees that ever howled through a maniac's nightmare. Their prosperous paunches were caving in like rubber balloons punctured with a sharp instrument; and it seemed as though all the inflation that escaped from their abdomens was going straight into their eyeballs. There was a sick blotchy pallor in their faces which suggested that they had been mentally spirited away onto the deck of a ship that was wallowing through all the screaming furies of the Horn.
It was Farwill who first found his voice, It was not much of a voice — it was more like the croak of a strangling frog — but it produced words.
"Inspector," it said, "arrest that man."
Teal's somnolent eyes opened a little, and there was a gleam of tentative exhilaration in them. So, after all, it seemed as if he had been mistaken. He was not to be cheated of his triumph. His luck had turned.
"I was going to," he said and started forward.
"On what charge?" asked the Saint.
"The same charge," said Teal inexorably. "Blackmail."
The Saint nodded.
"I see," he said and shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, well — no game can go on for ever, and we've had lots of fun." His gaze watched the advancing detective with a hint of wicked banter in it that belied the rueful resignation of his features; but Teal did not see that at once. "It'll be a sensational case," said the Saint. "Let me give you an idea."
And without warning, with a flow of movements too swift to follow, he took a couple of paces sideways and aimed a punch at what was left of the Honourable Leo's prosperous corporation. Far-will instinctively jerked up his hands; and with a quick smile Simon turned the feint into a deft reach of his hand that caught Her Wedding Secret as it fell.
Barrow and Teal plunged towards him simultaneously; and the Saint moved rapidly back — past the automatic that had appeared like magic in the hand of a Mr. Uniatz who this time had not been artificially obstructed on the draw.
"Stay back, youse guys!" barked Hoppy, in a voice quivering with exultation at his achievement; and involuntarily the two detectives checked.
The two politicians, equally involuntarily taking the lead in any popular movement, went farther. They went back as far as the confines of the room would allow them.
"You know your duty, Inspector," said the Home Secretary tremblingly. "I order you to arrest those men!"
"Don't order a good man to commit suicide," said the Saint curtly. "Nobody's going to get hurt — if you'll all behave yourselves for a few minutes. I'm the bloke who's being arrested, and I want to enjoy it. Readings by the public prosecutor of extracts from this book will be the high spot of the trial, and I want to have a rehearsal."
He turned the pages and quickly found a place.
"Now here's a juicy bit that'll whet your appetites," he remarked. "It must have something to do with those reasons of state which you were burbling about, Leo. "On May 15th I dined again with Farwill, then Secretary of State for War. He was inclined to agree with me about the potentialities of the Aix-la-Chapelle incident for increasing the friction between France and Germany; and on my increasing my original offer to £30,000 he agreed to place before the Cabinet—"
"Stop!" shouted Farwill shrilly. "It's a lie!"
The Saint closed his book and put it down; and very slowly the smile returned to his lips.
"I shouldn't be so melodramatic as that," he said easily. "But of course it's a joke. I suppose it's really gone a bit too far."
There was another long silence; and then Lord Iveldown cleared his throat.
"Of course," he said in a cracked voice. "A joke."
"A joke," repeated Farwill hollowly. "Ah — of course."
Simon flicked his cigarette through the open window, and a rumble of traffic went by in the sudden quiet.