"And not, I'm afraid," he murmured, "in the best of taste."
His eyes strayed back to the staring gaze of Chief Inspector Teal.
Of all those persons present, Mr. Teal did not seem the most happy. It would be inaccurate to say that he realized exactly what was going on. He didn't. But something told him that there was a catch in it. Somewhere in the undercurrents of that scene, he knew, there was something phony-something that was preparing to gyp him of his triumph at the very moment of victory. He had only the dimmest idea of how it was being worked; but he had seen it happen too many times before to mistake the symptoms.
"What the heck is this joke?" he demanded.
"Leo will tell you," said the Saint.
Farwill licked his lips.
"I — ah — the joke was so — ah — silly that I — ah… Well, Inspector, when Mr. Templar approached us with the offer of this — ah — literary work, and — ah — knowing his, if I may say so, notorious — ah — character, I — ah — that is, we — thought that it would be humorous to play a slight — ah — practical joke on him, with your — ah — unwitting assistance. Ah—"
"Whereas, of course, you meant to buy it all the time," Simon prompted him gently.
"Ah — yes," said the Honourable Leo chokingly. "Buy it. Ah — of course."
"At once," said Lord Iveldown quaveringly, taking out his checkbook.
"Ah — naturally," moaned the Honourable Leo, feeling for his pen. "At once."
"Two hundred thousand pounds, was it not, Mr. Templar?" said Lord Iveldown.
The Saint shook his head.
"The price has gone up a bit," he said. "It'll cost you two hundred and fifty thousand now — I need a new hat, and the Simon Templar Foundation isn't intended to pay for that."
With his head swimming and the blood drumming in his ears, Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal watched the checks being made out and blotted and handed over. He would never really know how the trick was turned. He only knew that Simon Templar was back; and anything could happen…
The parting words with which the Saint shepherded the gathering out of the door did nothing to enlighten him.
"By the way, Leo," said the Saint, "you must remember to tell Neville to send on his share. If you toddle straight back home you'll find him waiting for you. He's standing guard over the Rose of Peckham with a great big gun — and for some reason or other he thinks Snowdrop is me."
"Sir Humbolt Quipp came in and left a check," said Patricia Holm uncertainly.
Simon took it and added it to his collection. He fanned out the four precious scraps of paper and brought the Honourable Leo Farwill's contribution to the top. Then he removed this one from the others and gazed at it for a long time with a rather rueful frown.
"I'm afraid we let Leo off too lightly," he said.
"When I begin to think what a splendiferous orgy of Teal-baiting we could have had with the Home Secretary permanently under our thumb, I almost wonder whether the Simon Templar Foundation is worth it."
But later on he brightened.
"It would have made life damned dull," he said.
II
The higher finance
I
One day some literary faker with more time to waste than I have may write a precious monograph about Doors. He will point out that Doors are both entrances and exits, and draw pseudo-philosophical conclusions about Life and Death. He will drag in the Door which American diplomats always insist on keeping Open, except when they are inside. He may turn aside to toy fancifully with the Door-consciousness of Wolves. He will inevitably mention some famous Doors; such as the Great Door of the cathedral of Poillissy-sur-Loire, on which Voltaire scribbled a rude epigram addressed to the Pope; the Golden Door of the temple of Pashka in Allahabad, on which are engraved 777 sacred cows; the Door of Cesare Borgia's guest house, which drove daggers into the backs of everyone who passed through it; and so forth. Probably he will unscrupulously invent all this part out of his own imagination, exactly as I have done, but nobody will be any the wiser.
It is difficult, however, to see how the Door of the Barnyard Club, in London, could find a place in any such catalogue, being made of gimcrack deal and having no history or peculiarities. And yet, when it opened in the small hours of a certain morning to let Simon Templar out into Bond Street, it was for that brief moment the Door of Adventure.
Simon Templar stood at the edge of the sidewalk and put a thin cigarette between his lips, letting the cool air of the night play on his forehead and freshen his lungs; but there was no indication that freshening was his vital need. His dark rakish face seemed to have walked straight out of the open windswept places of the earth rather than out of the strained stuffy atmosphere of a night club, and his gay blue eyes could not have been clearer and keener at any other hour of the day. His strong lawless mouth had a curve of half-amused expectancy, as if his day were just beginning and he had a long list of diverting things to do; but there was nothing on his mind. It was only that Simon Templar's days were always ready to begin, at any hour, whenever adventure offered.
At his side Mr. Hoppy Uniatz, resplendent in a tight-waisted tuxedo and a shirtfront pinned together with a diamond stud, yawned cavernously and trod on the butt of his cigar. His was a less resiliently romantic soul, and he felt healthily depressed.
"Say, boss," he remarked querulously, "is dat what dey calls a big night in dis city?"
"I'm afraid it is," said the Saint.
Mr. Uniatz had none of that ascetic nobility of character which enables the Englishman to suffer his legislators gladly. He spat mournfully into the road.
"Chees," he said, with a gloomy emulsion of awe and disgust, "it ain't human. De last joint we're in, dey snatch off all de glasses becos it's twelve-toity. We pay two bucks each to get into dis joint, an' then we gotta pay five bucks fer a jug of lemonade wit' a spoonful of gin in it; an' all they got is a t'ree-piece band an' no floor show. An' de guys sits an' takes it! Why, if any joint had tried to gyp guys like dat in New York, even when we had prohibition, dey'd of wrecked it in two minutes." Mr. Uniatz sighed and reached for. the only apparent conclusion, unaware that other philosophers had reached it long before him: "Well, maybe dem Limeys ain't human, at dat."
"You forget that this is a free country, Hoppy," murmured the Saint gently.
He lighted his cigarette and blew out a wreath of smoke at the stars. A few spots of rain were beginning to fall from a bank of cloud that was climbing up from the west, and he scanned the street for a taxi to take them home. As if it had been conjured up in answer to his wish, a cab swung round the corner of Burlington Gardens and chugged towards them; and the Saint watched its approach hopefully. It was fifteen yards away when he saw that the flag was down, and shrugged ruefully. The setback was only an apt epilogue to a consistently inauspicious evening.
"We'd better walk," he said.
They turned down towards Piccadilly; and then, as they fell into step, he heard the rattle of the taxi die down and looked back over his shoulder. It had stopped outside the entrance of the Barnyard Club.
The Saint caught Hoppy's arm.
"Hold on," he said. "The luck's changed. We stay dry after all."
They strolled back towards the spot where this minor miracle stood panting metallically while its passenger alighted. It was a girl, he saw as she stood, fumbling with her bag.
"I'm afraid I haven't anything smaller," she was saying; and he heard that her voice was low and pleasant.
The driver grunted and climbed down laboriously from his box. Standing in the gutter, he unbuttoned his overcoat, his coat, his waistcoat, his cardigan, and part of his shirt, and began a slow and painful search through the various strange and inaccessible places where London taxi drivers secrete their small change. From scattered areas of his anatomy he collected over a period of time an assortment of coins and looked at them under the light.