And then an awful noise broke the silence behind him. It was a frightful clattering consumptive hiccough which turned into a continuous sobbing rattle in which all the primeval anguish of ancient iron and steel was orchestrated into one grinding medley of discords. The taxi which had brought Adventure's offering had started up again.
Simon Templar turned. He had been mad for years, and it was much too late in life to begin striving after sanity. His face was dazzlingly seraphic as he looked up at the rehabilimented driver, who was settling stoically into his seat.
"Does this happen to be your own cab, brother?" he asked.
"Yes, guv'nor," said the man. "Jer wanter buy it?"
"That's exactly what I do want," said the Saint.
II
The driver gaped down at him with a feeble fish-like grin — handsomer men than he had been smitten in the same way when their facetious witticisms were taken literally.
"Wot?" he said weakly, expressing the ultimate essence of cosmic doubt in the one irreducible monosyllable which philosophers have sought in vain for centuries.
"I want to buy your cab," said the Saint. "I'm collecting specimens for a museum. What's the price?"
"Five 'undred quid, guv'nor, an' it's yours,"
stated the proud owner, clinging hysterically to his joke.
Simon took out his billfold and counted out five crackling banknotes. The driver crawled down from his box with glazed eyes and clutched at one rusty mudguard for support.
"You ain't arf pulling me leg, are yer?" he said.
Simon folded the notes and pushed them into his hand.
"Take those round to a bank in the morning and see how your leg feels," he advised and took out another note as an afterthought. "Will a fiver buy your coat and cap as well?"
"Blimey, guv'nor," replied the driver, unbuttoning again with sudden vigour, "you could 'ave me shirt an' trousers as well for arf that."
The Saint stood for a moment and watched the happily bereaved driver veering somewhat light-headedly out of view; and then, beside him, Hoppy Uniatz groped audibly for comprehension.
"What kinda joke is dis, boss?" he asked; and the Saint pulled himself together.
"It'll grow on you as the years go by, Hoppy,"; he said kindly.
He was pulling on the driver's big grubby overcoat and winding the nondescript muffler round his neck with the speed and efficiency of a quick-change artist between scenes. In the emptiness of the street there was no one to see him. His black felt hat came off and was dumped into Hoppy's hands; the driver's peaked cap took its place. For a moment Hoppy saw the dark clean-cut face blithe and buccaneering under the shade of the cap, the white teeth glinting in a smile that had no respect for any impossibilities.
"You won't be able to stay here and share it with me," said the Saint. "I've got another job for you. Get hold of this address: 26 Abbot's Yard, Chelsea. You'd better take a taxi — but not this one. Go straight there and make yourself at home. There's a bottle of Scotch in the pantry; and here's the key. We're going to throw a party!"
"Okay, boss," said Mr. Uniatz dimly.
He took the key, stowed it away in his pocket, and without another word hoofed phlegmatically away in the direction of Piccadilly. It would be untrue to say that he had grasped the point with inspired intuition; but certain nouns and verbs had conglomerated in his mind to indicate a course of action, and therefore he was taking it. His brain, which was a small and loosely knit organization of nerve endings accustomed to directing such simple activities as eating, sleeping, and shooting off guns, was not adapted to the higher mysteries of inductive speculation; but it had a protective affinity for the line of least resistance. If the Saint required him to go to Chelsea and look for a bottle of Scotch, that was jake with him…
And, heading on his way with that plodding single-mindedness in which Lot's wife was so unfortunately lacking, he did not see the Saint climb into the driver's seat and steer his museum specimen up the road; nor did he see any of the other enlightening things which happened in that district shortly afterwards.
Chief Inspector Teal came out of the Barnyard Club and looked up and down the street.
"You and Henderson can go home," he said to one of the men with him. "I shan't need you any more tonight."
He put up a hand to stop the ancient taxi which came crawling hopefully towards them at that moment, and as it stopped he turned to the two people who had been added to his party since he entered the club.
"Get in," he ordered briefly.
He watched his prisoners embark with stolid vigilance — the raid had not by any means been as successful as he had hoped, and he would not know how much he had got out of it until the two arrests had been questioned. The other detective followed them in, and Teal paused to direct the driver to Cannon Row police station. Then he also got in and settled his bulk on the other folding seat, facing his captives.
The taxi jolted away with a hideous clanking of gears, and Mr. Teal pulled out a large silver watch and calculated his expectation of sleep. The other detective inspected his fingernails and nibbled a peeling scrap of cuticle on his thumb. The two prisoners sat in silence — the girl whose pound note Simon Templar had changed, and a dark florid man whose shirtfront sported a large square emerald which no arbiter of fashion could have approved. Mr. Teal did not even look at them. His hands lay primly on his knees, and his plump face was torpid, inscrutable, unworried. The case might be solved that night, or it might wait a year for solution. It made no difference to him. The relentless dogged routine which he represented took little account of time, and it had very few of the sensational brilliancies and hectic pursuits beloved of writers of fiction: it was a matter of taking up one trivial clue, following it with mechanical logic until it led no further, dropping it and patiently picking up the next; and usually the net was completed some day, and a man was prosaically caught. Except when the man for whom the net was woven happened to be the Saint… A slight frown crossed Teal's round red face as that unwelcome reflection obtruded itself in his train of thought; and then the taxi, which for some minutes past had been puffing more and more wearily, finally expired with a last senile wheeze and would travel no farther.
Teal looked round with a scowl of more immediate irritation; and the driver climbed down and opened the bonnet of the machine. They were in a dingy narrow street which Teal did not recognize, for he had not been paying any attention to the route. He put his head out of the window.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Dunno yet," grunted the driver, still groping in the bowels of his antediluvian engine.
Teal fidgeted through a few minutes of silence and then turned to his subordinate.
"See if you can find out where we are, Durham," he said. "We can't sit here all night."
The other detective opened the door on his side and got down. Seen in fuller perspective, the road in which they had stopped was even more unprepossessing than it had looked through the windows. One thing about it at least was certain — no other taxi was likely to come cruising along it in the hope of picking up a fare.
Durham walked up to the driver, who was still half buried in his machinery and seemed ready to remain in that position indefinitely, like a modern Indian fakir trying out a novel method of mortifying the flesh.