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 ｣ｧ0,000 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.
"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.