"You don't mind if I have a look at this?" he said.
It was not so much a question as an authoritative demand; and a queer tingle of supernatural expectation touched Simon Templar's spine for an instant and was gone. For the first time since the . hand fell on his shoulder he looked beyond the detective's broad and portly form and saw another solid bowler-hatted figure, equally broad but a shade less portly, kicking its regulation rubber heels a few paces away, as if waiting for the conversation to conclude. The Saint's suddenly quiet and watchful eyes swerved along the sidewalk in the other direction, and saw two other men of the same unmistakable pattern engrossed in inaudible discussion in the shadow of a shop doorway on his right. All at once, without a sound that his unguarded ears had noticed, the deserted street had acquired a population. ...
A tiny pulse began to beat in the Saint's brain, a pulse that was little more than the echo of his own heart working steadily through a moment of utter physical stillness; and then he drew a deep lungful of air through his cigarette and let the smoke trickle out in a slow feather through the sparse twinkling beads of rain. After all, the night had not failed him. It had merely been teasing. What it would have to offer eventually he still did not know; but he knew that three men out of the mould which he saw do not abruptly assemble in Bond Street, materializing like genii out of the damp paving stones at two o'clock in the morning, and bringing Chief Inspector Teal with them, for no other reason than that they have been simultaneously smitten with an urge to discover at first hand whether the night life of London is as dull as it is universally reputed to be. And wherever and whenever such a deputation of official talent was gathered together, Simon Templar had a potential interest in the proceedings.
"What's the matter with it?" he inquired thoughtfully.
Mr. Teal straightened up slowly from his examination of the banknote under one of the taxi's feeble lights. He took out his wallet and folded the bill in deliberately.
"You won't mind if I look after it for you?" he said, with the same authoritative decision.
"Help yourself," murmured the Saint lavishly. "Are you starting a collection, or something? I've got a few more of those if you'd like 'em."
The detective buttoned his coat and glanced towards the two men who were conversing in the adjacent doorway. Without appearing to interrupt their conversation, they moved out onto the pavement and came nearer.
"I'm surprised at you, Saint," he said, with what in anyone else would have been a tinge of malicious humour, "being taken in with a thing like that at your age. Is this the first time you've seen a bit of slush?"
"I like 'em that way," said the Saint slowly. "You know me, Claud. I never cared for this mass-production stuff. I've always believed in encouraging individual enterprise------"
"It's a good job I watched you encouraging it,"
said the detective grimly. "With your reputation, you wouldn't have stood much chance if you'd been caught trying to pass a counterfeit note." A wrinkle of belated regret for a lost opportunity creased his forehead as that last poignant thought entrenched itself in his mind. "Perhaps I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to take it away from you if I'd remembered that before," he added candidly.
The Saint smiled; but the smile was only on his lips.
"You have the friendliest inspirations, dear old bird," he remarked amiably. "Why not give it back? There's still time; and I see you've got lots of your old school pals around."
"I've got something else to do," said Mr. Teal. He squared his shoulders, and his mouth set in a line along which many things might have been read. "If I want to ask you anything more about this, I'll know where to find you," he said and turned brusquely away towards the door of the club.
As he did so, the other man who had been kicking his heels in the middle background roused out of his vague detachment and went after him. The second pair of detectives who had been strolling closer drifted unobtrusively into the same route. There was nothing dramatic, nothing outwardly sensational about it; but it had the mechanical precision of a manoeuvre by a well-drilled squad of soldiers. For one or two brief seconds the three men who had appeared so surprisingly out of the empty night were clustered at the doorway like bees alighting at the entrance of a hive; and then they had filtered through, without fuss or ostentation, as if they had never been there. The door was closed again, and the broken lights and shadows of the street were so still that the patter of swelling raindrops on the parched pavements could be heard like a rustle of leaves in the absence of any other sound.
Simon put his cigarette to his lips, with his eyes fixed on the blank door, and drained it of the last slow inhalation. He dropped it between his fingers and shifted the toe of a polished patent-leather shoe, blotting it out. The evening had done its stuff. It had provided the wherewithal. . . . He put his hands in his trouser pockets and felt the lightness which had been left there by the twenty shillings' worth of good silver which he had paid out in exchange for that confiscated scrap of forged Bank of England paper; and he remembered a bewitching face and the shadow of fear which had come and gone in its brown eyes. But at that moment he was at a loss to know what he could do.
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.