"Good-evening, Miss Holm," he said at last, breathing deeply and detaching his eyes from Orace's stormy countenance with obvious diffi-culty. "I have a search warrant------"
"You must be collecting them," murmured Patricia sweetly. "Come in and tell me what it's all about this time."
She turned and went back into the study, anc Mr. Teal and his satellite followed. Mr. Teal' eyes discovered Mr. Uniatz and transferred their smouldering malevolence to him. It is a regret-l table fact that Mr. Teal's soul was not at that moment overflowing with courtesy and good wil towards men; and Mr. Uniatz had crossed his path on another unfortunate occasion.
"I've seen you before," Teal said abruptly. "Who are you?"
"Tim Vickery," replied Hoppy promptly, with an air of triumph.
"Yes?" barked the detective. "You're the forger, eh?"
There was something so consistently unfriendly in his china-blue gaze that Hoppy reached around nervously for the whisky bottle. He had been let down. This was not what the Saint had told him. He had to think, and that always gave him a pain somewhere between his ears.
"I ain't no forger, boss," he protested. "I'm a fairy."
"You're what?" blared the detective.
"A bootlegger," said Mr. Uniatz, gulping hastily. "I mean, de udder business is my perfes-sion. I got an accent like a nightingale------"
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal grabbed at the scattering fragments of his temper with both hands. If only he could master the art of remaining tranquil under the goad of that peculiar form of baiting in which not only the Saint indulged, but which seemed to infect all his associates like a malignant disease, he might yet be able to score for law and order the deciding point in that ancient feud. He had missed points before by letting insult and injury get under his skin-- the Saint's malicious wit had stung him, ragged him, baited him, rattled him, tied him up in a series of clove hitches and stood him on his head and rolled him over again, till he had no more chance of victory than a mad bull would have had against an agile hornet.
But this man in front of him, whose calloused throat apparently allowed whisky to flow through it like milk, was not the Saint. The style of badinage might be similar--in fact, it is interesting to record that, to Teal's overwrought imagination, the style was almost identical--but the man behind it could not conceivably be the same. In any one century, two men like the Saint could not plausibly have been born. The earth could not have survived it.
And Mr. Teal had a point to make. The man with the whisky bottle had given it to him, open-handed. It was a point which annihilated all the routine plans he had made for that raid on which he had barely started to embark--a point so free and brazen that Mr. Teal's respiratory system went haywire at the sight of it.
"Your name's Vickery, is it?" he said, in the nearest he could get to his normal sleepy voice; and Mr. Uniatz, after an appealing glance at Patricia, nodded dumbly. "Then why is it," Teal flung at him suddenly, "that when Miss Holm tried to ring you up a quarter of an hour ago, she was told that you were in bed and asleep?"
Mr. Uniatz opened his mouth, and, finding that nothing at all would come out of it, decided to put something in and hope for the best. He pushed the neck of the whisky bottle between his teeth and swallowed feverishly; and Patricia spoke for him.
"That was a mistake," she explained. "Mr. Vickery came in just a minute or two after I telephoned."
"Dat's right, boss," agreed Mr. Uniatz, grasping the point with an injudicious speed which trickled a couple of gills of good alcohol waste-fully down his tie. "A minute or two after she telephones, I come in."
Mr. Teal gazed at him balefully.
"Then why is it," he rasped, "that the man I had waiting outside the front gate while I was at the telephone exchange didn't see you?"
"I come in de back door," said Hoppy brightly.
"And the man I had at the back door didn't see you either," said Chief Inspector Teal.
Hoppy Uniatz sank down into the nearest chair and tacitly retired from the competition. His brow was ploughed into furrows of honest effort, but he was out of the race. He had a resentful feeling that he was being fouled, and the referee wasn't doing anything about it. He had done his best, but that wasn't no use if a guy didn't get a break.
"It sounds even funnier," Mr. Teal said trenchantly, "when I tell you that another Tim Vickery was pulled in for questioning just before I left London, and he hasn't been let out yet." His sharp glittering eyes between the pink creases of fat went back to Patricia Holm. "I'll be interested to have a look at this third Tim Vickery who's asleep at Hawk Lodge," he said. "But if the Saint isn't here, I can make a good guess at who he's going to be!"
"You do your guessing," answered Patricia, as the Saint would have answered; but her heart was thumping.
"I'll do more than that," said the detective grimly.
He turned on his heel and waddled out of the room; and his silent companion followed him. Patricia went after them to the front door. There was a police car standing on the drive, and Teal stopped beside it and called two names. After a slight interval, two large overcoated men materialized out of the dark.
"You two stay here," commanded Teal. "Inside the house. Don't let anyone out who's inside, or anyone else who comes in while I'm away---on any excuse. I'll be back shortly."
He climbed in, and his taciturn equerry took the wheel. In another moment the police car was scrunching down the drive, carrying Claud Eustace Teal on his ill-omened way.
IX
Ivar Nordsten was dead. He must have been dead even before Simon Templar snatched his automatic away from under the lashing tearing claws of the panther and sent two slugs through its heart at point-blank range. He lay on the shining oak close to the door, a curiously twisted and mangled shape which was not pleasant to look at. The maddened beast that had turned on him had wreaked its vengeance with fiendish speed; but it had not wrought neatly. . . .
The Saint straightened up, cold-eyed, and looked across at Erik. The man was staring mo-tionlessly at the black glossy body of the dead panther and at the still and crumpled remains of Ivar Nordsten; and the dull glazed sightlessness had been wiped out of his eyes. His throat was working mutely, and the tears were raining down the yellow parchment of his cheeks.
Footsteps were coming across the hall; and Simon remembered the three shots which had been fired. It was not impossible that they might have been mistaken for cracks of the whip; but the end of the panther's savage snarling had begun a sudden deep silence which would demand some explanation. With a quick deliberate movement Simon opened the door and stood behind it. He raised his voice in a muffled imitation of Nordsten's:
"Trusaneff!"
The butler's footsteps entered the room. The Saint saw him come into view and stop to stare at the man Erik. Very gently he pushed the door to behind the unsuspecting man, reversed his gun, and struck crisply with the butt. . . .
Then he completed the closing of the door and took out his cigarette case. For the moment there was no reason why he shouldn't. Certainly the battle-scarred gladiator with the passionate interest in antirrhinums remained, together with heaven knew how many more of Nordsten's curious staff; but to all outward appearances Ivar Nordsten was closeted with his butler, and there was no cause for anyone else to be inquisitive. In fact, Simon had already gathered that inquisitive-ness was not a vice in which Nordsten's retainers had ever been encouraged.
He lighted a cigarette and looked again at the financier's erstwhile prisoner.
"Erik," he said quietly.
The man did not move; and Simon walked across and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Erik," he repeated, and the man's tear-streaked face turned helplessly. "Was Ivar your brother?"