"Fetch me a towel from the bathroom, Hoppy," he ordered. "And for heaven's sake put that blasted cannon away. How many more times have I got to tell you that this is the closed season for policemen?"
While he was waiting, he handcuffed the two detectives with their own bracelets; and when the towel arrived he tore it into two strips and gagged them.
"Get your hat," he said, when the job was finished. "We're going to travel."
Mr. Uniatz followed him obediently. It may be true, as we have acknowledged, that the higher flights of philosophy and metaphysics were for ever beyond the range of Mr. Uniatz's bovine intellect; but he had an incomparable grip on the fundamentals of self-preservation. Experience had taught him that after an active encounter with the police the advantages of expeditious traveling could be taken for granted--a fact which relieved his brain of much potentially painful exertion.
As they turned into Berkeley Square, he followed a little more hesitantly; and eventually he plucked at the Saint's sleeve.
"Where ya goin', boss?" he asked. "Dis ain't de way to de garage."
"It's the way to the garage we're going to," answered the Saint.
He had automatically ruled out the Hirondel as a conveyance for that getaway--the great red-and-cream speedster was far too conspicuous and far too well known, and it was the car whose description would be immediately broadcast by Mr. Teal as soon as that hapless sleuth had worked the gag out of his mouth and reached the telephone. Simon had another and more commonplace car in reserve, in another garage and another name, which he had laid up some weeks ago with a far-sighted eye to just such a complication as this; and he was inclined to flatter himself on his forethought without undertaking the Herculean labour of hammering the idea into Hoppy's armour-plated skull.
Whether any net was actually spread out for him in time to cross his path, he never knew; certainly he slipped through London without incident, making excellent time over the almost deserted roads in spite of several detours at strategic points where he might have been stopped. He abandoned the car outside the entrance of the Vickers factory on the Byfleet road, where there would soon be a score of other cars parked around it, and one more modest saloon might easily pass unnoticed for days; and walked through the woods to his house as the dawn was breaking. There was no hope that Teal would fail to draw that covert as soon as he had reorganized his forces; but it was a temporary haven, and the Saint had a few items of personal equipment there which he wanted to pick up.
There were sounds of movement in the kitchen when he let himself in at the front door, and in another moment the belligerent walrus-mous-tached visage of Orace appeared on the opposite side of the hall. Simon threw his hat at him and smiled.
"What's our chance of breakfast, Orace?" he asked.
"Narf a minnit," said Orace expressionlessly and vanished again.
Over the bacon and eggs, golden brown toast and steaming coffee which Orace produced necroman-tically in very little more than the time he had promised, the Saint's brain was working overtime. For the time being, Teal had been dealt with; but the past tense had no more permanent stability than the haven in which Simon Templar was eat-ing his breakfast. Ahead of those transient satis-factions lay the alternatives of penal servitude or a completed getaway; and he had no spontaneous leaning towards either. He turned them over in his mind like small beetles discovered under a log and decided that he liked them even less. But there was a third solution which took him longer to think over--which, in fact, kept him wrapped in silent concentration until his plate was pushed away and he was smoking a cigarette over a second cup of coffee and Mr. Uniatz intruded his bashful personality again.
Hoppy's brain had not been working overtime, because the hours between one breakfast and the following bedtime were rarely long enough to let it do much more than catch up with where it had left off the previous night. Nevertheless the wheels, immersed in the species of thick soup in which nature had asked them to whizz round, had been doggedly trying to revolve.
"Boss," said Hoppy Uniatz, articulating with some indistinctness through a slice of toast, two ounces of butter, a rasher of bacon, and half an egg, "de cops knows you got dis house."
Simon harked back over some leagues of his own cerebrations and recognized the landmark which Hoppy had contrived to reach.
"That's perfectly true," he remarked admiringly. "Now don't go doing any more of that high-pressure thinking--give your brain a minute to cool off, because I want you to listen to me."
He rang the bell and smoked quietly until Orace answered. Mr. Uniatz, happily absolved from further brainwork, engulfed the rest of the food within his reach and cast longing eyes at a decanter of whisky on the sideboard.
"Orace," said the Saint, "I'm afraid Claud Eustace is after us again."
"Yessir," said Orace phlegmatically.
"You might sound more sympathetic about it," Simon complained. "One of the charges is wilful murder."
"Well, it's yer own thunderin' fault, ain't it?" retorted Orace, unmoved.
The Saint sighed.
"I suppose you're right," he admitted. "Anyway, Hoppy's idea is that we ought to pull an Insull."
"Dat means to take it on de lam," explained Hoppy, clarifying the point.
Orace's faded eyes lost none of their ferocity, but his overhanging moustache twitched.
"If yer can wite 'arf a minnit, sir," he said, "I'll go wiv yer."
The Saint laughed softly and stood up. His hand fell on Orace's shoulder.
"Thanks a lot, you old humbug; but it isn't nec- , essary. You see, Hoppy's wrong. And you ought to know it, after all the years you've been around with me." He leaned back against the mantelpiece, one hand in his pocket, and looked at the two men with eyes that were beginning to twinkle again. "Hoppy reminds me that Teal knows all about this house, but he's forgotten that Teal also, knows I know it. Hoppy thinks we ought to pack our keisters and take it on the lam, but he's for-gotten that that's the very thing Teal is expecting us to do. After all, Claud Eustace has seen me hang it on the limb before. . . . Are you there, Hoppy?"
"Yes, boss," said Mr. Uniatz, after glancing around to reassure himself of the fact.
"It's quite true that you'll probably see some cops skating up the drive before long; but somehow I don't think Claud Eustace will be with them. It'll be almost a formality. They may browse around looking for incriminating relics, but they won't be seriously looking for me--or Hoppy. And that's why none of 'em will ever be great detectives, because this is exactly where Hoppy is going to be--lying snug and low in the secret room off the study, which is one of the things they still don't know about this house."
"Chees!" said Mr. Uniatz, in pardonable awe. "Didja t'ink of all dat while ya was eatin' breakfast?"
The Saint smiled.
"That and some more; but I guess that's enough for your head to hold at one time." He looked at his watch. "You'd better move into your new quarters now--Orace will bring you food and drink from time to time, and I'll know where to find you when I want you."
He steered Hoppy across the hall and into the study, slid back the bookcase beside the desk, and pushed him through the gap in the wall behind it. Framed in the narrow opening, Mr. Uniatz blinked out at him pleadingly.
"Boss," he said, "it's gonna be toisty waitin'."
"Hoppy," said the Saint, "if I think you're going to have to wait long, I'll tell Orace to have a pipeline laid from a distillery right into the room. Then you can just lie down under the tap and keep your mouth open--and it'll be cheaper than buying it in bottles."