Simon caught Patricia's eye and sighed. And then he began to laugh.
"I got Claud to forget it for the sake of his mother," he said. "Now suppose you tell your story. Did you catch Wynnis?"
The front doorbell rang on the interrogation, and they listened in a pause of silence, while Hoppy poured himself out half a pint of undiluted Scotch. They heard Orace's limping tread crossing the hall, and the sounds of someone being admitted; and then the study door was opened and Simon saw who the visitor was.
He jumped up.
"Claud!" he cried. "The very devil we were talking about! I was just telling Hoppy about your mother."
Mr. Teal came just inside the room and settled his thumbs in the belt of his superfluous overcoat. His china-blue eyes looked as if they were just about to close in the sleep of unspeakable boredom; but that was an old affectation. It had nothing to do with the slight heliotrope flush in his round face or the slight compression of his mouth. In the ensuing hiatus, an atmosphere radiated from him which was nothing like the sort of atmosphere which should have radiated from a man who was thinking kindly of his mother.
"Oh, you were, were you?" he said, and his voice broke on the words in a kind of hysterical bark. "Well, I didn't come down from London to hear about my mother. I want to hear what you know about a man called Wynnis, who was held up in his flat at half-past eight this morning -----"
WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF
THE 'SAINT' ON OTHER
AVON BOOKS
HE WILL BE BACK.