"Mr. Teal is here, sir," said Sam Outrell's voice on the telephone; and the Saint sighed.
"Okay, Sam. Send him up." He replaced the microphone and turned back to Mr. Uniatz, who was engulfing quantities of toast with concentrated gusto. "I'm afraid you've got to blow again, Hoppy," he said. "I'll see you later."
Mr. Uniatz rose wearily. He had been shot out of the Saint's apartment to make room for other visitors so often that morning that he had grave fears for his digestion. There was one slice of toast left for which even his Gargantuan mouth was temporarily unable to find room. In order to eliminate any further risks of having his meal disturbed, he put the slice in his pocket and went out obediently; and he was the first thing that Teal saw when Simon opened the door.
"Hi, Claud," said Mr. Uniatz amiably and drifted on towards the sanctity of his own quarters.
"Who the deuce is that?" demanded the startled detective, staring after Hoppy's retreating rear.
The Saint smiled.
"A friend of mine," he said. "Come along in, Claud, and make yourself uncomfortable. This is just like old times."
Mr. Teal turned round slowly and advanced into the apartment. The momentary human surprise which Hoppy's greeting had given him faded rather quickly out of his rubicund features. The poise of his plump body as he came to rest in the living room, the phlegmatic dourness of his round pink face under its unfashionable bowler hat, was exactly like old times. It was Chief Inspector Teal paying an official calclass="underline" Chief Inspector Teal, with the grim recollection of many such calls haunting his mind, trundling doggedly out once again to take up his hopeless duel with the smiling young freebooter before him. The sum of a score of interviews like that drummed through his head, the memory of a seemingly endless sequence of failures and the bitter presentiment of many more to come was in his brain; but there was no hint of weakness or evasion in the somnolent eyes that rested on the Saint's brown face.
"Well," he said, "I told you I'd be coming to see you."
Simon nodded pleasantly.
"It was nice of you to make it so soon, Claud," he murmured. "And what do you think is going to win the Derby?"
He knew as well as the chief commissioner himself that Mr. Teal would never have called on him to enjoy small talk and racing gossip; but it was not his business to make the first move. A faint smile of humorous challenge stayed on his lips, and under the light of that smile Teal rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
"Do you know anything about that?" he asked.
Simon took the sheet and flattened it out. It was his own notehead, and there was certainly no surprise for him in the words which were written on it; but he read the document through obligingly.
The Rt. Hon. Leo Farwill, 384, Hanover Square, London W. i. Dear Sir:
As you have probably been informed, I have in my possession a volume of unique international interest, in which your own distinguished name happens to be mentioned.
I have decided to sell this volume, in sections, for the benefit of the Simon Templar Foundation, which I am founding. This foundation will exist for the purpose of giving financial and other assistance to the needy families of men who were killed or deprived of their livelihood in the last war, to the care of the incurably crippled wounded, and to the endowment of any approved cause which is working to prevent a repetition of that outbreak of criminal insanity.
The price to you, of the section in which your name appears, is ｣200,000; and, knowing your interest in literature, I am sure you will decide that the price is reasonable--particularly as the Simon Templar Foundation will in its small way work towards the promise of "a land fit for heroes to live in" with which you once urged men to military service, death, and disablement, and which circumstances {always, of course, beyond your control) have since made you unable to fulfil.
In expecting your check to reach me before next Saturday midnight, I am, I feel sure, my dear honourable Leo, only anticipating your own natural urgent desire to benefit such a deserving charity.
Yours faithfully,
Simon Templar.
"Very lucid and attractive, I think," said the Saint politely. "What about it?" Teal took the letter back from him. "It's signed with your name, isn't it?" he asked. "Certainly," said the Saint.
"And it's in your handwriting."
"Beyond a doubt."
"So that it looks very-much as if you wrote it."
Simon nodded.
"That Sherlock Holmes brain of yours goes straight to the point, Claud," he said. "Faced with such keen deductive evidence, I can't deceive you. I did write it."
Teal folded the letter again and put it back in his pocket. His mouth settled into a relentless line. With any other man than the one who faced him. he would have reckoned the interview practically over; but he had crossed swords with the Saint too often ever to believe that of any interview-had seen too many deadly thrusts picked up like the clumsy lunges of an amateur on the rapierlike brilliance of the Saint's brain, and tossed aside with a smile that was more deadly than any riposte. But the thrust had to be made.
"I suppose you know that's blackmail," Teal said flatly.
The Saint frowned slightly.
"Demanding money with menaces?" he asked.
"If you want the technical charge," Teal said stubbornly, "yes."
And it came--the cool flick of the rapier that carried his point wide and aimless.
"Where," asked the Saint puzzledly, "are the menaces?"
Teal swallowed an obstruction in his throat. The game was beginning all over again--the futile hammering of his best blades on a stone wall that was as impalpable as ether, the foredoomed pur-suit of the brigand who was easier to locate than any other lawbreaker in London, and who was more elusive than a will-o'-the-wisp even when he was most visible in the flesh. All the wrath that curdled his milk of human kindness was back in the detective at that moment, all the righteous anger against the injustice of his fate; but he had to keep it bottled up in his straining chest.
"The menaces are in the letter," he said bluntly.
Simon stroked his chin in a rendering of ingenuous perplexity that acted on Teal's blood pressure like a dose of strychnine.
"I may be prejudiced," he remarked, "but I didn't see them. It seemed a very respectable appeal to me, except for a certain unconventional familiarity at the end, where Leo's Christian name was used--but these are free-and-easy days. Otherwise I thought it was a model of restrained and touching eloquence. I have a book, of which it occurs to me that Leo might like to buy the section in which his name appears--you know what publicity hounds most of these politicians are. There-fore I offer to sell it to him, which I'm sure must be strictly legal."
"Mr. Farwill's statement," retorted Teal, "is that the part of the book you're referring to is nothing hut a collection of libellous lies."
Simon raised his eyebrows.
"He must have a guilty conscience," he murmured. "But you can't put me in jail for that. I didn't say anything in my letter to give him that impression. I defy you to find one threat, one word of abuse, one questionable insinuation. The whole epistle," Simon said modestly, "is couched in the most flattering and even obsequious terms. In ex-pecting his check to reach me before next Saturday midnight, I am, I feel sure, only anticipating his own natural urgent desire to benefit such a deserv-ing charity. Leo may have turned out to be not quite the eager philanthropist I took him for," said the Saint regretfully, "but I still hope he'll see the light of godliness in the end; and I don't see what you've got to do with it, Claud."