The detective broke off with a gesture that comprehended Patricia's ragamuffin appearance and the Saint's own tattered clothes, and Simon grinned.
"So sad!" he drawled. "And now I suppose you'll be in agonies of curiosity for weeks."
Carn shrugged.
"That depends."
The detective was a passably good actor, but he was heavily handicapped by the suggestion of malicious glee that lurked in the Saint's twinkling eyes. And he dared not seem to notice that the Saint was quietly laughing at him because it was essential for him to maintain the role of Dr. Carn in the presence of a witness. Which goes some way to explain why his florid face remained more rubicund even. than it normally was, and why there was a certain unnatural restraint in his voice.
Patricia was perplexed. She had expected to find that the Saint and Carn were familiar friends: instead, she found two men fencing with innuendo. It was beyond her to follow the subtleties of the duel, but there was no doubt that Simon was quite happy and Carn was quite annoyed, for it was indisputably the Saint's game.
"Shall I tell you all about it, Doc?" asked the Saint insinuatingly, for it was a weakness of his to exaggerate his pose to the borders of farce.
"Do," urged Carn, in an unguarded moment.
'Til tell you," said Simon confidentially. "It was like this. ..."
Carn drew nearer. The Saint frowned, blinked, scratched his head, and stared blankly at the detective.
"Do you know," said Simon, in simulated dismay, "it's a most extraordinary thing I can't remember. Isn't that funny?"
The detective was understood to reply that he |was not amused. He said other things, in a low voice that was none the less pregnant with emotion, for the Saint's ears alone, and Simon turned away with a pained expression.
I don't agree," said Simon. "The Ten-Toed Tripe-Hopper is nothing like the Wall-Eyed 'Giraffe. Try Keating's."
"As a matter of fact," interposed Patricia, who felt that things looked like getting out of hand, Mr. Templar's been with me most of the evening. We were taking a walk along by the cliff, and " Simon raised his hand.
"Hush!" he said. "Not before the Doc. You'll be -putting ideas into his head."
"Grrrr," said Carn fiercely, which a man might well say when goaded to the limits of human endurance, and then he coughed energetically to cover it up.
"You see?" said the Saint. "You're embarrassing him."
Simon was perfect. His Smiling, polished ease made Carn's red-faced discomfort look like an intentional effort of the detective to entertain a children's party with a few "faces" between the ice creams and the Punch and Judy, and Patricia was weak with suppressed laughter. It was unpardonable, of course, but it was the only way to dispose of Carn's burning curiosity. To have been secretive and mysterious, much as the Saint would have loved playing the part, would have been fatal.
Carn suddenly realized that he was being futile that the elasticity of his leg was being sorely tried. The Saint had been watching for that, and instantly he became genuinely apologetic.
"Perhaps I ragged you a bit too much," he hastened to confess. "Really, though, you were asking for it, by being so infernally suspicious. Almost as if you suspected me of just having murdered somebody, or robbing the till of the village post office. It's really quite simple. Miss Holm and I were walking along the cliffs, and "
"I fell over," Patricia explained, jumping in as soon as the Saint hesitated. "I landed on a ledge, and I wasn't seriously hurt, but Mr. Templar had an awful job getting me back.
Carn frowned. He had been badly had. The Saint's merciless leg pulling had achieved its object. So masterly was the transition from teasing to sober seriousness that the seriousness went unquestioned, and Carn swallowed whole a story that he would certainly have disbelieved if it had been told him in the first place without any nonsense.
"No offence, old thing," pleaded the Saint contritely. "I couldn't miss such a marvellous opportunity to make you imagine the worst."
Carn looked from one to the other; but Patricia, pulling her weight and more also, met the detective's searching stare unabashed, and the Saint's face displayed exactly what the Saint wanted it to display.
"I tried to tell you once," Patricia pointed out, "only Mr. Templar interrupted."
Simon flashed her a boatload of appreciation in a glance. Ye gods! What a girl! There wasn't an actress in the world who could have taught her anything about the kind of acting that gets over without any stage effects she had every woman in every Secret Service in Europe skun a mile. There she was, cool as you please, playing up to her cue like an old hand. And, marvel of marvels, asking no questions. The Saint hadn't the foggiest notion why a girl he'd known only a couple of days should back him up like that, when every flag on the mast would have told any ordinary person that the Saint was more likely to be wrong than not. Ordinary respectable people did not go in for the hobbies that she had seen the Saint indulging in like bending statuettes over millionaire knight's skulls after walking mysteriously out of the night through their library windows, or being chased round gardens by men and bloodhounds, or chucking their lady friends over eight-foot walls. And yet she trusted him implicitly, took her line from him, and postponed the questions till afterward! And not the least remarkable fact was that the Saint, that consummate egotist, never thought of the obvious explanation. ...
Carn reddened again, recovered his normal colour, and his stolid features gradually lost their strained appearance and relaxed into a wry smile.
"You certainly did try to save me, Miss Holm," he admitted. "You see, the Saint that is, Mr. Templar he's always running into trouble, and seeing him like that I couldn't help thinking of his habits. It didn't occur to me that you were with him I was so dense it didn't strike me that you might have got mussed up at the same time as he did and, of course, I know all about you, Miss Holm, so "
"Half-time!" begged the Saint dazedly. "We're getting all tied up. Let's call it quits."
Carn nodded.
"Saint," he said, "it wasn't fair. I'm taking this game seriously, and that's quite bad enough without tangling it any more."
"That'll be all right," said the Saint heartily. "And now what about that Baby Polly we were going to split?"
Carn busied himself with decanter and glasses, and the Saint offered up a short prayer of thanksgiving. That was a nasty corner taken on two wheels in the devil of a skid, but they were round it somehow with the old bus still right side up, and the road looked pretty clear at least as far ^as the next bend.
Simon caught the girl's eye while Carn's back was turned. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. The Saint grinned back and spread out his hands. Then, quite shamelessly, he blew her a "kiss.
Carn brought the drinks, and the Saint raised his glass.
"Bung-no troops," he said. "Here's to a good race, Carn."
The detective looked back.
''''Reasonablygood hunting, Saint," he replied grimly, and Simon grinned and drank.
"All things considered, worthy chirurgeon, I think ''
The Saint broke off at the sound ofathunderous knocking on the front door. Then a bell pealed long and insistently at the back of the house, and the knocking was resumed. Simon set down his glass carefully.
"You're popular to-night, son," he murmured. "Someone in a tearing hurry, too. Birth or death what's the betting?"
"Hanged if I know," said Carn, and went out. The Saint crossed the room swiftly and opened the casement windows wide, as an elementary precaution. Apparently the evening's party was not yet over. He had not the vaguest idea what the next move was going to be, but the air tingled with an electric foreboding that something was about to happen. The girl looked at him inquiringly. He dared not speak, but he signed to her to keep her end up and go on trusting him.