“We’re investigating... that is I am investigating a complaint from one of the neighbors.”
“About what?” inquired the girl sweetly. “Men tramping around over the roofs?”
“About a fight. Have you heard or seen anything unusual in the past half hour or forty-five minutes?”
“Have I! Two men broke into my studio, stripped the bedclothes off me, trotted out the wackiest excuse, and...” The detective reddened. “Yes. Well... I’m very sorry, Miss...”
“Lane,” she said. “Cassie Lane. And that’s George.” She indicated the dummy in the other bed, and Teal was so flustered that he half-nodded to it before he caught himself. “That’s Caspar,” Cassie Lane continued.
She pointed to another dummy, a very lifelike one, propped in a sitting position in the corner beyond where she was lying. It was dressed in Bermuda shorts, a straw hat, and sandals. Simon moved in for a closer look.
“These are — er — friends of yours?” he asked.
“My best friends,” said Cassie Lane, looking fondly at Caspar. “In fact, my only real friends.”
Teal looked more disturbed than ever. He backed towards the roof.
“Well, Miss Lane, I appreciate your cooperation.”
The girl looked at Simon with an expression which showed that she found him much more potentially sympathetic than the detective.
“Don’t think I’m a complete nut,” she said. “I’m an artist. I make these dummies.”
“Must be fascinating work,” said the Saint. “Has Scotland Yard taken an option on all your output?”
“You’re nice,” she said. “Get rid of your fat friend, and I’ll tell you about it.”
“I might do that.”
“Come along, Templar,” snarled Teal from the doorway.
“You mean I don’t even get a parking ticket for sleeping in my own bed?” the girl said with feigned relief.
“You’re on your own property,” answered the Saint.
“Really? I thought it was becoming a public highway.”
She and Simon grinned at one another. Teal closed the door and led the way back across the roof toward Loudon’s house. There was still an orange glow in the western sky, but lights had been turned on in some of the houses whose backs were visible up and down the alley. Teal stripped the wrapper from a stick of chewing gum and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Constable!” the Saint called when they had come to the fence. “Time to moor the blimp.”
Teal, in seething eagerness to prove his agility, almost ended his long war against the Saint by dropping on to his head in the lane below. But once again Simon and the policeman combined their efforts to prolong his life. As he was about to topple backward from the end of the fence they caught his arms on either side and whipped him from the edge of disaster to a sitting position on the late Perry Loudon’s roof. He assumed the position with such force and lack of grace that the whole adjacent area of the building trembled, and Inspector Teal swallowed his chewing gum.
As he coughed and choked, Simon helpfully pounded his back until the breathing passages were unclogged again, and Teal jerked petulantly away and wiped his streaming tears with a handkerchief. The constable looked solemnly off at a cluster of television antennae in the middle distance.
“That was a narrow escape, Claud,” said the Saint with great concern. “Almost done in by a wedge of Spearmint. Maybe you really should take up something safe like plumbing. It pays better than this daredevil stuff, too, and when senility isn’t too far up the road a man has to think of practical considerations.”
“Clark!” Teal roared to the constable. “See what Perth has found out, if anything, and report back up here as fast as possible.”
As the policeman hurried off, Teal ignored his helpfully offered hand and laboriously clambered to his feet.
“Irrational loss of temper with subordinates,” clucked Simon. “Another sign of deterioration.”
Teal ignored that bit of analysis and strode into the sculptor’s studio. He turned on the light and looked around at the grotesque metal shapes.
“If you want to learn to make these things, you’re welcome to it,” he growled. “But I don’t believe a word you’ve said, and I particularly don’t think that Loudon went out for beer. He’d have been back long before this.”
“Claud, isn’t this getting a little bit silly? We’ve been squabbling here for at least half an hour over whether some artist went out for beer or not, while all over London citizens are getting robbed, murdered, and otherwise misused as a direct consequence of your neglect of your proper duties.”
The detective opened his mouth, but the Saint went on.
“It might occur to anybody with more brain than a policeman that an eccentric like Loudon can pop out for beer one minute, disappear, and show up three weeks later with a suntan and a performing troupe of African elephants.” Simon walked toward the door. “Now, as far as I’m concerned I’ve had enough of this nonsense, and I’d like to finish up my sculpting session so I can go to dinner.”
Teal’s pink jowls quivered with the strangulated earthquake that they were containing. He reached for another stick of chewing gum, thought better of it, and stepped heavily toward the door.
It was then that Simon saw a small drop of dark reddish liquid splatter against the metallic intricacies of one of Loudon’s sculptures. His eye darted up to confirm his suspicion of the source, and he saw another drop forming for the plunge at one corner of the trapdoor. Fortunately the open work in the interior of the sculpture, which resembled a large family of snakes in the midst of a festive reunion, had dispersed the blood which had already fallen and kept it from making a puddle on the floor.
There had never been a time in his life when the Saint was more anxious for Chief Inspector Teal to complete an exit.
“I’ll check back on this,” the latter said. “If anything has happened to this fellow Loudon you’ll hear from me.”
Another globule of blood gathered enough weight to fall from the corner of the trapdoor and splash into the tortured recesses of the sculpture. Simon interposed himself between Teal and that unpleasant sight and manufactured a story which he hoped would speed the detective’s departure. “I’m sure I’ll hear from you, Claud, and just to show how cooperative I am I’ll tell you I’ve just remembered a pub Loudon mentioned. The Crown, I think it was.”
“Where is that?”
“Now how many times have I reminded you that I can’t do everything for you?” Simon answered a little irritably. “I don’t know where this one is, but there must be dozens of them in London. You’ve only got to go through them methodically, starting in this neighborhood.”
Any gratitude that Teal might have wished to express for that information had to be contained while the constable he had sent away a few minutes before came trotting excitedly up the stairs.
“Found something there, sir,” he said. “Down on the front hall table among some bills and letters.”
Teal turned to the head of the stairs to take the small square of paper the constable handed him, and the Saint used the opportunity to join them outside the door of the studio.
Looking over Teal’s shoulder he had the sudden peculiar sensation that he was living in a dream, and that he would do best to wrench himself to full consciousness before things got any worse. For in the stout detective’s hand was a snapshot of Simon Templar and Perry Loudon on a river bank, looking in a holiday mood, with a gorgeous doll in a minimal bikini standing between them.
4
It was not a very good picture. Whoever had taken it had adjusted the lens slightly off focus — a common failing of shot-snappers, but in this case possibly done for good reason. Because Simon positively did not recognize the doll, much as he would have liked to, and he knew that he had never seen Perry Loudon before that afternoon; and yet there he appeared to be posing with what it would seem obvious — in one case at least — to call bosom friends. Therefore a certain fuzziness of focus might have been designed to make a passable facsimile of the Saint less easily detectable for the impersonation that it had to be.