12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

The man swung round in the sudden blaze of light. At the very moment when he started to turn, Simon saw the gun in his hand, and thanked his immoral deities that he had not removed his fingers too promptly from the switch. In a split second he had clicked the lever up again, and the darkness fell again with blinding intensity after that one dazzling instant of luminance.

The Saint's voice floated once more out of the blackness.

"So you pack a rod, do you, Algernon? You must know that rods aren't allowed in this re-spectable city. I shall have to speak to you severely about that presently, Algernon--really I shall."

The beam of the intruder's torch stabbed out again, printing a white circle of light on the door; but Simon was not inside the circle. The Saint had no rooted fear of being cold-bloodedly shot down in that apartment--the chances of a clean getaway for the shooter were too remote--but he had a very sound knowledge of what a startled burglar, amateur Or professional, may do in a moment of panic; and what had been visible of the intruder's masked face as he spun round had not been tender or sentimental.

Simon heard the man's heavy breathing as the ray of the flashlight moved to left and right of the door and then began with a wilder haste to dance over the other quarters of the room. For the space of about half a minute it was a game of deadly hide-and-seek: the door appeared to be unguarded, but something told the intruder that he would be walking into a trap if he attempted to make a dash for liberty that way. At the end of that time his nerve broke and he plunged desperately for the only visible path of escape, and in so doing found that his suspicions had been almost clairvoyantly accurate.

A weight of teaklike bone and muscle landed on his back with a catlike spring; steel fingers fastened on his gun hand, and another equally strong hand closed round his throat, driving him remorselessly to the floor. They wrestled voicelessly on the carpet, but not for long. Simon got the gun away without a single shot being fired and flung himself clear of his opponent with an acrobatic twist of his body. Then he found his way to the switch and turned on the lights again.

The burglar looked up at him from the floor, breathing painfully; and Simon permitted the muzzle of the captured gun to settle into a steady aim on the centre of the man's tightly tailored torso.

"You look miserable, Algernon," he remarked affably. "But you couldn't expect to have all the fun to yourself, could you? Come on, my lad--take that old sock off your head and let's see how your face is put together."

The man did not answer or obey, and Simon stepped forward and whipped off the mask with a deft flick of his hand.

Having done which, he remained absolutely motionless for several ticks of the clock.

And then, softly, helplessly, he started to laugh.

"Suffering snakes," he wailed. "If it isn't good old Hoppy Uniatz!"

"For cryin' out loud," gasped Mr. Uniatz. "If it ain't de Saint!"

"You haven't forgotten that time when you took a dive through the window of Rudy's joint on Mott Street?"

"Say, an' dat night you shot up Angie Paletta an' Russ Kovari on Amsterdam Avenue."

"And you got crowned with a chair and locked in the attic--you remember that?"

Mr. Uniatz fingered his neck gingerly, as though the aches in it brought back memories.

"Say," he protested aggrievedly, "whaddaya t'ink I got for a memory--a sieve?" He beamed again, reminiscently; and then another thought overcast his homely features with a shadow of retrospective alarm. "An' I might of killed you!" he said in an awed voice.

The Saint smiled.

"If I'd known it was you, I mightn't have thought this gun was quite so funny," he admitted. "Well, well, well, Hoppy--this is a long way from little old New York. What brings you here?"

Mr. Uniatz scrambled up from the floor and scratched his head.

"Well, boss," he said, "t'ings never were de same after prohibition went out, over dere. I bummed around fer a while, but I couldn't get in de money. Den I hoid dey was room fer guys like me to start up in London, so I come over. But hell, boss, dese Limeys dunno what it's all about, fer God's sake. Why, I asks one mob over here what about gettin' a coupla typewriters, an' dey t'ink I'm nuts." Mr. Uniatz frowned for a moment, as if the incapability of the English criminal to appreciate the sovereign uses of machine guns was still preying on his mind. "I guess I must of been given a bum steer," he said.