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

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."

Mr. Teal gulped in a breath that hurt him as it went down his windpipe.

"Oh, you don't, don't you?" he bit out.

"I'm afraid I don't, Claud," said the Saint. "Leo may have been caught in a hysterical moment, but other blokes have had the identical letter without feeling that way about it. Look at this."

He picked up a slip of tinted paper from beside the coffee pot and held it out so that the detective could read the words. It was a check on the City & Continental Bank, dated that day, and it was made out for two hundred thousand pounds.

"Sir Barclay Edingham came here at half-past nine to give me that--he was in such a hurry to do his share. Major General Sir Humboldt Quipp blew in at half-past ten--he grumbled and thun-| dered a bit about the price, but he's gone away again to think it over, and I'm sure he'll pay it in the end. The other contributors will be coming through in the next day or two, and I wouldn't mind betting that Leo will be one of them as soon as he comes out of his tantrum. You ought to have another talk with him, Claud--it might help him to see the path of duty."

"Never you mind what I ought to do," Teal said hotly. His baby-blue eyes, with all the sleepiness knocked out of them, were goggling like young balloons at the check which Simon was dangling under his nose, as if his brain had flatly refused to believe their message and they had swollen to twice their normal size with proper indignation at the insult. With a genuine physical effort he .averted them from the astounding figures. "Sir Barclay Edingham gave you that?" he repeated incredulously.

Simon inclined his head.

"And he was glad to. Sir Barclay Edingham has a very keen appreciation of literature. The pages I sold him are now his most treasured possession, and you couldn't buy them off him for twice as much as he gave me."

He folded the check carefully and put it away in his wallet; and the detective straightened up. "Where is this book?" he demanded. The Saint's eyebrows shifted again fractionally.

It was a gesture that Teal knew better than any other of the Saint's bar one, and that almost imperceptible change of alignment carried more meaning than a thousand words of description could convey.

"It's in England," he answered.

"That's good," said Teal grimly, "because I want to see it."

The Saint picked up a cigarette, spun it into the air, and caught it in his mouth without moving his head. He snapped a flame from his lighter and blew out a long feather of smoke.