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

"Now wait a minute, you prize fathead," Simon answered quite pleasantly. "I didn't kill this bloke------"

"I know you didn't," said Teal, in an ecstasy of elephantine sarcasm. "You've been sitting here talking to me all the time. This fellow just died. He drew your picture on a piece of paper and had heart failure when he looked at it."

"Your guess is as good as mine, Claud," drawled the Saint lazily. "But personally I should say that some low crook is trying to frame me."

"You would, eh? Well, if I were looking for this low crook------"

"You'd come to my address." Simon pushed his cigarette into an ashtray, finished his drink, and spread money on the table to pay the bill. "Well, here I am. You gave me the murder and you gave me the alibi. You thought of this game. Why don't you get on with it? Am I arrested?"

Teal gulped and swallowed a piece of gum.

"You'll be arrested as soon as I know some more about this murder. I know where to find you--------"

The Saint smiled.

"I seem to have heard words to that effect before," he said. "But it hasn't always worked out quite that way. My movements are so erratic. Why take a chance? Let me arrest myself. My car's just round the corner, and the night is before us. Let's go and find out some more about this murder of mine."

He stood up; and for some unearthly reason Teal also rose to his feet. An exasperating little bug of uncertainty was hatching out in the detective's brain and starting to dig itself in. He had been through these scenes before, and they had lopped years off his expectation of life. He had known the Saint guilty of innumerable felonies and breaches of the peace, beyond any possible shadow of human doubt, and had got nothing out of it-- nothing but a smile of infuriating innocence and a glimmer of mocking amusement in the Saint's eyes, which was not evidence. He was used to being outwitted, but it had never occurred to him that he might be wrong. Until that very moment, when the smile of infuriating innocence was so startlingly absent. . . . He didn't believe it even then--he had reached the stage when nothing that Simon Templar said or did could be taken at its face value--but the germ of preposterous doubt was brooding in his mind, and he followed the Saint out into the street in silence, without understanding why he did it.

"Where did this news come from?" Simon inquired, as he slid in behind the wheel of the great shining Hirondel which was parked close by.

"Horley," Teal replied curtly, and couldn't help adding: "You ought to know."

The Saint made no retort; and that again was unusual. The tiny maggot of incertitude in Teal's brain laid another egg, and he chewed steadily on his remaining sludge of spearmint in self-defensive taciturnity while the long thrumming nose of the car threaded its way at breath-taking speed through the thinning traffic of south London.

Simon kindled a fresh cigarette from the lighter on the dash and thrust the Hirondel over the southward artery with one hand on the wheel and the speedometer quivering around seventy, driving automatically and thinking about other things.

Before that, he had sometimes wondered why such a notorious scapegoat as himself should have been passed over for so long by the alibi experts of the underworld, and he had only been able to surmise that the fear of attracting his own attention was what had deterred them. The man who had set a new precedent this night must either have been very confident or very rash; and the Saint wanted to know him. And there was an edge of quiet steel in the Saint's narrowed eyes as they followed the road in the blaze of his sweeping headlights which indicated that he would have an account to settle with his unauthorized substitute when they met. . . .

Perhaps it was because he was very anxious to learn something more which might help to bring that meeting nearer, or perhaps it was only because the Saint never felt really comfortable in a car unless it was using the king's highway for a race track, but it was exactly thirty-five minutes after they left the restaurant when he swung the car round the last two-wheeled corner and switched off the engine under the blue lamp of Horley police station. For the latter half of the journey Mr. Teal had actually forgotten to chew; but he released his hold on his bowler hat and climbed out phlegmatically enough. Simon followed him up the steps and heard Teal introduce himself to the night sergeant.

"They're in the inspector's office, sir," said the man.

Simon went in at Teal's shoulder and found three men drinking coffee in the bare distempered room. One of them, from his typical bulk and the chair he occupied at the desk, appeared to be the inspector; the second, a grey-haired man in pince-nez and an overcoat, was apparently the police surgeon; the third was a motorcycle patrol in uniform.

"I thought I'd better come down at once," Teal said laconically.