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

Simon Templar had owed his life to many queer things, from opening a window to dropping a cigarette, but he had never owed it before to such a rustic combination of items as a flirtatious moon and a rabbit. The rabbit appeared about one second after the moon, by lolloping out of a bush into the pool of twilight which the moon provided between two trees. The Saint had been so absolutely immobile in his observation post by the tree trunk that it could never even have noticed him: it had simply been attracted by the lighting effects provided in the adjoining field, and, being a bunny of scientific appetites and an inquisitive turn of mind, it had suspended its foraging for a space to explore this curious phenomenon. Simon saw the moving blur of it out of the corner of his eye before he realized what it was--and froze instinctively back into motionlessness almost before he had begun to move. Then he saw the rabbit clearly and moved again. A dry leaf rustled under his foot, and the rabbit twitched its nose and decided to abandon its cosmic investigations for that evening.

But it didn't lollop back into the bush from which it had emerged. Perhaps it had a date with some loose-moraled doe in the next parish and had merely paused to admire the wonders of nature on its way to more serious business or perhaps it had only heard news of some fresh young lettuces sprouting in the kitchen gardens of March House; only its reincarnation in the shape of a theosophist will ever tell. But at all events, it pushed on instead of turning back. It made a rapid hopping dive for the nearest gap in the hedge through which Simon himself had been preparing to pass.

And it died.

There was a momentary flash of blue flame, and the rabbit kicked over backwards in a dreadful leap and lay twitching in the patch of moonlight.

IV

SlMON turned it over with his foot: it was indubitably one of the deadest rabbits in the county of Kent. Then he took a tiny flashlight from his pocket and examined the hedge with great caution. There were lines of gleaming copper wire strung through it at intervals of about six inches and rising to a height of six feet above the ground --if he had not stopped to watch the rabbit he could not have helped touching one of them.

The Saint pushed a hand somewhat unsteadily across his forehead and turned his attention to the tree. But there was no chance there of repeating his Tarzan impersonation, for there were similar copper wires coiled round the trunk to a greater height than he could reach. Without rubber gloves and insulated wire cutters he could go no farther; and he had no doubt that the same high-voltage circuit continued all the way round the landing field and enclosed everything else that might be interesting to look at.

Twenty minutes later he dropped out of another tree into the road beside his car and found Hoppy Uniatz sitting on the running board and gazing disconsolately at an inadequate hip flask which had long since run as dry as a Saharan water hole.

"Hi, boss," said Mr. Uniatz, rising stiffly from his unprofitable meditations. "Dijja get de dough?"

Simon shook his head, lighting a cigarette in his cupped hands.

"I didn't get to first base," he said. "A rabbit stopped me." He saw a vacuous expression of perplexity appear on Mr. Uniatz's'homely dial and extinguished his lighter with a faint grin. "Never mind, Hoppy. Pass it up. I'll tell you all about it next year. Let's get back to London."

He slid into the driving seat; and Mr. Uniatz put his flask away and followed him more slowly, glancing back doubtfully over his shoulder with a preoccupied air. As Simon pressed the starter, he coughed.

"Boss," said Mr. Uniatz diffidently, "is it oke leavin' de cop here?"

"Leaving the which?" ejaculated the Saint limply.

"De cop," said Mr. Uniatz.

Simon pushed the gear lever back into neutral and gazed at him.

"What are you talking about?" he inquired.

"Ya see, boss," said Mr. Uniatz, with the manner of Einstein solving a problem in elementary arithmetic, "de tire wasn't flat."

"What tire?" asked the Saint heroically.

"De tire you told me to change," explained Hoppy. "Ya told me to fix de flat, but it wasn't."

The Saint struggled with his vocabulary in an anguished silence, seeking words in which he might deal suitably with the situation; but before he had counted all the syllables in the phrases he proposed to use, Mr. Uniatz was ploughing on, as if determined, now that he had started, to make a clean breast of the matter.

"Well, boss, I put back de wheel an' sat down to wait for de cop. After a bit he rides up on a bicycle. 'Hi-yah, guy,' he says, 'whaddaya doin' here?' So I tells him I was fixin' a flat, but it wasn't. 'Well, whaddaya waitin' for?' he says. So I remembers what ya tells me, boss, an' I says: 'I'm t'inkin' of de little woman back home, waitin' for her man.' 'Ya big bum,' he says, 'ya drunk.' "

"I'll bet he didn't," said the Saint.