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

On either side of him, Nassen and the other sleuth licked their sores in silence. Whether they were completely satisfied with the course of events so far is not known, nor does the chronicler feel that posterity will greatly care. Simon thought kindly of other possible ways of adding to their martyrdom; but before he had made his final choice of the various forms of torment at his disposal the taxi was stopped by a traffic light at the corner of St. James's Street, and the Saint looked through the window from a range of less than two yards full into the chubby red face and sleepy eye' of the man without whom none of his adventures were really complete.

Before either of the other two could stop him he had slung himself forward and loosed a de-lighted yell through the open window.

"Claud Eustace, by the bed socks of Dr. Bar-nardo!" cried the Saint joyfully.

The man's drowsy optics revolved towards the source of the sound, and, having located it, wid-ened with indescribable eloquence. For a second or two he actually stopped chewing on his gum His jaws seized up, and his portly bowler-hatted figure halted statuesquely.

There were cogent and fundamental reasons for the tableau--reasons which were carved in imperishable letters across the sluggish coagulation of emotions which Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal himself would have been much too diffident to call his soul. They were reasons which went 'way back through the detective's life to those almost unimaginably distant blissful days before anyone in England had ever heard of the Saint-- the days when a policeman's lot had been a reasonably happy one, moving through well-ordered grooves to a stolid and methodical percentage of success, and there had been no such incalculable filibuster sweeping at intervals into the peaceful scene to tie all averages in knots and ride such rings round the wrath and vengeance of Scotland Yard as had never been ridden before. They were reasons which could have been counted one by one on Mr. Teal's grey hairs; and all of them surged out of his memory in a solid phalanx at such moments as that, when the Saint returned to England after an all-too-brief absence, and Mr. Teal saw him in London again and knew that the tale was no aearer its end than it had ever been.

All these things came back to burden Mr. Teal's overloaded heart in that moment's motionless stare; and then with a sigh he stepped to the window of the taxicab and faced his future stoically.

"Hullo," he said.

The Saint's eyebrows went up in a rising slant of mockery.

"Claud!" he protested. "Is that kind? I ask you, is that a brotherly welcome? Anyone might think you weren't pleased to see me."

"I'm not," said Mr. Teal dourly. "But I shall have to see you."

The Saint smiled.

"Hop in," he invited hospitably. "We're going your way."

Teal shook his head--that is the simplest way of describing the movement, but it was such a perfunctory gesture that it simply looked as if he had thought of making it and had subsequently decided that he was too tired.

"Thanks," he said. "I've got another job to do just now. And you seem to be in good company." His baby-blue eyes, restored to their habitual affectation of sleepiness, moved over the two embarrassed men who flanked the Saint. "You know who you're with, boys," he told them. "Watch him."

"Pardon me," said the Saint hastily. "I forgot to do the honours. This specimen on my left is Snowdrop, the Rose of Peckham------"

"All right," said Teal grimly. "I know them. And I'll bet they're going to wish they'd never known you--if they haven't begun wishing it already." The traffic light was at green again, and the hooting of impatient drivers held up behind made the detective step back from the window. "I'll see you later," he said and waved the taxi on.

The Saint grinned and settled back again, as the cab turned south towards the Park. That chance encounter had set the triumphal capstone on his homecoming: it was the last familiar chord of the old opening chorus, his guarantee that the old days had finally come back in all their glory. The one jarring note was in the sinister implications of Teal's parting speech. Ever frank and open, the Saint sought to compare opinions on the subject.

"It sounds," he murmured, "almost as if Claud Eustace had something on his mind. Didn't it sound that way to you, Snowdrop?"

Nassen was wiping his forehead with a large white handkerchief; and he seemed deaf to the advance. His genteel sensitive soul had been bruised, and he had lost the spirit of such candid camaraderie. He put his handkerchief away and slipped an automatic from his pocket. Simon felt the muzzle probe into his ribs, and glanced down at it with one satirical eyebrow raised.

"You know, you could kill someone with that," he said reprovingly.

"I wish it could be you," said the Rose of Peck-ham in a tone of passionate earnestness, and relapsed into morbid silence.