The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

It was then half-past three in the afternoon; but by a notable oversight on the part of the efficient legislators who framed that unforgettable Defense of the Realm Act which has for so long been Britain's bulwark against the horrors of an invasion of foreign tourists, the Scilly Islands were omitted from the broad embrace of that protection, and it is still lawful to drink beer at almost any hour at which a man can reasonably raise a thirst. As Simon entered the long glass-fronted veranda over­looking the bay, he naturally expected to find it packed to suffocation with sodden islanders wallowing in the decadent excesses from which a beneficent government had not been thoughtful enough to protect them; but such (as the unspeakable newspapers say, in what they apparently believe to be the English language) was not the case. In fact, the only occupant of the bar was Mr. Smithson Smith himself, who was making out bills be­side an open window.

"Why-good-afternoon, Templar. What can I do for you ?"

"A pint of beer," murmured the Saint, sinking into a chair. "Possibly, if my thirst holds, two pints. And one for yourself if you feel like it."

Mr. Smithson Smith disappeared into his serving cubicle and returned with a brimming glass. He ex­cused himself from joining in the performance.

"I'd rather leave it till the evening, if you don't mind," he said with a smile. "What have you been doing today?"

He was a thin, mild-mannered man with sandy grey hair, a tiny moustache, and an extraordinary gentle voice; and it was a strange thing that he was only one of many men in those islands who were more familiar with the romantic cities of the East than they were with the capital of their own country. Simon had been struck by that odd fact on his first call at Tregarthen's, and subsequent visits had confirmed it. There, on those lonely clusters of rock breaking out of the sea forty miles from Land's End, where you would expect to find men who had seen scarcely anything of the world out­side the other rocky islands around their own homes, you found instead simple men whose turns of remi­niscence recalled the streets of Damascus and Bagdad by their names. And whenever reminiscence turned that way Mr. Smithson Smith would call on his own memo­ries, with a faraway look in his eyes, and the same faraway sound in that very gentle voice, as if his dreams saw the deserts of Arabia more vividly than the blue bay beyond his windows. "I mind a time when I was in Capernaum . . ."-Simon had heard him say it, and felt that for that man at least all the best days lay in the past. It was the war, of course, that had picked men out of every sleepy hamlet in England and hurled them into the familiarity of strange sights and places as well as the flaming shadows of death, and in the end sent some of them back to those same sleepy hamlets to remember; but there was in that quiet man a mystic sensitiveness, a tenseness of poetry struggling rather puzzledly for the expression he could not give it, that made his memories more dreamy with a quaint kind of reverence than most others.

"I've been over by Tresco," said the Saint, lifting his face presently from the beer.

"Oh. Did you see those yachts-are they still there?"

Simon nodded.

"As a matter of fact, I managed to scrounge lunch on one of them."

" Was it Abdul Osman's?"

"No-Galbraith Stride's. I saw Osman's, though. It's a long way for him to come all the way over here."

He knew that the other would need the least possible encouragement to delve into the past; and his expectations were founded on the soundest psychology. Mr. Smithson Smith sat down and accepted a cigarette.

"I think I said in my letter that I thought I'd heard his name before. I was thinking about it only yesterday, and the story came back to me. He hasn't visited St. Mary's-at least, if he has, I don't think I've seen him- but I should know this Abdul Osman if he was the same man, because he was branded on both cheeks."

The Saint's eyebrows rose in innocent surprise.

"Really?"

The other nodded.

"It's quite a story-you could almost put it in a book. An Englishman did it-at least, the rumour said he was an Englishman, although they never caught him. This Abdul Osman was supposed to have a monopoly of various unpleasant things in the East-brothels and gambling dens and drug-trafficking, all that sort of thing. I don't know if it was true, but that was what they told me. He had a fine house in Cairo, anyway, so he must have made plenty of money out of it. I re­member what happened distinctly. It was a local sen­sation at the time. ... I hope I'm not boring you?"

Mr Smithson Smith was oddly afraid of being boring, as if he felt that any mundane restlessness in his audi­ence would break the fragile glamour of those wonderful things he could remember.

"Not a bit," said the Saint. "What happened?"