The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

MR. SMITHSON SMITH blinked and wiped his forehead. His arm relaxed slowly, as if it required a conscious effort to loosen the involuntary contraction of his muscles. He had no idea why the miniature drama that he had seen enacted should have had such an effect on him. It might have been the utter stillness in which it was played out, the unexplanatory silence of the man beside him-anything. But it seemed as if for the last few seconds he had forgotten to breathe, and when it was finished he expanded his chest with an inaudible sigh.

Then the Saint spoke; and his voice jarred the other's ears by sheer contrast with the silence.

"Don't tell me your beer's as potent as all that!"

The manager stared at him.

"Do you mean-do you mean it was drugged?"

"No less, and possibly even some more. We'll soon see." With unruffled calm, the Saint fished out the fly with a matchstick and laid it in an ashtray to cool off. " But I don't somehow think it was sudden death-that would probably be considered too good for me."

"But-but-damn it!" Mr. Smithson Smith felt queerly shaken under his instinctive incredulity. "You can't tell me that Mr. Trape-"

"Is that his name?" The Saint was as cool as an ice pack. "I can't tell you much about him, but I can tell you that. My dear chap"-he put his hand on the manager's shoulder for a moment-"can you be expected to guarantee the morals of everyone who stays at your hotel? Can you demand a budget of references from anyone who asks for a room? Of course you can't. You have to take them at their face value, and so long as they behave themselves while they're here you aren't expected to ask them whether their fingerprints are registered at Scotland Yard. No-they just had to find somewhere to stay, and you were unlucky."

The manager frowned.

"If what you say is true, Templar, I shall have to ask for their room," he said; and the Saint had to laugh.

"You've got your room now, old lad. But whether they've left money to pay the bill is another matter."

He sat on the table with a glance at the fly, which was still sunken in its coma. He found it difficult to think that it could be dead-although, of course, a drug that a man would survive might be fatal to an insect. But his summary of Abdul Osman's character didn't fit in with such a clean conclusion. The hot irons that had scored their insult on the Egyptian's face would call for something much more messy in the way of vengeance-Abdul Osman would not forget, nor would he be so easily satisfied when his chance came. Then why the drug? And why, anyway, the very presence of those two respectable young men, who on Smithson Smith's own statement had been staying at the hotel for the past fortnight? It seemed improbable that Abdul Osman claimed any of the gifts of necro­mantic clairvoyance which popular novelists attribute to the "mysterious East." And yet . . .

All at once he recognized a slim figure in wide blue trousers walking up from the harbour towards the hotel, and waved to it joyfully out of the window. He was in a state of puzzlement in which he wanted to think aloud, and he could not have hoped for a better audience. But it struck him, while he was waiting for her to arrive, that it was a remarkable thing that he had not seen the two respectable young men making their way hastily towards the harbour, even as he had seen her coming in the opposite direction.

"Look here, Templar," began Mr. Smithson Smith worriedly; but the Saint interrupted him with a smile of seraphic blandness.

"Excuse me-I'll be back in a sec."

He went out and met Patricia at the gate.

"What about a spot of tea, boy?" she suggested; and then the electric gaiety of him opened her eyes, and she stopped.

"Sit down here-this is a conference, but since we aren't politicians we can't fix a date for it next year on the other side of the world." The Saint pulled open the gate, seated himself on the step, and drew her down beside him. "Pat, a very respectable-looking young man, name of Trape, has just put a sleeping draught in my beer."

"Good Lord-you haven't drunk it, have you?"

The Saint laughed.