The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

But that was nothing unusual. Mr. Clements was there to be kicked. He was kicked whenever anything went wrong, and just as impartially when everything went right. Abdul Osman kicked him, cuffed him, and spat in his face; and his secretary cringed. There was something hideous about his quivering submission.

For Clements was a white man. His hair was almost ash-blond, his shrinking eyes grey.

"Swine!" Osman hissed.

His sunken eyes glittered with the vindictive pleasure that soothed his senses whenever he heaped humiliations on that cowering travesty of a man. Even in that paroxysm of fury the sensation was like balm to his uncontrolled nerves--perhaps it was the very thing that finally turned the tide of his unleashed savagery and began to restore him to reason. For that crawling servile thing that had once been a man was the most permanently soothing monument to Abdul Osman's vanity in the world. Simon Templar, as a helpless prisoner, might supplant him; but until the day came when Osman could look down and spit in the face of that ultimate triumph the degradation of Clements reigned as his supreme achievement.

Less hastily, ten times more malignantly, Osman reached out a hand, grasped his secretary by the nose, and forced him to his knees. He stared at him con­temptuously for a moment; then he put a foot in his face and sprawled him over.

"Get up, pig."

Clements obeyed.

"Look at me."

The white man raised his eyes slowly. Abdul Osman saw the red sparks of futile hate glowing in their depths like hot embers, and laughed.

"You know that I always have my revenge, don't you?" His almost perfect English had a sibilant accent, as if a snake had spoken. "How unfortunate it was that my misguided parents should have sent me to an English school! Unpleasant for me, perhaps; but how much more enduringly regrettable for you! I was a dirty nigger then, wasn't I? And it seemed so humorous to you to humiliate me. I trust you look back on those days with satisfaction, Clements ?"

The man did not answer.

"It was such a pity that you began to try the needle, and then found you couldn't live without it. And then that you committed that indiscretion which finally put you at my mercy. . . . You were so strong and healthy once, weren't you?--so proud and brave! You would never have let me strike you. You would have struck me yourself, like this."

His flat hand smacked the other's face from side to side-once, twice.

"You would like to strike me again, wouldn't you? But then there is always the certainty that you would have to bare your back to my little whip. It's wonderful how hunger for the needle, and the entertainment of my little whip, have curbed your spirits." He was play­ing with the man now, drugging his disordered vanity again with the sadistic repetition of a scene that he had played hundreds of times and never tired of. "Pah! I've crushed you so much that now you haven't even the courage to kill yourself and end your misery. You're mine, body and soul-the idol of the school fawning on the dirty nigger. Doesn't that reflection please you, Clements?" He was watching the silent man with a shrewdness in his slow malevolence. "You'll be wanting the needle again about now, won't you? I've a good mind to keep you waiting. It will amuse you to have to come crawling round my feet, licking my shoes, plead­ing, weeping, slobbering-won't it, Clements ?"

The secretary licked his lips. It looked for a moment as if at last the smouldering fires in him would flare up to some reply, and Osman waited for it hopefully. And then came voices and footsteps on the deck over their heads, feet clattering down the companion, and the door was opened by a smart-uniformed Arab seaman to admit a visitor.

It was Galbraith Stride.

" Did you get him ?" he demanded huskily.

There were beads of perspiration on his face, and not all of them were due to the heat of the day. Osman's puffy lips curled at the sight of him.

"No, I didn't," he said shortly. "A fool bungled it. I have no time for fools."

Stride mopped his forehead.

"It's on my nerves, Osman. He's been on the Claudette, admitted who he was-who knows what he'll do next ? I tell you --"

"You may tell me all you want to in a few minutes," said Osman suavely. "I have some business to attend to first-if you will excuse me." He turned to the sea­man. "Ali, send Trape to me."

The Arab touched his forehead and disappeared, and Osman elbowed his secretary aside and helped himself from an inlaid brass cigarette box on the table. All his self-possession had returned, and somehow his heavy tranquillity was more inhuman than his raving anger.

Presently the Arab came back with Trape. Osman gazed at him unwinkingly for some seconds, and then he spoke.

"I have no time for fools," he repeated.