The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

He turned slowly, spreading out one arm in a grandi­ose gesture.

"So you have come-my beautiful white rose!"

Laura Berwick smiled hesitantly. The room was full of the peculiarly dry choky scent of sandalwood. Every­thing in her recoiled in disgust from its ornately exotic gloom. It seemed unhealthy, suffocating, heavy with an aura of horribly secret indulgence, like the slack puffy body of the man who was feeding his eyes on her. She was glad that Toby had come with her-his clear-cut Spartan cleanness was like an antiseptic.

"Mr. Stride asked me to bring a note over to you," she said.

He held out his hand, without taking his eyes from her face. Unhurriedly he ripped open the envelope-it contained nothing but a blank sheet of paper. Deliber­ately he tore it into four pieces and laid them on a table.

"Perhaps," he said, "it was more important that a note should bring you over to me."

Then for the first time he saw Toby Halidom, and his face changed.

"What are you doing here?" he inquired coldly.

The young man was faintly taken aback.

"I just buzzed over with Miss Berwick," he said. "Thought she might like some company, and all that."

"You may go."

There was an acid, drawling incisiveness in Osman's voice that was too dispassionate to be rude. It staggered Halidom with the half-sensed menace of it.

"I asked Mr. Halidom to come with me," said Laura, striving to keep a sudden breathlessness out of her voice. "We shall be going back together."

"Did-er-your stepfather suggest that arrange­ment ?"

"No. Toby just thought he'd come."

"Really!" Osman laughed softly, an almost in­audible chuckle that made the girl shiver unaccount­ably. "Really!" He turned away, a movement that came after his temporary motionlessness with a force that was subtly sinister. "Really!" The joke seemed to amuse him. He strolled away down the room, the cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and turned again at a place where the dim lights left him almost in darkness. The cigarette end glowed like a hot ruby against the grey smudge of his shirt front in the gloom -they could not see his thick fingers touching bells that had men always waiting to answer them. "How very romantic, my dear Halidom! The perfect knight-errant!"

Toby Halidom flushed dully at the sneer. Something in the atmosphere of the interview was getting under his skin, in spite of the healthy unimaginativeness of his instincts.

"Well, Laura, let's be getting along," he said, and heard the note of strain in his own assumed heartiness.

Osman's ghostly chuckle whispered again out of the shadows, but he said nothing. Halidom turned abruptly to the door, opened it, and stopped dead. There were three of Osman's crew outside, crowded impassively across the opening.

Toby faced the Egyptian with clenched fists.

"What's the idea, Osman?" he demanded bluntly.

Abdul moved an inch or two from his position, so that his broad fleshy face stood out like a disembodied mask of evil under one of the rose-shaded light globes.

"The idea, Halidom, is that Laura is staying here with me-and you are not."

"You lousy nigger --"

Halidom leapt at the mask like a young tiger-cat, but he was stopped short in less than a foot. Sinewy brown arms caught his arms from behind, twisted and pinioned them expertly.

Osman stepped forward slowly.

"Did you say something, Halidom?'

"I called you a lousy nigger," retorted Toby de­fiantly. "You heard me all right. Shall I say it again?"

"Do."

Osman's voice was sleek, but his hands were shaking. His face had gone a dead white, save only for the scarred red circles on his cheeks. Toby swallowed, and flung up his head.

"You foul, slimy --"

Osman's fist smacked the last word back into his teeth.

"If you had remembered your manners, Halidom, your fate might have been very different," he said; and it was obvious that he was only controlling himself momentarily, by an effort of will that brought beads of perspiration to the whiteness of his forehead. " But that is one word you cannot use. There was another man who used it many years ago-perhaps you would like to see him ?"

He spoke to Ali purringly, in Arabic, and the man disappeared. Halidom was struggling like a maniac.

"You can't get away with this, you ugly swine --"

"No?"

Osman struck him again; and then, after a moment's pause, deliberately spat in his face. Laura cried out and flung herself forward, but one of the men caught her instantly. Osman sauntered over to her and tilted up her chin in his bloated hands.

"You're a spitfire too, are you, my dear? That makes it all the more interesting. I'm good at taming spitfires. In a moment I'll show you one of my tamed ones.

You shall see me tame Halidom in the same way-and you too."

He looked round as the seaman returned with his secretary. Clements was in a pitiful state-Osman had withheld the needle from him all that day, as he had threatened to do, and the slavering creature that tottered into the room made even Halidom's blood run cold.