Free Follow the Saint by Leslie Charteris Page A

retrospect, he sometimes wondered whether he would have any chance of claiming that
the astounding quality of care which it showed could be credited entirely to his own inspired forethought.
    It was on
the stroke of four when he sailed into the May Fair and espied the plump and
unromantic shape of Chief Inspector Teal dumped into a pink brocade armchair
and looking rather like a bailiff in a boudoir.
    Teal got
up as the Saint breezed towards him; and some thing in the way he
straightened and stood there almost checked Simon in the middle of a
stride. Simon forced himself to keep coming without a flaw in the smooth
surface of his outward tranquillity; but a sixth sense was rocketing red danger
signals through his brain even before he heard the detective’s
unnaturally hard gritty voice.
    “I’ve
been waiting for you, Saint!”
    “Then
you must have been early, Claud,” said the Saint. His smile was amiable
and unruffled, but there was an out law’s watchfulness at the back of his bantering eyes.
“Is that any excuse for the basilisk leer ? Anyone would think you’d eaten something—— ”
    “I
don’t want to hear any more of that,” Teal said crunchily. “You
know damned well why I’m waiting for you. Do you know what this is ?”
    He
flourished a piece of paper in Simon’s face.
    The Saint
raised his eyebrows.
    “Not
another of those jolly old warrants ?” he murmured. “You
must be getting quite a collection of them.”
    “I’m
not going to need to collect any more,” Teal said grimly. “You went
too far when you left your mark on the dead man you threw out of your car in
Richmond Park this afternoon. I’m taking you into custody on a charge of
wilful murder!”     
     
    X
    S IMON TOOK Mr Teal
by the arm and led him back to a seat. He was probably the
only man in the world who could have got away with such a thing, but he did it
without the faintest sign of effort. He switched on about fifty
thousand watts of his personality, and Mr Teal was sitting down
beside him before he recovered from it.
    “Damn
it, Templar, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he
exploded wrathfully. “You’re under arrest!”
    “All
right, I’m under arrest,” said the Saint accommodat ingly, as
he stretched out his long legs. “So what ?”
    “I’m
taking you into custody—— ”
    “You
said that before. But why the hurry ? It isn’t early closing day at Vine Street, is it ? Let’s
have our tea first, and you can tell me all
about this bird I’m supposed to have moidered. You say he was thrown out
of a car——”
    “Your
Hirondel!”
    “But
why mine? After all, there are others. I don’t use enough of them to keep the
factory going by myself.”
    The detective’s
jaws clamped on his chewing gum.
    “You
can say all that to the magistrate in the morning,” he retorted dourly.
“It isn’t my job to listen to you. It’s my job to take you to the
nearest police station and leave you there, and that’s what I’m going to do.
I’ve got a car and a couple of men at each of the entrances, so you’d better
not give any trouble. I had an idea you’d be here at four o’clock —— ”
    “So I
spent the afternoon moidering people and chucking them out of cars,
and then rush off to meet you so you needn’t even have the trouble
of looking for me. I even use my own famous Hirondel so that any cop can
identify it, and put my trademark on the deceased to make everything
easy for the prosecution. You know, Claud,” said the Saint
pen sively, “there are times when I wonder whether I’m quite sane.”
    Teal’s baby
blue eyes clung to him balefully.
    “Go
on,” he grated. “Let’s hear the new alibi. It’ll give me plenty of time to get it
torn down before you come up for trial!”
    “Give
me a chance,” Simon protested. “I don’t even know what time I’m supposed to have
been doing all these exciting things.”
    “You
know perfectly well——
    “Never
mind. You tell me, and