Free The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal by Leslie Charteris

the gravel scraped again outside the windows. Footsteps and voices sounded in the hall, and the library door opened to admit the form of the Honourable Leo’s butler. “Lord Iveldown,” he announced.
    VIII
    Simon Templar’s cigar had gone out. He put it down carefully in an ashtray and took out his cigarette case. It stands as a matter of record that at that moment he did not bat an eyelid, though he knew that the showdown had arrived.
    “Delighted to see you, Iveldown,” the Honourable Leo was exclaiming. “Yorkland was unfortunately unable to stay. However, you are not too late to make the acquaintance of our new—ah— agents. Mr. Orconi …”
    Farwill’s voice trailed hesitantly away. It began to dawn on him that his full-throated flow of oratory was not carrying his audience with him. Something, it seemed, was remarkably wrong.
    Standing in front of the door which had closed behind the retiring butler, Lord Iveldown and Mr. Nassen were staring open-mouthed at the Saint with the aspect of a comedy unison dance team arrested in midflight. The rigidity of their postures, the sag of their lower jaws, the glazed bulging of their eyes, and the suffusion of red in their complexions were so ludicrously identical that they might have been reflections of each other. They looked like two peas who had fallen out of their pod and were still trying to realize what had hit them; and the Honourable Leo looked from them to the Saint and back again with a frown of utter bewilderment.
    “Whatever is the matter?” he demanded, startled into uttering one of the shortest sentences of his life; and at the sound of his question Lord Iveldown came slowly and painfully out of his paralysis.
    He turned, blinking through his pince-nez.
    “Is that—that—the American gunman you told me about?” he queried awfully.
    “That is what I have been—ah—given to understand,” said Farwill, recovering himself. “We are indebted to Mr. Uniatz for the introduction. I am informed that he has had an extensive career in the underworld of—ah—Pittsburgh. Do you imply that you are already acquainted?”
    His lordship swallowed.
    “You bumptious blathering ass!” he said.
    Simon Templar uncoiled himself from his chair with a genial smile. The spectacle of two politicians preparing to speak their minds candidly to one another was so rare and beautiful that it grieved him to interrupt; but he had his own part to play. It had been no great effort to deny himself the batting of an eyelid up to that point—the impulse to bat eyelids simply had not arisen to require suppressing. Coming immediately on the heels of Leo Farwill’s revelation, he was not sorry to see Lord Iveldown.
    “What ho, Snowdrop,” he murmured cordially. “Greetings, your noble Lordship.”
    Farwill gathered himself together.
    “So you are already acquainted!” he rumbled with an effort of heartiness. “I thought––”
    “Do you know who that is?” Iveldown asked dreadfully.
    Some appalling intuition made Farwill shake his head; and the Saint smiled encouragingly.
    “You tell him, Ivelswivel,” he urged. “Relieve the suspense.”
    “That’s the Saint himself!” exploded Iveldown.
    There are times when even this talented chronicler’s genius stalls before the task of describing adequately the reactions of Simon Templar’s victims. Farwill’s knees drooped, and his face took on a greenish tinge; but in amplification of those simple facts a whole volume might be written in which bombshells, earthquakes, dynamite, mule-kicks, and other symbols of devastating violence would reel through a kaleidoscope of similes that would still amount to nothing but an anaemic ghost of the sight which rejoiced Simon Templar’s eyes. And the Saint smiled again and lighted his cigarette.
    “Of course we know each other,” he said. “Leo and I were just talking about you, your Lordship. I gather that you’re not only the bird who suggested bumping me off so that you’d