Free Featuring the Saint by Leslie Charteris Page B

listen to me, Templar. You’ve already robbed me once—”
    “When?”
    “D’you have to bluff when there isn’t an audience? D’you deny that you’re the Saint?”
    “On the contrary,” murmured Simon calmly. “I’m proud of it. But when have I robbed you?”
    For a moment Lemuel looked as if he would choke. Then:
“What have you come for now?” he demanded.
    Simon seemed to sink even deeper into his chair, and he watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette with abstracted eyes.
    “Suppose,” he said lazily-“just suppose we had all the congregation out in the limelight. Wouldn’t that make it seem more matey?”
    “What d’you mean?”
    Lemuel’s voice cracked on the question.
    “Well,” said Simon, closing his eyes, with a truly sanctimonious smile hovering on his hips, “I really do hate talking to people I can’t see. And it must be frightfully uncomfortable for Claud Eustace, hiding behind that screen over there.”
    “I don’t understand—”
    “Do you understand, Claud?” drawled the Saint; and Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal answered wearily that he understood.
    He emerged mountainously, and stood looking down at the Saint with a certain admiration in his bovine countenance.
    “And how did you know I was there?”
    Simon waved a languid hand towards the table. Teal, following the gesture, saw the ash tray, and the discarded pink overcoat of the gum which he was even then chewing, and groaned.
    “Wrigley,” sighed the Saint, succinctly.
    Then Lemuel turned on the detective, snarling.
    “What the hell did you want to come out for?”
    “Chiefly because there wasn’t much point in staying where I was, Mr. Lemuel,” replied Teal tiredly.
    Simon chuckled.
    “It’s as much your fault as his, Francis, old coyote,” he said. “If you must try to pull that old gag on me, you want to go into strict training. A man in your condition can’t hope to put it over… . Oh, Francis! To think you thought I’d bite that bit of cheese-and land myself in good and proper, with Teal taking frantic notes behind the whatnot! You must take care not to go sitting in any damp grass, Francis-you might get brain fever.”
    “Anyway,” said Teal, “it was a good idea.”
    “It was a rotten idea,” said the Saint disparagingly. “And always has been. But I knew it was ten to one it would be tried
-I knew it when I sent that note to Francis. I’m glad you came. Claud-I really did want you here.”
    “Why?”
    Lemuel cut in. His face was tense and drawn.
    “Inspector, you know this man’s character—”
    “I do,” said Teal somnolently. “That’s the trouble.”
    “He came here to try to blackmail me, and he’d have done it if he hadn’t discovered you. Now he’s going to try to get out of it on one of his bluffs-“
    “No,” said the Saint; and he said it in such a way that there was a sudden silence.
    And, in the stillness, with his eyes still closed, the Saint listened. His powers of hearing were abnormally acute: he heard the sound he was waiting for when neither of the other two could hear anything-and even to him it was like nothing more than the humming of a distant bee.
    And then he opened his eyes. It was like the unmasking of two clear blue lights in the keen brown face; and the eyes were not jesting at all. He stood up.
    “As you said-you know me, Teal,” he remarked. “Now I’ll tell you what you don’t know about Francis Lemuel. The first thing is that he’s at the head of the dope ring you’ve been trying to get at for years. I don’t know how he used to bring the stuff into the country; but I do know that when I was his private pilot, a little while ago, he came back from Berlin one time with enough snow in his grip to build a ski-slope round the Equator.”
    “It’s a lie! By God, you’ll answer for that, Templar—”
    “Now I come to think of it,” murmured Teal, “how do you know his real name?”
    Simon laughed softly. The humming of the bee was