"That was the house," Graham protested. "You just passed it."
"I know," said the Saint.
He locked the hand brake as the car pulled in to the curb, and turned to look back at the corner they had just taken. The movement was automatic, although he knew that he couldn't see the entrance of the house from where they had stopped; but in his memory he could see it as clearly as if the angle of the building which hid it from his eyes had been made of glass — the whole little tableau that had blazed those high-voltage danger signals into his brain.
Not that there had been anything sensational about it, anything that would have had that instantaneous and dynamic effect on the average man's reactions. Just seven or eight assorted citizens of various but quite ordinary and unexciting shapes and sizes, loafing and gaping inanely about the pavement, with the door of the house which Simon had been making for as a kind of vague focus linking them roughly together. A constable in uniform standing beside the door, and a rotund, pink-faced man in a bowler hat who had emerged from the hall to speak to him at the very moment when the Saint's eye was grasping the general outlines of the scene. Nothing startling or prodigious; but it was enough to keep the Saint sitting there with his eyes keen and intent while he went over the details in his mind. Perhaps it was the memory of that round man with a face like a slightly apoplectic cherub, who had come out to speak to the policeman…
Graham was staring at him perplexedly.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
The Saint looked at him almost without seeing him, and a faint aimless smile touched his lips.
"Nothing," he said. "Can you drive a car?"
"Fairly well."
"Drive this one. She's a bit of a handful, so you'd better take it easy. Don't put your foot down too quickly, or you'll find yourself a mile or two ahead of yourself."
"But—"
"Go back to my place. You'll find a girl there — name of Patricia Holm. I'll phone her and tell her you're on your way. She'll give you a drink and prattle to you till I get back. I'd like to pay this call alone."
"But—"
Simon swung his legs over the side and pushed himself off onto the pavement.
"That seems to be quite a favourite word of yours," he remarked. "On your way, brother. You can tell me all about it presently."
He stood and watched the Hirondel take a leap forward like a goosed antelope and then crawl on up the road with a very mystified young man clinging grimly to the steering wheel; and then he turned into a convenient tobacconist's and put a call through to Patricia.
"I'm sending my Boy Scout material back for you to look after," he said. "Feed him some ginger ale and keep him happy till I get back. I wouldn't flirt with him too much, because I think he's a rather earnest soul. And if there should be any inquiries tell Orace to hide him in the oven and don't let anybody know we've got him."
"Does this mean you're getting into trouble again?" she demanded ominously. "Because if you are—"
"Darling, I am about to have a conference with the vicar about the patterns for the next sewing bee," said the Saint and hung up the receiver.
He lighted a cigarette as he sauntered down to the corner and across the street towards the house which he had been meaning to visit. The scene was still more or less the same, one or two new idle citizens having joined the small accumulation of inquisitive loafers, and one or two of the old congregation having grown tired of gaping at nothing and moved off. The policeman still stood majestically by the door, although the man in the bowler hat no longer obstructed the opening. The policeman moved a little to do some obstructing of his own as the Saint ambled up the steps.
"Do you live here, sir?"
"No," said the Saint amiably. "Do you?"
The constable gazed at him woodenly.
"Who do you want to see?"
"I should like to see Chief Inspector Teal," Simon told him impressively. "He's expecting me."
The policeman studied him suspiciously for a moment; but the Saint was very impressive. He looked like a man whom a chief inspector might have been expecting. He might equally well have been expected by a prime minister, a film actress or a man who trained budgereegahs to play the trombone; but the constable was not a sufficiently profound thinker to take this universal view. He turned and led the way into the house, and Simon followed him. They went through the hall, which had the empty and sanitary and freshly painted air common to all houses which have been recently converted into flats, and through the half-open door of a ground-floor flat a strip of curl-papered female goggled at them morbidly as they went by. At the top of the empty and sanitary and freshly painted stairs the door of another flat was ajar, with another policeman standing beside it.
"Someone to see the inspector," said the first policeman and, having discharged his duty, went downstairs again to resume his vigil.
The second policeman opened the door, and they went into the hall of the flat. Almost opposite the entrance was the open door of the living room; and as the Saint reached it he saw four men moving about. There was a man fiddling with a camera on a tripod near the door, and across the room another man was poring over the furniture with a bottle of grey powder and a camel-hair brush and a magnifying glass. A tall, thin, melancholy-looking man with a large notebook stood a little way apart, sucking the end of a pencil; and the man with the bowler hat and the figure like an inverted egg whom Simon had seen from his car was peering over his shoulder at what had been written down.
It was on the last of these men that the Saint's eyes rested as he entered the room. He remained indifferent to the other stares that swivelled round to greet him with bovine curiosity, waiting until the bowler hat tilted towards him. And as it did so a warm and friendly smile established itself on the Saint's face.
"What ho, Claud Eustace," he said affably.
The china-blue eyes under the brim of the bowler hat grew larger and rounder as they assimilated the shock of identification. In them even a man with the firmest intentions of believing nothing but good of his fellow men would have found it hard to discern any of that spontaneous cordiality and cheer with which a well-mannered wanderer in the great wilderness of life should have returned the greeting of a brother voyager. To be precise they looked as if their owner had just discovered that he was in the act of absentmindedly swallowing a live toad.
A rich tint of sun-kissed plum mantled the face below the eyes; and the man seemed to quiver a little, like a volcano seeking for some means of self-expression. After one or two awful seconds he found it.
"What the hell are you doing here?" blared Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal.