Chief inspector claud eustace teal fastened his chewing gum well back in his mouth and prayed that his collar would stand the strain of the swelling which he could feel creeping up his neck.
"Are you trying to tell me that I'm raving mad?" he squawked.
He had not meant to squawk. But those same infuriating convulsions with which he was only too bitterly familiar were taking hold of his vocal cords again, robbing his voice of the rich commanding resonance which for some reason he could never achieve when he faced that lazy, derisive buccaneer who had long ago taken all the joy out of his life. And the sound of his own squawking filled him with such flabbergasted fury that it only increased his internal feeling of inflation till his collar creaked perilously on its studs.
"What — me?" protested the Saint in shocked accents. "Claud, have I ever been rude to you? Have I ever hurt your feelings? I may think things, but I keep them to myself—"
"Listen." The detective took hold of himself with both pudgy hands. "I've spent two hours at Quintana's house—"
"Did you have fun?"
"I've spent most of that time talking to Quintana. I took Urivetzky away with me — he's in a cell at Cannon Row now—"
"You took who?"
"Urivetzky."
"What are Urivetzky?" asked the Saint. "They sound like a remedy for rheumatism. Have you been having some more trouble with that gouty toe of yours?"
"You know damn well who I mean!"
Simon scratched his head.
"Now I think of it the name does sort of sound familiar," he admitted. "Was he the guy who pulled off that big forgery some time ago?"
"You know that as well as I do," Teal said grimly, "and you know we were looking for him until we heard he'd been shot in Spain. Well, it's all very well for you to hand him over—"
"Me?" repeated the Saint. "I never touched him."
"He had a cracked jaw when I picked him up. And where did you skin your knuckles?"
"Trying to do a bit of amateur repair work on the car. I don't know if you've ever noticed what a lot of nobbly bits there are in these new-fangled engines."
"You—"
"I'm not, Claud, really I'm not. And you mustn't say things like that. They're slanderous." The Saint took out a cigarette. "You know, the trouble with you is that you're too modest. After you've done a brilliant piece of detective work running down this crook that everybody's been looking for for years you come over all coy and try to pass the credit on to someone else. It won't do, Claud. Modesty is all very well, but in these days you have to advertise even if it hurts."
"Besides that," Teal proceeded, "I took a man called Perez, and he's charged with murdering Ingles-ton last night."
The Saint frowned slightly.
"Ingleston?" he repeated. "I've heard of him too… Oh yes — he was the bloke with the bent skull that we were looking at this morning. And you've got his murderer too?" The Saint's smile acquired a spontaneous warmth that would have thawed anyone less obstinately prejudiced. "Claud, this has been a great day for you! And you came straight over to tell me before you told anyone else. Well, I think we ought to have a drink on it."
"Quintana told the whole story," Teal ploughed on doggedly. "There wasn't much else he could do unless he'd tried to stand on 'diplomatic rights,' and he was too shaken by what you'd done to his nose to think about that. He was howling for a doctor and cursing his friends in Spanish and answering most of my questions at the same time. I may get into trouble later for taking advantage of him, but I've got his signed statement, and I've got Perez. I don't know how much Quintana's immunity is good for, since he's the representative of the Rebel government, but we'll see about that. I heard what he said to you just before you smashed the light and so did three other officers. And his statement brings you in on three other charges of burglary, demanding money with menaces—"
"There's only one thing about this story that worries me, as I told you before," said the Saint mildly, "and that is why I keep coming into it."
Mr Teal moved his gum over to the other side of his jaw, and his round cherubic pink face became pinker and more desperately cherubic.
"You know why you come into it," he said. "You were prowling around at Ingleston's this morning, trying to get in my way. You knew that we were looking for Graham and didn't say anything about him."
"You didn't ask me, Claud. You know how sensitive you are about outsiders trying to show you how to do your job, so it wasn't my business to butt into your case without any invitation."
"You've been hiding him here all day—"
"I certainly haven't. Just because you didn't find him doesn't mean that I was hiding him. It was all perfectly open. You only had to come to the door and say 'Knock, knock, is Graham there?' and we'd have said 'Graham who?' and you'd have said 'Graham the dawn,' and we'd have said 'Peepbo, here he is,' and everything would have been all right."
"We made enquiries here, and the porter said no one had been to see you."
"He must have been mistaken. To err is human—"
Teal moved his gum again and almost swallowed it.
"You've been harbouring a suspected person—"
"But what on earth," asked the Saint puzzledly, "is the poor boy suspected of? Buying a sweepstake ticket or something dreadful like that? I thought you'd got a bloke called Perez who was supposed to have murdered Ingleston."
"Graham was suspected at the time, and you'd no business to be harbouring him. And now he's still believed to be in possession of seven thousand pounds worth of American bearer bonds—"
"Bonds?"
"Yes, bonds. Forged bonds. And there's also forty thousand pounds in cash that you stole from Quintana's house tonight!"
"My dear Claud!" The Saint was earnestly sympathetic. "If you've been thinking things like that I don't wonder that you're upset. Seven thousand pounds worth of forged bonds and forty thousand quid in cash — that would be something to make a song about. But you're all wrong this time. We haven't got any bonds, and we haven't got anything like forty thousand pounds."
"No?" Teal's voice was savage. "Well—"
"Of course you can," said the Saint clairvoyantly. "Go ahead and search us. Search the place. I won't even ask you to show a warrant. If it'll set your mind at rest…"
Teal glared around the room as if he was ready to start in and tear it apart without further parley, but even in his glare there was the beginning of a kind of hopeless doubt. The very way that the Saint had so readily told him to go ahead was almost a guarantee that there would be nothing to find, that he would only be laying himself open to more derision from that maddeningly bantering tongue. He had to brace himself to keep plunging on before he thought too much about it and lost steerageway.
"We'll search the room all right while you're in the cell next to Urivetzky," he retorted venomously.
"And what's going to put me there?"
"I am! I know what you were doing at that house tonight—"
"How could I have been doing anything," Simon protested, "when I wasn't there?"
"I know you were there all right—"
Simon shook his head.
"Somebody must have been playing tricks on you. We've all been sitting quietly here, telling stories and talking about architecture."
Teal swallowed, choked and got his voice back.
"Are you trying to tell me that I'm raving mad?" he bugled again. "After I spoke to you myself on the telephone?"
"Telephones are deceptive things," said the Saint sadly. "If someone was pretending to be me naturally they'd imitate my voice—"
"I've got more than that. I've got statements from Quintana and Urivetzky and Perez that you were there all the time."
Simon shrugged deprecatingly.
"After all," he said, "their reputations don't seem to be too good, and I suppose people like that will say anything if they think it'll take trouble away from themselves."
"Would they telephone me and ask me to come over and arrest them?" hooted Teal.
"I don't say they did, although people do lots of queer things. But somebody did it. Why, I don't know. But that's not my job. I'm not a detective, and this isn't my case. it'll be quite a little problem for you, Claud, and I'll be glad to let you know if I think of any theories. But did you see me there?"
"I heard your voice inside the room and so did three other officers—"
"But that must have been my impersonator, Claud — the bloke who did all the tough stuff, cracking jaws and bopping people on the nose and so forth. I'm sure your officers think they were right, the same as you do — but what about your other officers?"
"What other officers?"
"I mean," said the Saint deliberately, "all those great flat-footed morons who've been plastering the scenery around this building ever since I saw you this morning. You've had them watching me like a flea under a microscope, and I suppose they're as sane as anyone else at Scotland Yard. And unless every one of them is a perjurer, I'll bet you can't bring on one of them who won't swear that I haven't put my nose outside all evening. Now suppose you laugh that off!"
His voice crisped to a subtle sting on the last words; but it was nothing to the tightening that crawled over Chief Inspector Teal. It was as if the detective suddenly soared out of all his gnawing hesitations on a great expansion of sublime triumph. He seemed to grow bigger as his chest swelled, and his round face was red with ecstasy.
"Now I'll tell you why I'm laughing!" he blazed back. "I know how you got out of here without my men seeing you! That was something else I got from Quintana, because his men were watching this flat too. I know how you were wheeled out in a false beard before these things happened and how you were wheeled back just a little while ago! I know all about this precious Mr Joshua Pond, who's supposed to live in the flat next door. And I know that he doesn't exist! I know that the only Joshua Pond in this building is you! And that's what's going to put you where you belong!"
The detective's crescendo of exclamation marks ended in a falsetto squeak like a stabbed canary, but Teal was past caring. The exultation of conquest was singing in his head like strong drink. For once, at last, he had in his hands the final proof that would wreck the Saint's last fatal alibi. And Teal was glad of it. It was the moment for which he had lived more years than he wanted to remember, but it would atone for all of them.
"How's that going to do anything to me?" Simon asked abruptly.
"Because this Joshua Pond hasn't been out again since my men saw him come in. And I'm going right next door to ring his bell and see if he's there. And if he isn't there I'll have all the evidence I want!"
"But suppose he is?" said the Saint anxiously. "I don't know anything about him, but he might object to being disturbed—"
"If he's there," Teal answered recklessly, "I'll admit that I'm raving mad. I'll admit that I've been dreaming all night. But I shan't have to 1"
"Give Joshua my love," said the Saint softly. "Show him your tummy — he might like it."
He picked up another cigarette and glanced around at Patricia Holm and Geoffrey Graham as Teal flung himself out of the room. And his smile had the superb inimitable madness on which all his life was based.
Teal was already thumbing the bell of the next apartment. And the door opened.
A very old man, in his shirt and trousers, with a voluminous growth of white whisker almost covering his face, looked out at him.
Something insane and unprecedented took possession of Mr Teal — something which, if he had stopped to think about it, had already seized him on two previous similar occasions during his long feud with the Saint. But Mr Teal was not stopping to think. He was not really responsible for his actions. He was no longer the cold remorseless Nemesis that he liked to picture himself as he lurched forward with one wild movement, grasped a section of the old man's beard with one hand and pulled to tear it off.
The only trouble was that the beard did not come off; and the next thing that Mr Teal was aware of was that his face was stinging from a powerful smack.
"Well, dang me!" squalled the ancient. "I never did heeear of such a thing in all my liiife. Haven't you got nothing better to do, young man, than come around pulling respectable folks' beeeards? You wait till I fetch a policeman to ye. I'll see that you learn some manners, danged if I doan't!"
Mr Teal stood there, hardly conscious of his tingling cheek, hardly hearing the old man on the telephone inside the apartment as he upbraided the porter for letting in "danged young fules to come and pull my beeeard." The exultant delirium of a few seconds ago seemed to have curdled to a leaden mass in his stomach. He knew without stirring another muscle that the supreme moment he had dreamed of had not yet come. He knew that he was doomed to leave the Saint free once again to organize more tragedies for him. He didn't know how this one had been organized, but he knew that it had been done, and he knew that his very own watchdogs were the best evidence against him. And Mr Teal knew with the utter deadness of despair that it had always been fated to be the same.