The Man Who Liked Toys
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal rested his pudgy elbows on the table and unfolded the pink wrappings from a fresh wafer of chewing gum.
"That's all there was to it," he said. "And that's the way it always is. You get an idea, you spread a net out among the stool pigeons, and you catch a man. Then you do a lot of dull routine work to build up the evidence. That's how a real detective does his job; and that's the way Sherlock Holmes would have had to do it if he'd worked at Scotland Yard."
Simon Templar grinned amiably, and beckoned a waiter for the bill. The orchestra yawned and went into another dance number; but the floor show had been over for half an hour, and Dora's Curfew was hurrying the drinks off the tables. It was two o'clock in the morning, and a fair proportion of the patrons of the Palace Royal had some work to think of before the next midnight.
"Maybe you're right, Claud," said the Saint mildly.
"I know I'm right," said Mr. Teal, in his drowsy voice. And then, as Simon pushed a fiver on to the plate, he chuckled. "But I know you like pulling our legs about it, too."
They steered their way round the tables and up the stairs to the hotel lobby. It was another of those rare occasions when Mr. Teal had been able to enjoy the Saint's company without any lurking uneasiness about the outcome. For some weeks his life had been comparatively peaceful. No hints of further Saintly lawlessness had come to his ears; and at such times he admitted to himself, with a trace of genuine surprise, that there were few things which entertained him more than a social evening with the gay buccaneer who had set Scotland Yard more mysteries than they would ever solve.
"Drop in and see me next time I'm working on a case, Saint," Teal said in the lobby, with a truly staggering generosity for which the wine must have been partly responsible. "You'll see for yourself how we really do it."
"I'd like to," said the Saint; and if there was the trace of a smile in his eyes when he said it, it was entirely without malice.
He settled his soft hat on his smooth dark head and glanced round the lobby with the vague aimlessness which ordinarily precedes a parting at that hour. A little group of three men had discharged themselves from a nearby lift and were moving boisterously and a trifle unsteadily towards the main entrance. Two of them were hatted and overcoated — a tallish man with a thin line of black moustache, and a tubby red-faced man with rimless spectacles. The third member of the party, who appeared to be the host, was a flabby flat-footed man of about fifty-five with a round bald head and a rather bulbous nose that would have persuaded any observant onlooker to expect that he would have drunk more than the others, which in fact he obviously had. All of them had the dishevelled and rather tragically ridiculous air of Captains of Industry who have gone off duty for the evening.
"That's Lewis Enstone — the chap with the nose," said Teal, who knew everyone. "He might have been one of the biggest men in the City if he could have kept off the bottle."
"And the other two?" asked the Saint incuriously, because he already knew.
"Just a couple of smaller men in the same game. Abe Costello — that's the tall one — and Jules Hammel." Mr. Teal chewed meditatively on his spearmint. "If anything ever happens to them, I shall want to know where you were at the time," he added warningly.
"I shan't know anything about it," said the Saint piously.
He lighted a cigarette and watched the trio of celebrators disinterestedly. Hammel and Costello he knew something about from the untimely reincarnation of Mr. Titus Oates; but the more sozzled member of the party was new to him.
"You do unnerstan', boys, don't you?" Enstone was articulating pathetically, with his arms spread around the shoulders of his guests in an affectionate manner which contributed helpfully towards his support. "It's jus' business. I'm not hardhearted. I'm kind to my wife an' children an' everything, God bless 'em. An' any time I can do anything for either of you — why, you jus' lemme know."
"That's awfully good of you, old man," said Hammel, with the blurry-eyed solemnity of his condition.
"Less have lunch together on Tuesday," suggested Costello. "We might be able to talk about something that'd interest you."
"Right," said Enstone dimly. "Lush Tooshday. Hic."
"An' don't forget the kids," said Hammel confidentially.
Enstone giggled.
"I shouldn't forget that!" In obscurely elaborate pantomime, he closed his fist with his forefinger extended and his thumb cocked vertically upwards, and aimed the forefinger between Hammel's eyes. "Shtick 'em up!" he commanded gravely, and at once relapsed into further merriment, in which his guests joined somewhat hysterically.
The group separated at the entrance amid much handshaking and back-slapping and alcoholic laughter; and Lewis Enstone wended his way back with cautious and preoccupied steps towards the lift. Mr. Teal took a fresh bite on his gum and tightened his mouth disgustedly.
"Is he staying here?" asked the Saint.
"He lives here," said the detective. "He's lived here even when we knew for a face that he hadn't got a penny to his name. Why, I remember once—"
He launched into a lengthy anecdote which had all the vitality of personal bitterness in the telling. Simon Templar, listening with the half of one well-trained ear that would prick up into instant attention if the story took any twist that might provide the germ of an adventure, but would remain intently passive if it didn't, smoked his cigarette and gazed abstractedly into space. His mind had that gift of complete division; and he had another job on hand to think about. Somewhere in the course of the story he gathered that Mr. Teal had once lost some money on the Stock Exchange over some shares in which Enstone was speculating; but there was nothing much about that misfortune to attract his interest, and the detective's mood of disparaging reminiscence was as good an opportunity as any other for him to plot out a few details of the campaign against his latest quarry.
"…So I,lost half my money, and I've kept the rest of it in gilt-edged stuff ever since," concluded Mr. Teal rancorously; and Simon took the last inhalation from his cigarette and dropped the stub into an ashtray.
"Thanks for the tip, Claud," he said lightly. "I gather that next time I murder somebody you'd like me to make it a financier."
Teal grunted, and hitched his coat round.
"I shouldn't like you to murder anybody," he said, from his heart. "Now I've got to go home — I have to get up in the morning."
They walked towards the street doors. On their left they passed the information desk; and beside the desk had been standing a couple of bored and sleepy page-boys. Simon had observed them and their sleepiness as casually as he had observed the colour of the carpet, but all at once he realised that their sleepiness had vanished. He had a sudden queer sensitiveness of suppressed excitement; and then one of the boys said something loud enough to be overheard which stopped Teal in his tracks and turned him round abruptly.
"What's that?" he demanded.
"It's Mr. Enstone, sir. He just shot himself."
Mr. Teal scowled. To the newspapers it would be a surprise and a front-page sensation: to him it was a surprise and a potential menace to his night's rest if he butted into any responsibility. Then he shrugged.
"I'd better have a look," he said, and introduced himself.
There was a scurry to lead him towards the lift. Mr. Teal ambled bulkily into the nearest car, and quite brazenly the Saint followed him. He had, after all, been kindly invited to "drop in" the next time the plump detective was handling a case… Teal put his hands in his pockets and started in mountainous drowsiness at the downward-flying shaft. Simon studiously avoided his eye, and had a pleasant shock when the detective addressed him almost genially.
"I always thought there was something fishy about that fellow. Did he look as if he'd anything to shoot himself about, except the head that was waiting for him when he woke up?"
It was as if the decease of any financier, however caused, was a benison upon the earth for which Mr. Teal could not help being secretly and quite immorally grateful. That was the subtle impression he gave of his private feelings; but the rest of him was impenetrable stolidity and aloofness. He dismissed the escort of page-boys and strode to the door of the millionaire's suite. It was closed and silent. Teal knocked on it authoritatively, and after a moment it opened six inches and disclosed a pale agitated face. Teal introduced himself again and the door opened wider, enlarging the agitated face into the unmistakable full-length portrait of an assistant hotel manager. Simon followed the detective in, endeavouring to look equally official.
"This will be a terrible scandal, Inspector," said the assistant manager.
Teal looked at him woodenly.
"Were you here when it happened?"
"No. I was downstairs, in my office—"
Teal collected the information, and ploughed past him. On the right, another door opened off the generous lobby; and through it could be seen another elderly man whose equally pale face and air of suppressed agitation bore a certain general similarity and also a self-contained superiority to the first. Even without his sober black coat and striped trousers, grey side-whiskers and passive hands, he would have stamped himself as something more cosmic than the assistant manager of an hotel — the assistant manager of a man.
"Who are you?" asked Teal.
"I am Fowler, sir. Mr. Enstone's valet."
"Were you here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where is Mr. Enstone?"
"In the bedroom, sir."
They moved back across the lobby, with the assistant manager assuming the lead. Teal stopped. "Will you be in your office if I want you?" he asked, with great politeness; and the assistant manager seemed to disappear from the scene even before the door of the suite closed behind him.
Lewis Enstone was dead. He lay on his back beside the bed, with his head half rolled over to one side, in such a way that both the entrance and the exit of the bullet which had killed him could be seen. It had been fired squarely into his right eye, leaving the ugly trail which only a heavy-calibre bullet fired at close range can leave… The gun lay under the fingers of his right hand.
"Thumb on the trigger," Teal noted aloud.
He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a pair of gloves, pink-faced and unemotional. Simon observed the room. An ordinary, very tidy bedroom, barren of anything unusual except the subdued costliness of furnishing. Two windows, both shut and fastened. On a table in one corner, the only sign of disorder, the remains of a carelessly-opened parcel. Brown paper, ends of string, a plain cardboard box — empty. The millionaire had gone no further towards undressing than loosening his tie and undoing his collar.
"What happened?" asked Mr. Teal.
"Mr. Enstone had had friends to dinner, sir," explained Fowler. "A Mr. Costello—"
"I know that. What happened when he came back from seeing them off?"
"He went straight to bed, sir."
"Was this door open?"
"At first, sir. I asked Mr. Enstone about the morning, and he told me to call him at eight. I then asked him whether he wished me to assist him to undress, and he gave me to understand that he did not. He closed the door, and I went back to the sitting-room."
"Did you leave that door open?"
"Yes, sir. I was doing a little clearing up. Then I heard — the shot, sir."
"Do you know any reason why Mr. Enstone should have shot himself?"
"On the contrary, sir — I understood that his recent speculations had been highly successful."
Teal nodded.
"Where is his wife?"
"Mrs. Enstone and the children have been in Madeira, sir. We are expecting them home tomorrow."
"What was in that parcel, Fowler?" ventured the Saint.
The valet glanced at the table.
"I don't know, sir. I believe it must have been left by one of Mr. Enstone's guests. I noticed it on the dining-table when I brought in their coats, and Mr. Enstone came back for it on his return and took it into the bedroom with him."
"You didn't hear anything said about it?"
"No, sir. I was not present after coffee had been served — I understood that the gentlemen had private business to discuss."
"What are you getting at?" Mr. Teal asked seriously.
The Saint smiled apologetically; and being nearest the door, went out to open it as a second knocking disturbed the silence, and let in a grey-haired man with a black bag. While the police surgeon was making his preliminary examination, he drifted into the sitting-room. The relics of a convivial dinner were all there — cigar-butts in the coffee cups, stains of spilt wine on the cloth, crumbs and ash everywhere, the stale smell of food and smoke hanging in the air — but those things did not interest him. He was not quite sure what would have interested him; but he wandered rather vacantly round the room, gazing introspectively at the prints of character which a long tenancy leaves even on anything so characterless as an hotel apartment. There were pictures on the walls and the side tables, mostly enlarged snapshots revealing Lewis Enstone relaxing in the bosom of his family, which amused Simon for some time. On one of the side tables he found a curious object. It was a small wooden plate on which half a dozen wooden fowls stood in a circle. Their necks were pivoted at the base, and underneath the plate were six short strings joined to the necks and knotted together some distance further down where they were all attached at the same point to a wooden ball. It was these strings, and the weight of the ball at their lower ends, which kept the birds' heads raised; and Simon discovered that when he moved the plate so that the ball swung round in a circle underneath, thus tightening and slackening each string in turn, the fowls mounted on the plate pecked vigorously in rotation at an invisible and apparently inexhaustible supply of corn, in a most ingenious mechanical display of gluttony.
He was still playing thoughtfully with the toy when he discovered Mr. Teal standing beside him. The detective's round pink face wore a look of almost comical incredulity.
"Is that how you spend your spare time?" he demanded.
"I think it's rather clever," said the Saint soberly. He put the toy down, and blinked at Fowler. "Does it belong to one of the children?"
"Mr. Enstone brought it home with him this evening, sir, to give to Miss Annabel tomorrow," said the valet. "He was always picking up things like that. He was a very devoted father, sir."
Mr. Teal chewed for,a moment; and then he said: "Have you finished? I'm going home."
Simon nodded pacifically, and accompanied him to the lift. As they went down he asked: "Did you find anything?"
Teal blinked.
"What did you expect me to find?"
"I thought the police were always believed to have a Clue," murmured the Saint innocently.
"Enstone committed suicide," said Teal flatly. "What sort of clues do you want?"
"Why did he commit suicide?" asked the Saint, almost childishly.
Teal ruminated meditatively for a while, without answering. If anyone else had started such a discussion he would have been openly derisive. The same impulse was stirring him then; but he restrained himself. He knew Simon Templar's wicked sense of humour, but he also knew that sometimes the Saint was most worth listening to when he sounded most absurd.
"Call me up in the morning," said Mr. Teal at length, "and I may be able to tell you."
Simon Templar went home and slept fitfully. Lewis Enstone had shot himself — it seemed an obvious fact. The windows had been closed and fastened, and any complicated trick of fastening them from the outside and escaping up or down a rope-ladder was ruled out by the bare two or three seconds that could have elapsed between the sound of the shot and the valet rushing in. But Fowler himself might… Why not suicide, anyway? But the Saint could run over every word and gesture and expression of the leave-taking which he himself had witnessed in the hotel lobby, and none of it carried even a hint of suicide. The only oddity about it had been the queer inexplicable piece of pantomime — the fist clenched, with the forefinger extended and the thumb cocked up in crude symbolism of a gun — the abstruse joke which had dissolved Enstone into a fit of inanely delighted giggling, with the hearty approval of his guests… The psychological problem fascinated him. It muddled itself up with a litter of brown paper and a cardboard box, a wooden plate of pecking chickens, photographs… and the tangle kaleidoscoped through his dreams in a thousand different convolutions until morning.
At half-past twelve he found himself turning on to the Embankment with every expectation of being told that Mr. Teal was too busy to see him; but he was shown up a couple of minutes after he had sent in his name.
"Have you found out why Enstone committed suicide?" he asked.
"I haven't," said Teal, somewhat shortly. "His brokers say it's true that he'd been speculating successfully. Perhaps he had another account with a different firm which wasn't so lucky. We'll find out."
"Have you seen Costello or Hammel?"
"I've asked them to come and see me. They're due here about now."
Teal picked up a typewritten memorandum and studied it absorbedly. He would have liked to ask some questions in his turn, but he didn't. He had failed lamentably, so far, to establish any reason whatsoever why Enstone should have committed suicide; and he was annoyed. He felt a personal grievance against the Saint for raising the question without also taking steps to answer it, but pride forbade him to ask for enlightenment. Simon lighted a cigarette and smoked imperturbably until in a few minutes Costello and Hammel were announced. Teal stared at the Saint thoughtfully while the witnesses were seating themselves, but strangely enough he said nothing to intimate that police interviews were not open to outside audiences.
Presently he turned to the tall man with the thin black moustache.
"We're trying to find a reason for Enstone's suicide, Mr. Costello," he said. "How long have you known him?"
"About eight or nine years."
"Have you any idea why he should have shot himself?"
"None at all, Inspector. It was a great shock. He had been making more money than most of us. When we were with him last night, he was in very high spirits — his family was on the way home, and he was always happy when he was looking forward to seeing them again."
"Did you ever lose money in any of his companies?"
"No."
"You know that we can investigate that?"
Costello smiled slightly.
"I don't know why you should take that attitude, Inspector, but my affairs are open to any examination."
"Have you been making money yourself lately?"
"No. As a matter of fact, I've lost a bit," said Costello frankly. "I'm interested in International Cotton, you know."
He took out a cigarette and a lighter, and Simon found his eyes riveted on the device. It was of an uncommon shape, and by some means or other it produced a glowing heat instead of a flame. Quite unconscious of his own temerity, the Saint said: "That's something new, isn't it? I've never seen a lighter like that before."
Mr. Teal sat back blankly and gave the Saint a look which would have shrivelled any other interrupter to a cinder; and Costello turned the lighter over and said: "It's an invention of my own — I made it myself."
"I wish I could do things like that," said the Saint admiringly. "I suppose you must have had a technical training."
Costello hesitated for a second. Then:
"I started in an electrical engineering workshop when I was a boy," he explained briefly, and turned back to Teal's desk.
After a considerable pause the detective turned to the tubby man with glasses, who had been sitting without any signs of life except the ceaseless switching of his eyes from one speaker to another.
"Are you in partnership with Mr. Costello, Mr. Hammel?" he asked.
"A working partnership — yes."
"Do you know any more about Enstone's affairs than Mr. Costello has been able to tell us?"
"I'm afraid not."
"What were you talking about at dinner last night?"
"It was about a merger. I'm in International Cotton, too. One of Enstone's concerns was Cosmopolitan Textiles. His shares were standing high and ours aren't doing too well, and we thought that if we could induce him to amalgamate it would help us."
"What did Enstone think about that?"
Hammel spread his hands.
"He didn't think there was enough in it for him. We had certain things to offer, but he decided they weren't sufficient."
"There wasn't any bad feeling about it?"
"Why, no. If all the business men who have refused to combine with each at different times became enemies, there'd hardly be two men in the City on speaking terms."
Simon cleared his throat.
"What was your first important job, Mr. Hammel?" he queried.
Hammel turned his eyes without moving his head.
"I was chief salesman of a general manufacturer in the Midlands."
Teal concluded the interview soon afterwards without securing any further revelations, shook hands perfunctorily with the two men, and ushered them out. When he came back he looked down at the Saint like a cannibal inspecting the latest missionary.
"Why don't you join the force yourself?" he inquired heavily. "The new Police College is open now, and the Commissioner's supposed to be looking for men like you."
Simon took the sally like an armoured car taking a snowball. He was sitting up on the edge of his chair with his blue eyes glinting with excitement.
"You big sap," he retorted, "do you look as if the Police College could teach anyone to solve a murder?"
Teal gulped as if he couldn't believe his ears, He took hold of the arms of his chair and spoke with an apoplectic restraint, as if he were conscientiously determined to give the Saint every fair chance to recover his sanity before he rang down for the bugs wagon.
"What murder are you talking about?" he demanded. "Enstone shot himself."
"Yes, Enstone shot himself," said the Saint. "But it was murder just the same."
"Have you been drinking something?"
"No. But Enstone had."
Teal swallowed, and almost choked himself in the process.
"Are you trying to tell me," he exploded, "that any man ever got drunk enough to shoot himself while he was making money?"
Simon shook his head.
"They made him shoot himself."
"What do you mean — blackmail?"
"No."
The Saint pushed a hand through his hair. He had thought of things like that. He knew that Enstone had shot himself, because no one else could have done it. Except Fowler, the valet — but that was the man whom Teal would have suspected at once if he had suspected anyone, and it was too obvious, too insane. No man in his senses could have planned a murder with himself as the most obvious suspect. Blackmail, then? But the Lewis Enstone he had seen in the lobby had never looked like a man bidding farewell to blackmailers. And how could a man so openly devoted to his family have been led to provide the commoner materials of blackmail?
"No, Claud," said the Saint. "It wasn't that. They just made him do it."
Mr. Teal's spine tingled with the involuntary reflex chill that has its roots in man's immemorial fear of the supernatural. The Saint's conviction was so wild and yet real that for one fantastic moment the detective had a vision of Costello's intense black eyes fixed and dilating in a hypnotic stare, his slender sensitive hands moving in weird passes, his lips under the thin black moustache mouthing necromantic commands… It changed into another equally fantastic vision of two courteous but inflexible gentlemen handing a weapon to a third, bowing and going away, like a deputation to an officer who has been found to be a traitor, offering the graceful alternative to a court-martial — for the Honour of High Finance… Then it went sheer to derision.
"They just said: 'Lew, why don't you shoot yourself?' and he thought it was a great idea — is that it?" he gibed.
"It was something like that," Simon answered soberly. "You see, Enstone would do almost anything to amuse his children."
Teal's mouth opened, but no sounds came from it. His expression implied that a whole volcano of devastating sarcasm was boiling on the tip of his tongue, but that the Saint's lunacy had soared into realms of waffiness beyond the reach of repartee.
"Costello and Hammel had to do something," said the Saint. "International Cottons have been very bad for a long time — as you'd have known if you hadn't packed all your stuff away in a gilt-edged sock. On the other hand, Enstone's interest — Cosmopolitan Textiles — were good. Costello and Hammel could have pulled out in two ways: either by a merger, or else by having Enstone commit suicide so that Cosmopolitans would tumble down in the scare and they could buy them in — you'll probably find they've sold a bear in them all through the month, trying to break the price. And if you look at the papers this afternoon you'll see that all Enstone's securities have dropped through the bottom of the market — a bloke in his position can't commit suicide without starting a panic. Costello and Hammel went to dinner to try for the merger, but if Enstone turned it down they were ready for the other thing."
"Well?" said Teal obstinately; but for the first time there seemed to be a tremor in the foundations of his disbelief.
"They only made one big mistake. They didn't arrange for Lew to leave a letter."
"People have shot themselves without leaving letters."
"I know. But not often. That's what started me thinking."
"Well?" said the detective again.
Simon rumpled his hair into more profound disorder, and said: "You see, Claud, in my disreputable line of business you're always thinking: 'Now, what would A do? — and what would B do? — and what would C do?' You have to be able to get inside people's minds and know what they're going to do and how they're going to do it, so you can always be one jump ahead of 'em. You have to be a practical psychologist — just like the head salesman of a general manufacturer in the Midlands."
Teal's mouth opened, but for some reason which was beyond his conscious comprehension he said nothing. And Simon Templar went on, in the disjointed way that he sometimes fell into when he was trying to express something which he himself had not yet grasped in bare words:
"Sales psychology is just a study of human weaknesses. And that's a funny thing, you know. I remember the manager of one of the biggest novelty manufacturers in the world telling me that the soundest test of any idea for a new toy was whether it would appeal to a middle-aged business man. It's true, of course. It's so true that it's almost stopped being a joke — the father who plays with his little boy's birthday presents so energetically that the little boy has to shove off and smoke papa's pipe. Every middle-aged business man has that strain of childishness in him somewhere, because without it he would never want to spend his life gathering more paper millions than he can ever spend, and building up rickety castles of golden cards that are always ready to topple over and be built up again. It's just a glorified kid's game with a box of bricks. If all the mighty earth-shaking business men weren't like that they could never have built up an economic system in which the fate of nations, all the hunger and happiness and achievement of the world, was locked up in bars of yellow tooth-stopping." Simon raised his eyes suddenly — they were very bright and in some queer fashion sightless, as if his mind was separated from every physical awareness of his surroundings. "Lewis Enstone was just that kind of a man," he said.
"Are you still thinking of that toy you were playing with," Teal asked restlessly.
"That — and other things we heard. And the photographs. Did you notice them?"
"No."
"One of them was Enstone playing with a clock-work train. In another of them he was under a rug, being a bear. In another he was working a big model merry-go-round. Most of the pictures were like that. The children came into them, of course, but you could see that Enstone was having the swellest time."
Teal, who had been fidgeting with a pencil, shrugged brusquely and sent it clattering across the desk.
"You still haven't shown me a murder," he stated.
"I had to find it myself," said the Saint gently, "You see, it was a kind of professional problem. Enstone was happily married, happy with his family, no more crooked than any other big-time financier, nothing on his conscience, rich and getting richer — how were they to make him commit suicide? If I'd been writing a story with him in it, for instance, how could I have made him commit suicide?"
"You'd have told him he had cancer," said Teal caustically, "and he'd have fallen for it."
Simon shook his head.
"No. If I'd been a doctor — perhaps. But if Costello or Hammel had suggested it, he'd have wanted confirmation. And did he look like a man who'd just been told that he might have cancer?"
"It's your murder," said Mr. Teal, with the beginnings of a drowsy tolerance that was transparently rooted in sheer resignation. "I'll let you solve it."
"There were lots of pieces missing at first," said the Saint. "I only had Enstone's character and weaknesses. And then it came out — Hammel was a psychologist. That was good, because I'm a bit of a psychologist myself, and his mind would work something like mine. And then Costello could invent mechanical gadgets and make them himself. He shouldn't have fetched out that lighter, Claud — it gave me another of the missing pieces. And then there was the box."
"Which box?"
"The cardboard box — on his table, with the brown paper. You know Fowler said that he thought either Hammel or Costello left it. Have you got it here?"
"I expect it's somewhere in the building."
"Could we have it up?"
With the gesture of a blase hangman reaching for the noose, Teal took hold of the telephone on his desk.
"You can have the gun, too, if you like," he said.
"Thanks," said the Saint. "I wanted the gun."
Teal gave the order; and they sat and looked at each other in silence until the exhibits arrived. Teal's silence explained in fifty different ways that the Saint would be refused no facilities for nailing down his coffin in a manner that he would never be allowed to forget; but for some reason his facial register was not wholly convincing. When they were alone again, Simon went to the desk, picked up the gun, and put it in the box. It fitted very well.
"That's what happened, Claud," he said with quiet triumph. "They gave him the gun in the box."
"And he shot himself without knowing what he was doing," Teal said witheringly.
"That's just it," said the Saint, with a blue devil of mockery in his gaze. "He didn't know what he was doing."
Mr. Teal's molars clamped down cruelly on the inoffensive merchandise of the Wrigley Corporation.
"Well, what did he think he was doing — sitting under a rug pretending to be a bear?"
Simon sighed.
"That's what I'm trying to work out."
Teal's chair creaked as his full weight slumped back in it in hopeless exasperation.
"Is that what you've been taking up so much of my time about?" he asked wearily.
"But I've got an idea, Claud," said the Saint, getting up and stretching himself. "Come out and lunch with me, and let's give it a rest. You've been thinking for nearly an hour, and I don't want your brain to overheat. I know a new place— wait, I'll look up the address."
He looked it up in the telephone directory; and Mr. Teal got up and took down his bowler hat from its peg. His baby blue eyes were inscrutably thoughtful, but he followed the Saint without thought. Whatever else the Saint wanted to say, however crazy he felt it must be, it was something he had to hear or else fret over for the rest of his days. They drove in a taxi to Knightsbridge, with Mr. Teal chewing phlegmatically, in a superb affectation of bored unconcern. Presently the taxi stopped, and Simon climbed out. He led the way into an apartment building and into a lift, saying something to the operator which Teal did not catch.
"What is this?" he asked, as they shot upwards. "A new restaurant?"
"It's a new place," said the Saint vaguely.
The elevator stopped, and they got out. They went along the corridor, and Simon rang the bell of one of the doors. It was opened by a good-looking maid who might have been other things in her spare time.
"Scotland Yard," said the Saint brazenly, and squeezed past her. He found his way into the sitting-room before anyone could stop him: Chief Inspector Teal, recovering from the momentary paralysis of the shock, followed him: then came the maid.
"I'm sorry, sir — Mr. Costello is out."
Teal's bulk obscured her. All the boredom had smudged itself off his face, giving place to blank amazement and anger.
"What the devil's this joke?" he blared.
"It isn't a joke, Claud," said the Saint recklessly. "I just wanted to see if I could find something — you know what we were talking about—"
His keen gaze was quartering the room; and then it lighted on a big cheap kneehole desk whose well-worn shabbiness looked strangely out of keeping with the other furniture. On it was a litter of coils and wire and ebonite and dials — all the junk out of which amateur wireless sets are created. Simon reached the desk in his next stride, and began pulling open the drawers. Tools of all kinds, various gauges of wire and screws, odd wheels and sleeves and bolts and scraps of sheet-iron and brass, the completely typical hoard of any amateur mechanic's workshop. Then he came to a drawer that was locked. Without hesitation he caught up a large screwdriver and rammed it in above the lock: before anyone could grasp his intentions he had splintered the drawer open with a skilful twist.
Teal let out a shout and started across the room. Simon's hand dived into the drawer, came out with a nickel-plated revolver — it was exactly the same as the one with which Lewis Enstone had shot himself, but Teal wasn't noticing things like that. His impression was that the Saint really had gone raving mad after all, and the sight of the gun pulled him up for a moment as the sight of a gun in the hands of any other raving maniac would have pulled him up.
"Put that down, you fool!" he yelled, and then he let out another shout as he saw the Saint turn the muzzle of the gun close up to his right eye, with his thumb on the trigger, exactly as Enstone must have held it. Teal lurched forward and knocked the weapon aside with a sweep of his arm; then he grabbed Simon by the wrist. "That's enough of that," he said, without realising what a futile thing it was to say.
Simon looked at him and smiled.
"Thanks for saving my life, old beetroot," he murmured kindly. "But it really wasn't necessary. You see, Claud, that's the gun Enstone thought he was playing with!"
The maid was under the table letting out the opening note of a magnificent fit of hysterics. Teal let go the Saint, hauled her out, and shook her till she was quiet. There were more events cascading on him in those few seconds than he knew how to cope with, and he was not gentle.
"It's all right, miss," he growled. "I am from Scotland Yard. Just sit down somewhere, will you?" He turned back to Simon. "Now, what's all this about?"
"The gun, Claud. Enstone's toy."
The Saint raised it again — his smile was quite sane, and with the feeling that he himself was the madman, Teal let him do what he wanted. Simon put the gun to his eye and pulled the trigger — pulled it, released it, pulled it again, keeping up the rhythmic movement. Something inside the gun whirred smoothly, as if wheels were whizzing round under the working of the lever. Then he pointed the gun straight into Teal's face and did the same thing.
Teal stared frozenly down the barrel and saw the black hole leap into a circle of light. He was looking at a flickering cinematograph film of a boy shooting a masked burglar. It was tiny, puerile in subject, but perfect. It lasted about ten seconds, and then the barrel went dark again.
"Costello's present for Enstone's little boy," explained the Saint quietly. "He invented it and made it himself, of course-he always had a talent that way. Haven't you ever seen those electric flashlights that work without a battery? You keep on squeezing a lever, and it turns a miniature dynamo. Costello made a very small one, and fitted it into the hollow casting of a gun. Then he geared a tiny strip of film to it. It was a jolly good new toy, Claud Eustace, and he must have been proud of it. They took it along to Enstone's; and when he'd turned down their merger and there was nothing else for them to do, they let him play with it just to tickle his palate, at just the right hour of the evening. Then they took it away from him and put it back in its box and gave it to him. They had a real gun in another box ready to make the switch."
Chief Inspector Teal stood like a rock, his jaws clamping a wad of spearmint that he had at last forgotten to chew. Then he said: "How did they know he wouldn't shoot his own son?"
"That was Hammel. He knew that Enstone wasn't capable of keeping his hands off a toy like that; and just to make certain he reminded Enstone of it the last thing before they left. He was a practical psychologist — I suppose we can begin to speak of him in the past tense now." Simon Templar smiled again, and fished a cigarette out of his pocket. "But why I should bother to tell you all this when you could have got it out of a stool pigeon," he murmured, "is more than I can understand. I must be getting soft-hearted in my old age, Claud. After all, when you're so far ahead of Sherlock Holmes—"
Mr. Teal gulped pinkly, and picked up the telephone.