The Saint stood on the opposite pavement with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth and surveyed the premises in a contemplative silence. A private car turned into the street and drew up outside the doorway to exude two men who went down the passage and up the stairs.
"Feel like a spot of night life, Pat?" queried the Saint.
There was a promise of mischief in his gaze. It might have come to anything or nothing, as the Fates decreed, but he felt that he would like to know more about a place where Tex Goldman descended to common or garden frivolity.
She nodded.
"O.K., boy."
They were crossing the road when the Saint's keen ears became aware that the music inside the club had stopped. There was nothing very remarkable in that, for even the most energetic orchestras must rest for a few moments now and then to expand their lungs and gargle. And yet it made the Saint hesitate. Somehow he associated that stoppage with the arrival of the two men who had just gone in-and the peculiar fact that their car was still standing outside, where parking was not allowed. Perhaps the glimpse he had had of Tex Goldman leaving the same premises a few minutes before had made him unduly suspicious. He turned off diagonally along the road, drawing Patricia with him. He seemed to hear the muffled sounds of some commotion inside the club-a commotion that was rather more than the usual babble of conversation that springs up between dances.
And then he heard the sound of feet pelting down the stairs.
He guided Patricia into the nearest porch, as if he were merely an innocent young citizen taking his girl friend home from a movie, and again used her mirror inconspicuously. He saw the two men dash out of the doorway and plunge into their car, and before they disappeared he had seen that the lower halves of their faces were covered by their white evening scarves.
The car pulled out and whirled up the street, passing them where they stood. Other feet were pounding down the steps of the club, and Simon looked round and saw the owner of the first pair reach the pavement. He was a frantic-looking young man with his bow tie draggling loose down his shirt front, and he yelled "Police!" in a voice that echoed down the street. In a few seconds he was joined by others with the same cry. One or two pale-faced girls crowded out behind the leading men.
Simon glanced after the departing car. He could still see its tail light as it was swinging round the next corner, and his hand flew to his hip. . . .
It stayed there. His other hand followed suit, on the other hip. With his coat swept back behind his forearms, he lounged over towards the panic-stricken mob on the pavement. A police whistle was shrilling somewhere near by. He might have been able to do some damage to the bandits' car, but the official attention to his tactics might have been more embarrassing than the damage would have been worth. He was not yet ready to take the law into his own hands.
The frantic-looking young man confirmed his guess of what had happened.
"They held us up-it must have been the gang that's been holding up all the banks. Took all our money and the girls' jewellery. We couldn't do anything, or some of the girls might have got hurt. ... I say! Officer --"
A running policeman had appeared, and the young man joined the general surge towards him. Simon faded away from the group and rejoined Patricia.
"Let's stick around," he said. "If I know anything, Claud Eustace will be along."
He was right in his diagnosis. The chattering crowd gradually filtered back into the club to make its several statements, under the constable's pressure; and a couple of plain-clothes men arrived from Marlborough Street. After a while another taxi entered the street and released a plump, familiar figure. Simon buttonholed him.
"What ho, Claud!" he murmured breezily. "This is a bit late in life for you to take up dancing. Or has someone been trying to buy a box of chocolates after nine o'clock?"
The detective looked at him with a rather strained weariness.
"What are you doing here, Saint?"
"Taking an after-dinner breather. Giving the gastric juices their ozone. I just happened to be around when the fun started."
" Did you see the men ?"
Simon nodded.
"Yes. But they were half-masked, of course. I got the number of the car; but it looked new, so I suppose it was stolen."
Teal rubbed his chin.
"If you can wait till I've finished here I'd like to have a talk with you."
"Oke. We'll toddle along to Sandy's and sniff some coffee. See you there."
The Saint took Patricia's arm, and they strolled through to Oxenden Street. Three quarters of an hour later Chief Inspector Teal came in and took his place at the counter.
"Did you get anything useful?" asked the Saint.
"Nothing," said Teal shortly. "The men had scarves over their faces, as you said. They were both in evening dress, which lets you out."
Simon sighed.
"That bee in your bonnet buzzes an awful lot," he protested. "Can't you think up anything better than that?"
"You've been abroad for a week, haven't you?"
"I have. Drinking good beer and associating with some stout Huns. The Secret Service must have been working overtime."
"I didn't suspect you seriously." Teal stirred three lumps of sugar into his cup. "This wholesale murder isn't in your line, is it ? A wretched clerk and one of our own uniformed men shot down in a week-and nothing to show for it. It fairly makes your blood boil."
The detective's round face was unwontedly hollow in the cheeks. The failures of the last few hectic days were making their mark on his ponderous self-assurance.
"We've tried all the regulars," he said. "The Green Cross boys are the nucleus of it, we know, but so far they've been able to work a system of alibis that have left us flat. Most of them have come into a lot of money that they can't account for since this trouble started, but that isn't a crime. We had one of their best men in the other day-a fellow named Orping. He was playing the American gangster to the life. Between ourselves, we knocked him about a bit-you know what can be done-but we couldn't shake a thing out of him. I don't like that American line that Orping's got hold of. It looks ugly."
"Any idea where the stuff's being fenced?"
"I'm afraid not. I don't think it's being fenced in this country at all."
Simon Templar smiled inwardly, but he forbore to point a moral.
"Who's the Big Noise?" he asked; and the detective shrugged grimly.
"If we knew that, the trouble would be practically over. There are rumours that it's some sort of Yank, and all the registered aliens have come under observation, but we haven't learned much. Whoever he is, he's got his men right under his thumb. I've never met so many oysters before. The story is that Corrigan was one of the bunch who threatened to squeal, and what happened to him has put the fear of God into everyone else who might have talked."
The Saint pushed his hands into his pockets and gazed at the detective with a faint suggestion of mockery.
" It must have made you wish I was on the road again, Claud. It's something to think that you may have admitted that my reign of terror wasn't so bad after all."
Mr. Teal finished his coffee and unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum. His baby-blue eyes looked the Saint over with a certain seriousness.
"If you only had the sense to keep out of the newspapers and save the assistant commissioner from practising sarcastic remarks on me," he said, "I shouldn't be sorry if you were on the road for a while. You can do things that we can't do officially. We're trying to get special powers, but you know what that's likely to mean. It may take us months-and men will be killed every day while we're helpless. There's only one way to deal with this sort of thing. You've got to fight guns with guns, killing with killing, fear with fear."