"I'll have to see what I can do," said the Saint.
He ushered Teal courteously to the door, and opened it to see a slim, fair-haired vision of a girl walking up the road towards them. Teal watched her approach with narrowed and expressionless eyes.
The girl reached the door and smiled at him sweetly.
"Good-morning," she said.
"Good-morning," said Teal acridly.
He settled his hat and stepped brusquely past her; and Simon Templar closed the front door and caught the girl in his arms.
"Pat, old darling," he said, "I feel that life has begun all over again. With you around, and Claud Eustace dropping in every other day to have words ... If we could only find someone to murder it'd just be perfect!"
Patricia Holm walked into the sitting room and pulled off her hat. She helped herself to a cigarette from his case and surveyed him with a little smile.
"Don't you think there might be a closed season for Teals ? I'll never forget how it was when we left England. I hated you, boy-the way you baited him."
"It's a rough game," said the Saint quietly. "But I haven't baited him this time-not yet. The trouble is that the assistant commissioner holds poor old Claud personally responsible for our brilliance. It was a brain wave of yours to raid Lormer directly you found I was in clink, but that alibi won't work twice. And Teal's just building up a real case. We'll have to be very careful. Anyway, we won't murder anyone in public...."
When the Saint went out that afternoon he carried a conspicuously large white envelope in his hand. At the corner of the cul-de-sac there was a big man patiently manicuring his nails with a pocketknife. Simon posted his envelope in full view of the watcher, and afterwards suffered himself to be painstakingly shadowed through a harmless shopping expedition in the West End.
Late that night a certain Mr. Ronald Nilder, whose agency for vaudeville artistes was not above suspicion, received a brief letter in a large white envelope. It stated quite simply that unless he made a five-figure donation to the Actors' Orphanage within the week his relatives might easily suffer an irreparable bereavement; and it was signed with the Saint's trade mark. Mr. Nilder, a public-spirited citizen, immediately rang up the police. Chief Inspector Teal saw him, and later had another interview with the assistant commissioner.
"Templar posted a large white envelope yesterday," he said, "but we can't prove it was the one Nilder received. If I know anything about the Saint, Nilder will get a follow-up message in a day or two, and we may be able to catch Templar red-handed."
His diagnosis of Saintly psychology proved to be even shrewder than he knew.
For the next couple of days Simon was busy with the work of adding to the comfortable furnishings of his house a selection of electrical devices of his own invention. They were of a type that he had never expected to find included in the fixtures and fittings of any ordinary domicile, but he considered them eminently necessary to his safety and peace of mind. He employed no workmen, for workmen are no less inclined to gossip than anyone else, and the kind of installations which were the Saint's specialty would have been a fruitful source of conversation to anyone. Wherefore the Saint worked energetically alone, and considered his job well done when at the end of it there were no signs of his activity to be found without a very close investigation. The watcher at the end of the cul-de-sac manicured his ceaselessly, and had many enjoyable walks at the Saint's heels whenever Simon went out. Simon christened him Fido, and became resigned to him as a permanent feature of the landscape. It was near the end of the week when Simon emerged from his front door with another conspicuously large white envelope similar to the first tucked under his arm; and the plain-clothes man, who had definite instructions, closed his penknife with a snap and stepped forward as the Saint came abreast of him.
"Excuse me, sir," he said punctiliously. "May I have a look at your letter ?"
The Saint stared at him.
"And who might you be?"
"I'm a police officer," said the man firmly.
"Then why are you wearing an Old Etonian tie?" asked the Saint.
He allowed the envelope to be taken out of his hand. It was addressed to Mr. Ronald Nilder, and the detective ripped it open. Inside he found a flexible gramophone disk, and somewhat to his amazement the label in the centre bore the name of Chief Inspector Teal.
"You'd better come along with me," said the detective.
They went in a taxi to Walton Street police station; and there, after some delay, a gramophone was produced and the record solemnly mounted on the turntable.
The plain-clothes man, the divisional inspector, the sergeant on duty, and two constables gathered round to listen. Chief Inspector Teal had already been called on the telephone, and the transmitter was placed close to the gramophone for a limited broadcast. Someone set the needle in its groove and started it off.
"Hullo, everybody," said the disk, in a cracked voice. "This is Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal speaking from Scotland Yard. The subject of my lecture today is 'How to Catch Criminals Red-Handed'-a subject on which my experience must be almost unique. From the day when I captured Jack the Ripper to the day when I arrested the Saint, my career has been nothing but a series of historic triumphs. Armed with a bottle of red ink and my three faithful red herrings, Metro, Goldwyn, and Mayer, I have never failed to reduce my hands to the requisite colour. Although for many years I suffered from bad legs, eczema, boils, halitosis, superfluous hair, and bunions --"
Simon gave Patricia a graphic account of the incident when he met her at lunchtime.
"It was not Teal-baiting," he insisted. "It was a little deed of kindness-a little act of love. After all, is it right that Claud should be encouraged to prod his nose into my private correspondence? If we let him run amok like that, one day he might go too far. We have warned him off for his own good."
They celebrated suitably; and it was late that night when they returned home for a final plate of bacon and eggs before calling it a day. Simon paid off the taxi in Queen's Gate, and they walked up to the house together. The watcher at the corner of the road had gone---the Saint had not expected that Teal would urge him to stay on after that home-made gramophone record had been played.
It was so soon after he had finished installing his electric safety devices that Simon had not even started to anticipate results from them-they were provided for the more strenuous days which he hoped to enjoy before very long-when his return became more widely known and many more guilty consciences began to ask themselves whether their subterranean industries might prosper better if Simon Templar were removed from the catalogue of risks which no insurance company would cover. He had the front-door key in his hand before he remembered that the latest product of his defense genius was now in full working order. Quite casually he slid up a small metal panel under the knocker; and then his face went keen and hard. A tiny bulb set in the woodwork under the panel was glowing red.
Simon dropped the shutter over it again and drew Patricia aside.
"We've had a visitor," he said. "I didn't think the fun would begin quite so soon."
There was nothing to show whether the visitor had taken his departure. Only one thing was certain-that someone or something had passed across the barrage of invisible alarms that Simon had arranged to cover every door and window in the place. The visitor might have left, but Simon was not disposed to bet on it.
He stood well to the side of the doorway, sheltered by the solid brickwork of the wall, while he reached round and slipped his key soundlessly into the lock at arm's length. Still keeping out of sight, he pushed the door softly back and felt under the jamb for the electric light switch. There was a flicker of fire and a deafening report; and then the light came on and Simon leapt through into the hall. He heard a patter of feet and the slam of a door, and raced through the kitchen to the back entrance on the mews. He got the door open in time to see a running figure fling itself into the back of an open car which was already speeding towards the street, and a second shot came from it before it turned out of the mews. The bullet flew wide and smacked into the wall; and Simon grinned gently and went back to Patricia Holm.