He pushed the telephone across the desk, and Simon picked up the receiver.
Without a shadow of hesitation he dialled the private number of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal.
IX
The only thing left was to pray that Teal would be there. Simon glanced at his watch while he waited for the connection. Mr Teal was not a man who had many diversions outside his job, and at that hour he should have been peacefully installed beside his hearth, chewing spearmint and doing whatever homely things chief inspectors did when they were off duty. And while the Saint was holding his breath the answer, in a familiar sleepy voice, came on the line.
"Hullo."
"Hullo," said Simon. "This is the Saint."
There was a moment's pause.
"Well, what do you want?" Teal asked nastily.
"I'm okay," said the Saint. "Can I speak to Patricia?"
"She's not here."
Simon took a pull at his cigarette.
"Oh, hullo, Pat," he said. "How are you?"
"I tell you she isn't here," yowled the detective. "Why should she be? I've got enough to do—"
"I'm fine, darling," said the Saint. "I'm with Quintana now."
"Who?"
"Luis Quintana… at 319 Cambridge Square."
"Look here," Teal said cholerically, "if this is another of your ideas of a joke—"
"I've talked things over with him," said the Saint, "and he's ready to do business. I've told him that we'll keep everything quiet — about Urivetzky being alive, and about those forged American short-term loan bearer bonds, and about Perez murdering Ingleston — all for forty thousand pounds cash. It seems fair enough to me if it's all right with the rest of you."
There was another silence for a second or two, and then Teal said in a different voice: "Are you talking to me?"
"Yes, darling," said the Saint. "I'm in his study now, and he's ready to hand over the money at once. There's only one condition. He knows that you know all about these things, and he wants you all to come over and sign an undertaking to keep your mouths shut as well as mine. I guess we'll have to agree to that."
"You want me to come over to 319 Cambridge Square?" said Teal slowly.
"Yes, Pat. At once. Quintana insists on it, and I can't argue with him."
"Shall I bring some help?"
"Yes, bring the others. He wants you all to sign. You needn't send your names in — they'll be expecting you. Will you come on over?"
"They've got a gun on you, I suppose," Teal said intelligently.
"That's the idea," said the Saint. "As quick as you can, darling. Bye."
He dropped the microphone back and pushed the telephone away with a smile of satisfaction.
"They'll be here in a few minutes," he announced.
Urivetzky unlocked his fingers and leaned back; and Perez, who had sat down on the arm of the same chair, crossed his legs and took out a cigarette. Quintana nodded and put his gun down on the desk where it was still within easy reach. Every one of their individual reactions held an unspoken triumph that would have shrieked aloud its confirmation of the Saint's deductions — if he had wanted any confirmation. They were like three spiders waiting for the entrance of the flies.
None of them spoke. An atmosphere of guarded relaxation settled upon the scene, in which they waited in savoury anticipation for the logical outcome of their own ingenuity.
The Saint himself was not reluctant to be spared the trouble of making conversation. At ease in his chair, with an outward confidence and equanimity that was even more convincing than theirs, with his head thrown back so that he could build intermittent smoke-ring patterns towards the ceiling, he watched in his imagination the machinery that his telephone call had set in motion.
Now Teal was hanging up the receiver after another telephone call. Now he would be kicking off his carpet slippers and going quietly frantic over the obstinacy of his boot laces. And over in the gloomy soot-grimed building on the Embankment that was called Scotland Yard there would be a suppressed crescendo of traffic ir certain bare echoing corridors, and big heavy-footed men would be buttoning their prosaic and respectable coats and reaching down their prosaic and respectable hats; and a car or two would start up and swing round in the courtyard and stand there unexcitedly ticking over; and a man would hurriedly finish his beer in the canteen and stump up the stairs. Perhaps in his study in Hampstead an assistant commissioner would be frowning over the telephone and fiddling with his moustache and giving counsel in a worried Oxonian bleat. "Well, I don't know… Yes, but… ticklish business, you know… international complications… Home Secretary… Foreign Office… Yes, I know, got to do something, but… Bonds? Forgery? Murder?… I don't know… discretion… unofficial… tact… Well, for God's sake be careful…" And Teal would be waiting, fidgeting on his doorstep, till the cars drove up and he stepped in with a curt businesslike greeting and they went on, threading rapidly through the traffic, filled with stolid, unromantic, uncommunicative men. "Your policemen are wonderful." Now they would be well on their way — it wouldn't take them long to get to Cambridge Square via the modest lodgings in Victoria where Teal had his home. All these things happening in London between the drab narrow streets under the pulse of the city while seekers after excitement crowded into movie theatres and sleek men and shrill women danced on overcrowded floors and smug or frustrated nonentities paced under the bright lights or hurried through quiet squares. All this happening under the deep monotonous murmur of London which penetrated even through closed windows and solid walls, a continuous thrum of life of which one would be unaware unless it stopped, out of which an isolated squeal of brakes or the toot of a passing horn close by came sometimes like an abrupt reminder of its far-spread reality…
The time passed so quickly, Simon thought, and stole another glance at his watch. At any moment now they would be here. And then there would be trouble for himself, whoever else was in it. He had still been guilty of burglary, and there were several items of information which he had condoned or concealed. And on the desk in front of him there were still forty thousand pounds in ready cash, which any efficiently organized buccaneering concern could have used.
He had done the only thing he could have done, in the circumstances. And Chief Inspector Teal, not being completely solid ivory above the bowler hatbrim, had grasped enough of the idea to save the situation, as the Saint had known he would. But it didn't end there.
Even at that moment, probably, Teal was gloating over the fact that for the first time in his life the Saint had had to appeal to him and the majesty of the Law for help; and he was doubtless elaborating in his mind the various sarcastic comments with which he would rub home the unpleasantness that could be visited on the Saint impartially with any other malefactors who might be collected at the same time. On that visitation at least the assistant commissioner must have been insistent — if Mr Teal needed any encouragement.
But the Saint had done what Quintana wanted. And after he had done it the certainty of success had had its own demoralizing effect on the opposition. The' sharp edge of vigilance on which Simon had felt his life balancing had been dulled — little enough, he knew, but with a subtle definiteness.
Quintana was rocking his swivel chair backwards and forwards, his hands supporting him on the edge of the desk. Urivetzky was lounging back as the Saint was, his hands folded and his deep-set eyes lost in thought. Perez was sprawling, his cigarette drooping limply from the corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets. But in one of those same pockets, Simon knew, was a loaded automatic.