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.
Part Two
The Unlicensed Victuallers
I
Somewhere among the black hills to the southwest dawned a faint patch of light. It moved and grew, pulsing and brightening, like a palely luminous cloud drifting down from the horizon; and Simon Templar, with his eyes fixed on it, slid his cigarette case gently out of his pocket.
"Here it comes, Hoppy," he remarked.
Beside him Hoppy Uniatz followed his gaze and inhaled deeply from his cigar, illuminating a set of features which would probably have caused any imaginative passer-by, seeing them spring suddenly out of the darkness, to mistake them for the dial of a particularly malevolent banshee.
"Maybe dey got some liquor on board dis time, boss," he said hopefully. "I could just do wit' a drink now."
Simon frowned at him in the gloom.
"You've got a drink," he said severely. "What happened to that bottle I gave you when we came out?"
Mr Uniatz wriggled uneasily in his seat.
"I dunno, boss. I just tried it, an' it was empty. It's de queerest t'ing…" An idea struck him. "Could it of been leakin', woujja t'ink, boss?"
"Either it was, or you will be," said the Saint resignedly.
His eyes were still fixed on the distance, where the nimbus of light was growing still brighter. By this time his expectant ears could hear the noise that came with it, a faraway rattle and rumble that was at first hardly more than a vibration in the air, growing steadily louder in the silence of the night.
He felt for a button on the dashboard, and the momentary whirr of the starter died into the smooth sibilant whisper of a perfectly tuned engine as the great car came to life. They were parked on the heath, just off the edge of the road, in the shadow of a clump of bushes, facing the ghostly aurora that was approaching them from where the hills rose towards the sea. Simon trod on the clutch and pushed the gear lever into first and heard a subdued click beside him as Mr Uniatz released the safety catch of his automatic.
"Howja know dis is it?" Mr Uniatz said hoarsely, the point having just occurred to him.
"They're just on time." Simon was looking down at the phosphorescent hands of his wrist watch. "Pargo said they'd be leaving at two o'clock. Anyway, we'll be sure of it when Peter gives us the flash."
"Is dat why you send him down de road?"
"Yes, Hoppy. That was the idea."
"To see de truck when it passes him?"
"Exactly."
Mr Uniatz scratched his head, making a noise like wood being sandpapered.
"How does he know it's de right truck?" he asked anxiously.
"By the number plate," Simon explained. "You know — that bit of tin with figures on it."
Mr Uniatz digested this thought for a moment and relaxed audibly.
"Chees, boss," he said admiringly. "De way you t'ink of everything!"
A warm glow of relief emanated from him, an almost tangible radiation of good cheer and fortified faith, rather like the fervour which must exude from a true follower of the Prophet when he arrives in paradise and finds that Allah has indeed placed a number of supremely voluptuous houris at his disposal, exactly as promised in the Quran. It was a feeling which had become perennially new to Mr Uniatz, ever since the day when he had first discovered the sublime infallibility of the Saint and clutched at it like a straw in the turbulent oceans of Thought in which he had been floundering painfully all his life. That Simon Templar, on one of those odd quixotic impulses which were an essential part of his character, should have encouraged the attachment was a miracle that Mr Uniatz had never stopped to contemplate: he asked nothing more than to be allowed to stay on as an unquestioning Sancho Panza to this dazzling demigod who could Think of Things with such supernatural ease.