"All right," said Teal grimly. "I know them. And I'll bet they're going to wish they'd never known you — if they haven't begun wishing it already." The traffic light was at green again, and the hooting of impatient drivers held up behind made the detective step back from the window. "I'll see you later," he said and waved the taxi on.
The Saint grinned and settled back again, as the cab turned south towards the Park. That chance encounter had set the triumphal capstone on his homecoming: it was the last familiar chord of the old opening chorus, his guarantee that the old days had finally come back in all their glory. The one jarring note was in the sinister implications of Teal's parting speech. Ever frank and open, the Saint sought to compare opinions on the subject.
"It sounds," he murmured, "almost as if Claud Eustace had something on his mind. Didn't it sound that way to you, Snowdrop?"
Nassen was wiping his forehead with a large white handkerchief; and he seemed deaf to the advance. His genteel sensitive soul had been bruised, and he had lost the spirit of such candid camaraderie. He put his handkerchief away and slipped an automatic from his pocket. Simon felt the muzzle probe into his ribs, and glanced down at it with one satirical eyebrow raised.
"You know, you could kill someone with that," he said reprovingly.
"I wish it could be you," said the Rose of Peck-ham in a tone of passionate earnestness, and relapsed into morbid silence.
Simon chuckled and lighted another cigarette. The gun in his own raincoat pocket rested comfortingly across his thigh, but he saw no need to advertise his own armoury. He watched their route with patient interest — they emerged at Parliament Square, but instead of turning down to the Embankment they circled the square and went back up Victoria Street.
"I suppose you know this isn't the way to Scotland Yard, Snowdrop?" he remarked helpfully. "This is the way you're going first," Nassen told him.
The Saint shrugged. They turned quickly off Victoria Street, and pulled up shortly afterwards outside a house in one of those almost stupefyingly sombre and respectable squares in the district known to its residents as Belgravia but to the vulgar public, less pretentiously, as Pimlico. Nassen's colleague got out and went up the steps to ring the bell, and the Saint followed under the unnecessarily aggressive propulsion of Nassen's gun.
The door was opened by one of the most magnificently majestic butlers that the Saint had ever seen. He seemed to be expecting them, for he stood aside immediately, and the Saint was led quickly through the hall into a spacious library on the ground floor.
"I will inform his lordship of your arrival," said the butler and left them there.
Simon Templar, who had been taking in his surroundings with untroubled interest, turned round as the door closed.
"You ought to have told me we were going to visit a Lord, Snowdrop," he said reproachfully.
"I'd have put on my Old Etonian suspenders and washed my neck. I know you washed your neck today, because I can see the line where you left off."
Nassen tugged at his lower lip and simmered audibly, but his woes had passed beyond the remedy of repartee. And he was still smouldering pinkly when Lord Iveldown came in.
Lord Iveldown's name will not go down to history in the company of Gladstone, Disraeli, or the Earl of Chatham. Probably it will not go down to history at all. He was a minor statesman whose work had never been done in the public eye, which was at least a negative blessing for a public eye which has far too much to put up with already. In plain language, which tradition forbids any statesman to use, he was one of those permanent government officials who do actually run the country while the more publicized politicians are talking about it. He was a big man inclined to paunchiness, with thin grey hair and pince-nez and the aura of stupendous pomposity by which the permanent government official may instantly be recognized anywhere; and the Saint, whose portrait gallery of excrescences left very little ground uncovered, recognized him at once.
He came in polishing his pince-nez and took up a position with his back to the fireplace.
"Sit down, Mr. Templar," he said brusquely and turned to Nassen. "I take it that you failed to find what you were looking for?"
The detective nodded.
"We turned the place inside out, your Lordship, but there wasn't a sign of it. He might have sewn it up inside a mattress or in the upholstery of a i: hair, but I don't think he would have had time."
"Quite," muttered Lord Iveldown. "Quite." He took off his pince-nez, polished them again, and looked at the Saint. "This is a serious matter, Mr. Templar," he said. "Very serious."
"Apparently," agreed the Saint blandly. "Apparently."
Lord Iveldown cleared his throat and wagged his head once or twice.
"That is why I have been obliged to adopt extraordinary measures to deal with it," he said.
"Such as sending along a couple of fake detectives to turn my rooms inside out?" suggested the Saint languidly.
Lord Iveldown started, peered down at him, and coughed.
"Ah-hum," he said. "You knew they were — ah — fakes?"
"My good ass," said the Saint, lounging more snugly in his armchair, "I knew that the Metropolitan Police had lowered itself a lot by enlisting Public School men and what not, but I couldn't quite believe that it had sunk so low as to make inspectors out of herbaceous borders like Snowdrop over there. Besides, I'm never arrested by ordinary inspectors — Chief Inspector Teal himself always comes to see me."
"Then why did you allow Nassen to bring you here?"
"Because I figured I might as well take a gander at you and hear what you had to say. The gander," Simon admitted frankly, "is not quite the greatest thrill I've had since I met Dietrich."
Lord Iveldown cleared his throat again and expanded his stomach, clasping his hands behind his back under his coat tails and rocking slightly in the manner of a schoolmaster preparing to deal with a grave breach of the Public School Code.
"Mr. Templar," he said heavily, "this is a serious matter. A very serious matter. A matter, I might say, of the utmost gravity. You have in your possession a volume which contains certain — ah — statements and — ah — suggestions concerning me — statements and suggestions which, I need scarcely add, are wholly without foundation—"
"As, for instance," said the Saint gently, "the statement or suggestion that when you were Undersecretary of State for War you placed an order for thirty thousand Lewis guns with a firm whose tender was sixty per cent, higher than any other, and enlarged your own bank balance immediately afterwards."
"Gross and damnable falsehoods," persisted Lord Iveldown more loudly.
"As, for instance," said the Saint, even more gently, "the gross and damnable falsehood that you accepted on behalf of the government a consignment of one million gas masks which technical experts had already condemned in the strongest language as worse than useless—"
"Foul and calumnious imputations," boomed Lord Iveldown in a trembling voice, "which can easily be refuted, but which if published would nevertheless to some degree smirch a name which hitherto has not been without honour in the annals of this nation. It was only for that reason, and not because I feared that my public and private life could not stand the light of any inquiry whatever that might be directed into it, that I consented to — ah — grant you this interview."
Simon nodded.
"Since your synthetic detectives had failed to steal that book from me," he murmured, "it was — ah — remarkably gracious of you."
His sardonic blue eyes, levelled over the shaft of a cigarette that slanted from between his lips like the barrel of a gun, bored into Lord Iveldown with a light of cold appraisal which made the nobleman shift his feet awkwardly.