He was writing when she arrived, but he put down his pen and surveyed her solemnly.
"Oh, there you are," he remarked. "I thought you were dead, but Teal said he thought you might only have taken a trip to Vladivostok."
"I've been helping Eilen Wiltham—her wedding's only five days away. Haven't you any more interest in her?"
"None," said the Saint callously. "The thought of the approaching crime makes my mind feel unbinged—unhinged. I've already refused three times to assist Charles to select pyjamas for the bridal chamber. I told him that when he'd been married as often as I have——"
"That'll do," said Patricia.
"It will, very nearly," said the Saint.
He cast an eye over the mail that she had brought in with her from the letter-box.
"Those two enevelopes with halfpenny stamps you may exterminate forthwith. On the third, in spite of the deceptive three-halfpenny Briefmarke, I recognise the clerkly hand of Anderson and Sheppard. Add it to the holocaust. Item four"—he picked up a small brown-paper package and weighed it calculatingly in his hand—"is much too light to contain high explosive. It's probably the new gold-mounted sock-suspenders I ordered from Asprey's. Open it, darling, and tell me what you think of them. And I will read you some more of the Hideous History of Charles."
He took up his manuscript.
"With what a zest did he prepare
For the first meeting (open-air)!
With what a glee he fastened on
His bevor and his morion,
His greaves, his ventail, every tace,
His pauldrons and his rerebrace!
He sallied forth with martial eye,
Prepared to do, prepared to die,
But not prepared—by Bayard! not
For the reception that he got.
Over that chapter of the tale
It would be kind to draw a veiclass="underline"
Let it suffice that in disdain,
Some hecklers threw him in a drain,
And plodding home——
"Excuse me," said the Saint.
His right hand moved like lightning, and the detonation of his heavy automatic in the confined space was like a vindictive thunderclap. It left the girl with a strange hot sting of powder on her wrist and a dull buzzing in her ears. And through the buzzing drifted the Saint's unruffled accents:
"And plodding home, all soaked inside,
He caught pneumonia—and died."
Patricia looked at him, white-faced.
"What was it?" she asked, with the faintest tremor in her voice.
"Just an odd spot of scorpion," answered Simon Templar gently. "An unpleasant specimen of the breed—the last time I saw one like that was up in the hills north of Puruk-jahu. Looks like a pal of mine has been doing some quick travelling, or ... Yes." The Saint grinned. "Get on the phone to the Zoo, old dear, and tell 'em they can have their property back if they care to send round and scrape it off the carpet. I don't think we shall want it any more, shall we?"
Patricia shuddered.
She had stripped away the brown paper and found a little cardboard box such as cheap jewellery is sometimes packed in. When she raised the lid, the tiny blue-green horror, like a miniature deformed lobster, had been lying there in a nest of cotton-wool; while she stared at it, it had rustled on to her and . . .
"It—wasn't very big," she said, in a tone that tried to match the Saint's for lightness.
"Scorpions run to all sizes," said the Saint cheerfully, "and as often as not their poisonousness is in inverse ratio to their size in boots. Mostly, they're very minor troubles—I've been stung myself, and all I got was a sore and swollen arm. But the late lamented was a member of the one and only sure-certain and no-hokum family of homicides in the species. Pity I bumped it off so quickly—it might have been really valuable stuffed."
Patricia's finger-tips slid mechanically around the rough edges of the hole that the nickel-cased .45 bullet had smashed through the polished mahogany table before ruining the carpet and losing itself somewhere in the floor. Then she looked steadily at the Saint.
"Why should anyone send you a scorpion?" she asked.
Simon Templar shrugged.
"It was the immortal Paragot who said: 'In this country the unexpected always happens, which paralyses the brain'. And if a real man-sized Scorpion can't be expected to send his young brothers to visit his friends as a token of esteem, what can he be expected to do?"
"Is that all?"
"All what?"
"All you propose to tell me."
The Saint regarded her for a moment. He saw the tall slim lines of reposeful strength in her body, the fine moulding of the chin, the eyes as blue and level as his own. And slowly he screwed the cap on his fountain pen; and he stood up and came round the table.
"I'll tell you as much more as you want to know," he said.
"Just like in the mad old days?"
"They had their moments, hadn't they?"
She nodded.
"Sometimes I wish we were back in them," she said wistfully. "I didn't fall in love with you in a pair of Anderson and Sheppard trousers——"
"They were!" cried the Saint indignantly. "I distinctly remember ——"
Patricia laughed suddenly. Her hands fell on his shoulders.
"Give me a cigarette, boy," she said, "and tell me what's been happening."
And he did so—though what he had to tell was little enough. And Chief Inspector Teal himself knew no more. The Scorpion had grown up in darkness, had struck from the darkness, and crawled back deeper into the dark. Those who could have spoken dared not speak, and those who might have spoken died too soon . . .
But as he told his tale, the Saint saw the light of all the mad old days awakening again in Patricia's eyes, and it was in a full and complete understanding of that light that he came to the one thing that Chief Inspector Teal would have given his ears to know.
"Tonight, at nine——"
"You'll be there?"
"I shall," said the Saint, with the slightest tightening of his lips. "Shot up by a bloody amateur! Good God! Suppose he'd hit me! Pat, believe papa—when I pass out, there's going to be a first-class professional, hall-marked on every link, at the thick end of the gun."
Patricia, in the deep armchair, settled her sweet golden head among the cushions.
"What time do we start?" she asked calmly. For a second, glancing at him sidelong. She saw the old stubborn hardening of the line of his jaw. It happened instinctively, almost without his knowing it; and then suddenly he swung off the arm of the chair in the breath of an even older Saintly laughter.
"Why not?" he said. "It's impossible—preposterous—unthinkable—but why not? The old gang have gone—Dicky, Archie, Roger—gone and got spliced on to women and come over all bowler-hat. There's only you left. It'd make the vicar's wife let out one piercing squawk and swallow her knitting-needles, but who cares? If you'd really like to have another sniff at the old brew——"
"Give me the chance!"
Simon grinned.
"And you'd flop after it like a homesick walrus down a water-chute, wouldn't you?"
"Faster," she said.
"And so you shall," said the Saint. "The little date I've got for tonight will be all the merrier for an extra soul on the side of saintliness and soft drinks. And if things don't turn out exactly according to schedule, there may be an encore for your especial entertainment. Pat, I have a feeling that this is going to be our week!"