Simon drew
down the automatic from under his pillow
and slid out of bed
like a phantom. He left the communicating
door alone, and
sidled noiselessly through the other door
which led out into the
hall. The front door was open just
enough to split the darkness with a
knife-edge of illumina
tion from the lights on the landing outside:
he eased over
to it like a cat, slipped his fingers through the gap,
and felt
the burred edges of the hole which had been drilled
through the outside of the frame so that the catch of the spring lock would be
pushed back.
A light
blinked beyond the open door of the living-room. The Saint came to the entrance
and looked in. Silhouetted
against the subdued glow of an electric torch
he saw the
shape of a man standing by the table with his back to the
door, and his bare feet padded over the carpet without a
breath of
sound until they were almost under the intruder’s
heels. He leaned over
until his lips were barely a couple of
inches from the
visitor’s right ear.
“Boo,”
said the Saint.
It was
perhaps fortunate for the intruder that he had a
strong heart, for if
he had had the slightest cardiac weakness
the nervous shock
which spun him round would have
probably popped it like a balloon. As it was,
an involuntary
yammer of sheer primitive fright dribbled out of his
throat
before he lashed out blindly in no less instinctive self-
defence.
Simon had
anticipated that. He was crouching almost to
his knees by that
time, and his left arm snaked around the
lower part of the
man’s legs simultaneously with a quick
thrust of his shoulder
against the other’s thighs.
The burglar
went over backwards with a violent thud;
and as most of his
breath jolted out of him he freighted it
with a selection of
picturesque expletives which opened up
new vistas of biologic
theory. One hand, swinging up in a
vicious arc, was caught clearly in the
beam of the fallen flashlight, and it was not empty.
“I
think,” said the Saint, “we can do without the persua
der.”
He jabbed
the muzzle of his gun very hard into the place
where his guest’s ribs forked, and heard a
satisfactory gasp of
pain in response. His
left hand caught the other’s wrist as it
descended, twisted with all the skill of a manipulative
surgeon, and let go again to grab the
life-preserver as it
dropped out of
the man’s numbed fingers.
“You
mustn’t hit people with things like this,” he said
reprovingly.
“It hurts. … Doesn’t it ?”
The
intruder, with jagged stars shooting through his
head, did not offer
an opinion; but his squirming lost nearly all of its early vigour. The Saint
sat on him easily, and made
sure that there were no other weapons on his
person before
he stood up again.
The main
lights clicked on with a sudden dazzling
brightness. Patricia
Holm stood in the doorway, the lines of
her figure draping
exquisite contours into the folds of a
filmy neglige, her
fair hair tousled with sleep and hazy
startlement in her blue eyes.
“I’m
sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
“That’s
all right,” said the Saint. “We’re keeping open
house.”
He lounged
back to rest the base of his spine against the
edge of the table and
inspected the caller in more detail. He saw a short-legged barrel-chested
individual with a thatch of
carroty hair, a wide coarse-lipped mouth, and
a livid scar running from one side of a flattened nose to near the lobe of
a misshapen
ear; and recognition dawned in his gaze.
He waved
his gun in a genial gesture.
“You
remember our old pal and playmate, Red McGuire ?”
he murmured.
“Just back from a holiday at Parkhurst after his last job of robbery with
violence. Somebody told him
about all those jewels we keep around, and he
couldn’t wait
to drop in and see them. Why didn’t you ring the bell,
Red,
and save yourself the trouble of carving up our door?”
McGuire
sat on the floor and tenderly rubbed his head.
“Okay,”
he growled. “I can do without the funny stuff.
Go on an’ call the
cops.”
Simon
considered the suggestion. It seemed a very logical
procedure. But it left
an unfinished edge of puzzlement still in his mind.
There was
something about finding himself the victim of
an ordinary burglary
that didn’t quite ring bells. He knew well enough that his reputation was
enough to make any
ordinary burglar steer as far away from him as the
landscape
would allow. And serious burglars didn’t break into any
dwelling chosen at random and hope for the best, without
even
knowing the identity of the occupant—certainly not
burglars with the
professional status of Red McGuire. Therefore …
His eyes
drained detail from the scene with fine drawn
intentness. Nothing
seemed to have been touched. Perhaps
he had arrived too quickly for that. Everything was as he
had
left it when he went to bed. Except—
The emptied
packet of Miracle Tea which Patricia had
bought for him that
evening was still in his coat pocket. The
packet which he had refilled for Teal’s
personal consumption
was still on the table.
…
Or was it ?
For on the floor, a yard from
where Red McGuire had fallen,
lay another
identical packet of Miracle Tea.
Simon
absorbed the jar of realization without batting an
eyelid. But a slowly
increasing joy crept into the casual
radiance of his smile.
“Why
ask me to be so unfriendly, Red?” he drawled.
“After all,
what’s a packet of tea between friends ?”
If he
needed any confirmation of his surmise, he had it in
the way Red McGuire’s
small green eyes circled the room
and froze on the yellow carton beside
him before they
switched furtively back to the Saint’s face.
“Wot
tea ?” McGuire mumbled sullenly.
“Miracle
Tea,” said the Saint gently. “The juice that pours
balm into
the twinging tripes. That’s what you came here
for tonight, Red. You
came here to swipe my beautiful
packet of gut-grease and leave some phony
imitation behind
instead!”
McGuire
glowered at him stubbornly.
“I
dunno wot yer talkin’ abaht.”
“Don’t
you?” said the Saint, and his smile had become
almost affectionate.
“Then you’re going to find the next half hour tremendously
instructive.”
He
straightened up and reached over for a steel chair that
stood
close to him, and slid it across in the direction of his
guest.
“Don’t
you find the floor rather hard?” he said. “Take a
pew and
make yourself happy, because it looks as if we may
be in for a longish
talk.”
A wave of
his gun added a certain amount of emphasis to
the invitation, and
there was a crispness in his eyes that car
ried even more
emphasis than the gun.
McGuire
hauled himself up hesitantly and perched on the
edge of the chair, And
the Saint beamed at him.
“Now
if you’ll look in the top drawer of the desk, Pat—I
think there’s quite a
collection of handcuffs there. About
three pairs ought to be enough. One
for each of his ankles,
and one to fasten his hands behind him.”
McGuire
shifted where he sat.
“Wot’s
the idea?” he demanded uneasily.
“Just
doing everything we can to make you feel at home,” answered the Saint
breezily. “Would you mind putting your
hands behind you so that the lady can fix
you up ? … Thanks
ever so much…. Now if
you’ll just move your feet back up
against
the legs of the chair——
”
Rebellious
rage boiled behind the other’s sulky scowl, a
rage that had its roots in a formless but
intensifying fear. But
the Saint’s steady
hand held the conclusive argument, and
he
kept that argument accurately aligned on McGuire’s
wishbone until the
last cuff had been locked in place and the
strong-arm
expert was shackled to the steel chair-frame as
solidly as if he had
been riveted on to it.
Then Simon put down his
automatic and languidly flipped
open the
cigarette box.
“I
hate to do this to you,” he said conversationally, “but
we’ve
really got to do something about that memory of
yours. Or have you
changed your mind about answering a
few questions ?”
McGuire
glared at him without replying.
Simon
touched a match to his cigarette and glanced at Patricia through a placid trail
of smoke.
“Can
I trouble you some more, darling? If you wouldn’t
mind plugging in that old electric
curling-iron of yours——”
McGuire’s
eyes jerked and the handcuffs clinked as he
strained against them.
“Go on, why don’t yer call
the cops ?” he blurted hoarsely.
“You
can’t do anything to me!”
The Saint
strolled over to him.
“Just
who do you think is going to stop me?” he asked
kindly.
He slipped
his hands down inside McGuire’s collar, one
on each side of the
neck, and ripped his shirt open clear to
the waist with one
swift wrench that sprung the buttons
pinging across the room like bullets.
“Get
it good and hot, darling,” he said over his shoulder, “and we’ll see
how dear old Red likes the hair on his chest
waved.”
VI
R
ED
M
C
G
UIRE
stared up
at the Saint’s gentle smile and
ice-cold eyes, and the breath stopped in his
throat. He was by no means a timorous man, but he knew when to be afraid—or
thought he did.
“You
ain’t given me a charnce, guv’nor,” he whined.
“Why don’t yer
arsk me somethink I can answer ? I don’t
want to give no
trouble.”
Simon
turned away from him to flash a grin at Patricia—
a grin that McGuire
was never meant to see.
“Go
ahead and get the iron, sweetheart,” he said, with bloodcurdling
distinctness, and winked at her. “Just in case
old dear Red changes
his mind.”
Then the
wink and the grin vanished together as he whip
ped round on his
prisoner.
“All
right,” he snapped. “Tell me all you know about
Miracle
Tea!”
“I
dunno anythink about it, so help me, guv’nor. I never
heard of it before
tonight. All I know is I was told to come
here wiv a packet,
an’ if I found another packet here I was to
swop them over an’
bring your packet back. That’s all I know about it, strike me dead if it
ain’t.”
“I
shall probably strike you dead if it is,” said the Saint
coldly.
“D’you mean to tell me that Comrade Osbett didn’t
say any more than that
?”
“Who’s
that?”
“I
said Osbett. You know who I’m talking about.”
“I
never heard of ‘im.”
Simon moved
towards him with one fist drawn back.
“That’s
Gawd’s own truth!” shouted McGuire desper
ately. “I said
I’d tell yer anythink I could, didn’t I? It ain’t
my fault if I don’t
know everythink——
”
“Then
who was it told you to come here and play tea-
parties ?”
“I
dunno…. Listen!” begged McGuire frantically. “This
is a
squeal, ain’t it ? Well, why won’t yer believe me ? I tell
yer, I
don’t know. It was someone who met me when I come
out of stir. I dunno
wot is name is, an’ in this business yer
don’t arsk questions.
He ses to me, would I like fifty quid a
week to do any dirty
work there is going, more er less. I ses,
for fifty quid a week
I’ll do anythink he can think of. So he
gives me twenty quid
on account, an’ tells me to go any
where where there’s a telephone an’
just sit there beside it
until he calls me. So tonight he rings up——
”