Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

"As a matter of fact, old porpoise," said the Saint, "I came back for some cigarettes. You can't buy my favourite brand in France, and if you've ever endured a week of Marylands—"

Teal took a seat on the bunk.

"You left England in rather a hurry two months ago, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did," admitted the Saint reflectively. "You see, I felt like having a good bust, and you know what I am. Impetuous. I just upped and went."

"It's a pity you didn't stay."

The Saint's blue eyes gazed out banteringly from under dark level brows.

"Teal, is that kind? If you want to know, I was expecting a better reception than this. I was only thinking just now how upset my solicitor would be when he heard about it. Poor old chap — he's awfully sensitive about these things. When one of his respectable and valued clients comes home to his native land, and he isn't allowed to move two hundred yards into the interior before some flat-footed hick cop is lugging him off to the hoosegow for no earthly reason—"

"Now you listen to me for a minute," Teal cut in bluntly. "I didn't come here to swap any funny talk of that sort with you. I came down to tell you how the Yard thinks you'd better behave now you're home. You're going loose as soon as I've finished with you, but if you want to stay loose you'll take a word of advice."

"Shall I?"

"That's up to you." The detective was plunging into his big speech half an hour before it was due, but he was going to get it through intact if it was the last thing he ever did. It was an amazing thing that even after the two months of comparative calm which he had enjoyed since the Saint left England, the gall of many defeats was as bitter on his tongue as it had ever been before. Perhaps he had a clairvoyant glimpse of the future, born out of the deepest darkness of his subconscious mind, which told him that he might as well have lectured a sun spot about its pernicious influence on the weather. The bland smiling composure of that lean figure opposite him was fraying the edges of his nerves with all the accumulated armoury of old associations. "I'm not suggesting," Teal said tersely. "I'm prophesying."

The Saint acknowledged his authority with the faintest possible flicker of one eyebrow — and yet the sardonic mockery of that minute gesture was indescribable.

"Yeah?"

"I'm telling you to watch your step. We've put up with a good deal from you in the past. You've been lucky. You even earned a free pardon, once. Anyone would have thought you'd have been content to retire gracefully after that. You had your own ideas. But a piece of luck like that doesn't come twice in any man's lifetime. You'd made things hot enough for yourself when you went away, and you needn't think they've cooled off just because you took a short holiday. I'm not saying they mightn't cool off a bit if you took a long one. We aren't out for any more trouble."

"Happy days," drawled the Saint, "are here again. Teal, in another minute you'll have me crying."

"You shouldn't have much to cry about," said the detective aggressively. "There's some excuse for the sneak thief who goes on pulling five-pound jobs. He hasn't a chance to retire. You ought to have made a pretty good pile by this time—"

"About a quarter of a million," said the Saint modestly. "I admit it sounds a lot, but look at Rockefeller. He could spend that much every day."

"You've had a good run. I won't complain about it. You've done me some good turns on your way, and the commissioner is willing to set that in your favour. Why not give the game a rest?"

The bantering blue eyes were surveying Teal steadily all the time he was speaking. Their expression was almost seraphic in its innocence — only the most captious critic, or the most overwrought inferiority complex, could have found anything to complain about in their elaborate sobriety. The Saint's face wore the register of a rapt student of theology absorbing wisdom from an archbishop.

And yet Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal felt his mouth drying up in spite of the soothing stimulus of spearmint. He had the numbing sensation of fatuity of a man who has embarked on a funny story in the hope of salvaging an extempore after-dinner speech that has been falling progressively flatter with every sentence, and who realizes in the middle of it that it is not going to get a laugh. His own ears began to wince painfully at the awful dampness of the platitudes that were drooling inexplicably out of his own mouth. His voice sounded like the bleat of a lost sheep crying in the wilderness. He wished he had sent someone else to Newhaven.

"Let me know the worst," said the Saint. "What are you leading up to? Is the government proposing to offer me a pension and a seat in the House of Lords if I'll retire?"

"It isn't. It's offering you ten years' free board and lodging at Parkhurst if you don't. I shouldn't want you to make any mistake about it. If you think you're—"

Simon waved his hand.

"If you're not careful you'll be repeating yourself, Claud," he murmured. "Let me make the point for you. So long as I carry on like a little gentleman and go to Sunday school every week, your lordships will leave me alone. But if I should get back any of my naughty old ideas — if anyone sort of died suddenly while I was around, or some half-witted policeman lost sight of a packet of illicit diamonds and wanted to blame it on me — then it'll be the ambition of every dick in England to lead me straight to the Old Bailey. The long-suffering police of this great country are on their mettle. Britain has awoken. The Great Empire on which the sun never sets—"

"That's enough of that," yapped the detective.

He had not intended to yap. He should have spoken in a trenchant and paralyzing baritone, a voice ringing with power and determination. Something went wrong with his larynx at the crucial moment.

He glared savagely at the Saint.

"I'd like to know your views," he said.

Simon Templar stood up. There were seventy-four steel inches of him, a long, lazy uncoiling of easy strength and fighting vitality tapering down from wide, square shoulders. The keen, tanned face of a cavalier smiled down at Teal.

"Do you really want them, Claud?"

"That's what I'm here for."

"Then if you want the news straight from the stable, I think that speech of yours would be a knockout at the Mothers' Union." The Saint spread out his arms. "I can just see those kindly, wrinkled faces lighting up with the radiant dawn of a new hope — the tired souls wakening again to beauty—"

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Very nearly, Claud. You see, your proposition doesn't tempt me. Even if it had included the pension and the peerage, I don't think I should have succumbed. It would make life so dull. I can't expect you to see my point, but there it is."

Teal also got to his feet, under the raking twinkle of those very clear blue eyes. There was something in their mockery which he had never understood, which perhaps he would never understand. And against that something which he could not understand, his jaw tightened up in grim belligerence.

"Very well," he said. "You'll be sorry."

"I doubt it," said the Saint.

On the way back to London, Teal thought of many more brilliant speeches which he could have made, but he had not made any of them. He returned to Scotland Yard in a mood of undiluted acid, which the sarcastic comments of the assistant commissioner did nothing to mellow.

"To tell you the truth, sir, I never expected anything else," Teal said seriously. "The Saint's outside our province, and he always has been. I never imagined anyone could make me believe in the sort of story-book Raffles who goes in for crime for the fun of the thing, but in this case it's true. I've had it out with Templar before — privately. The plain fact is that he's in the game with a few highfalutin' ideas about a justice above the law, and a lot of superfluous energy that he's got to get rid of somehow. If we put a psychologist on to him," expounded the detective, who had been reading Freud, "we should be told he'd got an Oedipus Complex. He has to break take law just because it if the law. If we made it illegal to go to church, he'd be heading a revivalist movement inside the week."