[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He went on turning thepages as if they made no more difference to his idleness than a trio ofinquisitive puppies.Teal came to the living-room last.Simon knew from the pregnant stillness thatpresently supervened that the search had come to a stultifying end, but hecontinued serenely to finish his page before he looked up.Page 91ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Well," he said at length, "have you found him?""Where is he?" shouted Teal, with dreadful savagery.Simon put down the magazine.'"Look here," he said wearily."I've made a lot of allow-ances for you, but Igive up.What's the use ? I tell you I was at home last night, and you can'tprove I wasn't; but just because you want me to have been out, I must befaking an alibi.You've got casts of the tyre tracks of a car that was mixedup in some dirty business last night, and they don't match the tracks ofeither of my cars; but just because you think they ought to match, I must havechanged my tyres.I tell you I haven't kidnapped this fellow Verdean, and youcan't find him anywhere in my house; but just because you think I ought tohave kidnapped him, I must have hidden him somewhere else.Every shred ofevidence is against you, and therefore all the evidence must be wrong.Youcouldn't possibly be wrong yourself, because you're the great Chief InspectorClaud Eustace Teal, who knows everything and always gets his man.All right.Every bit of proof there is shows that I'm innocent, but I must be guiltybecause your theories would be all wet if I wasn't.So why do we have to wasteour time on silly little details like this ? Let's just take me down to thepolice station and lock me up.""That's just what I'm going to do," Teal raved blindly.The Saint looked at him for a moment, and stood up."Good enough," he said breezily."I'm ready when you are."He went to the door and called: "Pat!" She answered him, and came down thestairs.He said: "Darling, Claud Eustace has had an idea.He's going to lug meoff and shove me in the cooler on a charge of being above suspicion.It's anew system they've introduced at Scotland Yard, and all the laws are beingaltered to suit it.So you'd better call one of our lawyers and see if heknows what to do about it.Oh, and you might ring up some of the newspaperswhile you're on the job they'll probably want to interview Claud about hisbrainwave.""Yes, of course," she said enthusiastically, and went towards the telephone inthe study.Something awful, something terrifying, something freez-ing and paralysing,damp, chilly, appalling, descended over Chief Inspector Teal like a glacialcascade.With the very edge of the precipice crumbling under his toes, hiseyes were opened.The delirium of fury that had swept him along so farcoagulated sickeningly within him.Cold, pitiless, ines-capable facts hammeredtheir bitter way through into the turmoil of his brain.He was too shocked atthe moment even to feel the anguish of despair.His mind shuddered under theimpact of a new kind of panic.He took a frantic step forward a step thatwas, in its own way, the crossing of a harrowing Rubicon."Wait a minute," he stammered hoarsely.VIIFIFTEEN MINUTES later, Simon Templar stood on the front steps and watched thepolice car crawl out of the drive with its cargo of incarnate woe.He feltPatricia's fingers slide into his hand, and turned to smile at her."So far, so good," he said thoughtfully."But only so far.""I thought you were joking, at breakfast," she said."How did he get here sosoon ?"He shrugged."That wasn't difficult.I suppose he stayed down at Staines last night; andthe Chertsey police would have phoned over about the Verdean business firstthing this morning, knowing that he was the manager of the bank that had beenheld up.Claud must have shot off on the scent like a prize greyhound, and I'mafraid I can sympathize with the way he must have felt when he arrived here.""Well, we're still alive," she said hopefully."You got rid of him again."Page 92ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Only because his nerves are getting a bit shaky from all the times I'veslipped through his fingers, and he's so scared of being made a fool of againthat he daren't move now without a cast-iron case, and I was able to pick afew awk-ward holes in this one.But don't begin thinking we've got rid of himfor keeps.He's just gone away now to see if he can stop up the holes againand put some more iron in the evidence, and he's sore enough to work overtimeat it.He's going to be three times as dangerous from now on.Worse than that,he's not so dumb that he isn't going to put two and two together about allthis commotion around Verdean coming right on top of the robbery.You can betthe Crown Jewels to a showgirl's virtue that he's already figured out thatVerdean was mixed up in it in some way.While we're stuck with Verdean, andVerdean is stuck with amnesia
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]