The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" by Leslie Charteris Page A

down his nose.
    “Y’ain’t still smokin’ those things?”
    He twitched the packet out of the cockney’s fingers and flipped it over the side. A rolled-gold cigarette case came out of his pocket and pushed into Clem Enright’s ribs under a black-rimmed thumbnail.
    “Take ‘alf a dozen.”
    Clem helped himself, and struck a match. They lounged back again, exhaling the fumes of cheap Turkish tobacco with elaborate relish. Either of them would secretly have preferred the yellow gaspers to which they were accustomed, but Ted Orping insisted on their improved status.
    Suddenly he leaned forward and punched the driver on the shoulder.
    “Hey, Joe! Time you were turning east. The Flying Squad ain’t after us tonight.”
    The driver nodded. They were speeding up the west side of Regent’s Park, and the driving mirror showed no lights behind.
    “And easy on the gas,” Ted snapped. “You don’t want to be copped for dangerous driving.”
    The car spun round a bend with a sharpness that sent Ted Orping lurching back into his corner, and held its speed. They drove east, and turned south again.
    Ted Orping scowled. He wanted all his colleagues to acknowledge him as the boss, the Big Fellow, whose word was law-to be obeyed promptly and implicitly. Joe Corrigan didn’t seem to cotton to the idea. And he had broad shoulders too-and grey Irish eyes that didn’t flinch readily. Independent. Maybe too independent, Ted Orping thought. It was Joe Corrigan who had insisted that they should go into a pub and have a bracer before they did the job, and who had got his way against Ted Orping’s opposition. Maybe Joe was getting too big for his boots… . Ted ran a hand over the hard bulge at his hip, thoughtfully. Four or five years ago the independence of Joe Corrigan would never have stimulated Ted to thoughts of murder, but he had been taught that when a guy got too big for his boots he was just taken for a ride.
    The car swung left, violently, and then to the right again. They were droning down a street of sombre houses on the east side of the park. One or two upper windows were lighted, but there were no pedestrians about-only another long-nosed silver-grey speed wagon drawn up by the curb with its side lights dimmed facing towards them.
    All at once their brakes went on with a screaming force that jerked the two men behind forward in their seats. They skidded to a stop by the pavement, with their bonnet a dozen feet away from the nose of the silver car.
    Ted Orping cursed and hitched himself further forward. His broad hand crimped on the driver’s shoulder.
    “What the hell —”
    He fell back as the driver turned, with his jaw dropping.
    The two Green Cross boys sat side by side, staring at the face of the man in the heavy leather coat that had been worn by Joe Corrigan when they set out. It was a lean sunburnt face, recklessly clean-cut and swashbuckling in its rakish keenness of line, in which the amazingly clear and mocking blue eyes gleamed like chips of crystal. There was a coolness, an effrontery, a fighting ruthlessness about it that left them momentarily speechless. It was the most dangerously challenging face that either of them had ever seen. But it was not the face of Joe Corrigan.
    “The jaunt is over, boys,” said the face amiably. “I hope you’ve had a good time and caught no colds. And thanks for the job-it was about the best I’ve been able to watch. You two ought to take it up professionally-you’d do well.”
    Ted Orping wetted his lips.
    “Who are you?” he asked.
    The driver smiled. It was a benevolent, almost seraphic smile, that bared a glint of ivory white teeth; and yet there was nothing reassuring about it. It was as full of the hair-trigger threat of sudden death as the round hollow snout of the gun that slid up over the back of the seat in the driver’s hand. Ted Orping had seen smiles like that in the movies, and he knew.
    “I am the Saint,” said the driver gently. “I see you’ve