The Saint vs Scotland Yard by Leslie Charteris

disinclined to meet.
    He eased up, and the constable guilelessly fell around to the side of the car.
    And then the Saint revved up his engine, let in the clutch again with
a bang, and went roaring on through the dawn with the policeman’s
shout tattered to futile fragments in the wind behind him.
    Chapter II
     
     
    It was full daylight when he turned into Upper Berke ley Mews
and stopped before his own front door, and the door opened even before he
had switched off the engine.
    “Hullo, boy!” said Patricia. “I wasn’t expecting you for another
hour.”
    “Neither was I,” said the Saint.
    He kissed her lightly on the lips, and stood there with his cap tilted rakishly to the back
of his head and his leather coat swinging
back from wide square shoulders, peeling off his gloves and smiling one of his most cryptic smiles.
    “I’ve brought you a new pet,” he said.
    He   twitched open   the   door behind him, and she peered puzzledly into   the back of the car. The passenger was still unconscious,
lolling back like a limb mummy in the travelling rug which   the   Saint had   tucked round him, his
white face turned blankly to the roof.
    “But—who is he?”
    “I haven’t the faintest idea,” said the Saint blandly.
“But for the purposes of convenient reference I have christened him Beppo. His shirt has a Milan tab on it—Sherlock Holmes himself
could deduce no more. And up to the present, he hasn’t been
sufficiently compos to offer any information.”
    Patricia Holm looked into his face, and saw the battle glint in his eye
and a ghost of Saintliness flickering in the corners of his smile,
and tilted her sweet fair head.
    “Have you been in some more trouble?”
    “It was rather a one-sided affair,” said the Saint modestly. “Sambo
never had a break—and I didn’t mean him to have one, either. But the
Queensberry Rules were strictly observed. There was no hitting
below belts, which were worn loosely round the ankles—— ”
    “Who’s this you’re talking about now?”
    “Again, we are without information. But again for the pur poses of
convenient reference, you may call him His Beatitude the Negro Spiritual. And
now listen.”
    Simon took her shoulders and swung her round.
    “Somewhere between Basingstoke and Wintney,” he said, “there’s
a gay game being played that’s going to interest us a lot. And I came into it
as a perfectly innocent party, for once in my life—but I
haven’t got time to tell you about it now. The big point at the
moment is that a cop who arrived two minutes too late to be useful got my
number. With Beppo in the back, I couldn’t stop to hold converse with him, and
you can bet he’s jumped to the worst conclusions. In which he’s damned
right, but not in the way he thinks he is. There was a phone box twenty
yards away, and unless the Negro Spiritual strangled him first
he’s referred my number to London most of an hour ago, and Teal
will be snorting down a hot scent as soon as they can get him out of bed.
Now, all you’ve got to know is this: I’ve just arrived, and I’m in
my bath. Tell the glad news to anyone who rings up and anyone who calls;
and if it’s a call, hang a towel out of the window.”
    “But where are you going?”
    “The Berkeley—to park the patient. I just dropped in to give you
your cue.” Simon Templar drew the end of a ciga rette red, and
snapped his lighter shut again. “And I’ll be right back,” he
said, and wormed in behind the wheel.
    A matter of seconds later the big car was in Berkeley Street, and he was
pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel.
    “Friend of mine had a bit of a car smash,” he rapped at a sleepy
reception clerk. “I wanna room for him now, and a doctor at eleven.
Will you send a coupla men out to carry him in? Car at the
door.”
    “One four eight,” said the clerk, without batting an eyelid.
    Simon saw the unconscious man carried upstairs, shot half- crowns into
the hands of the men who