"Hullo!" he bawled. "Chief Inspector Teal speaking… No, that wasn't me before… Never mind that, go on… What?… What's that?… Yes… Yes… "
An indistinguishable mutter droned on from the receiver, and as Teal listened to it his cherubic round face grew hard and strained. His eyes stayed fixed upon the Saint, hot and jagged with a seethe of violent emotions of which the most accurately identifiable one was wrath rising to the temperature of incandescence. His mouth was a clenched trap in the lurid mauve of his face, which now and again opened just sufficiently to eject a sizzling monosyllable like a blob of molten quartz.
"All right," he bit out at last. "Stay there. I'll be round presently."
He slammed the instrument back on its bracket and stood glaring at the Saint like a gorilla that has just got up from sitting down on a drawing pin.
"Well?" he snarled. "Let's hear what you've got to say about that."
"What have I got to say?" Simon's voice was the honey of spotless innocence. "Well, Claud, since you ask me, it does seem to me that if you're going to turn this place into a club and tell your low friends to ring you up here you oughtn't to mind my having a bit of fun out of—"
"I'll see that you get your fun! So you thought you were taking me in with all that slop you were giving me. You've been… You're…"
"You're getting incoherent, Claud. Take a deep breath and speak from the diaphragm."
Chief Inspector Teal took the deep breath, but it came out again like an explosion of compressed air.
"You heard enough on the telephone—"