He turned away with an air of stoical resolution and sauntered steadily towards the door. Teal followed on his heels. Fairweather grasped his umbrella and followed Teal. As they entered the room, where the bed was still disordered from the Saint's recent rising, Simon said: "You've always suspected that I had a collection of secret passages and things here. You were pretty close to the mark, too. This ought to amuse you."
He indicated the door to one side of the bed.
Teal jerked it open. It revealed the interior of a big built-in cupboard in which an assortment of suits from the Saint's unlimited wardrobe hung on a long rail like a file of thin soldiers.
The Saint sat dejectedly on the side of the bed.
"Just push the wall at the end and it opens," he said listlessly.
Teal shoved himself grimly in, shouldering the rank of suits aside. Fairweather stepped up to the door and peered in after him.
What happened next was a succession of startling events of which Mr Fairweather's subsequent recollections were inclined to be confused. It seemed to him that without any warning the back of his collar and the seat of his pants were seized by the grappling mechanism of a kind of bimanual travelling crane. He rose from the ground and moved forward without any effort of his own into the interior of the cupboard, letting out a thin plaintive squeal as he did so. Then his advancing abdomen collided with breathtaking violence with the unyielding posterior of Chief Inspector Teal; the cupboard door slammed behind him; the light overhead went out; darkness descended; there was the sound of a key turning in the lock; and after that there was as much empty and unhelpful silence as Teal's sporadic sputtering of inspired profanity left room for…
Simon Templar moved swiftly out of the bedroom and locked that door also after him.
Now he was in it up to the neck, but he felt only an exuberant elation. As soon as Teal and Fairweather got out, which they must do in a comparatively short time, he would be a hunted man with all the nation-wide networks of the law spread out to catch him; but he only felt as if a burden had been taken off his shoulders. He had lived like that in the old days, when every man's hand was against him and death or ignominious defeat waited for him around every carelessly turned corner, and in those days he had known life at its keenest rapture, with a fullness that men who led safe humdrum existences could never know. Now at least the issues were clean cut and unevadable. Perhaps he had been respectable for too long…
The telephone was ringing again. He picked it up.