The Saint shrugged.
"Exactly," he said.
"What do you mean — 'exactly'?"
Mr Teal's voice was not quite so monotonous as he wanted it to be. It tended to slide off its note into a kind of squawk. But that was something that the Saint's ineffable sangfroid always did to him. It was something that always brought Mr Teal to the verge of an apoplectic seizure.
"What do you mean?" he squawked.
"My dear ass," said the Saint patiently, in the manner of one who explains a simple point to a small and dull-witted child, "you said it yourself. You came in and found me standing over the body. You know perfectly well that when I murder people you never come in and find me standing over the body. Now, do you?"
Mr Teal's eyes boggled in spite of the effort he made to control them. The hot porridge came back into his larynx.
"Are you trying to tell me you're in the clear because I came in and found you bending over the body?" he yawped. "Well, this is once when you're wrong! Perhaps I haven't done it before. But I've done it now. I've got you, Saint." The superb, delirious conviction grew upon him. "This is the one time you've made a mistake, and I've got you." Chief Inspector Teal drew himself up in the full pride of his magnificent climactic moment. "Simon Templar, I shall take you into custody on a charge of—"
"Wait a minute," said the Saint quietly.
The porridge bubbled underneath Teal's collar stud.