"There are two poplars there, Mr. Vallance," Simon ventured to point out, when he had got his bearings on the picture, and the artist turned to him with an exasperated glare.
"My dear sir, what people like you want isn't an artist — it's a photographer. There are millions of blades of grass on that lawn, and you'd like me to draw every one of them. What I paint," said Spencer Vallance magnificently, "is the Impression of Poplar. The Soul of all Poplars is expressed in this picture, if you had the eyes to see it."
Mr. Vallance himself was the very antithesis of his art, being a small straggly man with straggly hair and a thin straggly beard. His clothes hung about him shapelessly; but his scrawny frame was obviously capable of so much superb indignation under criticism that Simon thought it best to accept the rebuke in all humility. And then Chief Inspector Teal took the Saint's arm and urged him firmly down the slope away from temptation.
"I'd better tell you what happened from our point of view," said the detective. "At twenty minutes to four the constable who was out here turned around and started to walk back towards the house. He had been watching the tennis for about a quarter of an hour. You might remember that all this time both the back and the front of the house had been covered, and nothing larger than a field mouse could have come through the plantation at the sides without making a noise that would certainly have attracted attention.
"The constable noticed that Vallance was not at his easel, and the windows of Whipplethwaite's study behind were open — he couldn't remember if they had been open before. Of course, he thought nothing of that. I don't think I mentioned that Vallance is also staying here as a guest. Then, just as the constable reached the top of the slope, Vallance came staggering out of the study, holding his head and bellowing that he'd been sandbagged. He was working at his painting, it appeared, when he was hit on the head from behind and stunned; and he remembered nothing more until he woke up on the floor of the study.
"The constable found a sandbag lying on the terrace just behind Vallance's stool. He went into the study and found the safe wide open. The theory, of course, would be that the robber dragged Vallance inside so that his body would not attract attention if the constable looked around."
Teal's voice was as detached and expressionless as if he had been making his statement in court. But once again that uncanny premonition flashed through the Saint's mind, rising ridiculously from that odd-sounding subjunctive in the detective's last sentence. Simon lighted a cigarette.
"I gather that Vallance is Lady Whipplethwaite's guest," he said presently.
Teal was only slightly surprised. "That is correct. How did you know?"
"His art fits in too perfectly with the house — and you said she was very progressive. I suppose he's been investigated?"