The Saint lighted a cigarette and leaned back.
"Aren't you being just a little bit hasty?" he inquired reasonably; but his blue eyes were twinkling with imps of mockery that sent cold shivers up and down the detective's spine. "All I've done is to bet that there'll be a burglary at Vascoe's within the week. It may be unusual, but is it criminal? If I were an insurance company—"
"You aren't an insurance company," Teal said pungently. "But you wouldn't make a bet like that if you thought there was any risk of losing it."
"That's true. But that still doesn't make me a burglar. Maybe I was hoping to put the idea into somebody else's head. Now if you want to give your nasty suspicious mind something useful to work on, why don't you find out something about Vascoe's insurance?"
For a moment the audacity of the suggestion took Teal's breath away. And then incredulity returned to his rescue.
"Yes — and see if I can catch him burgling his own house so he can lose five thousand pounds!" he hooted. "Do you know what would happen if I let my suspicious mind have its own way? I'd have you arrested as a suspected person and keep you locked up for the rest of the week!"
The Saint nodded enthusiastically.
"Why don't you do that?" he suggested. "It'd give me a gorgeous alibi."
Teal glared at him thoughtfully. The temptation to take the Saint at his word was almost overpowering. But the tantalising twinkle in the Saint's eyes, and the memory of many past encounters with the satanic guile of that debonair freebooter, filled Teal's heated brain with a gnawing uneasiness that paralysed him. The Saint must have considered that contingency: if Teal carried out his threat, he might be doing the very thing that the Saint expected and wanted him to do — he might be walking straight into a baited trap that would elevate him to new pinnacles of ridiculousness before it turned him loose. The thought made him go hot and cold all over.
Which was exactly what Simon meant it to do.