"The trouble is that if anything goes wrong, that won't stop him squawking," Teal said gloomily.
Of all the persons concerned, Simon Templar was probably the most untroubled. For two days he peacefully followed the trivial rounds of his normal law-abiding life; and the plain-clothes men whom Teal had set to watch him, in spite of his instructions, grew bored with their vigil.
At about two o'clock in the morning of the third day his telephone rang.
"This is Miss Vascoe's chauffeur, sir," said the caller. "She couldn't reach a telephone herself, so she asked me to speak to you. She said that she must see you."
Simon's blood ran a shade faster — he had been half expecting such a call.
"When and where?" he asked crisply.
"If you can be in Regent's Park near the Zoo entrance in an hour's time, sir — she'll get there as soon as she has a chance to slip away."
"Tell her I'll be there," said the Saint.
He hung up the instrument and looked out of the window. On the opposite pavement, a man paced wearily up and down, as he had done for two nights before, wondering why he should have been chosen for a job that kept him out of bed to so little purpose.
But on this particular night the monotony of the sleuth's existence was destined to be relieved. He followed his quarry on a brief walk which led to Soho and into one of the many night haunts which crowd a certain section of that fevered district, where the Saint was promptly ushered to a favoured table by a beaming head waiter. The sleuth, being an unknown and unprofitable-looking stranger, was ungraciously hustled into an obscure corner. The Saint sipped a drink and watched the dancing for a few minutes, and then got up and sauntered back through the darkened room towards the exit. The sleuth, noting with a practised eye that he had still left three-quarters of his drink and a fresh packet of cigarettes on the table, and that he had neither asked for nor paid a bill, made the obvious deduction and waited without anxiety for his return. After a quarter of an hour he began to have faint doubts of his wisdom; after half an hour he began to sweat; and in forty-five minutes he was in a panic. The lavatory attendant didn't remember noticing the Saint, and certainly he wasn't in sight when the detective arrived; the doorman was quite certain that he had gone out nearly an hour ago, because he had left him ten shillings to pay the waiter.