An angry and somewhat uncomfortable sleuth went back to the Saint's address and waited for some time in agony before the object of his attention came home. As soon as he was relieved at eight o'clock, he telephoned headquarters to report the tragedy; but by then it was too late.
Chief Inspector Teal's eyes swept scorchingly over the company that had collected in Vascoe's drawing-room. It consisted of Elliot Vascoe himself, Meryl, the Comte de Beaucroix, an assortment of servants, and the night guard from Ingerbeck. "I might have known what to expect," he complained savagely. "You wouldn't help me to prevent anything like this happening, but after it's happened you expect me to clean up the mess. It'd serve you right if I told you to let your precious Ingerbeck do the cleaning up. If the Saint was here now—"
He broke off, with his jaw dropping and his eyes rounding into reddened buttons of half-unbelieving wrath.
The Saint was there. He was drifting through the door like a pirate entering a captured city, with an impotently protesting butler fluttering behind him like a flustered vulture — sauntering coolly in with a cigarette between his lips and blithe brows slanted banteringly over humorous blue eyes. He nodded to Meryl, and smiled over the rest of the congregation.
"Hullo, souls," he murmured. "I heard I'd won my bet, I toddled over to make sure."
For a moment Vascoe himself was gripped in the general petrification; and then he stepped forward, his face crimson with fury.
"There you are," he burst out incoherently. "You come here — you — There's your man, Inspector. Arrest him!"
Teal's mouth clamped up again.
"You don't have to tell me," he said grimly.
"And just why," Simon inquired lazily, as the detective — moved towards him, "am I supposed to be arrested?"