"What are we wasting time for?" snorted Vascoe. "He admits he was here—"
"I was here," said the Saint coolly. "You know how the back of the house goes practically down to the river, and you have a little private garden there and a landing stage? I knew that if anything was happening, it'd happen on that side — it'd be too risky to do anything on the street frontage, where anybody might come by and see it. Well, things were happening. There was a man out there, but I beat him over the head and tied him up before he could make a noise. Then I waited around; and somebody opened the window from inside and threw out a parcel. So I picked it up and took it home. Here it is."
He took it out of his hip pocket — it was a very large parcel, and the bulge would have been easy to notice if anyone had got behind him.
Vascoe let out a hoarse yell, jumped at it, and wrenched it out of his hands. He ripped it open with clawing fingers.
"My miniatures!" he sobbed. "My medallions — my cameos! My—"
"Here, wait a minute!"
Teal thrust himself forward again, taking possession of the package. For a second or two the denouement had blown him sky-high, turned him upside down, and left him with the feeling that the pit of his stomach had suddenly gone away on an unauthorised vacation; but now he had his bearings again. He faced the Saint with homicidal determination.
"It's a fine story," he said raspily. "But this is one time you're not going to get away with it. Yes, I get the idea. You pull the job so you can win your bet, and then you bring the stuff back with that fairy tale and think everything's going to be all right. Well, you're not going to get away with it! What happened to the fellow you say you knocked out and tied up, and who else saw him, and who else saw all these things happen?"
The Saint smiled.
"I left him locked up in the garage," he said. "He's probably still there. As for who else saw him, Martin Ingerbeck was with me."