Teal's face turned a shade redder.
"You're not going to save yourself by quibbling like that," he snarled. "It's no good, Templar. You can try it on the jury. You're under arrest."
He took his right hand out of his pocket for the first time in that interview; and a pair of handcuffs clinked in it.
Simon glanced at them without moving.
"Hadn't you better think again, old dear?" he suggested quietly. "I don't know why I should go out of my way to save your hide, but I suppose I'm funny that way. Perhaps it's because life wouldn't be the same if you got chucked out of Scotland Yard on your ear and couldn't bring your tummy round to see me any more. Perhaps it's because I object to being marched into Piccadilly with bracelets over my wrists. But somehow or other I've got to save you from yourself."
"You don't have to worry—"
"But I do, Claud. I can't help it. it'd keep me awake at night, thinking of you sleeping out in the cold gutters with no one to even buy you a piece of spearmint. And it's all so obvious. The whole trouble is that you're jumping to too many conclusions. Just because I'm the Saint, and you never found any other criminals, you think I must be all of them. Then you hear of some guy called the Z-Man, so you think I must be him too. Well, who the hell is this Z-Man, and why haven't I heard of him before?"
Chief Inspector Teal bit on his gum in a supercharged effort of self-control that threatened to boil over at any moment. It was only by straining his will power to the limit that he succeeded in recovering the pose of mountainous boredom that he usually struggled in vain to maintain in the Saint's maddeningly nonchalant presence.
"I don't know what you hope to gain by all this, Templar, but you're wasting your breath," he said, shifting his lump of worn-out spearmint from one side of his mouth to the other. "I'm acting on facts that even you can't get away from. You may as well know that Sergeant Barrow was in the Dorchester at the time."
"Keeping a fatherly eye on me?"