"Raddon here," he said in a rapid subdued voice. "Something has gone wrong. Can't do anything more this evening. Better turn our attention to the next proposition…" He broke off and listened. "All right. Usual place tomorrow, as early as possible."
He hung up at once and found Welmont looking curiously at him out of his ferret eyes.
"Was that Z?" Welmont asked.
"It was Gandhi," answered Raddon curtly. "If you're ready we'll go. There's nothing more for tonight. Too dangerous to move until we know more about Templar."
They departed — none too soon for Tyler, who was jumpy and worried — leaving one of the big double doors slightly ajar.
Simon Templar stroked the cog of his lighter and inhaled deeply and luxuriously from a much-needed cigarette. He heard the three men walking over the cobbles outside; and then silence. With the lithe ease of a panther he lowered himself from the overhead beam on which he had been lying at full length, dropped to the roof of the taxi and thence descended to the ground.
There was a smile on his lips as he dusted himself down. That beam, so easily reached from the roof of the taxi, had positively asked him to make its acquaintance when he had first glanced up at it. Patricia, he knew, could handle her end of the job with smooth efficiency; he had had a couple of minutes earnest talk with her before they parted. For Simon Templar, even before he left the cellar, had put in some of that characteristic quick thinking which was the everlasting despair of the law and the ungodly alike. His restless brain, working at supercharged pressure, had looked into the immediate future with a clarity that was little short of clairvoyant; he had formulated a plan of action out of a situation that had not even acquired a definite geography. But that power of thinking ahead into the most remote possibilities was the gift which had so often left his enemies breathless in the background, hopelessly outpaced by the hurricane speed of the Saint's imagination…
Which satisfactorily explains why he was still in Mr Tyler's garage, dusting the well-creased knees of his impeccable Anderson & Sheppard trousers and by no means dissatisfied with the results of his roosting. He grinned helplessly as he realised how easily the departed trio could have seen him if they had only looked up into the dusty rafters. Not that it would have mattered much: he was armed, and they weren't. However, it was just as well that he had remained undiscovered. His ears hadn't told him much more than he knew already; but his eyes had served him well.
Raddon's phone call to Scotland Yard had given him nothing to worry about. If he knew anything of Patricia she would be through with Beatrice Avery long before the padded shoulders of the law could darken the portals of Parkside Court.
His eyes had served him on the second phone call. Lying along the overhead beam, he had looked straight down upon the telephone… He chuckled as he thought of Raddon's precautions. Raddon would never have used the instrument at all for his second call if it had been one of the old-fashioned non-dialling type. He couldn't have given his number to the exchange without giving it to Welmont and Tyler at the same time. Dialling was different: he had only to obtrude his body between his companions and the telephone, and they couldn't possibly know what number he had called.