"Can't I?" drawled the Saint with his head round the door. "And what sort of a crime is it to go and have a chat with a film producer? Maybe my face is the face the world has been waiting for."
He was gone before Teal could think of a reply.
Mr Hubert Sentinel, the grand panjandrum of Sentinel Films, was not an aristocrat by birth or even a Conservative by conviction; but even he might have been slightly upset if he had heard himself referred to as "Comrade Sentinel." For he was considered a coming man in the British film industry, and obtaining an entry into his presence was about as easy as getting into Hitler's mountain chalet with one fist clenched and a red flag in the other.
But the Saint accomplished the apparently impossible at the first attempt. He simply enclosed his card in a sealed envelope with a request that it should be immediately delivered to Mr Sentinel, and he waited exactly two minutes.
Mr Sentinel was in conference. He took one look at the card, and during the next half minute one matinee idol, one prominent author, two script writers, a famous director and a covey of yes-men were swept out of the office like leaves before an autumn gale. When Simon Templar was admitted Mr Hubert Sentinel was alone, and Mr Sentinel was looking at the back of the Saint's card. On it were pencilled the words: Re the Z-Man.
"Take a pew, Mr Templar," he said, pushing forward a cigar box and inspecting his visitor out of bright and observant eyes. "I've heard about you of course."
"Who hasn't?" murmured the Saint modestly.
He accepted a cigar, carefully clipped the end, lighted it and emitted a fragrant cloud of blue smoke. It was merely an example of that theatrical timing which so pleased the Saint's heart. Sentinel waited restively, turning a pencil between his fingers. He was a thin bald-headed man with a birdlike face and an air of inexhaustible nervous vitality.
"If it had been anyone else I should have thought it was some crank with a bee in his bonnet," he said. "We get a lot of them around here. But you — Are you going to tell me that there's anything in these rumours?"
"There's everything in them," said the Saint deliberately. "They happen to be true. The Z-Man is as real a person as you are."