"Arriba Espana," murmured the Saint solemnly. "But you won't mind if I call you Pongo, will you? I can't remember all your other names at once. And the point, my dear Senor Pongo, is not exactly how long I've been here but how long you've been here."
There was a moment's startled silence, and then Quintana said coldly: "Will you be good enough to explain?"
Simon gestured slightly with his cigarette.
"You see," he said, "unless you have a very good alibi, Pongo, I shall naturally have to include you with the rest of the menagerie. And that will cost you money."
Major Vicente Guillermo Gabriel Perez's flat vicious eyes stared at him with a rather stupid blankness. The other two men seemed to have been similarly afflicted with a temporary paralysis of incomprehension. But the Saint's paternal geniality held them all together with the unobtrusive dominance of a perfect host. With the same natural charm he tried to relieve them of some of their perplexity.
"We have here," he explained, "Comrade Ladek Urivetzky, once of Warsaw and subsequently of various other places. A bloke with quite a reputation in certain circles, if I remember rightly. I think the last time I heard of him was in connection with the celebrated City and Continental Bank case, when he got away with about fifty thousand quid after depositing a bundle of Danish premium bonds for security. All the boys at Scotland Yard were looking for him all over the place, and I expect they were still looking for him until they heard that he'd been mopped up in Oviedo. Now it seems that he isn't dead at all. He's right here in London, playing happy families with the representative of the Spanish Rebels and" — Simon bowed faintly in the direction of the square man — "Major Vicente Guillermo Gabriel Pongo, of the Third Division of the army of the Spanish Whatnots. So I have a feeling that Chief Inspector Teal would be interested to know why two such illustrious gentlemen are entertaining a notorious criminal."
There was another short strained stillness before Quintana broke it with a brittle laugh.
"If you think that we are here to be bluffed by a common burglar—"
"Not common," Simon protested mildly. "Whatever else I may be I've never been called that. Ask Comrade Urivetzky. But in any case there are worse crimes in this country than burglary."
"What do you mean?"