“Mr Inverest, I never saw your daughter before in my life. I didn’t have the faintest idea who she was. I just happened to meet her outside the Colosseum. She was having an argument with a cab driver who was trying to overcharge her. I helped her out, and we went into the place together. We went on talking, naturally. And then I was conked on the head. That’s all I know.”
“There were two others,” said the superior policeman impartially. “After they knocked out Mr Templar, they grabbed Miss Inverest and rushed her out to a car which was waiting outside. I think, your Excellency, that if you give us a little time alone with Mr Templar, we may persuade him to tell us who they were and how he arranged to — as you say — put the finger on your daughter.”
Inverest waved him down impatiently. “Mr Templar is to be released at once.”
“Your Excellency must be joking.”
“I demand it in the name of the Government of the United States. There is no reasonable charge that can be brought against him.”
“But a man of his reputation—”
Inverest’s level gray eyes, oddly reminiscent of his daughter’s, searched the Saint’s face over his spectacle rims with the same detached appraisal that the girl had given it.
“Inspector Buono,” he said, “Mr Templar is rumored to have considerable disregard for the law, but there are no actual charges of lawbreaking pending against him in my country. His notoriety, as I understand it, comes from his reprehensible habit of taking the law into his own hands. But it is well known that he is a relentless enemy of criminals. I cannot think of anyone who would be less likely to have any part of such a crime as this. O si sic omnes! ”
It was a quaintly professorial and almost pedantic speech, even to the Latin quotation at the end, of the type that frequently made Mr Inverest an easy butt for the more ribald type of political heckling, but his handling of it gave it an austere dignity.
Inspector Buono shrugged helplessly.