“Quit holding up on me,” Liefman implored. “Is the Saint on the war-path again?”
Simon began his tale at the beginning.
5
The return from Scherpenzeel, after a gargantuan repast devoured with respectful deliberation, was made at the same suicidal velocity, but so coolly timed that clocks were booming the hour that Simon had fixed in his mind as the Jaguar purred to a stop in the street where Hendrik Jonkheer plied his trade, but several doors away from the house itself. The short street was deserted except for one other car parked at the opposite end.
“I only hope you’ve figured this on the button,” Pieter Liefman said.
“I am the world’s greatest practical psychologist,” said the Saint. “Go ahead with your part of the act.”
He slipped out of the car and strolled unhurriedly down the street to Jonkheer’s door. The building was dark and wrapped in silence. He turned the door handle experimentally. The door started to yawn at his touch, and no inside chain stopped it.
Simon stepped in, closing it swiftly and silently behind him. With a pencil flashlight smothered in his hand so that the bulb was almost covered by his fingers, he let a dim glow play momentarily over the inside of the frame. The chain was dangling, the hasp at one end still attached to it with fragments of freshly torn wood adhering to the screws, testifying to the inherent weakness of such devices which was no surprise to him.
He turned the same hardly more than phosphorescent illumination around the hall, and at the foot of the stairs he saw the burly bodyguard, Zuilen, lying on the floor, the wrists and ankles expertly bound and tied together and his mouth covered with adhesive tape. The big policeman seemed uninjured, except probably in his dignity, to judge by the lively glare of wrath that smouldered in his eyes.
Simon went past him without pausing for any social amenities, moving with the fluid soundlessness of a disembodied shadow.