"Maybe you have," said the Saint encouragingly.
Indubitably that was the gladstone which he had heard about. It even had the initials "HSM" gold-stamped beside the handle. But if there had ever been an ostrich-skin leather case in the lining, it wasn't there any more. The lining had been slashed to ribbons, and you could have found a long-lost pin in it.
It was a picturesque mystery-museum piece, but that was all The current questions were, how had it come to rest there, and why? Johan Blatt had removed it from the Ascot; and by no stretch of imagination could his description have been confused with that of the latest failure in the field of empirical levitation. Vaschetti and Blatt were even more different than chalk and cheese: they didn't even begin with the same letter.
Simon Templar pondered that intensely for a time, while the house detective teetered batrachianly on his heels and gnawed on his bowsprit of cigar. The house detective, Simon thought, would surely have been a big help in detecting a house. Aside from that, he was evidently content to let nature and the Police Department take their course. He would have made Dick Tracy break out in a rectangular rash.
They remained in that sterile atmosphere until the sound of voices and footsteps in the corridor, swelling rapidly louder, presaged the advent of Lieutenant Kinglake and his cohorts.
"Ah," said Detective Yard wisely, as he sighted the Saint.
Kinglake didn't even take time out to show surprise. He turned savagely on the frog-shaped house detective.
"How in hell did this bird get in here?"
"I came in under my own power," Simon intervened. "I was thinking of moving, and I wanted to see what the rooms were like. Don't blame Rowden. He was trying to tell me about the wooden mattresses. If you look again, you'll see where he was even ripping them open to show me the teak linings."
The Lieutenant was not amused. He had never looked like a man who was amused very often, and this was manifestly not one of his nights to relax in a bubble bath of wit and badinage.