“Delighted—delighted—long expected pleasure—what?” he babbled.
“Is it really?” asked the Saint guilelessly.
Algy screwed a pane of glass into his eye and surveyed the visitor with awe.
“So you’re the Mystery Man!” he prattled on. “You don’t mind being called that? I’m sure you won’t. Everybody calls you the Mystery Man, and I honestly think it suits you most awfully well, don’t you know. And fancy taking the Pill Box! Isn’t it too frightfully draughty? But of course you’re one of these strong, hearty he-men we see in the pictures.”
“Algy, you’re being rude,” interrupted the girl.
“Am I really? Only meant for good-fellowship and all that sort of thing. What? What? No offence, old banana pip, you know, don’t you know.”
“Do I? Don’t I?” asked the Saint, blinking.
The girl rushed into the pause, for she already had a good estimate of the Saint’s perverse sense of fun, and dreaded its irresponsibility. She felt that at any moment he would produce a revolver and ask if they knew anyone worth murdering.
“Algy, be an angel and go and tell Aunt Agatha to hurry up.”
“That is Mynheer Hans Bloem’s nephew,” observed the Saint calmly as the door closed behind the talkative one. “He is thirty-four. He lived for some years in America; in the City of London he is known as a man with mining property in Transvaal.”