He was half a head shorter than the Saint, but a good two stone heavier. His eyes were large and child-like behind a pair of enormous horn-rimmed glasses, and he wore a straggly pale walrus moustache. The sight of this big middle-aged man in the shocking clothes, with his ridiculous little butterfly net, was as diverting as anything the Saint could remember.
“Of course—you’re Dr. Carn,” said the Saint, and the other started.
“How did you know?”
“I always seem to be giving people surprises,” complained Simon, completely at his ease. “It’s so simple. You look less like a doctor than anyone but a doctor could look, and there’s only one doctor in Baycombe. How’s trade?”
Suddenly Carn was no longer genial.
“My profession?” he said stiffly. “I don’t quite understand.”
“You are one of many,” sighed the Saint. “Nobody ever quite understands me. And I wasn’t talking about your new profession, but about your old trade.”
Carn looked very closely at the younger man, but Simon was gazing at the sea, and his face was inscrutable except for a faintly mocking twist at the corners of his mouth—a twist that might have meant anything.
“You’re clever, Templar——”
“Mr. Templar to the aristocracy, but Saint to you,” Simon corrected him benevolently. “Naturally I’m clever. If I wasn’t, I’d be dead. And my especial brilliance is an infallible memory for faces.”