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Hayn-Edgar Hayn.”
    “Why?” asked the Saint innocently.
    “It happens to be the name I was christened with, Mr. Templar,” Hayn replied with some asperity.
    “Is-that-so!” drawled the Saint mildly. “Sorry again!”
    Hayn frowned. There was something peculiarly infuriating about the Saint in that particular vein- something that, while it rasped the already raw fringe of his temper, was also beginning to send a queer, indefinable uneasiness creeping up his back. “And I’m sorry if it annoys you,” he snapped.
    Simon Templar regarded him steadily. “It annoys me,” he said, “because, as I told you, it’s my business never to make mistakes, and I just hate being wrong. The records of Somerset House told me that your name was once something quite different- that you weren’t christened Edgar Hayn at all. And I believed it.”
    Hayn said nothing. He sat quite still, with that tingling thrill of apprehension crawling round the base of his scalp. And the Saint’s clear blue gaze never left Hayn’s face.
    “If I was wrong about that,” the Saint went on softly, “I may quite easily have been wrong about other things. And that would annoy me more than ever, because I don’t like wasting my time. I’ve spent several days figuring out a way of meeting you for just this little chat-I thought it was about time our relationship became a bit more personal-and it’d break my heart to think it had all been for nothing. Don’t tell me that, Edgar, beloved-don’t tell me it wasn’t any use my finding out that dear little Jerry was a friend of yours-don’t tell me that I might have saved myself the trouble I took scraping an acquaintance with the said Jerry just to bring about this informal meeting. Don’t tell me that, dear heart!”
    Hayn moistened his lips. He was fighting down an insane, unreasoning feeling of panic; and it was the Saint’s quiet, level voice and mocking eyes, as much as anything, that held Edgar Hayn rooted in his chair.
    “Don’t tell me, in fact, that you won’t appreciate the little conjuring trick I came here especially to show you,” said the Saint, more mildly than ever.
    He reached out suddenly and took the cards he had dealt from Hayn’s nerveless fingers. Hayn had guessed what they would prove to be, long before Simon, with a flourish, had spread the cards out face upwards on the table.
    “Don’t tell me you aren’t pleased to see our visiting cards, personally presented!” said Simon, in his very Saintliest voice. His white teeth flashed in a smile, and there was a light of adventurous recklessness dancing in his eyes as he looked at Edgar Hayn across five neat specimens of the sign of the Saint.
    Chapter VII
“AND if it’s pure prune juice and boloney,” went on the Saint, in that curiously velvety tone which still contrived somehow to prickle all over with little warning spikes-“if all that is sheer banana oil and soft roe, I shan’t even raise a smile with the story I was going to tell you. It’s my very latest one, and it’s about a loose-living land-shark called Hayn, who was born in a barn in the rain. What he’d struggled to hide was found out when he died-there was mildew all over his brain. Now, that one’s been getting a big hand everywhere I’ve told it since I made it up, and it’ll be one of the bitterest disappointments of my life if it doesn’t fetch you, sweetheart!”
    Hayn’s chair went over with a crash as he kicked to his feet. Strangely enough, now that the murder was out and the first shock absorbed, the weight on his mind seemed lightened, and he felt better able to cope with the menace. “So you’re the young cub we’ve been looking for!” he rasped.
    Simon raised his hand.
    “I’m called the Saint,” he murmured. “But don’t let us get melodramatic about it, son. The last man who got melodramatic with me was hanged at Exeter six months back. It don’t seem to be healthy!”
    Hayn looked round. The diners had left, and as