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shoulder
against the other’s thighs.
    The burglar
went over backwards with a violent thud; and as most of his
breath jolted out of him he freighted it with a selection of
picturesque expletives which opened up new vistas of biologic
theory. One hand, swinging up in a vicious arc, was caught clearly in the
beam of the fallen flashlight, and it was not empty.
    “I
think,” said the Saint, “we can do without the persua der.”
    He jabbed
the muzzle of his gun very hard into the place where his guest’s ribs forked, and heard a
satisfactory gasp of pain in response. His
left hand caught the other’s wrist as it descended, twisted with all the skill of a manipulative surgeon, and let go again to grab the
life-preserver as it dropped out of
the man’s numbed fingers.
    “You
mustn’t hit people with things like this,” he said reprovingly.
“It hurts. … Doesn’t it ?”
    The
intruder, with jagged stars shooting through his head, did not offer
an opinion; but his squirming lost nearly all of its early vigour. The Saint
sat on him easily, and made sure that there were no other weapons on his
person before he stood up again.
    The main
lights clicked on with a sudden dazzling brightness. Patricia
Holm stood in the doorway, the lines of her figure draping
exquisite contours into the folds of a filmy neglige, her
fair hair tousled with sleep and hazy startlement in her blue eyes.
    “I’m
sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
    “That’s
all right,” said the Saint. “We’re keeping open house.”
    He lounged
back to rest the base of his spine against the edge of the table and
inspected the caller in more detail. He saw a short-legged barrel-chested
individual with a thatch of carroty hair, a wide coarse-lipped mouth, and
a livid scar running from one side of a flattened nose to near the lobe of a misshapen
ear; and recognition dawned in his gaze.
    He waved
his gun in a genial gesture.
    “You
remember our old pal and playmate, Red McGuire ?” he murmured.
“Just back from a holiday at Parkhurst after his last job of robbery with
violence. Somebody told him about all those jewels we keep around, and he
couldn’t wait to drop in and see them. Why didn’t you ring the bell,
Red, and save yourself the trouble of carving up our door?”
    McGuire
sat on the floor and tenderly rubbed his head.
    “Okay,”
he growled. “I can do without the funny stuff. Go on an’ call the
cops.”
    Simon
considered the suggestion. It seemed a very logical procedure. But it left
an unfinished edge of puzzlement still in his mind.
    There was
something about finding himself the victim of an ordinary burglary
that didn’t quite ring bells. He knew well enough that his reputation was
enough to make any ordinary burglar steer as far away from him as the
landscape would allow. And serious burglars didn’t break into any
dwelling chosen at random and hope for the best, without even
knowing the identity of the occupant—certainly not burglars with the
professional status of Red McGuire. Therefore …
    His eyes
drained detail from the scene with fine drawn intentness. Nothing
seemed to have been touched. Perhaps he had arrived too quickly for that. Everything was as he
had left it when he went to bed. Except—
    The emptied
packet of Miracle Tea which Patricia had bought for him that
evening was still in his coat pocket. The packet which he had refilled for Teal’s
personal consumption was still on the table. … Or was it ?
    For on the floor, a yard from
where Red McGuire had fallen, lay another
identical packet of Miracle Tea.
    Simon
absorbed the jar of realization without batting an eyelid. But a slowly
increasing joy crept into the casual radiance of his smile.
    “Why
ask me to be so unfriendly, Red?” he drawled. “After all,
what’s a packet of tea between friends ?”
    If he
needed any confirmation of his surmise, he had it in the way Red McGuire’s
small green eyes circled the room and froze on the yellow