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his hand. “However, the mistake is fortunately not fatal,
except for Weissmann—and Emi lio will not annoy me again. Is your curiosity satisfied?”
    “Not so’s you’d notice it,” said
the Saint pungently. “We’re only just starting. Our curiosity hasn’t got
its bib wet yet. Who was this Weissmann bird, anyway?”
    The prince raised his finely pencilled eyebrows. “You seem to require a great deal of
information, my dear Mr. Templar.”
    “I soak up information like sponge, old
sweetheart. Tell me more. What is the boodle?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Granted. What is the boodle? You know.The jack—the swag —the loot—the mazuma—the stuff that all this song
and dance is about. The sardines in
that ingenious little can. Gosh-darn it,”
said the Saint, with exasperation, “you used to understand plain English. What’s the first prize in the
sweepstake? We’ve paid for our
tickets. We’re inquisitive. Let’s hear you tell us what it’s all about.”
    For the merest fraction of a second, a glitter
of expression skimmed across the prince’s eyes. And then it was gone
again, and his
sensitive features were once more as impassive as a Siberian sea.
    “You appear,” he said suavely,
“to be forgetting your posi tion.”
    “You don’t say.”
    The prince’s stick swung gracefully from his
fingertips.
    “You forget, my impetuous young friend,
that I am the visitor—and the dictator of the conversation. You are
inquisitive, but you may or may not be so ignorant as you wish me to believe.
The point is really immaterial. Except that, if you are honestly
ignorant, I can assure you—from nothing but my per sonal regard for you,
my dear Mr. Templar—I can assure you that it will be healthier for you to
remain in ignorance.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we have
wasted enough time. Mr. Templar, when you abducted Weissmann, he was carrying a small
steel box. I see that you have detached it from him. That box, Mr. Templar, is
my property, and I shall be glad to have it.”
    The Saint lounged even more languidly against
the wall.
    “I’ll bet you’d love it—Highness.”
    Simon’s voice was dreamy. And right down
behind that drawling dreaminess his brain was sizzling with the
knowledge that somewhere the interview had sprung a leak.
    In no way whatsoever had it taken the line he
had subcon sciously expected of it, and not one of his deliberate
discourtesies had been able to startle it back into the way it should have gone. The
Saint felt like a second-rate comedian frantically pumping the old oil
into a frosted audience, and feeling all the inclement draughts
of Lapland whistling back at him to roost below his wishbone. The badinage
was going hideously flat. He caught the prince’s gaze on him with a quiet
wraith of humour in it
    “In a few minutes more, my friend, I
shall believe that your ignorance is genuine. Or possibly your intelligence has
deteriorated. Such things have been known to happen. I will ad mit that,
when I decided to call on you myself, I had my doubts about the wisdom of the
proceeding. A natural curiosity of my own persuaded me to take the risk. Now
the risk has been justi fied, and I have been disappointed. It is a
pity. But perhaps one cannot have everything… .”
    “Allow me,” murmured the Saint
genially, “to mention that I’m doing my utmost to oblige. What, after all,
is one corpse more or less between friends? Of course, my shooting isn’t what it was, and as a matter of fact it never has been, and if you feel like taking a chance
on it——”
    “I rarely feel inclined to take
chances,” said the prince calmly. “But perhaps I have been distracting
your attention.”
    He made a slight signal with his right hand.
    Just for an instant, the movement seemed to be
nothing more than a meaningless gesture; and the Saint was deceived. And then
the scales fell from his eyes—just that one instant too late.
    He had forgotten that drumming on the front
door