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as
well.”
    He sat
down at the table and cheerfully proceeded to pack his own remarkable version
of Miracle Tea into the original carton. Having stuffed it full, he replaced
the seals and wrappings with as much care as he had removed them; and when he
had finished there was not a trace to show that the package had ever been
tampered with.
    “What
will you do if he dies ?” asked the girl.
    “Send a wreath of tea
roses to his funeral,” said the Saint. He
put down the completed packet after he had inspected it closely from every angle, and moved himself over
to a more comfortable lounging site on
the settee. His eyes were alert and hot with a gathering zest of
devilment. “Now we go into the second
half of this brilliant conspiracy.”
    “What
does that mean ?”
    “Finding
out where Claud Eustace buys fifteen hundred quid for half a dollar. Just
think, sweetheart—we can go shopping once a week and keep ourselves in
caviar without ever doing another stroke of work!”
    He reached
for the telephone and set it on his lap while he dialled Teal’s private number
with a swift and dancing fore finger. The telephone, he knew, was beside Teal’s
bed; and the promptness with which his ring was answered
established the detective’s location with quite miraculous certainty.
    “I
hope,” said the Saint, with instantaneous politeness, “that I haven’t
interrupted you in the middle of any import ant business,
Claud.”
    The
receiver did not actually explode in his ear. It was a soundly constructed
instrument, designed to resist spontane ous detonation. It
did, however, appear to feel some strain in reproducing the cracked-foghorn
cadence in which the answering voice said: “Who’s that?”
    “And how,” said the
Saint, “is the little tum-tum tonight ?”
    Mr Teal
did not repeat his question. He had no need to. There was only one voice in the
whole world which was capable of inquiring after his stomach with
the exact inflec tion which was required to make that hypersensitive organ curl up
into tight knots that sent red and yellow flashes squirting across his
eyeballs.
    Mr Teal
did not groan aloud; but a minute organic groan swept through him like a cramp
from his fingertips to his toes.
    It is true
that he was in bed, and it is also true that he had been interrupted in the
middle of some important business; but that important business had been
simply and exclusively concerned with trying to drown his
multitudinous woes in sleep. For a man in the full bloom of health
to be smitten over the knob with a blunt instrument is usually a
somewhat trying experience; but for a man in Mr Teal’s dyspeptic condition
to be thus beaned is ultimate disaster. Mr Teal now had two fearful
pains rivalling for his attention, which he had been trying to
give to neither. The only way of evad ing this responsibility which he had been able to think of
had been to go to bed and go to sleep, which
is what he had set out to do as soon as the Saint had left him at his door; but sleep had steadfastly eluded him
until barely five minutes before the telephone bell had blared its recall to
conscious suffering into his anguished ear. And when he became aware that the emotions which he had been caused by that
recall had been wrung out of him for
no better object than to answer some
Saintly badinage about his abdomen, his throat dosed up so that it was an effort for him to breathe.
    “Is
that all you want to know ?” he got out in a strangled squawk.
“Because if so—— ”
    “But
it bothers me, Claud. You know how I love your tummy. It would break
my heart if anything went wrong with it.”
    “Who
told you anything was wrong with it?”
    “Only
my famous deductive genius. Or do you mean to tell me you drink
Miracle Tea because you like it ?”
    There was
a pause. With the aid of television, Mr Teal could have been seen
to wriggle. The belligerent blare crumpled out of his voice.
    “Oh,”
he said weakly. “What miracle tea ?”
    “The
stuff