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notes.
He flung Corrigan back. Ted Orping seized Corrigan from behind as the
Irishman's fists clenched.
"You dirty double-crossing rat! So you sold us to the Saint!"
Goldman tore the notes across and across, and scat-tered them over the floor.
"Get out of here!"
"Listen, Goldman I didn't "
"Get out!"
Ted Orping twisted the man round and pushed him towards the door. Corrigan's
eyes flamed, and he took a pace back into the room. Orping's hand touched his
hip.
Then Joe Corrigan turned on his heel and left the apartment.
Tex Goldman looked at Orping steadily. There was a question in Ted Orping's
gaze, another question in Tex Goldman's. Temporarily forgotten in his corner,
Clem Enright shuffled his feet again, open-mouthed.
"There's only one way to deal with traitors," Goldman said.
Ted Orping nodded. He shrugged, with the callous understanding that he had
been taught, and pulled down the brim of his hat. He went out without a word.
He caught Joe Corrigan in the street.
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"Walk a little way with me, Joe?"
"You get away from me," grated Corrigan surlily. "I don't want your company."
Ted Orping took his arm.
"Aw, come on, Joe. You don't understand the boss. He's a great guy, but
naturally he has to be suspicious. You must admit what you said didn't sound
right. I just took his part so's I could try an' make things right for you
when he cools off."
"I never double-crossed anyone," said Corrigan. "I dipped a toff's wallet on a
bus this morning, and got those notes."
"O' course, Joe. That's what he ought to have thought of. I understand."
They walked up Baker Street from the Marylebone Road crossing. Near the top, a
few yards from Regent's Park, Orping steered the other off to the right into a
dimly lighted mews. They went a little way down it, and Corrigan stopped.
"What's the idea?" he demanded sullenly. "We don't want to go this way."
Ted Orping looked left and right.
"This'll do," he said.
"What for?"
"Just to give you what's coming to you, rat."
He fired three times before Joe Corrigan could speak
CHAPTER III
SIMON TEMPLAR came back from Amsterdam a few days later. The items of
jewellery which sometimes came his way were never fenced in England the Saint
was far too notorious for that, and caution in the right place was still his
longest suit. He travelled by roundabout routes, for his movements were always
a subject of absorbing interest to the watchful powers of Scotland Yard. That
particular trip took him the best part of a week, but it was worth three
thousand pounds to him. He felt no remorse on account of Mr. Peabody. The
insurance companies would cover most if not all of the loss, and Mr. Peabody
had definitely asked for it. As for those insurance companies, Simon felt that
the blow would not be likely to shake their stock to its foundations. In a
misguided moment of altruistic zeal he had once attempted to insure his own
life, and had discovered that so long as he undertook not to fly aeroplanes,
travel in tropical parts, enter into naval or military service, become a
lion-tamer or a steeple-jack, or in fact do anything whatsoever that might by
any conceivable chance endanger the life of a reasonably healthy and
intelligent man, the insurance company would be charmed to accept his
premiums. His opinion of insurance companies was that they were bloated
organizations which were delighted to take anybody's money over risks that had
been eliminated from every angle that human ingenuity could foresee. They were
fair game so far as he was concerned, and his conscience was even more
pachydermatous than usual over their rare misfortunes.
But he came back to a London in which the insurance companies were more
worried than they had been for many years.
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Patricia Holm met him in the Haymarket, where the Air Union bus decanted him
after an uneventful journey from Ostend. One of the first things he saw was a
crim-son evening newspaper poster proclaiming "Another Bank Hold-up," but he
was not immediately impressed. They strolled up to Oddenino's for a cocktail,
and she sprang the news on him rather suddenly.
"They got Joe Corrigan," she said.
Simon raised his eyebrows. He read the newspaper cutting which she handed him,
and smoked a cigarette.
"Poor devil!... But what a fool! He shouldn't have gone back at least, I
thought he'd have the sense to put up a good story. Goldman must have caught
him out somehow..... Tex is clever!"
The cutting simply described the finding of the body and its identification.
Corrigan was the man of doubtful associations with three convictions to his
name, and the police were hopeful of making an early arrest.
"I saw Claud Eustace in Piccadilly the day before yesterday," said Patricia.
"He as good as told me they hadn't a hope of getting the man who did it."
"I suppose it'd be a long shot if the night porter in Tex's block recognized
the photograph," said the Saint thoughtfully. "It isn't particularly
flattering to Joe. And the whole Green Cross bunch would have their alibis."
He speared a cherry and frowned at it. "Tex might have done it himself or else
it was Ted Orping. I don't see Brother Clem as a cold-blooded killer."
"There've been some odd-looking men hanging about Manson Place," she told him;
and the Saint's eyebrows slanted again dangerously.
"Any trouble?"
"No. But I've been taking care not to come home late at night."
Simon sipped his Bronx and gazed at the Bac-chanalian array of shakers and
glasses stencilled on the coloured glass behind the bar.
"I expected things would be quiet. Tex isn't the lad to waste his energies on
side issues when there's big stuff in the offing. Now that I'm home, South
Kensing-ton may get unhealthy. Glory be, Pat wouldn't you love to see the
faces of the local trouts if Tex started spraying S.W.7 with Tommy guns for my
benefit?"
It was characteristic of him to turn off the menace with a flippant remark,
and yet he knew better than anyone what a threat hung over others in London
besides himself others who had a far sounder claim than he to object to a
lavish expenditure of ammunition. The Saint had never cared to live safely;
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