“Shall I tell you all about it, Doc?” asked the Saint insinuatingly, for it was a weakness of his to exaggerate his pose to the borders of farce. “Do,” urged Carn, in an unguarded moment. “I’ll tell you,” said Simon confidentially. “It was like this. . . .” Carn drew nearer. The Saint frowned, blinked, scratched his head, and stared blankly at the detective. “Do you know,” said Simon, in simulated dismay, “it’s a most extraordinary thing—I can’t remember. Isn’t that funny?” The detective was understood to reply that he was not amused. He said other things, in a low voice that was none the less pregnant with emotion, for the Saint’s ears alone, and Simon turned away with a pained expression. “I don’t agree,” said Simon. “The Ten-Toed Tripe-Hopper is nothing like the Wall-Eyed Giraffe. Try Keating’s.” “As a matter of fact,” interposed Patricia, who felt that things looked like getting out of hand, “Mr. Templar’s been with me most of the evening. We were taking a walk along by the cliff, and——” Simon raised his hand. “Hush!” he said. “Not before the Doc. You’ll be putting ideas into his head.” “Grrrr,” said Carn fiercely, which a man might well say when goaded to the limits of human endurance, and then he coughed energetically to cover it up. “You see?” said the Saint. “You’re embarrassing him.” Simon was perfect. His smiling, polished ease made Carn’s red-faced discomfort look like an intentional effort of the detective to entertain a children’s party with a few “faces” between the ice-creams and the Punch and Judy, and Patricia was weak with suppressed laughter. It was unpardonable, of course, but it was the only way to dispose of Carn’s burning curiosity. To have been secretive and mysterious, much as the Saint would have loved playing the part, would have been fatal. Carn suddenly realised that he was being futile—that the elasticity of his leg was being sorely tried. The Saint had been watching for that, and instantly he became genuinely apologetic. “Perhaps I ragged you a bit too much,” he hastened to confess. “Really, though, you were asking for it, by being so infernally suspicious. Almost as if you suspected me of just having murdered somebody, or robbing the till of the village Post Office. It’s really quite simple. Miss Holm and I were walking along the cliffs, and——” “I fell over,” Patricia explained, jumping in as soon as the Saint hesitated. “I landed on a ledge, and I wasn’t seriously hurt, but Mr. Templar had an awful job getting me back.” Carn frowned. He had been badly had. The Saint’s merciless leg-pulling had achieved its object. So masterly was the transition from teasing to sober seriousness that the seriousness went unquestioned, and Carn swallowed whole a story that he would certainly have disbelieved if it had been told him in the first place without any nonsense. “No offence, old thing,” pleaded the Saint contritely. “I couldn’t miss such a marvellous opportunity to make you imagine the worst.”