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taking in other details of her
appearance, recognised the simple perfection of a fifty-guinea gown. And her
face was utterly innocent of guile—Wilfred Garniman had a shrewd
perception of these things also. She scanned the crowd anxiously, as
though looking for someone, and in due course it became apparent that the
someone was not present. Wilfred Garniman was the last man she looked
at. Their glances met, and held for some seconds; and then the
faintest ripple of a smile touched her lips.
    And exactly one hour later, Simon Templar was ringing the bell at
28, Mallaby Road, Harrow.
    He was not expecting a reply, but he always liked to be sure of his
ground. He waited ten minutes, ringing the bell at intervals; and then
he went in by a ground-floor window. It took him straight into
Mr. Garniman’s study. And there, after carefully drawing the
curtains, the Saint was busy for some time. For thirty-five minutes by his watch, to be exact.
    And then he sat down in a chair and lighted a cigarette.
    “Somewhere,” he murmured thoughtfully, “there is a catch in
this.”
    For the net result of a systematic and expert search had panned out
at precisely nil.
    And this the Saint was not expecting. Before he left the Carlton, he
had propounded one theory with all the force of an incontestable fact.
    “Wilfred may have decided to take my intrusion calmly, and trust that
he’ll be able to put me out of the way before I managed to strafe him
good and proper; but he’d never leave himself without at least one line of
retreat. And that implies being able to take his booty with him. He’d
never have put it in a bank, because there’d always be the chance that
someone might notice things and get curious. It will have been in a safe deposit;
but it won’t be there now.”
    Somewhere
or other—somewhere within Wilfred Garniman’s easy
reach—there was a large quantity of good solid cash, ready and willing to be converted into all manner of
music by anyone who picked it up and
offered it a change of address. It might
have been actually on Wilfred Garniman’s person; but the Saint didn’t think so. He had decided that it
would most probably be somewhere in
the house at Harrow; and as he drove
out there he had prepared to save time by considering the potential hiding-places in advance. He had
thought of many, and discarded them
one by one, for various reasons; and
his final judgment had led him unhesitatingly into the very room where he had spent thirty-five fruitless
minutes … and where he was now
getting set to spend some more.
    “This is the Scorpion’s sacred lair,” he figured, “and
Wilfred wouldn’t let himself forget it. He’d play it up to himself for all it was
worth. It’s the inner sanctum of the great ruthless organisation that
doesn’t exist. He’d sit in that chair in the evenings—at that
desk—there—thinking what a wonderful man he was. And he’d look
at whatever innocent bit of interior decoration hides his secret cache, and
gloat over the letters and dossiers that he’s got hidden there, and the
money they’ve brought in or are going to bring in—the fat, slimy,
wallowing slug… .”
    Again his eyes travelled slowly round the room. The plainly papered
walls could have hidden nothing, except behind the pictures, and he had
tried every one of those. Dummy books he had ruled out at once, for a servant
may always take down a book; but he had tested the back of every shelf—and found nothing. The whole floor was carpeted, and he gave
that no more than a glance: his
analysis of Wilfred Garniman’s august meditations
did not harmonise with the vision of the same gentleman crawling about on his
hands and knees. And every drawer of
the desk was already unlocked, and not one of them contained anything of compromising interest.
    And that appeared to exhaust the possibilities. He stared speculatively
at the fireplace—but he had done that before. It ignored the exterior
architecture of the building and was