Simon stared.

"You're a blinkin' marvel, George," he murmured. "You are, really."

With the host's assistance he entered Mr. Lemuel's room, and emerged with the key of the door in his pocket and one of Lemuel's bags in his hand. Mr. Lemuel snored rhythmically through it all.

"Thanks, George," said the Saint, returning the master key. "Breakfast at ten, and in bed, I think. . . ."

Then he took the bag into his own room, and opened it without much difficulty.

Its weight, when he had lifted it out of the aëroplane, had told him not to expect it to contain clothes; but the most superficially interesting thing about it was that Mr. Lemuel had not possessed it when he left England, and it was simply as a result of intensive pondering over that fact that the Saint had arrived at the scheme that he was then carrying out. And, in view of his hypothesis, and Mr. Lemuel's reaction to the magic word "Croydon," it cannot be said that the Saint was wildly surprised when he found what the bag actually held. But he was very, very interested, nevertheless.

There were rows and rows of neatly packed square tins, plain and unlabelled. Fishing one out, the Saint gently detached the strip of adhesive tape which sealed it, and prised off the lid. He came to a white, crystalline powder . . . but that had been in his mind when he opened the tin. Almost perfunctorily, he took a tiny pinch of the powder between his finger and thumb, and laid it on his tongue; and the Saintly smile tightened a little.

Then he sat back on his heels, lighted a cigarette, and regarded his catch thoughtfully.

"You're a clever boy, Francis," he murmured.

He meditated for some time, humming under his breath, apparently quite unmoved. But actually his brain was seething.

It would have been quite easy to dispose of the contents of the bag. It would have been equally easy to dispose of Mr. Lemuel. For a while the Saint toyed with the second idea. A strong solution of the contents of one of the tins, for instance, administered with the hypodermic syringe which Simon had in his valise . . . Then he shook his head.