He turned to the Law with a smile.

"I am the doctor in charge of the case," he said, "so you may quite safely leave things in my hands."

His manner would have disarmed the chief commissioner himself. And before either of the other two could say a word, the Saint had stepped over the threshold as if he owned the house.

"Good-night, officer," he said sweetly, and closed the door.

NOW THE UNKIND CRITIC may say that the Saint had opened his break with something like the most fantastic fluke that ever fell out of the blue; but the unkind critic would be wrong, and his judgment would merely indicate his abysmal ignorance of the Saint and all Saintly methods. It cannot be too clearly understood that, having determined to enter the house of Heinrich Dussel and dissect the mystery of the Invalid who was not Ill, Simon Templar had walked up Park Lane with the firm intention of ringing the bell, walking in while the butler was still asking him his business, closing the door firmly behind him, and leaving the rest to Providence. The broken window, and the cry that came through it, had not been allowed for in such nebulous calculations as he had made—admitted; but in fact they made hardly any difference to the general plan of campaign. It would be far more true to say that the Saint refused to put off his stroke by the circumstances, than to say that the circumstances helped him. All that happened was that an unforeseen accident intervened in the smooth course of the Saint's progress; and the Saint, with the inspired audacity that lifted him so high above all ordinary adventurers, had flicked the accident into the accommodating machinery of his stratagem, and passed on....

And the final result was unaltered; for the Saint simply arrived where he had meant to arrive, anyway—with his back to the inside of the door of Heinrich Dussel's house, and all the fun before him....