“That, sir,” said the sentimentalist’s nephew, “was my uncle’s. He bought it in Shanghai when he was a young man, and he called it his mascot. He used to burn a joss-stick in front of it every day—said the ju-ju wouldn’t work without it. And then, when he died, what do you think we found in his will?”
Simon was getting accustomed to Sir Ambrose’s interrogative style, but the Saint was not very easily silenced.
“A thousand quid to buy joss-sticks,” he hazarded.
Sir Ambrose shook his head rather impatiently, till both his chins wobbled.
“No, sir. Something much worse than that. We found that not a penny of his money could be touched until this ridiculous thing had been sold for two thousand pounds. He said that only a man who was prepared to pay a sum like that for it would appreciate it properly and give it the attention he wanted. Personally, I think that anyone who paid a sum like that for it could be put in a lunatic asylum without a certificate. But there it is in the will, and the lawyers say we can’t upset it. I’ve been carrying the damned thing about with me half the week, showing it to all the antique shops in London, and the best offer I’ve had is fifteen shillings.”
“But surely,” said the Saint, “you could get a friend of yours to buy it, and give him the two thousand back with a spot of interest as soon as the executors unbuttoned?”
“If anything like that could have been done, sir, I’d have done it. But the old fool thought of that himself, and he left strict instructions that the executors were to be satisfied beyond all possible doubt that the sale was a genuine one. And he made his bank the executors, damn him! If you’ve ever tried to put anything over on a bank you’ll know what a hope we’ve got of doing anything like that. No—the best thing we can ever hope to do is to find some genuine stranger and sell it to him while he’s drunk.”
Simon picked up the image and examined it closely. It was unexpectedly heavy, and he guessed that the brass casting must have been filled with lead. On the base was a line of Chinese characters cut into the metal and filled with red.
“Funny language,” observed Sir Ambrose, leaning over to point to the characters. “I’ve often wanted to meet a Chink who could tell me what they write on things like this. Look at that thing there like a tadpole with wings. I’ll bet that’s a particularly dirty swearword—it’s twice the size of the other words. Have a drink.”
The Saint looked at his watch.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting home,” he observed.
“Come and see me one evening,” said Sir Ambrose. “You’ve got my address on my card, and I like young company. Come along one night next week, and I’ll invite some girls.”
Simon reached his flat in time to see Peter Quentin and Patricia Holm climbing out of a taxi. They were in evening dress, and the Saint surveyed them rudely.
“Well,” he said, “have you mugs finished pretending to be numbers one and two of the Upper Ten?”
“He’s jealous,” said Patricia, on Peter Quentin’s arm. “His own tails have been in pawn so long that the moth’s done them in.”
A misguided friend had presented the Saint with tickets for the Opera. Simon Templar, in one of his fits of perversity, had stated in no uncertain terms that it was too hot to put on a starched shirt and listen to perspiring tenors dying in C flat for four hours, and Peter Quentin had volunteered to be Patricia’s escort.
“We thought of some bacon and eggs,” Peter said, “and we wondered if you’d like to treat us.”
“I thought you might treat me,” murmured the Saint, “as an inducement for me to be seen out with a girl whose clothes have all slipped down below her waist, and a pie-faced tough disguised as a waiter, it’s the least you can offer.”
Back in the taxi, they asked him how he had spent the evening.
“I’ve been drinking beer with one of the most septic specimens in London,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And if I can’t make him wish he hadn’t told me so much about himself I won’t have another bath for six years.”
The problem of securing an adequate contribution towards his Old Age Pension from Sir Ambrose Grange occupied the Saint’s mind considerably for the next twenty-four hours. Sir Ambrose had gratuitously introduced himself as such a perfect example of the type of man whom the Saint prayed to meet that Simon felt that his reputation was at stake. Unless something suitably unpleasant happened to Sir Ambrose in a very short space of time, the Saint would sink down to somewhere near zero in his own estimation of himself—a possibility that was altogether too dreadful to contemplate.
He devoted most of the Sabbath to revolving various schemes in his mind, all of which were far less holy than the day, but he had not finally decided on any of them when the solution literally fell into his arms by a coincidence that seemed too good to be true.
This happened on the Monday afternoon.
He sallied out of his flat into Piccadilly in the hope of finding a paper with the winner of the Eclipse Stakes, and as he stepped on to the pavement a middle-aged man in horn-rimmed spectacles and a Panama who was hurrying past suddenly staggered in his direction, and would have fallen if the Saint had not caught him. Several passers-by turned and watched curiously, and Simon Templar, whose ideas of grandstanding heroism were not of that type, was tempted to deposit the middle-aged gent tenderly on the pavement and let him do his dying gladiator act alone. The man in the Panama was no human hairpin, and his legs seemed to have turned to rubber.
Then Simon saw that the man’s eyes were open. He grinned at the Saint crookedly.
“Sorry, stranger,” he said, in the broadest Yankee. “I’ll be okay in a minute. Been trying to do too much after my operation, I guess—the doc told me I’d crack up if I didn’t take it easy…Gosh, look at the rubbernecks waitin’ to see me die! Say, do you live in there? Is there a foyer I can sit down in? I don’t wanna be stared at like I was the Nelson Monument.”
Simon helped the man inside and sat him on a settee beside the lift. The Yank tipped off his Panama and wiped his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief.
“Just four days outa the hospital and tearin’ about like a fool for two of ’em. And missed my lunch today. That’s what’s done it. Say, is there a public telephone here? I promised to meet my wife an hour ago, and she must think I made myself a street accident.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t,” said the Saint. “This is just a block of flats.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just be bawled out. Gosh, but that poor kid’ll be worried stiff!”
Simon looked up at the clock. He was in no great hurry.
“You can phone from my flat if you like,” he said. “It’s on the first floor.”
“Say, that’s real white of you!”
The Saint helped him into the elevator, and they shot upwards. Settled in an arm-chair beside the telephone, the American made a reassuring call to the Savoy Hotel number. Simon thought it was excessively sloppy, but it was not his business.
“Well, that’s that,” said his guest, when the gush was over. “I guess I owe you something for your kindness. Have a cigar?”
Simon accepted a weed. It was a large fat one, with a lovely picture on the band.
“Think of me cracking up like that in your arms!” prattled the American, whose vocal chords at least seemed unimpaired. “Gosh, you musta thought I was something out of a flower-bed. I didn’t know they could take that much outa you along with your appendix. And all this fuss just to find a damn brass Buddha! Gosh, it makes you wonder what nut started this collecting game.”
The Saint, with a match halfway to his cigar, stared at him till the flame scorched his fingers.
“Brass Buddha?” he said faintly. “Who wants a brass Buddha?”
“Louis Froussard wants one, if that means anything to you, stranger. Say, but here am I in your apartment, and you don’t even know my name. Allow me.” The American dug out his wallet, extracted a card, and handed it over. “James G. Amberson, at your service. A
ny time you want one of Napoleon’s skulls, or the original pyjamas the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon—I’m the man to go and find ’em. Yes, sir. That’s my job—huntin’ for missing links for museums and millionaires who feel they gotta collect something so’s they can give the reporters something to write about. That’s me.”
“And you want a brass Buddha?” said the Saint, almost caressingly.
James G. Amberson (according to his card, the “G” stood for Gardiner, which the Saint thought was very modest—it might have been Gabriel.) flapped a raw-boned hand deprecatingly.
“Aw, you ain’t gonna offer me the thing your auntie brought home last time she went on a world cruise, are you?” he pleaded. “That’s what I been getting every place I’ve tried. Everyone in London’s got a brass Buddha, but none of ’em is the right one. This one’s a special one—you wouldn’t know it to look at it, but it is. Some Chink emperor back in about two million BC had three of ’em made for his three daughters, who were no better than they shouldha been, accordin’ to history—you don’t wanna know all that hooey, do you? I guess I’m a bit fuddled over it myself. But anyhow, Lou Froussard has got two of ’em, and he wants the third. I gotta find it. Sounds like I’d taken on a long job, don’t it?”
Simon drew on his cigar a little less impetuously.
“How will you know this particular one when you find it?” he asked.
“Say, that’s easy. It’s gotta little Chinese dedication carved in the base and filled with red paint. I don’t know any language except plain English, but this daughter’s name comes in the dedication, and I got a Chink to show me what it looked like…Gosh, is that cigar corked or something?”
“No—it’s a swell cigar. Would you mind showing me what this name looks like?”
The American’s eyes opened rather blankly, but he took out a pencil and sketched a character on the back of an envelope.
“There she is, stranger. Say, you’re looking at me like I was a mummy come to life. What’s the matter?”
The Saint filled his lungs. For him, the day had suddenly bloomed out into a rich surpassing beauty that only those who have shared his delight in damaging the careers of pompous old sinners with bushy grey face-hair can understand. The radiance of his own inspiration dazzled him.
“Nothing’s the matter,” he said seraphically. “Nothing on earth could be the matter on a day like this. How many millions will your Mr Froussard give for that Buddha?”
“Well, millions is a large word,” said Amberson cautiously, looking at the Saint in not unreasonable perplexity. “But I guess I could pay fifteen thousand iron men for it.”
“You find the iron men, and I’ll find your Buddha,” said the Saint.
The American grinned, and stood up.
“I don’t know whether you’ve got an ace in the hole or whether you’re just pulling my leg,” he remarked, “but if you can find that Buddha the fifteen grand are waitin’ for you. Say, but I’m real grateful to you for helpin’ me out like this. Come to the Savoy and have lunch tomorrow—and you can bring the Buddha with you if you’ve found it.”
“Thanks,” said the Saint. “I’ll do both.”
He showed Amberson to the door, and came straight back to grab the telephone. Sir Ambrose Grange was out, he was informed, but he was expected back about six. Simon bought his evening paper, found that the favourite had won—he never backed favourites—and was at the telephone again when the hour struck.
“I’m taking you at your word and coming round to see you, Sir Ambrose.”
“Delighted, my dear sir,” said the knight, somewhat plaintively. “But if you’d told me I could have got hold of some girls—”
“Never mind the girls,” said Simon.
He arrived at the lodgings in Seymour Street where Sir Ambrose maintained his modest bachelor pied-à-terre half an hour later, and plunged into his business without preliminaries.
“I’ve come to buy your Buddha,” he said. “Two thousand was what your uncle wanted, wasn’t it?”
Sir Ambrose goggled at him for some seconds, and then he laughed feebly.
“Ho, ho, ho! I bought that one, didn’t I, by Gad! Getting a bit slow on the uptake, what? Never mind, sir—have a drink.”
“I’m not being comic,” said the Saint. “I want your Buddha and I’ll give you two thousand for it. I backed sixteen losers last week, and if I don’t get a good mascot I shall be in the bankruptcy court.”
After several minutes he was able to convince Sir Ambrose that his lunacy, if inexplicable, was backed up by a ready cheque-book. He wrote the figures with a flourish, and Sir Ambrose found himself fumbling for a piece of paper and a stamp to make out the receipt.
Simon read the document through—it was typical.
Received from Mr Simon Templar, by cheque, the sum of Two Thousand Pounds, being payment for a brass Buddha which he knows is only worth fifteen shillings.
Ambrose Grange.
“Just to prove I knew what I was doing? I expected that.”
Sir Ambrose looked at him suspiciously.
“I wish I knew what you wanted that thing for,” he said. “Even my uncle only wanted us to get a thousand for it, but I thought I’d double it for luck. Two thousand couldn’t be much more impossible than one.” He heaved with chin-flivvering mirth. “Well, my dear sir, if you can make a profit on two thousand, I shan’t complain. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Have a drink.”
“Sometimes,” said the Saint quite affably, “I wonder why there’s no law classifying men like you as vermin and authorizing you to be sprayed with weed-killer on sight.”
He routed out Peter Quentin before going home that night, and uttered the same philosophy to him—ever more affably. The brass Buddha sat on a table beside his bed when he turned in, and he blew it a kiss before he switched out the light and sank into the dreamless sleep of a contented corsair.
He paraded at the Savoy at twelve-thirty the next day.
At two o’clock Patricia Holm found him in the grill-room.
Simon beckoned the waiter who had just poured out his coffee, and asked for another cup.
“Well,” he said, “where’s Peter?”
“His girlfriend stopped in a shop window to look at some stockings, so I came on.” Her eyebrows were faintly questioning. “I thought you were lunching with that American.”
Simon dropped two lumps of sugar into his cup and stirred it lugubriously.
“Pat,” he said, “you may put this down in your notes for our textbook on Crime—the perfect confidence trick, Version Two. Let me tell you about it.”
She lighted a cigarette slowly, staring at him.
“The Mug,” said the Saint deliberately, “meets an Unpleasant Man. The Unpleasant Man purposely makes himself out to be so sharp that no normally healthy Mug could resist the temptation to do him down if the opportunity arose, and he may credit himself with a title just to remove all suspicion. The Unpleasant Man has something to sell—it might be a brass Buddha, valued at fifteen shillings, for which he’s got to realize some fantastic sum like two thousand quid under the terms of an eccentric will. The Mug admits that the problem is difficult, and passes out into the night.”
Simon annexed Patricia’s cigarette, and inhaled from it.
“Shortly afterwards,” he said, “the Mug meets the Nice American who is looking for a very special brass Buddha valued at fifteen thousand bucks. The Nice American gives away certain information which allows the Mug to perceive, beyond all possible doubt, that this rare and special Buddha is the very one for which the Unpleasant Man was trying to get what he thought was the fantastic price of two thousand quid. The Mug, therefore, with the whole works taken right down into his stomach—hook, line, and sinker—dashes round to the Unpleasant Man and gives him his two thousand quid. And he endorses a receipt saying he knows it’s only worth fifteen bob, so that the Unpleasant Man can prove himself innocent of deception. Then the Mug goes to meet the Nice American and collect his profit
…And, Pat, I regret to say that he pays for his own lunch.”
The Saint gazed sadly at the folded bill which a waiter had just placed on the table.
Patricia was wide-eyed.
“Simon! Did you—”
“I did. I paid two thousand quid of our hard-won boodle to the perambulating sausage—”
He broke off, with his own jaw sinking.
James G. Amberson was flying across the room, with his Panama hat waving in his hand and his spectacles gleaming. He flung himself into a chair at the Saint’s table.
“Say, did you think I was dead? My watch musta stopped while I was huntin’ round junk stores in Limehouse—I saw a clock outa the taxi window as I was comin’ back, and had a heart attack. Gosh, I’m sorry!”
“That’s all right,” murmured the Saint. “Pat, you haven’t met Mr Amberson. This is our Nice American. James G.—Miss Patricia Holm.”
“Say, I’m real pleased to meet you, Miss Holm. Guess Mr Templar told you how I fainted in his arms yesterday.” Amberson reached over and wrung the girl’s hand heartily. “Well, Mr Templar, if you’ve had lunch you can have a liqueur.” He waved to a waiter. “And, say, did you find me that Buddha?”
Simon bent down and hauled a small parcel out from under the table.
“This is it.”
Amberson gaped at the package for a second, and then he grabbed it and tore it open. He gaped again at the contents—then at the Saint.
“Well, I’m a son of a—excuse me, Miss Holm, but—”
“Is that right?” asked the Saint.
“I’ll say it is!” Amberson was fondling the image as if it were his own long-lost child. “What did I promise you? Fifteen thousand berries?”
He pulled out his wallet and spilled American bills on to the table.
“Fifteen grand it is, Mr Templar. And I guess I’m grateful. Mind if I leave you now? I gotta get on the transatlantic phone to Lou Froussard and tell him, and then I gotta rush this little precious into a safe deposit. Say, let me ring you up and invite you to a real dinner next week.”
The Brighter Buccaneer (The Saint Series) Page 9