“I couldn’t possibly take it,” he said.
“Of course you could, uncle,” said the Saint. “And you will. It’s only a fair price for your invention. Just do one thing for me in return.”
“I’d do anything you asked me to,” said the inventor.
“Then never forget,” said Simon deliberately, “that I was with you the whole of this morning—from half-past-ten till one o’clock. That might be rather important.” Simon lighted a cigarette and stretched himself luxuriously in his chair. “And when you’ve got that thoroughly settled into your memory, let us try to imagine what Augustus Parnock is doing right now.”
It was at that precise moment, as a matter of history, that Mr Augustus Parnock and his friend who understood those things were staring at a brass ashtray on which no vestige of plating was visible.
“What’s the joke, Gus?” demanded Mr Parnock’s friend at length.
“I tell you it isn’t a joke!” yelped Mr Parnock. “That ashtray was perfectly plated all over when I put it in my pocket at lunchtime. The fellow gave me his formula and everything. Look—here it is!”
The friend who understood those things studied the scrap of paper, and dabbed a stained forefinger on the various items.
“Cu is copper,” he said. “Hg is mercury and HNO2 is nitric acid. What it means is that you dissolve a little mercury in some weak nitric acid, and when you put it on copper the nitric acid eats a little of the copper, and the mercury forms an amalgam. CuHgNO3 is the amalgam—it’d have a silvery look which might make you think the thing had been plated. The other constituents resolve themselves into H2O, which is water, and NO2, which is gas. Of course, the nitric acid goes on eating, and after a time it destroys the amalgam and the thing looks like copper again. That’s all there is to it.”
“But what about the Bf?” asked Mr Parnock querulously.
His friend shrugged.
“I can’t make that out at all—it isn’t any chemical symbol,” he said, but it dawned on Mr Parnock later.
THE UNUSUAL ENDING
Simon Templar buttered a thin slice of toast and crunched happily.
“I have been going into our accounts,” he said, “and the result of the investigation will amaze you.”
It was half-past-eleven, and he had just finished breakfast. Breakfast with him was always a sober meal, to be eaten with a proper respect for the gastronomic virtues of grilled bacon and whatever delicacy was mated with it. On this morning it had been mushrooms, a dish that had its own unapproachable place in the Saint’s ideal of a day’s beginning, and he had dealt with them slowly and lusciously, as they deserved, with golden wafers of brown toast on their port side and an open newspaper propped up against the coffee-pot for scanning to starboard. All that had been done with the solemnity of a pleasant rite. And now the last slice of toast was buttered and marmaladed, the last cup of coffee poured out and sugared, the first cigarette lighted and the first deep cloud of fragrant smoke inhaled, and the time had come when Simon Templar was wont to touch on weighty matters in a mood of profound contentment.
“What is the result?” asked Patricia.
“Our running expenses have been pretty heavy,” said the Saint, “and we haven’t denied ourselves much in the way of good things. On the other hand, last year we had a couple of the breaks that only come once in a lifetime, which just helps to show how brilliant we are. Perrigo’s illicit diamonds and dear old Dudolf’s crown jewels.” The Saint smiled reminiscently. “And this current year’s sport and dalliance hasn’t been run at a total loss. In fact, old darling, at this very moment we’re worth three hundred thousand quid clear of all overhead, and if that isn’t something like a record for a life of crime I’ll eat my second-best hat. I’m referring, of course,” said the Saint fastidiously, “to a life of honest crime. Company promoters and international financiers we don’t profess to compete with.”
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, on the same day, reviewed the same subject with less contentment, which was only natural. Besides, he had the Assistant Commissioner’s peculiarly sarcastic and irritating sniff as an obbligato.
“I gather,” said the Assistant Commissioner, in his precise and acidulated way, “that we are to wait until this man Templar has made himself a millionaire, when presumably he will have no further incentive to be dishonest.”
“I wish I could believe that,” said Teal funereally.
He had a definite feeling of injustice about that interview, for on the whole the past twelve months had been exceptionally peaceful. Simon Templar had actually been on the side of the Law in two different cases, whole-heartedly and without much financial profit, and his less lawful activities, during the period with which Teal’s report dealt, were really little more than rumours. Undoubtedly the Saint had enriched himself, and done so by methods which would probably have emerged somewhat tattered from the close scrutiny of a jury of moralists, but there had been no official complaints from the afflicted parties—and that, Teal felt, was as much as his responsibility required. Admittedly, the afflicted parties might not have known whom to accuse, or, when they knew, might have thought it better not to complain lest worse befall them, but that was outside Teal’s province. His job was to deal in an official manner with officially recognized crimes, and this he had been doing with no small measure of success. The fact that Simon Templar’s head, on a charger, had not been included in his list of offerings, however, appeared to rankle with the exacting Commissioner, who sniffed his dissatisfied and exasperating sniff several times more before he allowed Mr Teal to withdraw from his sanctum.
It was depressing for Mr Teal, who had been minded to congratulate the Saint, unofficially, on the discretion with which he had lately contrived to avoid those demonstrations of brazen lawlessness which had in the past added so many grey hairs to Teal’s thinning tally. In the privacy of his own office, Mr Teal unwrapped a fresh wafer of chewing-gum and meditated moodily, as he had done before, on the unkindness of a fate that had thrown such a man as Simon Templar across the path of a promising career. It removed nearly all his enthusiasm from the commonplace task of apprehending a fairly commonplace swindler, which was his scheduled duty for that day.
But none of these things could noticeably have saddened Simon Templar, even if he had known about them. Peter Quentin, intruding on the conclusion of the Saint’s breakfast shortly afterwards, felt that the question, “Well, Simon, how’s life?” was superfluous, but he asked it.
“Life keeps moving,” said the Saint. “Another Royal Commission has been appointed, this time to discuss whether open-air restaurants would be likely to lower the moral tone of the nation. Another law has been passed to forbid something or other. A Metropolitan Policeman has won a first prize in the Irish Sweep. And you?”
Peter helped himself to a cigarette, and eyed the Saint’s blue silk Cossack pyjamas with the unconscious and unreasonable smugness of a man who has dressed for breakfast and been about for hours.
“I can see that I haven’t any real criminal instincts,” he remarked. “I get up too early. And what are the initials for?”
Simon glanced down at the monogram embroidered on his breast pocket.
“In case I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t remember who I am,” he said. “What’s new about Julian?”
“He skips today,” said Peter. “Or perhaps tomorrow. Anyway, he’s been to the bank already and drawn out more money than I’ve ever seen before in hard cash. That’s why I thought I’d better knock off and tell you.”
Mr Julian Lamantia should be no stranger to us. We have seen him being thrown into the Thames on a rainy night. We have seen him in his J. L. Investment Bureau, contributing to the capital required for buying a completely worthless block of shares.
If Mr Lamantia had restricted himself to such enterprises as those in which the Saint’s attention had first been directed towards him, we might still have been able to speak of him in the present tense. He had, in his pr
ime, been one of the astutest skimmers of the Law of his generation. Unfortunately for him he became greedy, as other men like him have become before, and in the current wave of general depression he found that the bucket-shop business was not what it was. His mind turned towards more dangerous but more profitable fields.
Out through the post, under the heading of the J. L. Investment Bureau, went many thousands of beautifully-printed pamphlets, in which was described the enormous profit that could be made on large short-term loans. The general public, said the pamphlet, was not in a position to supply the sums required for these loans, and therefore all these colossal profits gravitated exclusively into the pockets of a small circle of wealthy financial houses. Nevertheless, explained the pamphlet, as the hymnbook had done before it, little drops of water, little grains of sand, made the tiddly-tum-tum and the tumty-tum. It was accordingly mooted that, under the auspices of the J. L. Investment Bureau, sums of from five pounds to ten pounds might be raised from private investors and in the aggregate provide the means for making these great short-term loans, of which the profits would be generously and proportionately shared with the investors.
It was a scheme which, in one form or another, is as old as some of the younger hills and as perennially fruitful as a parson’s wife. Helped on by the literary gifts of Mr Lamantia, it proceeded in this reincarnation as well as it always will. From the first issue of circulars thousands of pounds poured in, and after a very brief interval the first monthly dividend was announced at ten per cent and paid. In another thirty days the second month’s dividend was announced at fifteen per cent—and paid. The third month’s dividend was twenty per cent—“which,” a second issue of circulars hoped, “should remain as a regular working profit”—and the money was pouring in almost as fast as it could be banked. The original investors increased their investments frantically, and told their friends, who also subscribed and spread the good news. The dividends, of course, were paid straight out of the investors’ own capital and the new subscriptions that were continually flowing in, but any suspicion of such low duplicity was, as usual, far from the minds of the innocent suckers who in a few months built up Mr Julian Lamantia’s bank balance to the amazing total of eighty-five thousand pounds.
Like all get-rich-quick schemes, it had its inevitable breaking-point, and this Mr Lamantia knew. “Clean up while it lasts, and get out,” is the only possible motto for its promoter, but a certain fatal doubt has often existed about how long it may safely be expected to last. Mr Lamantia thought that he had gauged the duration to a nicety. On this morning whose events we have been following, Mr Lamantia drew out his balance from the bank, packed it neatly in a small leather bag, and called back at his office. Perhaps that was a foolish thing to do, but his new secretary was a very beautiful girl. It was Saturday, and the weekend would give him a long start on his getaway. He had a new passport in another name, his passage was booked from Southampton, his luggage was packed and gone, his moustache ready for moving: only one more thing was needed.
“Well,” he said bluntly, “have you made up your mind?”
“I should like to come, Mr Lamantia.”
“Julian,” said Mr Lamantia attractively, “will do. Haven’t you got a first name—Miss Allfield?”
“Kathleen,” said the girl, with a smile. “Usually Kate.”
The name meant nothing to Mr Lamantia, who did his best to hold aloof from ordinary criminal circles. He said he preferred Kathleen.
“When do we go?” she asked.
“This afternoon.”
“But you told me—”
“I’ve had to change my plans. I had a cable from Buenos Aires at my hotel this morning—I must get there as soon as I possibly can.”
He had not taken her into his confidence. That could be done later, by delicate and tactful stages, if he felt like prolonging the liaison. His projected journey to South America had been discussed as a purely business affair, in connexion with vague talk of a gigantic loan to the Argentine National Railways.
“It would be a wonderful trip for you,” he said. “New places, new people, no end of new entertainments. Never mind about a lot of luggage. You can go home now and pack everything you want to take from London, and anything else you need you can buy at Lisbon.”
She hesitated for a few moments, and then turned her deep brown eyes back to him.
“All right.”
His gaze stripped her in quiet elation, but he did not try to make love to her. There would be plenty of time for that. He put on his hat again and went home to finish the last items of his packing, and when he had gone Kate Allfield picked up his private telephone and called the Saint’s flat.
Peter Quentin answered it, and returned after a few minutes to the bathroom, where the Saint was washing his razor.
“It’s today,” he said. “The boat train leaves at two-thirty, and Kate is supposed to be meeting Julian for lunch at the Savoy first. Kate,” said Peter reflectively, unaware that the same thought had struck Mr Lamantia, “isn’t nearly so nice as Kathleen.”
Simon turned off the taps that were filling his bath, threw off his pyjamas, and sank into the warm water.
“You have been seeing quite a lot of her lately, haven’t you?” he murmured.
“Only on business,” said Peter, with unnecessary clearness. “After she put us on to this stunt of Julian’s, and volunteered to do the inside work—”
“And the new vocabulary, Peter? Did you get that out of a book?”
The Saint’s mocking blue eyes swerved down from the ceiling and aimed directly at the other’s face. Peter went red.
“I think I did get it from her,” he said. “But that’s nothing.”
Simon picked up the soap and lathered his legs thoughtfully.
“In the preliminary palaver of that Star of Mandalay affair, she told me she was about to retire.”
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” said Peter, judicially.
“I don’t see why anyone shouldn’t retire,” said the Saint, “when they’ve made a useful pile. Look at you.”
“Why look at me?”
“You’ve done pretty well since we teamed up. About fifteen thousand quid, I make it.”
These chronicles have only attempted a few incidents in the Saint’s career that were distinguished by some odd twist of luck or circumstance or ingenuity. His crimes were always legion, and it is often hard for the historian to select the exploits which seem most worthy of commemoration.
“I owe you a lot,” said Peter.
“Brickdust,” said the Saint tersely.
He spread the lather over his arms and chest and shoulders, and submerged himself again. Then he said, “Peter, I let you come in with me because you wanted to and you’d lost your job and you had to live somehow. Now you’ve got fifteen thousand quid, nine hundred a year or more if you invest it skilfully, and you don’t need a job. You don’t need to run to seed in an office. You’re not rich, but you can have all the fun in the world. You can go anywhere, do almost anything you like within reason. If I may talk to you like an uncle—don’t be the pitcher that goes once too often to the well.”
“You’ve never stopped,” said Peter.
The Saint grinned.
“I never could. While I’m strong and alive, I’ve got to go on. When I stop crashing about the world and raising hell, I might as well die. Excitement, danger, living on tiptoe all the time—that’s what life means to me. But it isn’t the same for you.”
“What will you do now?”
“I’m blowed if I know. I think I shall travel south, and put my trust in the Lord. Something’s sure to happen. Something always does happen, if you go out and challenge it. Adventure never comes. You have to lug it in by the ears. You might settle down in a nice house in England for fifty years, and nothing would ever happen. A few people would die, a few people would get married, they might change over from auction to contract or back again, the man next door might run off with his w
ife’s sister and the grocer’s assistant might run off with the till—that’s all. But you won’t find adventure unless you look for it, and that means living dangerously. Sometimes when I hear fools complaining that life is dull, I want to advise them to knock their bank manager on the head and grab a handful of money and run. After a fortnight, if they could keep running that long, they’d know what life meant…I expect I shall do something like that, and the chase will start all over again. But somewhere in the south it will be, Peter. Do you know, when I woke up this morning it was cold enough for me to see my breath going up like steam, and when that happens I feel the old call of long days and sunshine and blue skies.”
He stood up, twitched out the plug, and turned the tap of the cold shower. For a few seconds he stood under it, letting it stream down over him and laughing at the stinging brunt of it, rubbing the water over his arms and thighs and chest in a sheer pagan delight of hardiness, and then he climbed out and reached for a towel and cigarette, and his wet hand smote Peter between the shoulder-blades.
“And I feel like a million dollars on it,” he said. “Come on—let’s go and be rude to Julian!”
In a surprisingly short space of time he was dressed, immaculate and debonair as ever, and they walked up Piccadilly together.
“No alibi?” asked Peter.
“Why bother?” smiled the Saint. “If anything could possibly go wrong, Julian would have a swell job trying to explain exactly why he had the entire capital of the firm in a bag in his room, with a one-way passage booked to Buenos Aires—and I don’t think he’d take it on.”
He had a faultless sense of time, and Kate Allfield had also learned that in their profession punctuality may be more precious than many alibis. She had just paid off her taxi when they arrived at the Savoy, and Simon could understand the foolishness of Julian Lamantia no less than the foolishness of Peter Quentin. He had always thought her lovely, even at that first meeting on Croydon Aerodrome when he had only just discovered the hypnotic powers of her cigarettes in time, and the affair of the Star of Mandalay had shown him something else about her that he saluted in his own way. But it was Peter Quentin’s hand that she touched first, and Simon knew that with this adventure one more adventurer came to an end.
The Brighter Buccaneer (The Saint Series) Page 21