"What was this letter about?" asked Mr. Kinsall.
"It was about your father's will," she told him; and suddenly Mr. Kinsall sat up. "It was from a man who's been to see him once or twice before—I've listened at the keyhole when they were talking," said the girl shamelessly, "and I gather that the will which was reported in the papers wasn't the last one your father made. This fellow—he's a solicitor— had got a later one, and Walter was trying to buy it from him. The letter I read was from the solicitor, and it said that he had decided to accept Walter's offer of ten thousand pounds for it."
Mr. Willie's eyes had recovered from their temporary shrinkage. During the latter part of her speech they had gone on beyond normal, and at the end of it they genuinely bulged. For a few seconds he was voiceless; and then he exploded.
"The dirty swine!" he gasped.
That was his immediate and inevitable reaction; but the rest of the news took him longer to grasp. If Walter was willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the will. . . . Ten thousand pounds! It was an astounding, a staggering figure. To be worth that, it could only mean that huge sums were at stake—and Willie could only see one way in which that could have come about. The second will had disinherited Walter. It had left all the Kinsall millions to him, Willie. And Walter was trying to buy it and destroy it—to cheat his out of his just inheritance.
"What's this solicitor's name?" demanded Willie hoarsely.
Patricia smiled.
"I thought you'd want that," she said. "Well, I know his name and address; but they'll cost you money."
Willie looked at the clock, gulped, and reached into a drawer for his cheque-book.
"How much?" he asked. "If it's within reason, I'll pay it."
She blew out a wreath of smoke and studied him calculatingly for a moment.
"Five hundred," she said at length.
Willie stared, choked, and shuddered. Then, with an expression of frightful agony on his predatory face, he took up his pen and wrote.
Patricia examined the cheque and put it away in her handbag. Then she picked up a pencil and drew the note-block towards her.
Willie snatched up the sheet and gazed at it tremblingly for a second. Then he heaved himself panting out of his chair and dashed for the hat-stand in the corner.
"Excuse me," he got out. "Must do something about it. Come and see me again. Goodbye."
Riding in a taxi to the address she had given him, he barely escaped a succession of nervous breakdowns every time a traffic stop or a slow-moving dray obstructed their passage. He bounced up and down on the seat, pulled off his hat, pulled out his watch, looked at his hat, tried to put on his watch, mopped his brow, craned his head out of the window, bounced, sputtered, gasped, and sweated in an anguish of impatience that brought him to the verge of delirium. When at last they arrived at the lodging-house in Bayswater which was his destination, he fairly hurled himself out of the cab, hauled out a handful of silver with clumsy hands, spilt some of it into the driver's palm and most of it into the street, stumbled cursing up the steps, and plunged into the bell with a violence which almost drove it solidly through the wall. While he waited, fuming, he dragged out his watch again, dropped it, tried to grab it, missed, and kicked it savagely into the middle of the street with a shrill squeal of sheer insanity; and then the door opened and a maid was inspecting him curiously.
"Is Mr. Penwick in?" he blurted.
"I think so," said the maid. "Will you come in?"
The invitation was unnecessary. Breathing like a man who had just run a mile without training, Mr. Willie Kinsall ploughed past her, and kicked his heels in a torment of suspense until the door of the room into which he had been ushered opened, and a tall man came in.
It seems superfluous to explain that this man's name was not really Penwick; and Willie Kinsall did not even stop to consider the point. He did look something like a solicitor of about forty, which is some indication of what Simon Templar could achieve with a black suit, a wing collar and bow tie, a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez, and some powder brushed into his hair.
Willie Kinsall did not even pause to frame a diplomatic line of approach.
"Where," he demanded shakily, "is this will, you crook?"
"Mr. Penwick" raised his grey eyebrows.
"I don't think I have—ah—had the pleasure——"
"My name's Kinsall," said Willie, skipping about like a grasshopper on a hot plate. "And I want that will—the will you're trying to sell to my dirty swindling brother. And if I don't get it, I'm going straight to the police!"
The solicitor put his finger-tips together.
"What proof have you, Mr.—ah—Kinsall," he inquired gently, "of the existence of this will?"
Willie stopped skipping for a moment. And then, with a painful wrench, he flung bluff to the winds. He had no proof, and he knew it.
"All right," he said. "I won't go to the police. I'll buy it What do you want?"
Simon pursed his lips.
"I doubt," he said, "whether the will is any longer for sale. Mr. Walter's cheque is already in my bank, and I am only waiting for it to be cleared before handing the document over to him."
"Nonsense!" yelped Willie, but he used a much coarser word for it. "Walter hasn't got it yet. I'll give you as much as he gave—and you won't have to return his money. He wouldn't dare go into court and say what he gave it to you for."
The Saint shook his head.
"I don't think," he said virtuously, "that I would break my bargain for less than twenty thousand pounds."
"You're a thief and a crook!" howled Willie.
"So are you," answered the temporary Mr. Penwick mildly. "By the way, this payment had better be in cash. You can go round to your bank and get it right away. I don't like to have to insist on this, but Mr. Walter said he was coming round in about an hour's time, and if you're going to make your offer in an acceptable form——"
It is only a matter of record that Willie went. It is also on record that he took his departure in a speed and ferment that eclipsed even his arrival; and Simon Templar went to the telephone and called Patricia.
"You must have done a great job, darling," he said. "What did you get out of it?"
"Five hundred pounds," she told him cheerfully. "I got an open cheque and took it straight round to his bank—I'm just pushing out to buy some clothes, as soon as I've washed this paint off my face."
"Buy a puce jumper," said the Saint, "and christen it Willie. I want to keep it for a pet."
Rather less than an hour had passed when the front door bell pealed again; and Simon looked out of the window and beheld the form of Walter Kinsall standing outside. He went to let the caller in himself.
Mr. Walter Kinsall was a little taller and heavier than his brother, but the rat-like mould of his features and his small beady eyes were almost the twins of his brother's. At that point their external resemblance temporarily ended, for Walter's bearing was not hysterical.
"Well, Mr. Penwick," he said gloatingly, "has my cheque been cleared?"
"It ought to be through by now," said the Saint. "If you'll wait a moment, I'll just phone up the bank and make sure."
He did so, while the elder Kinsall rubbed his hands. He paused to reflect, with benevolent satisfaction, what a happy chance it was that his first name, while bearing the same initial as his brother's, still came first in index sequence, so that this decayed solicitor, searching the telephone directory for putative kin of the late Sir Joseph, had rung him up first. What might have happened had their alphabetical order been different, Walter at that moment hated to think.
"Your cheque has been cleared," said the Saint, returning from the telephone; and Walter beamed.
"Then, Mr. Penwick, you have only to hand me the will——"
Simon knit his brows.
"The situation is rather difficult," he began; and suddenly Walter's face blackened.
"What the devil do you mean—difficult?" he rasped. "You've had your money
. Are you trying——"
"You see," Simon explained, "your brother has been in to see me."
Walter gaped at him apoplectically for a space; and then he took a threatening step forward.
"You filthy double-crossing——"
"Wait a minute," said the Saint. "I think this is Willie coming back."
He pushed past the momentarily paralysed Walter, and went to open the front door again. Willie stood on the step, puffing out his lean rat-like cheeks and quivering as if he had just escaped from the paws of a hungry cat. He scrabbled in his pockets, tugged out a thick sheaf of banknotes, and crushed them into the Saint's hands as they went down the hall.
"It's all there, Mr. Penwick," he gasped. "I haven't been long, have I? Now will you give me——"
It was at that instant that he entered the room which Simon Templar had rented for the occasion, and saw his brother; and his failure to complete the sentence was understandable.
For a time there was absolute silence, while the two devoted brothers glared at each other with hideous rigidity. Simon Templar took out his cigarette case and selected a smoke at luxurious leisure, while Willie stared at Walter with red-hot eyes, and Walter glowered at Willie with specks of foam on his lips. Then the Saint stroked the cog of his lighter; and at the slight sound, as if invisible strait-jackets which held them immobile had been conjured away, the two men started towards each other with simultaneous detonations of speech.
"You slimy twister!" snarled Walter.
"You greasy shark!" yapped Willie.
And then, as if this scorching interchange of fraternal compliments made them realise that there was a third party present who had not been included, and who might have felt miserably neglected, they checked their murderous advance towards one another and swung round on him together.
Epithets seared through their minds and slavered on their jaws—ruder, unkinder, more malignant words than they had ever shaped into connected order in their lives. And then, with one accord, they realised that those words could not be spoken yet; and deprived of that outlet, they simmered in a second torrid silence.
Walter was the first to come out of it. He opened his aching throat and brought forth trembling speech.
"Penwick," he said, "whatever that snivelling squirt has given you, I'll pay twice as much."
"I'll pay three times that," said Willie feverishly. "Four times—five times—I'll give you twenty per cent of anything I get out of the estate—"
"Twenty-five per cent," Walter shrieked wildly. "Twenty-seven and a half——"
The Saint raised his hand.
"One minute, boys," he murmured. "Hadn't you better hear the terms of the will first?"
"I know them," barked Walter.
"So do I," bellowed Willie. "Thirty per cent ——"
The Saint smiled. He took a large sealed envelope from his breast pocket, and opened it.
"I may have misled you," he said, and held up the document for them to read.
They crowded closer, breathing stertorously, and read:
I, Joseph Kinsall, hereby give and bequeath everything of which I die possessed, without exception, to the Royal London Hospital, believing that it will be better spent than it would have been by my two worthless sons.
It was in the late Sir Joseph Kinsall's own hand; and it was properly signed, sealed, and witnessed.
Simon folded it up and put it carefully away again; and Willie looked at Walter, and Walter looked at Willie. For the first time in their lives they found themselves absolutely and unanimously in tune. Their two minds had but a single thought. They drew deep breaths, and turned. ...
It was unfortunate that neither of them was very athletic. Simon Templar was; and he had promised Mr. Penwick that the will should come to no harm.
XI
The Tall Timber
The queer things that have led Simon Templar into the paths of boodle would in themselves form a sizable volume of curiosities; but in the Saint's own opinion none of these strange starting-points could ever compare, in sheer intrinsic uniqueness, with the moustache of Mr. Sumner Journ.
Simon Templar's relations with Chief Inspector Teal were not always unpleasant. On that morning he had met Mr. Teal in Piccadilly Circus and insisted on standing him lunch; and both of them had enjoyed the meal.
"And yet you'll probably be trying to arrest me again next week," said the Saint.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Teal heavily.
They stood in the doorway of Arthur's, preparing to separate; and Simon was idly scanning the street when the moustache of Mr. Sumner Journ hove into view.
Let it be said at once that it was no ordinarily overgrown moustache, attracting attention by nothing but its mere vulgar size. It was, in fact, the reverse. From a slight distance no moustache was visible at all; and the Saint was looking at Mr. Journ simply by accident, as a man standing in the street will sometimes absent-mindedly follow the movements of another. As Mr. Journ drew nearer, the moustache was still imperceptible; but there appeared to be a slight shadow on his upper lip, as if it were disfigured by a small mole. And it was not until he was passing a yard away that the really exquisite singularity of the growth dawned upon Simon Templar's mind.
On Mr. Sumner Journ's upper lip, approximately fourteen hairs had been allowed to grow, so close together that the area they occupied could scarcely have been larger than a shirt button. These fourteen hairs had been carefully parted in the middle; and each little clique of seven had been carefully waxed and twisted together so that they stuck out about half an inch from their patron's face like the horns of a snail. In the whole of Simon Templar's life, which had encountered a perhaps unusual variety of developments of facial hair, ranging from the handlebar protuberances of the South-shire Insurance Company's private detective to the fine walrus effect sported by a Miss Gertrude Tinwiddle who contributed the nature notes in the Daily Gazette, he had never seen any example of hair culture in which such passionate devotion to detail, such a concentrated ecstasy of miniaturism, such an unostentatious climax of originality, had simultaneously arrived at concrete consummation.
Thus did the moustache of Mr. Journ enter the Saint's horizon and pass on, accompanied by Mr. Journ, who looked at them rather closely as he went by; and lest any suspicious reader should be starting to get ideas into his head, the historian desires to explain at once that this moustache has nothing more to do with the story, and has been described at such length solely on account of its own remarkable features qua face-hair. But, as we claimed at the beginning, it is an immutable fact that if it had not been for this phenomenal decoration the Saint would hardly have noticed Mr. Journ at all, and would thereby have been many thousands of pounds poorer. For, shorn of that incomparable appendage, Mr. Journ was quite an ordinary-looking business man, thin, dark, hatchet-faced, well and quietly dressed; and although he was noticeably hard about the eyes and mouth, there was really nothing else about him which would have caused the Saint to stare fascinatedly after him and ejaculate in a hushed voice: "Well, I am a piebald pelican balancing rubber balls on my beak!"
Wherefore Mr. Teal would have had no reason to turn his somnolent gaze back to the Saint with a certain dour and puzzled humour, and to say: "I should have thought he was a fellow you'd be sure to know."
"Never set eyes on him in my life," said the Saint. "Do you know who he is?"
"His name's Sumner Journ," Mr. Teal said reluctantly, after a slight pause.
Simon shook his head.
"Even that doesn't ring a bell," he said. "What does he do? No bloke who cultivated a nose-tickler like that could do anything ordinary."
"Sumner Journ doesn't," stated the detective flatly.
He seemed to have realised that he had said too much already; and it was impossible to draw any further information from him. He took his leave rather abruptly, and Simon gazed after his plump departing back with a tiny frown. The only plausible explanation of Teal's sudden taciturn
ity was that Mr. Journ was engaged in some unlawful or nearly unlawful activities—Teal had had enough trouble with the victims whom the Saint found for himself, without conceiving any ambition to press fresh material into his hands. But if Chief Inspector Teal did not want the Saint to know more about Mr. Sumner Journ, that was sufficient reason for the Saint to become abnormally inquisitive; and as a matter of fact, his investigations had not proceeded very far when a minor coincidence brought them up to date without further effort.
"This might interest you," said Monty Hayward one evening.
"This" was a very tastefully prepared booklet, on the cover of which was printed: "BRAZILIAN TIMBER BONDS: A Gold Mine for the Small Investor." Simon took it and glanced at it casually; and then he saw something on the first page of the pamphlet which brought him to attention with a delighted start:
Managing Director:
SUMNER JOURN Esq., Associate of the Institute of Timber Planters, Fellow of the International Association of Wood Pulp Producers; formerly Chairman of South American Mineralogical Investments, Ltd., etc., etc.
"How did you get hold of this, Monty?" he asked.
"A young fellow in the office gave it to me," said Monty. "Apparently he was trying to make a bit of money on the side by selling these bonds; but lots of people seem to have heard about 'em. I pinched the book, and told him not be an ass because he'd probably find himself in clink with the organisers when it blew up; but I thought you might like to have a look at it."
"I would," said the Saint thoughtfully, and opened another bottle of beer.
He read the booklet through at his leisure, later, and felt tempted to send Monty Hayward a complimentary case of Carlsberg on the strength of it; for the glow of contentment and goodwill towards men which spreads over the rabid entomologist who digs a new kind of beetle out of a log is as the frosts of Siberia to the glow which warms the heart of the professional buccaneer who uncovers a new swindle.
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