1. The Brain Workers

"Happy" Fred Jorman was a man with a grievance. He came to his partner with a tale of woe.

"It was an ordinary bit of business, Meyer. I met him in the Alexandra — he seemed interested in horses, and he looked so lovely and innocent. When I told him about the special job I'd got for Newmarket that afternoon, and it came to suggesting he might like to put a bit on himself, I'd hardly got the words out of my mouth before he was pushing a tenner across the table. Well, after I'd been to the phone I told him he'd got a three-to-one winner, and he was so pleased he almost wept on my shoulder. And I paid him out in cash. That was thirty pounds — thirty real pounds he had off me — but I wasn't worrying. I could see I was going to clean him out. He was looking at the money I'd given him as if he was watching all his dreams come true. And that was when I bought him another drink and started telling him about the real big job of the day. 'It's honestly not right for me to be letting you in at all,' I said, 'but it gives me a lot of pleasure to see a young sport like you winning some money,' I said. 'This horse I'm talking about now,' I said, 'could go twice round the course while all the other crocks were just beginning to realize that the race had started; but I'll eat my hat if it starts at a fraction less than five to one,' I said."

"Well?"

"Well, the mug looked over his roll and said he'd only got about a hundred pounds, including what he'd won already, and that didn't seem enough to put on a five-to-one certainty. 'But if you'll excuse me a minute while I go to my bank, which is just around the corner,' he said, 'I'll give you five hundred pounds to put on for me.' And off he went to get the money —"

"And never come back," said the smaller speaking part, with the air of a Senior Wrangler solving the first problem in a child's book of arithmetic.

"That's just it, Meyer," said Happy Fred aggrievedly. "He never came back. He stole thirty pounds off me, that's what it amounts to — he ran away with the ground-bait I'd given him, and wasted the whole of my afternoon, not to mention all the brain work I'd put into spinning him the yarn —"

"Brain work!" said Meyer.

Simon Templar would have given much to overhear that conversation. It was his one regret that he never had the additional pleasure of knowing exactly what his pigeons said when they woke up and found themselves bald.

Otherwise, he had very few complaints to make about the way his years of energetic life had treated him. "Do others as they would do you," was his motto; and for several years past he had carried out the injunction with a simple and unswerving wholeheartedness, to his own continual entertainment and profit. "There are," said the Saint, "less interesting ways of spending wet week-ends…"

Certainly it was a wet week-end when he met Ruth Eden, though he happened to be driving home along that lonely stretch of the Windsor road after a strictly lawful occasion.

To her, at first, he was only the providential man in the glistening leather coat who came striding across from the big open Hirondel that had skidded to a standstill a few yards away. She had seen his lights whizzing up behind them, and had managed to put her foot through the window as he went past — Mr. Julian Lamantia was too strong for her, and she was thoroughly frightened. The man in the leather coat twitched open the nearest door of the limousine and propped himself gracefully against it, with the broken glass crunching under his feet. His voice drawled pleasantly through the hissing rain.

"Evening, madam. This is Knight Errants Unlimited. Anything we can do?"

"If you're going towards London," said the girl quickly, "could you give me a lift?"

The man laughed. It was a short soft lilt of a laugh that somehow made the godsend of his arrival seem almost too good to be true.

An arm sheathed in wet sheepskin shot into the limousine — and Mr. Lamantia shot out. The feat of muscular prestidigitation was performed so swiftly and slickly that she took a second or two to absorb the fact that it had indubitably eventuated and travelled on into the past tense. By which time Mr. Lamantia was picking himself up out of the mud, with the rain spotting the dry portions of his very natty check suit and his vocabulary functioning on full throttle.

He stated, amongst other matters, that he would teach the intruder to mind his own unmentionable business; and the intruder smiled almost lazily.

"We don't like you," said the intruder.

He ducked comfortably under the wild swing that Mr. Lamantia launched at him, collared the raving man below the hips, and hoisted him, kicking and struggling, onto one shoulder. In this manner they disappeared from view. Presently there was a loud splash from the river bank a few yards away, and the stranger returned alone.

"Can your friend swim?" he inquired interestedly.

The girl stepped out into the road, feeling rather at a loss for any suitable remark. Somewhere in the damp darkness Mr. Lamantia was demonstrating a fluency of discourse which proved that he was contriving to keep at least his mouth above water; and the conversational powers of her rescuer showed themselves to be, in their own way, equally superior to any awe of circumstances.

As he led her across to his own car he talked with a charming lack of embarrassment.

"Over on our left we have the island of Runnymede, where King John signed the Magna Carta in the year 1215. It is by virtue of this Great Charter that Englishmen have always enjoyed complete freedom to do everything that they are not forbidden to do…"

The Hirondel was humming on towards London at a smooth seventy miles an hour before she was able to utter her thanks.

"I really was awfully relieved when you came along — though I'm afraid you've lost me my job."

"Like that, was it?"

"I'm afraid so. If you happen to know a nice man who wants an efficient secretary for purely secretarial purposes, I could owe you even more than I do now."

It was extraordinarily easy to talk to him — she was not quite sure why. In some subtle way he succeeded in weaving over her a fascination that was unique in her experience. Before they were in London she had outlined to him the whole story of her life. It was not until afterwards that she began to wonder how on earth she had ever been able to imagine that a perfect stranger could be interested in the recital of her inconsiderable affairs. For the tale she had to tell was very ordinary — a simple sequence of family misfortunes which had forced her into a profession amongst whose employers the Lamantias are not so rare that any museum has yet thought it worth while to include a stuffed specimen in the catalogue of its exhibits.

"And then, when my father died, my mother seemed to go a bit funny, poor darling! Anyone with a get-rich-quick scheme could take money off her. She ended up by meeting a man who was selling some wonderful shares that were going to multiply their value by ten in a few months. She gave him everything we had left; and a week or two later we found that the shares weren't worth the paper they were printed on."

"And so you joined the world's workers?"

She laughed softly.

"The trouble is to make anyone believe I really want to work. I'm rather pretty, you know, when you see me properly. I seem to put ideas into middle-aged heads."

She was led on to tell him so much about herself that they had reached her address in Bloomsbury before she had remembered that she had not even asked him his name.

"Templar — Simon Templar," he said gently.

She was in the act of fitting her key into the front door, and she was so startled that she turned around and stared at him, half doubtful whether she ought to laugh.

But the man in the leather coat was not laughing, though a little smile was flickering round his mouth. The light over the door picked out the clean-cut buccaneering lines of his face under the wide-brimmed filibuster's hat, and glinted back from the incredibly clear blue eyes in such a blaze of merry mockery as she had never seen before… It dawned upon her, against all her ideas of probability, that he wasn't pulling her leg…

"Do you mean that I've really met the Saint?" she asked dizzily.

"That's so. The address is in the telephone book. If there's anything else I can do, any time —"

"Angels and ministers of grace!" said the girl weakly, and left him standing there alone on the steps; and Simon Templar went laughing back to his car.

He came home feeling as pleased as if he had won three major wars single-handed, for the Saint made for himself an atmosphere in which no adventure could be commonplace. He pitched his hat into a corner, swung himself over the table, and kissed the hands of the tall slim girl who rose to meet him.

"Pat, I have rescued the most beautiful damsel, and I have thrown a man named Julian Lamantia into the Thames. Does life hold any more?"

"There's some mud on your face, and you're as wet as if you'd been in the river yourself," said his lady.

The Saint had the priceless gift of not asking too much of life. He cast his bread with joyous lavishness upon the waters, and tranquilly assumed that he would find it after many days — buttered and thickly spread with jam. In his philosophy that night's adventure was sufficient unto itself; and when, twenty-four hours later, his fertile brain was plunged deep into a new interest that had come to him, he would probably have forgotten Ruth Eden altogether, if she had not undoubtedly recognized his name. The Saint had his own vanity.

Consequently, when she called him one afternoon and announced that she was coming to see him, he was not utterly dumbfounded.

She arrived about six o'clock, and he met her on the doorstep with a cocktail shaker in his hand.

"I'm afraid I left you very abruptly the other night," she said. "You see, I'd read all about you in the newspapers, and it was rather overpowering to find that I'd been talking to the Saint for three-quarters of an hour without knowing it. In fact, I was very rude; and I think it's awfully sweet of you to have me."

He sat her down with a dry Martini and a cigarette, and once again she felt the strange sense of confidence that he inspired. It was easier to broach the object of her visit than she had expected.

"I was looking through some old papers yesterday, and I happened to come across those shares I was telling you about — the last lot my mother bought. I suppose it was ridiculous of me to think of coming to you, but it occurred to me that you'd be the very man who'd know what I ought to do about them — if there is anything that can be done. I've got quite a lot of nerve," she said, smiling.

Simon slipped the papers out of the envelope she handed him and glanced over them. There were ten of them, and each one purported to be a certificate attributing to the bearer two hundred £ shares in the British Honduras Mineral Development Trust.

"If they're only worth the paper they're printed on, even that ought to be something," said the Saint. "The engraving is really very artistic."

He gazed at the shares sadly. Then, with a shrug, he replaced them in the envelope and smiled. "May I keep them for a day or two?"

She nodded.

"I'd be frightfully grateful." She was watching him with a blend of amusement and curiosity; and then she laughed. "Excuse me staring at you like this, but I've never met a desperate criminal before. And you really are the Saint — you go about killing dope traffickers and swindlers and all that sort of thing?"

"And that sort of thing," admitted the Saint mildly.

"But how do you find them? I mean, if I had to go out and find a swindler, for instance —"

"You've met one already. Your late employer runs the J. L. Investment Bureau, doesn't he? I can't say I know much about his business, but I should be very surprised if any of his clients made their fortunes through acting on his advice."

She laughed.

"I can't think of any who have done so; but even when you've found your man —"

"Well, every case is taken on its merits; there's no formula. Now did you ever hear what happened to a bloke named Francis Lemuel —"

He amused her for an hour with the recital of some of his more entertaining misdeeds; and when she left she was still wondering why his sins seemed so different in his presence, and why it was so impossible to feel virtuously shocked by all that he admitted he had done.

During the next few days he gave a considerable amount of thought to the problem of the Eden family's unprofitable investments; and since he had never been afflicted with doubts of his own remarkable genius, he was not surprised when the course of his inquiries produced a possible market which had nothing at all to do with the Stock Exchange. Simon had never considered the Stock Exchange anyway.

He was paying particular attention to the correctly rakish angle of his hat preparatory to sallying forth on a certain morning when the front door bell rang and he went to open to the visitor. A tall saturnine man, with white moustache and bushy white eyebrows, stood on the mat, and it is an immutable fact of this chronicle that he was there by appointment.

"Can I see Captain Tombs? My name —"

"Is Wilmer-Steak?"

"Steck."

"Steck. Pleased to meet you. I'm Captain Tombs. Step in, comrade. How are you off for time?"

Mr. Wilmer-Steck suffered himself to be propelled into the sitting-room, where he consulted a massive gold watch.

"I think I shall have plenty of time to conclude our business, if you have enough time to do your share," he said.

"I mean, do you think you could manage to wait a few minutes? Make yourself at home till I come back?" With a bewildering dexterity the Saint shot cigarette-box, matches, pile of magazines, decanter, and siphon on to the table in front of the visitor. "Point is, I absolutely must dash out and see a friend of mine. I can promise not to be more than fifteen minutes. Could you possibly wait?"

Mr. Wilmer-Steck blinked.

"Why, certainly, if the matter is urgent, Captain — er —"

"Tombs. Help yourself to anything you want. Thanks so much. Pleased to see you. Bye-bye," said the Saint.

Mr. Wilmer-Steck felt himself wrung warmly by the hand, heard the sitting-room door bang, heard the front door bang, and saw the figure of his host striding past the open windows; and he was left pardonably breathless.

After a time, however, he recovered sufficiently to help himself to a whisky-and-soda, and a cigarette, and he was sipping and puffing appreciatively when the telephone began to ring.

He frowned at it vaguely for a few seconds; and then he realized that he must be alone in the house, for no one came to take the call. After some further hesitation, he picked up the receiver.

"Hullo," he said.

"Listen, Simon — I've got great news for you," said the wire. "Remember those shares of yours you were asking me to make inquiries about? Well, it's quite true they were worth nothing yesterday, but they'll be worth anything you like to ask for them tomorrow. Strictly confidential till they release the news, of course, but there isn't a doubt it's true. Your company has struck one of the biggest gushers on earth — it's spraying the landscape for miles around. The papers'll be full of it in twenty-four hours. You're going to pick up a fortune!"

"Oh!" said Mr. Wilmer-Steck."

"Sorry I can't stop to tell you more now, laddie," said the man on the wire. "I've got a couple of important clients waiting, and I must see them. Suppose we meet for a drink later. Berkeley at six, what?"

"Ah," said Mr. Wilmer-Steck.

"Right-ho, then, you lucky old devil. So-long!"

"So-long," said Mr. Wilmer-Steck.

He replaced the receiver carefully on its bracket, and it was not until several minutes afterwards that he noticed that his cigarette had gone out.

Then, depositing it fastidiously in the fireplace and helping himself to a fresh one, he turned to the telephone again and dialled a number.

He had scarcely finished his conversation when the Saint erupted volcanically back into the house; and Mr. Wilmer-Steck was suffering from such profound emotion that he plunged into the subject of his visit without preamble.

"Our directors have gone carefully into the matter of those shares you mentioned, Captain Tombs, and I am happy to be able to tell you that we are prepared to buy them immediately, if we can come to an agreement. By the way, will you tell me again the exact extent of your holding?"

"A nominal value of two thousand pounds," said the Saint. "But as for their present value —"

"Two thousand pounds!" Mr. Wilmer-Steck rolled the words almost gluttonously round his tongue. "And I don't think you even told us the name of the company."

"The British Honduras Mineral Development Trust."

"Ah, yes! The British Honduras Mineral Development Trust!.. Naturally our position must seem somewhat eccentric to you, Captain Tombs," said Mr. Wilmer-Steck, who appeared to have only just become conscious of the fact, "but I can assure you —"

"Don't bother," said the Saint briefly.

He went to his desk and flicked open a drawer, from which he extracted the bundle of shares.

"I know your position as well as you know it yourself. It's one of the nuisances of running a bucket-shop that you have to have shares to work on. You couldn't have anything more worthless than this bunch, so I'm sure everyone will be perfectly happy. Except, perhaps, your clients — but we don't have to worry about them, do we?"

Mr. Wilmer-Steck endeavoured to look pained, but his heart was not in the job.

"Now, if you sold those shares for, let's say, three hundred pounds —"

"Or supposing I got five hundred for them —

"If you were offered four hundred pounds, for instance —"

"And finally accepted five hundred —"

"If, as we were saying, you accepted five hundred pounds," agreed Mr. Wilmer-Steck, conceding the point reluctantly, "I'm sure you would not feel you had been unfairly treated."

"I should try to conceal my grief," said the Saint.

He thought that his visitor appeared somewhat agitated, but he never considered the symptom seriously. There was a little further argument before Mr. Wilmer-Steck was persuaded to pay over the amount in cash. Simon counted out the fifty crisp new ten-pound notes which came to him across the table, and passed the share certificates over in exchange. Mr. Wilmer-Steck counted and examined them in the same way.

"I suppose you're quite satisfied?" said the Saint. "I've warned you that to the best of my knowledge and belief those shares aren't worth a fraction of the price you've paid for them —"

"I am perfectly satisfied," said Mr. Wilmer-Steck. He pulled out his large gold chronometer and glanced at the dial. "And now, if you will excuse me, my dear Captain Tombs, I find I am already late for an important engagement."

He made his exit with almost indecent haste.

In an office overlooking the Haymarket he found two men impatiently awaiting his return. He took off his hat, mopped his forehead, ran a hand over his waistcoat, and gasped.

"I've lost my watch," he said.

"Damn your watch," said Mr. Julian Lamantia callously. "Have you got those shares?"

"My pocket must have been picked," said the bereaved man plaintively. "Yes, I got the shares. Here they are. It was a wonderful watch, too. And don't you forget I'm on to half of everything we make."

Mr. Lamantia spread out the certificates in front of him, and the man in the brown bowler who was perched on a corner of the desk leaned over to look.

It was the latter who spoke first.

"Are these the shares you bought, Meyer?" he asked in a hushed whisper.

Wilmer-Steck nodded vigorously.

"They're going to make a fortune for us. Gushers blowing oil two hundred yards in the air — that's the news you'll see in the papers tomorrow. I've never worked so hard and fast in my life, getting Tombs to —"

"Who?" asked the brown bowler huskily.

"Captain Tombs — the mug I was working. But it's brain that does it, as I'm always saying… What's the matter with you, Fred — are you feeling ill?"

Mr. Julian Lamantia swivelled round in his chair.

"Do you know anything about these shares, Jorman?" he demanded.

The brown bowler swallowed.

"I ought to," he said. "I was doing a big trade in them three or four years ago. And that damned fool has paid five hundred pounds of our money for 'em — to the same man that swindled me of thirty pounds only last week! There never was a British Honduras Mineral Development Trust till I invented it and printed the shares myself. And that — that —"

Meyer leaned feebly on the desk.

"But listen, Fred," he pleaded. "Isn't there some mistake? You can't mean — After all the imagination and brain work I put into getting those shares —"

"Brain work!" snarled Happy Fred.

2. The Export Trade

It is a notable fact, which might be made the subject of a profound philosophical discourse by anyone with time to spare for these recreations, that the characteristics which go to make a successful buccaneer are almost the same as those required by the detective whose job it is to catch him.

That he must be a man of infinite wit and resource goes without saying; but there are other and more uncommon essentials. He must have an unlimited memory not only for faces and names, but also for every odd and out-of-the-way fact that comes to his knowledge. Out of a molehill of coincidence he must be able to build up a mountain of inductive speculation that would make Sherlock Holmes feel dizzy. He must be a man of infinite human sympathy, with an unstinted gift for forming weird and wonderful friendships. He must, in fact, be equally like the talented historian whose job it is to chronicle his exploits — with the outstanding difference that instead of being free to ponder the problems which arise in the course of his vocation for sixty hours, his decisions will probably have to be formed in sixty seconds.

Simon Templar fulfilled at least one of these qualifications to the n th degree. He had queer friends dotted about in every outlandish corner of the globe, and if many of them lived in unromantic-sounding parts of London, it was not his fault. Strangely enough, there were not many of them who knew that the debonair young man with the lean tanned face and gay blue eyes who drifted in and out of their lives at irregular intervals was the notorious law-breaker known to everyone as the Saint. Certainly old Charlie Milton did not know.

The Saint, being in the region of the Tottenham Court Road one afternoon with half an hour to dispose of, dropped into Charlie's attic work-room and listened to a new angle in the changing times.

"There's not much doing in my line these days," said Charlie, wiping his steel-rimmed spectacles. "When nobody's going in for real expensive jewellery, because the costume stuff is so good, it stands to reason they don't need any dummies. Look at this thing — the first big bit of work I've had for weeks."

He produced a glittering rope of diamonds, set in a cunning chain of antique silver and ending in a wonderfully elaborate heart-shaped pendant. The sight of it should have made any honest buccaneer's mouth water, but it so happened that Simon Templar knew better. For that was the secret of Charlie Milton's employment.

Up there, in his dingy little shop, he laboured with marvelously delicate craftsmanship over the imitations, which had made his name known to every jeweller in London. Sometimes there were a hundred thousand pounds' worth of precious stones littered over his bench, and he worked under the watchful eye of a detective detailed to guard them. Whenever a piece of jewellery was considered too valuable to be displayed by its owner on ordinary occasions, it was sent to Charlie Milton for him to make one of his amazingly exact facsimiles; and there was many a wealthy dowager who brazenly paraded Charlie's handiwork at minor social functions, while the priceless originals were safely stored in a safe deposit.

"The Kellman necklace," Charlie explained, tossing it carelessly back into a drawer. "Lord Palfrey ordered it from me a month ago, and I was just finishing it when he went bankrupt. I had twenty-five pounds advance when I took it on, and I expect that's all I shall see for my trouble. The necklace is being sold with the rest of his things, and how do I know whether the people who buy it will want my copy?"

It was not an unusual kind of conversation to find its place in the Saint's varied experience, and he never foresaw the path it was to play in his career. Some days later he happened to notice a newspaper paragraph referring to the sale of Lord Palfrey's house and effects; but he thought nothing more of the matter, for men like Lord Palfrey were not Simon Templar's game.

In the days when some fresh episode of Saintly audacity was one of the most dependable weekly stand-bys of the daily press, the victims of his lawlessness had always been men whose reputations would have emerged considerably dishevelled from such a searching inquiry as they were habitually at pains to avoid; and although the circumstances of Simon Templar's life had altered a great deal since then, his elastic principles of morality performed their acrobatic contortions within much the same limits.

That those circumstances should have altered at all was not his choice; but there are boundaries which every buccaneer must eventually reach, and Simon Templar had reached them rather rapidly. The manner of his reaching them has been related elsewhere, and there were not a few people in England who remembered that story. For one week of blazing headlines the secret of the Saint's real identity had been published up and down the country for all to read; and although there were many to whom the memory had grown dim, and who could still describe him only by the nickname which he had made famous, there were many others who had not forgotten. The change had its disadvantages, for one of the organizations which would never forget had its headquarters at Scotland Yard; but there were occasional compensations in the strange commissions which sometimes came the Saint's way.

One of these arrived on a day in June, brought by a sombrely dressed man who called at the flat on Piccadilly where Simon Templar had taken up his temporary abode — the Saint was continually changing his address, and that palatial apartment, with tall windows overlooking the Green Park, was his latest fancy. The visitor was an elderly white-haired gentleman with the understanding eyes and air of tremendous discretion which one associates in imagination with the classical type of family solicitor that he immediately confessed himself to be.

"To put it as briefly as possible, Mr. Templar," he said, "I am authorized to ask if you would undertake to deliver a sealed package to an address in Paris which will be given you. All your expenses will be paid, of course; and you will be offered a fee of one hundred pounds."

Simon lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling.

"It sounds easy enough," he remarked. "Wouldn't it be cheaper to send it by mail?"

"That package, Mr. Templar — the contents of which I am not allowed to disclose — is insured for five thousand pounds," said the solicitor impressively. "But I fear that four times that sum would not compensate for the loss of an article which is the only thing of its kind in the world. The ordinary detective agencies have already been considered, but our client feels that they are scarcely competent to deal with such an important task. We have been warned that an attempt may be made to steal the package, and it is our client's wish that we should endeavour to secure the services of your own — ah — singular experience."

The Saint thought it over. He knew that the trade in illicit drugs does not go on to any appreciable extent from England to the Continent, but rather in the reverse direction; and apart from such a possibility as that the commission seemed straight-forward enough.

"Your faith in my reformed character is almost touching," said the Saint at length; and the solicitor smiled faintly.

"We are relying on the popular estimate of your sporting instincts."

"When do you want me to go?"

The solicitor placed the tips of his fingers together with a discreet modicum of satisfaction.

"I take it that you are prepared to accept our offer?"

"I don't see why I shouldn't. A pal of mine who came over the other day told me there was a darn good show at the Folies Bergère, and since you're only young once —"

"Doubtless you will be permitted to include the entertainment in your bill of expenses," said the solicitor dryly. "If the notice is not too short, we should be very pleased if you were free to visit the — ah — Folies Bergère tomorrow night."

"Suits me," murmured the Saint laconically.

The solicitor rose.

"You will travel by air, of course," he said. "I shall return later this evening to deliver the package into your keeping, after which you will be solely responsible. If I might give you a hint, Mr. Templar," he added, as the Saint shepherded him to the door, "you will take particular pains to conceal it while you are travelling. It has been suggested to us that the French police are not incorruptible."

He repeated his warning when he came back at six o'clock and left Simon with a brown-paper packet about four inches square and two inches deep, in which the outlines of a stout cardboard box could be felt. Simon weighed the package several times in his hand — it was neither particularly light nor particularly heavy, and he puzzled over its possible contents for some time. The address to which it was to be delivered was typed on a plain sheet of paper; Simon committed it to memory, and burnt it.

Curiosity was the Saint's weakness. It was that same insatiable curiosity which had made his fortune, for he was incapable of looking for long at anything that struck him as being the least bit peculiar without succumbing to the temptation to probe deeper into its peculiarities. It never entered his head to betray the confidence that had been placed in him, so far as the safety of the package was concerned; but the mystery of its contents was one which he considered had a definite bearing on whatever risks he had agreed to take. He fought off his curiosity until he got up the next morning, and then it got the better of him. He opened the packet after his early breakfast, carefully removing the seals intact with a hot palette-knife, and was very glad that he had done so.

When he drove down to Croydon aerodrome later the package had been just as carefully refastened, and no one would have known that it had been opened. He carried it inside a book, from which he had cut the printed part of the pages to leave a square cavity encircled by the margins; and he was prepared for trouble.

He checked in his suit-case and waited around patiently during the dilatory system of preparations which for some extraordinary reason is introduced to negative the theoretical speed of air transport. He was fishing out his cigarette-case for the second time when a dark and strikingly pretty girl, who had been waiting with equal patience, came over and asked him for a light.

Simon produced his lighter, and the girl took a pack of cigarettes from her bag and offered him one.

"Do they always take as long as this?" she said.

"Always when I'm travelling," said the Saint resignedly. "Another thing I should like to know is why they have to arrange their time-tables so that you never have the chance to get a decent lunch. Is it for the benefit of the French restauraunts at dinner-time.

She laughed.

"Are we fellow passengers?"

"I do not know. I'm for Paris."

"I'm for Ostend."

The Saint sighed.

"Couldn't you change your mind and come to Paris?"

He had taken one puff from the cigarette. Now he took a second, while she eyed him impudently. The smoke had an unfamiliar, slightly bitter taste to it. Simon drew on the cigarette again thoughtfully, but this time he held the smoke in his mouth and let it trickle out again presently, as if he had inhaled. The expression on his face never altered, although the last thing he had expected had been trouble of that sort.

"Do you think we could take a walk outside?" said the girl. "I'm simply stifling."

"I think it might be a good idea," said the Saint.

He walked out with her into the clear morning sunshine, and they strolled idly along the gravel drive. The rate of exchange had done a great deal to discourage foreign travel that year, and the airport was unusually deserted. A couple of men were climbing out of a car that had drawn up beside the building; but apart from them there was only one other car turning in at the gates leading from the main road, and a couple of mechanics fussing round a gigantic Handley-Page that was ticking over on the tarmac.

"Why did you give me a doped cigarette?" asked the Saint with perfect casualness, but as the girl turned and stared at him his eyes leapt to hers with the cold suddenness of bared steel.

"I–I don't understand. Do you mind telling me what you mean?"

Simon dropped the cigarette and trod on it deliberately.

"Sister," he said, "if you're thinking of a Simon Templar who was born yesterday, let me tell you it was someone else of the same name. You know, I was playing that cigarette trick before you cut your teeth."

The girl's hand went to her mouth; then it went up in a kind of wave. For a moment the Saint was perplexed; and then he started to turn. She was looking at something over his shoulder, but his head had not revolved far enough to see what it was before the solid weight of a sandbag slugged viciously into the back of his neck. He had one instant of feeling his limbs sagging powerlessly under him, while the book he carried dropped from his hand and sprawled open to the ground; and then everything went dark.

He came back to earth in a small barely-furnished office overlooking the landing-field, and in the face that was bending over him he recognized the round pink countenance of Chief Inspector Teal, of Scotland Yard.

"Were you the author of that clout?" he demanded, rubbing the base of his skull tenderly. "I didn't think you could be so rough."

"I didn't do it," said the detective shortly. "But we've got the man who did — if you want to charge him. I thought you'd have known Kate Allfield, Saint."

Simon looked at him.

"What — not 'the Mug'? I have heard of her, but this is the first time we've met. And she nearly made me smoke a sleepy cigarette!" He grimaced. "What was the idea?"

"That's what we're waiting for you to tell us," said Teal grimly. "We drove in just as they knocked you out. We know what they were after all right — the Deacon's gang beat them to the necklace, but that wouldn't make the Green Cross bunch give up. What I want to know is when you started working with the Deacon."

"This is right over my head," said the Saint, just as bluntly. "Who is this Deacon, and who the hell are the Green Cross bunch?"

Teal faced him calmly.

"The Green Cross bunch are the ones that slugged you. The Deacon is the head of the gang that got away with the Palfrey jewels yesterday. He came to see you twice yesterday afternoon — we got the wire that he was planning a big job and we were keeping him under observation, but the jewels weren't missed till this morning. Now I'll hear what you've got to say; but before you begin I'd better warn you —"

"Wait a minute." Simon took out his cigarette-case and helped himself to a smoke. "With an unfortunate reputation like mine, I expect it'll take me some time to drive it into your head that I don't know a thing about the Deacon. He came to me yesterday and said he was a solicitor — he wanted me to look after a valuable sealed packet that he was sending over to Paris, and I took on the job. That's all. He wouldn't even tell me what was in it."

"Oh, yes?" The detective was dangerously polite. "Then I suppose it'd give you the surprise of your life if I told you that that package you were carrying contained a diamond necklace valued at about eight thousand pounds."

"It would," said the Saint.

Teal turned.

There was a plain-clothes man standing guard by the door, and on the table in the middle of the room was a litter of brown paper and tissue in the midst of which gleamed a small heap of coruscating stones and shining metal. Teal put a hand to the heap of jewels and lifted it up into a streamer of iridescent fire.

"This is it," he said.

"May I have a look at it?" said the Saint.

He took the necklace from Teal's hand and studied it closely under the light. Then he handed it back with a brief grin.

"If you could get eighty pounds for it, you'd be lucky," he said. "It's a very good imitation, but I'm afraid the stones are only jargoons."

The detective's eyes went wide. Then he snatched the necklace and examined it himself.

He turned around again slowly.

"I'll begin to believe you were telling the truth for once, Templar," he said, and his manner had changed so much that the effect would have been comical without the back-handed apology. "What do you make of it?"

"I think we've both been had," said the Saint. "After what you've told me, I should think the Deacon knew you were watching him, and knew he'd have to get the jewels out of the country in a hurry. He could probably fence most of them quickly, but no one would touch that necklace — it's too well known. He had the rather artistic idea of trying to get me to do the job —"

"Then why should he give you a fake?"

Simon shrugged.

"Maybe that Deacon is smoother than any of us thought. My God, Teal — think of it! Suppose even all this was just a blind — for you to know he'd been to see me — for you to get after me as soon as the jewels were missed — hear I'd left for Paris — chase me to Croydon — and all the time the real necklace is slipping out by another route —"

"God damn!" said Chief Inspector Teal, and launched himself at the telephone with surprising speed for such a portly and lethargic man.

The plain-clothes man at the door stood aside almost respectfully for the Saint to pass.

Simon fitted his hat on rakishly and sauntered out with his old elegance. Out in the waiting room an attendant was shouting, "All Ostend and Brussels passengers, please!" — and outside on the tarmac a roaring aeroplane was warming up its engines. Simon Templar suddenly changed his mind about his destination.

"I will give you thirty thousand guilders for the necklace," said Van Roeper, the little trader of Amsterdam to whom the Saint went with his booty.

"I'll take fifty thousand," said the Saint; and he got it.

He fulfilled another of the qualifications of a successful buccaneer, for he never forgot a face. He had had a vague idea from the first that he had seen the Deacon somewhere before, but it had not been until that morning, when he woke up, that he had been able to place the amiable solicitor who had been so anxious to enlist his dubious services; and he felt that fortune was very kind to him.

Old Charlie Milton, who had been dragged away from his breakfast to sell him the facsimile for eighty pounds, felt much the same.

3. The Unblemished Bootlegger

Mr. Melford Croon considered himself a very prosperous man. The brass plate outside his unassuming suite of offices in Gray's Inn Road described him somewhat vaguely as a "Financial Consultant"; and while it is true that the gilt-edged moguls of the city had never been known to seek his advice, there is no doubt that he flourished exceedingly.

Out of Mr. Croon's fertile financial genius emerged, for example. the great Tin Salvage Trust. In circulars, advertisements, and statements to the Press, Mr. Croon raised his literary hands in horror at the appalling waste of tin that was going on day by day throughout the country. "Tins," of course as understood in the British domestic vocabulary to mean the sepulchres of Hcinz's 57 Varieties, the Crosse & Blackwell vegetable garden, or the Campbell soup kitchen, are made of thin sheet steel with the most economical possible plating of genuine tin; but nevertheless (Mr. Croon pointed out) tin was used. And what happened to it? It was thrown away.

The garbage man removed it along with the other contents of the ashcan, and the municiapl incenerators burnt it. And tin was a precious metal — not quite so valuable as gold and platinum, but not very far behind silver. Mr. Croon invited his readers to think of it. Hundreds of thousands of pounds being poured into garbage dumps and incinerators every day of the week from every kitchen in the land. Individually worthless "tins" which in the accumulation represented an enormous potential wealth.

The great Tin Salvage Trust was formed with a capital of nearly a quarter of a million to deal with the problem. Barrows would collect cans from door to door. Rag-and-bone men would lend their services. A vast refining and smelting plant would be built to recover the pure tin. Enormous dividends would be paid. The subscribers would grow rich overnight

The subscribers did not grow rich overnight; but that was not Mr. Croon's fault. The Official Receiver reluctantly had to admit it, when the Trust went into liquidation eighteen months after it was formed. The regrettable capriciousness of fortune discovered and enlarged a fatal leak in the scheme; without quite knowing how it all happened, a couple of dazed promoters found themselves listening to sentences of penal servitude; and the creditors were glad to accept one shilling in the pound. Mr. Croon was overcome with grief — he said so in public — but he could not possibly be blamed for the failure. He had no connection whatever with the Trust, except as Financial Consultant — a post for which he received a merely nominal salary. It was all very sad.

In similar circumstances, Mr. Croon was overcome with grief at the failures of the great Rubber Waste Products Corporation, the Iron Workers' Benevolent Guild, the Small Investors' Cooperative Bank, and the Consolidated Albion Film Company. He had a hard and unprofitable life; and if his mansion flat in Hampstead, his Rolls Royce, his shoot in Scotland, his racing stable, and his house at Marlow helped to console him, it is quite certain that he needed them.

"A very suitable specimen for us to study," said Simon Templar.

The latest product of Mr. Croon's indomitable inventiveness was spread out on his knee. It took the form of a very artistically typewritten letter, which had been passed on to the Saint by a chance acquaintance.

Dear Sir, As you cannot fail to be aware, a state of Prohibition exists at present in the United States of America. This has led to a highly profitable trade in the forbidden alcoholic drinks between countries not so affected and the United States. A considerable difference of opinion exists as to whether this traffic is morally justified. There can be no question, however, that from the standpoint of this country it cannot be legally attacked, nor that the profits, in proportion to the risk, are exceptionally attractive. If you should desire further information on the subject I shall be pleased to supply it at the above address. Yours faithfully, Melford Croon.

Simon Templar called on Mr. Croon one morning by appointment; and the name he gave was not his own. He found Mr. Croon to be a portly and rather pale-faced man, with the flowing iron-grey mane of an impresario; and the information he gave — after a few particularly shrewd inquiries about his visitor's status and occupation — was very much what the Saint had expected.

"A friend of mine," said Mr. Croon — he never claimed personally to be the author of the schemes on which he gave Financial Consultations — "a friend of mine is interested in sending a cargo of wines and spirits to America. Naturally, the expenses are somewhat heavy. He has to charter a ship, engage a crew, purchase the cargo, and arrange to dispose of it on the other side. While he would prefer to find the whole of the money — and, of course, reap all the reward-he is unfortunately left short of about two thousand pounds."

"I see," said the Saint.

He saw much more than Mr. Croon told him, but he did not say so.

"This two thousand pounds," said Mr. Croon, "represents about one-fifth of the cost of the trip, and in order to complete his arrangements my friend is prepared to offer a quarter of his profits to anyone who will go into partnership with him. As he expects to make at least ten thousand pounds, you will see that there are not many speculations which offer such a liberal return."

If there was one role which Simon Templar could play better than any other, it was that of the kind of man whom financial consultants of every size and species dream that they may meet one day before they die. Mr. Croon's heart warmed towards him as Simon laid on the touches of his self-created character with a master's brush.

"A very charming man," thought the Saint as he paused on the pavement outside the building which housed Mr. Croon's offices.

Since at various stages of the interview Mr. Croon's effusive bonhomie had fairly bubbled with invitations to lunch with Mr. Croon, dine with Mr. Croon, shoot with Mr. Croon, watch Mr. Croon's horses win at Goodwood with Mr. Croon, and spend week-ends with Mr. Croon at Mr. Croon's house on the river, the character which Simon Templar had been playing might have thought that the line of the Saint's lips were unduly cynical; but Simon was only thinking of his own mission in life.

He stood there with his walking cane swinging gently in his fingers, gazing at the very commonplace street scene with thoughtful blue eyes, and became aware that a young man with the physique of a pugilist was standing at his shoulder. Simon waited.

"Have you been to see Croon?" demanded the young man suddenly.

Simon looked around with a slight smile.

"Why ask?" he murmured. "You were outside Croon's room when I came out, and you followed me down the stairs."

"I just wondered."

The young man had a pleasantly ugly face with crinkly grey eyes that would have liked to be friendly; but he was very plainly nervous.

"Are you interested in bootlegging?" asked the Saint; and the young man stared at him grimly.

"Listen, I don't know if you're trying to be funny, but I'm not. I'm probably going to be arrested this afternoon. In the last month I've lost about five thousand pounds in Croon's schemes — and the money wasn't mine to lose. You can think what you like. I went up there to bash his face in before they get me, and I'm going back now for the same reason. But I saw you come out, and you didn't look like a crook. I thought I'd give you a word of warning. You can take it or leave it. Goodbye."

He turned off abruptly into the building, but Simon reached out and caught him by the elbow.

"Why not come and have some lunch first?" he suggested. "And let Croon have his. It'll be so much more fun punching him in the stomach when it's full of food."

He waved away the young man's objections and excuses without listening to them, hailed a taxi, and bundled him in. It was the kind of opportunity that the Saint lived for, and he would have had his way if he was compelled to kidnap his guest for the occasion. They lunched at a quiet restaurant in Soho; and in the persuasive warmth of half a litre of Antinori Chianti and the Saint's irresistible personality the young man told him what he knew of Mr. Melford Croon.

"I suppose I was a complete idiot — that's all. I met Croon through a man I used to see in the place where I always had lunch. It didn't occur to me that it was all a put-up job, and I thought Croon was all right. I was fed to the teeth with sitting about in an office copying figures from one book to another, and Croon's stunts looked like a way out. I put three thousand quid into his Consolidated Albion Film Company: it was only on paper, and the way Croon talked about it made me think I'd never really be called on for the money. They were going to rent the World Features studio at Teddington — the place is still on the market. When Consolidated Albion went smash I had to find the money, and the only way I could get it was to borrow it out of the firm. Croon put the idea into my head, but — Oh, hell! It's easy enough to see how things have happened after the damage is done."

He had borrowed another two thousand pounds — without the cashier's knowledge — in the hope retrieving the first loss. It had gone into a cargo of liquor destined for the thirsty States. Six weeks later Mr. Croon broke the news to him that the coastal patrols had captured the ship.

"And that's what'll happen to any other fool who puts money into Croon's bootlegging," said the young man bitterly. "He'll be told that the ship's sunk, or captured, or caught fire, or grown wings and flown away. He'll never see his money back. My God — to think of that slimy swab trying to be a bootlegger! Why, he told me once that the very sight of a ship made him feel sick, and he wouldn't cross the Channel for a thousand pounds."

"What are you going to do about it?" asked the Saint, and the young man shrugged.

"Go back and try to make him wish he'd never been born — as I told you. They're having an audit today at the office, and they can't help finding out what I've done. I stayed away — said I was ill. That's all there is to do."

Simon took out his chequebook and wrote a cheque for five thousand pounds.

"Whom shall I make it payable to?" he inquired, and his guest's eyes widened.

"My name's Peter Quentin. But I don't want any of your damned —"

"My dear chap, I shouldn't dream of offering you charity." Simon blotted the pink slip and scaled it across the table. "This little chat has been worth every penny of it. Besides, you don't want to go to penal servitude at your age. It isn't healthy. Now be a good fellow and dash back to your office — square things up as well as you can —"

The young man was staring at the name which was scribbled in the bottom right-hand corner of the paper.

"Is that name Simon Templar?"

The Saint nodded.

"You see, I shall get it all back," he said.

He went home with two definite conclusions as a result of his day's work and expenses: first, that Mr. Melford Croon was in every way as undesirable a citizen as he had thought, and second, that Mr. Melford Croon's contribution to the funds of righteousness was long overdue. Mr. Croon's account was, in fact, exactly five thousand pounds overdrawn; and that state of affairs could not be allowed to continue.

Nevertheless, it took the Saint twenty-four hours of intensive thought to devise a poetic retribution; and when the solution came to him it was so simple that he had to laugh.

Mr. Croon went down to his house on the river for the week-end. He invariably spent his week-ends there in the summer, driving out of London on the Friday afternoon and refreshing himself from his labours with three happy days of rural peace. Mr. Croon had an unexpected appetite for simple beauty and the works of nature: he was rarely so contented as when he was lying out in a deck-chair and spotless white flannels, directing his gardener's efforts at the flower-beds, or sipping an iced whisky-and-soda on his balcony while he watched supple young athletes propelling punts up and down the stream.

This week-end was intended to be no exception to his usual custom. He arrived at Marlow in time for dinner, and prepared for an early night in anticipation of the tireless revels of a mixed company of his friends who were due to join him the next day. It was scarcely eleven o'clock when he dismissed his servant and mixed himself a final drink before going to bed.

He heard the front door-bell ring, and rose from his armchair grudgingly. He had no idea who could be calling on him at that hour; and when he had opened the door and found that there was no one visible outside he was even more annoyed.

He returned to the sitting-room, and gulped down the remainder of his nightcap without noticing the bitter tang that had not been there when he poured it out. The taste came into his mouth after the liquid had been swallowed, and he grimaced. He started to walk towards the door, and the room spun around. He felt himself falling helplessly before he could cry out.

When he woke up, his first impression was that he had been buried alive. He was lying on a hard narrow surface, with one shoulder squeezed up against a wall on his left, and the ceiling seemed to be only a few inches above his head. Then his sight cleared a little, and he made out that he was in a bunk in a tiny unventilated compartment lighted by a single circular window. He struggled up on one elbow, and groaned. His head was one reeling whirligig of aches, and he felt horribly sick.

Painfully he forced his mind back to his last period of consciousness. He remembered pouring out that last whisky-and-soda — the ring at the front door — the bitter taste in the glass… Then nothing but an infinity of empty blackness… How long had he been unconscious? A day? Two days? A week? He had no means of telling.

With an agonizing effort he dragged himself off the bunk and staggered across the floor. It reared and swayed sickeningly under him, so that he could scarcely keep his balance. His stomach was somersaulting nauseatingly inside him. Somehow he got over to the one window, the pane was frosted over, but outside he could hear the splash of water and the shriek of wind. The explanation dawned on him dully — he was in a ship.

Mr. Croon's knees gave way under him, and he sank moaning to the floor. A spasm of sickness left him gasping in a clammy sweat. The air was stiflingly close, and there was a smell of oil in it which made it almost unbreathable. Stupidly, unbelievingly, he felt the floor vibrating to the distant rhythm of the engines. A ship! He'd been drugged — kidnapped — shanghaied! Even while he tried to convince himself that it could not be true, the floor heaved up again with the awful deliberateness of a seventh wave; and Mr. Croon heaved up with it…

He never knew how he managed to crawl to the door between the paroxysms of torment that racked him with every movement of the vessel. After what seemed like hours he reached it, and found strength to try the handle. The door failed to budge. It was locked. He was a prisoner — and he was going to die. If he could have opened the door he would have crawled up to the deck and thrown himself into the sea. It would have been better than dying of that dreadful nausea that racked his whole body and made his head swim as if it were being spun on the axle of a dynamo.

He rolled on the floor and sobbed with helpless misery. In another hour of that weather he'd be dead. If he could have found a weapon he would have killed himself. He had never been able to stand the slightest movement of the water — and now he was a prisoner in a ship that must have been riding one of the worst storms in the history of navigation. The hopelessness of his position made him scream suddenly — scream like a trapped hare — before the ship slumped suckingly down into the trough of another seventh wave and left his stomach on the crest of it.

Minutes later — it seemed like centuries — a key turned in the locked door, and a man came in. Through the bilious yellow mists that swirled over his eyes, Mr. Croon saw that he was tall and wiry, with a salt-tanned face and far-sighted twinkling blue eyes. His double-breasted jacket carried lines of dingy gold braid, and he balanced himself easily against the rolling of the vessel.

"Why, Mr. Croon — what's the matter?"

"I'm sick," sobbed Mr. Croon, and proceeded to prove it.

The officer picked him up and laid him on the bunk.

"Bless you, sir, this isn't anything to speak of. Just a bit of a blow — and quite a gentle one for the Atlantic."

Croon gasped feebly.

"Did you say the Atlantic?"

"Yes, sir. The Atlantic is the ocean we are on now, sir, and it'll be the same ocean all the way to Boston."

"I can't go to Boston," said Mr. Croon pathetically. "I'm going to die."

The officer pulled out a pipe and stuffed it with black tobacco. A cloud of rank smoke added itself to the smell of oil that was contributing to Croon's wretchedness.

"Lord, sir, you're not going to die!" said the officer cheerfully. "People who aren't used to it often get like this for the first two or three days. Though I must say, sir, you've taken a long time to wake up. I've never known a man be so long sleeping it off. That must have been a very good farewell party you had, sir."

"Damn you!" groaned the sick man weakly. "I wasn't drunk — I was drugged!"

The officer's mouth fell open.

"Drugged, Mr.Croon?"

"Yes, drugged!" The ship rolled on its beam ends, and Croon gave himself up for a full minute to his anguish. "Oh, don't argue about it! Take me home!"

"Well, sir, I'm afraid that's —"

"Fetch me the captain!"

"I am the captain, sir. Captaine Bourne. You seem to have forgotten, sir. This is the Christabel Jane, eighteen hours out of Liverpool with a cargo of spirits for the United States. We don't usually take passengers, sir, but seeing that you were a friend of the owner, and you wanted to make the trip, why, of course we found you a berth."

Croon buried his face in his hands.

He had no more questions to ask. The main details of the conspiracy were plain enough. One of his victims had turned on him for revenge — or perhaps several of them had banded together for the purpose. He had been threatened often before. And somehow his terror of the sea had become known. It was poetic justice — to shanghai him on board a bootlegging ship and force him to take the journey of which he had cheated their investments.

"How much will you take to turn back?" he asked; and Captain Bourne shook his head.

"You still don't seem to understand, sir. There's ten thousand pounds' worth of spirits on board — at least, they'll be worth ten thousand pounds if we get them across safely — and I'd lose my job if I —"

"Damn your job!" said Melford Croon.

With trembling fingers he pulled out a cheque book and fountain-pen. He scrawled a cheque for fifteen thousand pounds and held it out.

"Here you are. I'll buy your cargo. Give the owner his money and keep the change. Keep the cargo. I'll buy your whole damned ship. But take me back. D'you understand? Take me back —"

The ship lurched under him again, and he choked. When the convulsion was over the captain was gone.

Presently a white-coated steward entered with a cup of steaming beef-tea. Croon looked at it and shuddered.

"Take it away," he wailed.

"The captain sent me with it, sir," explained the steward. "You must try to drink it, sir. It's the best thing in the world for the way you're feeling. Really, sir, you'll feel quite different after you've had it."

Croon put out a white, flabby hand. He managed to take a gulp of the hot soup; then another. It had a slightly bitter taste which seemed familiar. The cabin swam around him again, more dizzily than before, and his eyes closed in merciful drowsiness.

He opened them in his own bedroom. His servant was drawing back the curtains, and the sun was streaming in at the windows.

The memory of his nightmare made him feel sick again, and he clenched his teeth and swallowed desperately. But the floor underneath was quite steady. And then he remembered something else, and struggled up in the bed with an effort which threatened to overpower him with renewed nausea.

"Give me my chequebook," he rasped. "Quick — out of my coat pocket —"

He opened it frantically and stared at a blank stub with his face growing haggard.

"What's today?" he asked.

"This is Saturday, sir," answered the surprised valet.

"What time?"

"Eleven o'clock, sir. You said I wasn't to call you —"

But Mr. Melford Croon was clawing for the telephone at his bedside. In a few seconds he was through to his bank in London. They told him that his cheque had been cashed at ten.

Mr. Croon lay back on the pillows and tried to think out how it could have been done.

He even went so far as to tell his incredible story to Scotland Yard, though he was not by nature inclined to attract the attention of the police.

A methodical search was made in Lloyd's Register, but no mention of a ship called the Christabel Jane could be found. Which was not surprising, for Christabel Jane was the name temporarily bestowed by Simon Templar on a dilapidated Thames tug which had wallowed very convincingly for a few hours in the gigantic tank at the World Features studio at Teddington for the filming of storm scenes at sea, which would undoubtedly have been a great asset to Mr. Croon's Consolidated Albion Film Company if the negotiations for the lease had been successful.