"The defendants," said Mr. Justice Goldie, with evident distaste, "have been unable to prove that the agreement between the plaintiff and the late Alfred Green constituted a money-lending transaction within the limits of the Act; and I am therefore obliged to give judgment for the plaintiff. I will consider the question of costs tomorrow."
The Saint tapped Peter Quentin on the shoulder as the court rose, and they slipped out ahead of the scanty assembly of spectators, bored reporters, dawdling solicitors, and traditionally learned counsel. Simon Templar had sat in that stuffy little room for two hours, bruising his marrowbones on an astonishingly hard wooden bench and yearning for a cigarette; but there were times when he could endure many discomforts in a good cause.
Outside, he caught Peter's arm.
"Mind if I take another look at our plaintiff?" he said. "Just over here — stand in front of me. I want to see what a snurge like that really looks like."
They stood in a gloomy corner near the door of the court, and Simon sheltered behind Peter Quentin's hefty frame and watched James Deever come out with his solicitor.
It is possible that Mr. Deever's mother loved him. Perhaps, holding him on her knee, she saw in his childish face the fulfilment of all those precious hopes and shy incommunicable dreams which (if we can believe the Little Mothers' Weekly) are the joy and comfort of the prospective parent. History does not tell us that. But we do know that since her death, thirty years ago, no other bosom had ever opened to him with anything like that sublime mingling of pride and affection.
He was a long cadaverous man with a face like a vulture and shaggy white eyebrows over closely-set greenish eyes. His thin nose swooped low down over a thin gash of a mouth, and his chin was pointed and protruding. In no respect whatsoever was it the kind of countenance to which children take an instinctive shine. Grown men and women, who knew him, liked him even less.
His home and business address were in Manchester; but the City Corporation had never been heard to boast about it. Simon Templar watched him walk slowly past, discussing some point in the case he had just won with the air of a parson conferring with a churchwarden after matins, and the reeking hypocrisy of the performance filled him with an almost irresistible desire to catch Mr. Deever's frock-coated stern with the toe of his shoe and start him on one sudden magnificent flight to the foot of the stairs. The Manchester City Corporation, Simon considered, could probably have kept their ends up without Mr. Deever's name on the roll of ratepayers. But the Saint restrained himself, and went on peaceably with Peter Quentin five minutes afterwards.
"Let us drink some Old Curio," said the Saint.
They entered a convenient tavern, lighting cigarettes as they went, and found a secluded corner in the saloon bar. The court had sat on late, and the hour had struck at which it is lawful for Englishmen to consume the refreshment which can only be bought at any time of the day in uncivilised foreign countries.
And for a few minutes there was silence…
"It's wonderful what you can do with the full sanction of the law," Peter Quentin said presently, in a rather sourly reflective tone; and the Saint smiled at him wryly. He knew that Peter was not thinking about the more obvious inanities of the English licensing laws.
"I rather wanted to get a good close-up of James, and watch him in action," he said. "I guess all the stories are true."
There were several stories about James Deever; but none of them ever found their way into print — for libel actions mean heavy damages, and Mr. Deever sailed very comfortably within the law. His business was plainly and publicly that of a moneylender, and as a money-lender he was duly and legally registered according to the Act which had done so much to bring the profession of usury within certain humane restrictions. And as a plain and registered money-lender Mr. Deever retained his offices in Manchester, superintending every detail of his business in person, trusting nobody, sending out beautifully-worded circulars in which he proclaimed his readiness to lend anybody any sum from ₤10 to ₤50,000 on note of hand alone, and growing many times richer than the Saint thought anyone but himself had any right to be. Nevertheless, Mr. Deever's business would probably have escaped the Saint's attentions if those few facts had covered the whole general principle of it.
They didn't. Mr. Deever, who, in spite of the tenor of his artistically-printed circulars, was not in the money-lending business on account of any urge to go down to mythology as the little fairy godmother of Manchester, had devised half a dozen ingenious and strictly legal methods of evading the limitations placed on him by the Act. The prospective borrower who came to him, full of faith and hope, for the loan of ₤10 to ₤50,000 was frequently accommodated — not, one must admit, on his note of hand alone, but eventually on the basis of some very sound security. And if the loan were promptly repaid, there the matter ended — at the statutory rate of interest for such transactions. It was only when the borrower found himself in further difficulties that Mr. Deever's ingenious schemes came into operation. It was then that the victim found himself straying little by little into a maze of complicated mortgages, discounted checks, "nominal" promissory notes, mysterious "conversions," and technically-worded transfers — straying into that labyrinth so gradually at first that it all seemed quite harmless, slipping deeper into it over an easy path of documents and signatures, floundering about in it at last and losing his bearings more and more hopelessly in his struggles to climb back — finally awakening to the haggard realisation that by some incomprehensible jugglery of papers and figures he owed Mr. Deever five or six times as much money as Mr. Deever had given him in cash, and having it proved to him over his own signature that there was no question of the statutory rate of interest having been exceeded at any time.
Exactly thus had it been proved to the widow of a certain victim in the case that they had listened to that afternoon; and there were other similar cases that had come to the Saint's receptive knowledge.
"There were days," remarked the Saint, rather wistfully, "when some lads of the village and I would have carved Brother Deever into small pieces and baited lobster-pots with him from the North Foreland to the Lizard."
"And what now?" queried Peter Quentin.
"Now," said the Saint, regretfully, "we can only call on him for a large involuntary contribution to our Pension Fund for Deserving Outlaws."
Peter lowered the first quarter of his second highball.
"It'll have to be something pretty smart to catch that bird," he said. "If you asked me, I should say you couldn't take any story to him that wouldn't have to pass under a microscope."
"For which reason," murmured Simon Templar, with the utmost gravity, "I shall go to him with a story that is absolutely true. I shall approach him with a hook and line that the cleverest detective on earth couldn't criticise. You're right, Peter — there probably isn't a swindle in the encyclopedia that would get a yard past Brother James. "It's a good thing we aren't criminals, Pete — we might get our fingers burned. No, laddie. Full of righteousness and good Scotch, we shall draw nigh to Brother James with our haloes fairly glistening. It was just for a man like him that I was saving up my Perfect Crime."
If the Saint's halo was not actually visibly luminous when he called at Mr. Deever's offices the next morning, he at least looked remarkably harmless. A white flower ("for purity," said the Saint) started in his button-hole and flowed in all directions over his coat lapel; a monocle was screwed into his right eye; his hat sat precariously on the back of his head; and his face was relaxed into an expression of such amiably aristocratic idiocy that Mr. Deever's chief clerk — a man hardly less sour-visaged than Mr. Deever himself — was even more obsequious than usual.
Simon said he wanted a hundred pounds, and would cheerfully give a jolly old note of hand for it if some Johnnie would explain to him what a jolly old note of hand was. The clerk explained, oleaginously, that a jolly old note of hand was a somewhat peculiar sort of thing that sounded nice in advertisements, but wasn't really used with important clients. Had Mr. — er — Smith? had Mr. Smith any other kind of security?
"I've got some jolly old premium bonds," said the Saint; and the clerk nodded his head in a perfect sea of oil.
"If you can wait a moment, sir, perhaps Mr. Deever will see you himself."
The Saint had no doubt that Mr. Deever would see him. He waited around patiently for a few minutes, and was ushered into Mr. Deever's private sanctum.
"You see, I lost a bally packet at Derby yesterday — every blinkin' horse fell down dead when I backed it. I work a system, but of course you can't back a winner every day. I know I'll get it back, though — the chappie who sold me the system said it never let him down."
Mr. Deever's eyes gleamed. If there was anything that satisfied every one of his requirements for a successful loan, it was an asinine young man with a monocle who believed in racing systems.
"I believe you mentioned some security, Mr. — er — Smith. Naturally we should be happy to lend you a hundred pounds without any formalities, but —"
"Oh, I've got these jolly old bonds. I don't want to sell 'em, because they're having a draw this month. If you hold the lucky number you get a fat bonus. Sort of lottery business, but quite gilt-edged an' all that sort of thing."
He produced a large envelope, and passed it across Mr. Deever's desk. Deever extracted a bunch of expensively watermarked papers artistically engraved with green and gold lettering which proclaimed them to be Latvian 1929 Premium Loan (British Series) Bonds, value ₤25 each.
The financier crunched them between his fingers, squinted at the ornate characters suspiciously through a magnifying glass, and looked again at the Saint.
"Of course, Mr. Smith, we don't keep large sums of money on the premises. But if you like to leave these bonds with me until, say, two o'clock this afternoon, I'm sure we can make a satisfactory arrangement."
"Keep 'em by every manner of means, old bean," said the Saint airily. "So long as I get the jolly old quidlets in time to take 'em down to the three-thirty today, you're welcome."
Conveniently enough, this happened to be the first day of the Manchester September meeting. Simon Templar paraded again at two o'clock, collected his hundred pounds, and rejoined Peter Quentin at their hotel.
"I have a hundred pounds of Brother James's money," he announced. "Let's go and spread it around on the most frantic outsiders we can find."
They went to the races, and it so happened that the Saint's luck was in. He had doubled Mr. Deever's hundred pounds when the result of the last race went up on the board — but Mr. Deever would not have been seriously troubled if he had lost the lot. Five hundred pounds' worth of Latvian Bearer Bonds had been deposited as security for the advance, and in spite of the artistic engraving on them there was no doubt that they were genuine. The interval between Simon Templar's visit to Mr. Deever in the morning and the time when the money was actually paid over to him had been devoted to an expert scrutiny of the bonds, coupled with inquiries at Mr. Deever's brokers, which had definitely established their authenticity — and the Saint knew it.
"I wonder," Simon Templar was saying as they drove back into the town, "if there's any place here where you could buy a false beard. With all this money in our pockets, why should you wait for Nature to take her course?"
Nevertheless, it was not with the air of a man who has collected a hundred pounds over a couple of well-chosen winners that the Saint came to Mr. Deever the next day. It was Saturday, but that meant nothing to Mr. Deever. He was a man who kept only the barest minimum of holidays and much good business might be done with temporarily embarrassed members of the racing fraternity on the second day of the meeting.
It appeared very likely on this occasion.
"I don't know how the horse managed to lose," said the Saint mournfully.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Deever unctuously. "Dear me! Did it lose?"
The Saint nodded.
"I don't understand it at all. The chappie who sold me this system said it had never had more than three losers in succession. And the stakes go up so frightfully fast. You see, you have to put on more money each time, so that when you win you get back your losses as well. But it simply must win today —"
"How much do you need to put on today, Mr. Smith?"
"About eight hundred pounds. But what with buzzing around an' having a few drinks and what not, don't you know — if you could make it an even thou —"
Mr. Deever rubbed his hands over each other with a face of abysmal gloom.
"A thousand pounds is quite a lot of money, Mr. — er — Smith, but of course, if you can offer some security — purely as a business formality, you understand —"
"Oh, I've got lots of those jolly old Latvian Bonds," said the Saint. "I think I bought about two hundred of 'em. Got to try and pick up a bonus somehow, what?"
Mr. Deever nodded like a mandarin.
"Of course, Mr. Smith. Of course. And it just happens that one of our advances was repaid today, so I may be able to find a thousand pounds for you in our safe." He pressed a bell on his desk, and a clerk appeared. "Mr. Goldberg, will you see if we can oblige this gentleman with a thousand pounds?"
The clerk disappeared again, and came back in a few moments with a sheaf of bank-notes. Simon Templar produced another large envelope, and Mr. Deever drew from it an even thicker wad of bonds. He counted them over and examined them carefully one by one; then he took a printed form from a drawer, and unscrewed the cap of a Woolworth fountain-pen.
"Now if you will just complete our usual agreement, Mr. Smith —"
Through the glass partition that divided Mr. Deever's sanctum from the outer office there suddenly arose the expostulations of an extraordinary loud voice. Raised in a particularly raucous north-country accent, it made itself heard so clearly that there was no chance of missing anything it said.
"I tell you, I'd know that maan anywhere. I'd know 'im in a daark room if I was bliindfooalded. It was Simon Templar, I tell you. I saw 'im coom in, an' I says to myself, 'Thaat's Saaint, thaat is.' I 'aad wife an' loogage with me, so I taakes 'em into "otel 'an cooms straaight baack. I'm going to see thaat Saaint if I waait here two years —"
The buttery voice of Mr. Goldberg could be heard protesting. Then the north-country voice drowned it again.
"Then if you won't let me in, I'll go straight out an' fetch policeman. Thaat's what I'll do."
There was an eruption without, as of someone departing violently into the street; and the Saint looked at Mr. Deever. Simon's hand was outstretched to grasp the pile of bank-notes — then he saw Deever's right hand come out of a drawer, and a nickel-plated revolver with it.
"Just a moment, Mr. — er — Smith," Deever said slowly. "I think you're in too much of a hurry."
He touched the bell on his desk again. Mr. Goldberg reappeared, mopping his swarthy brow. There was a glitter in Deever's greenish eyes which told Simon that the revolver was not there merely for the purposes of intimidation. The Saint sat quite still.
"Look in this gentleman's pockets, Mr. Goldberg. Perhaps he has some evidence of identity on him."
The clerk came over and began a search. The monocle had vanished from the Saint's right eye, and the expression on his face was anything but vacuous.
"You filthy miser!" he blazed. "I'll see that you're sorry for this. No one has ever insulted me like this for years —"
Coolly Deever leaned over the desk and smacked Simon over the mouth. The blow cut the Saint's lip.
"A crook should be careful of his tongue," Deever said.
"There's a letter here, Mr. Deever," said the clerk, laying it on the blotter. "It's addressed to Simon Templar. And I found this as well."
"This" was another large envelope, the exact replica of the one in which Simon had handed over his Latvian Bonds. Deever opened it, and found that it contained a similar set of bonds; and when he had counted them he found that they were equal in number to those which he had accepted for security.
"I see — Mr. — er — Smith." The close-set eyes gloated. "So I've been considered worthy of the attention of the famous Saint. And a very pretty swindle, too. First you borrow money on some genuine bonds; then you come back and try to borrow more money on some more genuine bonds — but when I'm not looking you exchange them for forgeries. Very neat, Mr. Templar. It's a pity that man outside recognized you. Mr. Goldberg, I think you might telephone for the police."
"You'll be sorry for this," said the Saint more calmly, with his eyes on Deever's revolver.
A police inspector arrived in a few minutes. He inspected the two envelopes, and nodded.
"That's an old trick, Mr. Deever," he said. "It's lucky that you were warned. Come along, you — put your hands out."
Simon looked down at the handcuffs.
"You don't need those," he said.
"I've heard about you," said the inspector grimly, "and I think we do. Come on, now, and no nonsense."
For the first time in his life Simon felt the cold embrace of steel on his wrists. A constable put his hat on for him, and he was marched out into the the street. A small crowd had collected outside, and already the rumour of his identity was passing from mouth to mouth.
The local inspector did not spare him. Simon Templar was a celebrity, a capture that every officer in England had once dreamed of making, even if of late it had been found impossible to link his name with any proven crimes; and once arrested he was an exhibit to be proud of. The police station was not far away, and the Saint was compelled to walk to it, with his manacled wrists chained to the burly constable on his left and the inspector striding on his right.
He was charged with attempting to obtain money under false pretences; and when it was all written down they asked him if he had anything to say.
"Only that my right sock is wearing a bit thin at the heel," answered the Saint. "D'you think someone could beetle along to my hotel and dig out a new pair?"
He was locked in a cell to be brought before the magistrate on the following Monday. It was Simon Templar's third experience of that, but he enjoyed it no more than the first time.
During Sunday he had one consoltation. He was able to divert himself with thoughts of what he could do with about ten thousand pounds.
Monday morning brought a visitor to Manchester in the portly shape of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, who automatically came north at the news of the sensational arrest. which had been the front-page splash of every newspaper in the kingdom. But the expert witness who came with him caused a much greater sensation. He examined the contents of the two envelopes, and scratched his head.
"Is this a joke?" he demanded. "Every one of these bonds is perfectly genuine. There isn't a forgery among them."
The local inspector's eyes popped half-way out of his head.
"Are you sure?" he blurted.
"Of course I'm sure," snapped the disgusted expert. "Any fool can see that with half an eye. Did I have to give up a perfectly good day's golf to tell you that?"
Chief Inspector Teal was not interested in the expert's golf. He sat on a bench and held his head in his hands. He was not quite certain how it had been worked, but he knew there was something very wrong somewhere.
Presently he looked up.
"And Deever struck him in the office — that isn't denied?"
"No, sir," admitted the local inspector. "Mr. Deever said —"
"And you marched Templar through the streets in broad daylight, handcuffed to a constable?"
"Yes, sir. Knowing what I did about him —"
"I'd better see the Saint," said Teal. "If I'm not mistaken, someone's going to be sorry they knew so much."
He was shown into Simon's cell, and the Saint rose languidly to greet him.
"Hullo, Claud," he murmured. "I'm glad you've arrived. A gang of these local half-wits in funny hats —
"Never mind that," said Teal bluntly. "Tell me what you're getting out of this."
Simon pondered.
"I shouldn't accept anything less than ten thousand pounds," he said finally.
The light in Chief Inspector Teal's understanding strengthened slowly. He turned to the local inspector, who had accompanied him.
"By the way," he said, "I suppose you never found that man from Huddersfield, or whoever it was that blew the gaff?"
"No, sir. We've made inquiries at all the hotels, but he seems to have disappeared. I've got a sort of description of him — a fairly tall broad-shouldered man with a beard —"
"I see," said Teal, very sleepily.
Simon dipped into the local inspector's pocket and calmly borrowed a packet of cigarettes. He lighted one.
"If it's any help to you," he said, "the report of everything that happened in Deever's office is perfectly true. I went to him for some money, and then I went to him for some more. Every time I offered excellent security. I behaved myself like a law-abiding citizen —"
"Why did you call yourself Smith?"
"Why shouldn't I? It's a grand old English name. And I always understood that you could call yourself anything you liked so long as you didn't do it with intent to defraud. Go and tell Deever to prove the fraud. I just had to have some cash to go to the races, I had those Latvian bonds with me, and I thought that if I gave my real name I'd be making all sorts of silly difficulties. That's all there was to it. But did anyone make an honest attempt to find out if there was a fraud?"
"I see," said Teal again — and he really did see.
"They did not," said the Saint in a pained voice. "What happened? I was assaulted. I was abused. I was handcuffed and marched through the streets like a common burglar, followed by shop girls and guttersnipes, snapped by press photographers. I was shoved in a cell for forty-eight hours, and I wasn't even allowed to send for a clean pair of socks. A bunch of flat-footed nincompoops told me when to get up, when to eat, when to take exercise, and when to go to bed again — just as if I'd already been convicted. Deever's story has been published in every paper in the United Kingdom. And d'you know what that means?"
Teal did not answer. And the Saint's forefinger tapped him just where his stomach began to bulge, tapped him debonairly in the rhythm of the Saint's seraphic accents, in a gesture that Teal knew only too well.
"It means that there's one of the swellest legal actions on earth waiting for me to win it — an action for damages for wrongful imprisonment, defamation of character, libel, slander, assault, battery, and the Lord alone knows what not. I wouldn't take a penny less than ten thousand pounds. I may even want more. And do you think James Deever won't come across?"
Chief Inspector Teal had no reply. He knew Deever would pay.