The wicked cousin
When Simon Templar arrived in Los Angeles there was a leaden ceiling of cloud over the sky and a cool wind blowing. A few drops of unenthusiastic rain moistened the pavements and speckled the shoulders of his coat. The porter who was loading his bags into a taxi assured him that it was most unusual weather, and he felt instantly at home.
Later on, comfortably stretched out on a divan in the sitting room of his suite at the hotel in Hollywood upon which he had chosen to confer the somewhat debatable honour of his tenancy, with a highball at his elbow and a freshly lighted cigarette smouldering contentedly between his lips, he turned the pages of the address book on his knee and considered what his next steps should be to improve that first feeling of a welcome return.
He was not there on business. To be quite accurate, none of the stages of the last few months of carefree wandering which had just completed their vague object of leading him across America from coast to coast had been undertaken with a view to business. If business had materialized on more than one occasion, it was be-cause there was something about Simon Templar which attracted adventure by the same kind of mysterious but inescapable cosmic law which compels a magnet to attract steel or a politician to attract attention; and if much of that business was not looked upon favourably by the Law — or would not have been favourably looked upon if the Law had known all that there was to know about it — this was because Simon Templar's business had an unfortunate habit of falling into categories which gave many people good reason to wonder what right he had to the nickname of the Saint by which he was far more widely known than he was by his baptismal titles. It is true that these buccaneering raids of his which had earned him the subtitle of "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime" were invariably undertaken against the property, and occasionally the persons, of citizens who by no stretch of the imagination could have been called desirable; but the Law took no official cognizance of such small details. The Law, in the Saint's opinion, was a stodgy and elephantine institution which was chiefly justified in its existence by the pleasantly musical explosive noises which it made when he broke it. Certainly he was not thinking of business. In Hollywood he had many genuine friends, few of whom gave much consideration to the sensational legends that were associated with his name in less unsophisticated circles, and his only immediate problem was to which one of them he should first break the dazzling news of his arrival. He paused at one name after another, recalling its personality: movie executives, directors, writers, actors and actresses both great and small and a certain number of ordinary human beings. He wanted — what did he want? A touch of excitement, preferably feminine, beauty, a little of the glamour and gay unreality with which the very name of Hollywood is inseparably linked in imagination if not in fact. He wanted some of these things very much. His last stop had been made in the state of Utah.
There was a girl called Jacqueline Laine whom Simon remembered suddenly, as one does sometimes remember people, with a sense of startling familiarity and a kind of guilty amazement that he should have allowed her to slip out of his mind for so long. Once she was remembered, he had no more hesitation. No one else could have been so obviously the one person in the world whom he had to call up at that moment.
He picked up the telephone.
"Hello, Jacqueline," he said when she answered. "Do you know who this is?"
"I know," she said. "It's Franklin D. Roosevelt."
"You have a marvellous memory. Do you still eat?"
"Whenever I'm thirsty. Do you?"
"I nibble a crumb now and then. Come out with me tonight and see if we can still take it."
"Simon, I'd love to; but I'm in the most frantic muddle—"
"So is the rest of the world, darling. But it's two years since I've seen you, and that's about seven hundred and thirty days too long. Don't you realize that I've come halfway around the world, surviving all manner of perils and slaying large numbers of ferocious dragons, just to get here in time to take you out to dinner tonight?"
"I know, but — Oh well. It would be so thrilling to see you. Come around about seven and I'll try to get a bit straightened out before then."
"I'll be there," said the Saint.
He spent some of the intervening time in making himself the owner of. a car, and shortly after half-past six he turned it westwards into the stream of studio traffic homing towards Beverly Hills. Somewhere along Sunset Boulevard he turned off to the right and began to climb one of the winding roads that led up into the hills. The street lights were just beginning to trace their twinkling geometrical network over the vast panorama of cities spread out beneath him, as the car soared smoothly higher into the luminous blue-grey twilight.
He found his way with the certainty of vivid remembrance; and he was fully ten minutes early when he pulled the car into a bay by the roadside before the gate of Jacqueline Laine's house. He climbed out and started towards the gate, lighting a cigarette as he went, and as he approached it he perceived that somebody else was approaching the same gate from the opposite side. Changing his course a little to the left so that the departing guest would have room to pass him, the Saint observed that he was a small and elderly gent arrayed in clothes so shapeless and ill fitting that they gave his figure a comical air of having been loosely and inaccurately strung together from a selection of stuffed bags of cloth. He wore a discolored Panama hat of weird and wonderful architecture, and carried an incongruous green umbrella furled, but still flapping in a bedraggled and forlorn sort of way, under his left arm; his face was rubicund and bulbous like his body, looking as if it had been carelessly slapped together out of a few odd lumps of pink plasticine.
As Simon moved to the left, the elderly gent duplicated the manoeuvre. Simon turned his feet and swerved politely to the right. The elderly gent did exactly the same, as if he were Simon's own reflection in a distorting mirror. Simon stopped altogether and decided to economize energy by letting the elderly gent make the next move in the ballet on his own.
Whereupon he discovered that the game of undignified dodging in which he had just prepared to surrender his part was caused by some dimly discernible ambition of the elderly gent's to hold converse with him. Standing in front of him and blinking short-sightedly upwards from his lower altitude to the Saint's six foot two, with his mouth hanging vacantly open like an inverted "U" and three long yellow teeth hanging down like stalactites from the top, the elderly gent tapped him on the chest and said, very earnestly and distinctly: "Hig fwmgn glugl phnihklu hgrm skhlglgl?"
"I beg your pardon?" said the Saint vaguely.
"Hig fwmgn," repeated the elderly gent, "glugl phnihklu hgrm skhlglgl?" Simon considered the point. "If you ask me," he replied at length, "I should say sixteen."
The elderly gent's knobbly face seemed to take on a brighter shade of pink. He clutched the lapels of the Saint's coat, shaking him slightly in a positive passion of anguish.
"Flogh ghoglu sk," he pleaded, "klngnt hu ughlgstghnd?"
Simon shook his head.
"No," he said judiciously, "you're thinking of weevils."
The little man bounced about like a rubber doll. His eyes squinted with a kind of frantic despair.
"Ogmighogho," he almost screamed, "klngt hu ughglstghnd? Ik ghln ngmnpp sktlghko! Klugt hu hgr? Ik wgnt hlg phnihkln hgrm skhlglgl!"
The Saint sighed. He was by nature a kindly man to those whom the Gods had afflicted, but time was passing and he was thinking of Jacqueline Laine.
"I'm afraid not, dear old bird," he murmured regretfully. "There used to be one, but it died. Sorry, I'm sure."
He patted the elderly gent apologetically upon the shoulder, steered his way around him, and passed on out of earshot of the frenzied sputtering noises that continued to honk despairingly through the dusk behind him. Two minutes later he was with Jacqueline.
Jacqueline Laine was twenty-three; she was tall and slender; she had grey eyes that twinkled and a demoralizing mouth. Both of these temptations were in play as she came towards him; but he was still slightly shaken by his recent encounter.
"Have you got any more village idiots hidden around?" he asked warily, as he took her hands; and she was puzzled.
"We used to have several, but they've all got into Congress. Did you want one to take home?"
"My God, no," said the Saint fervently. "The one I met at the gate was bad enough. Is he your latest boy friend?"
Her brow cleared.
"Oh, you mean the old boy with the cleft palate? Isn't he marvellous? I think he's got a screw loose or something. He's been hanging around all day — he keeps ringing the bell and bleating at me. I'd just sent him away for the third time. Did he try to talk to you?"
"He did sort of wag his adenoids at me," Simon admitted, "but I don't think we actually got on to common ground. I felt quite jealous of him for a bit, until I realized that he couldn't possibly kiss you nearly as well as I can, with that set of teeth."
He proceeded to demonstrate this.
"I'm still in a hopeless muddle," she said presently. "But I'll be ready in five minutes. You can be fixing a cocktail while I finish myself off."
In the living room there was an open trunk in one corner and a half-filled packing case in the middle of the floor. There were scattered heaps of paper around it, and a few partially wrapped and unidentifiable objects on the table. The room had that curiously naked and inhospitable look which a room, has when it has been stripped of all those intimately personal odds and ends of junk which make it a home, and only the bare furniture is left.
The Saint raised his eyebrows.
"Hullo," he said. "Are you moving?"
"Sort of." She shrugged. "Moving out, anyway."
"Where to?"
"I don't know."
He realized then that there should have been someone else there, in that room.
"Isn't your grandmother here any more?"
"She died four weeks ago."
"I'm sorry."
"She was a good soul. But she was terribly old. Do you know she was just ninety-seven?" She held his hand for a moment. "I'll tell you all about it when I come down. Do you remember where to find the bottles?"
"Templars and elephants never forget."
He blended bourbon, applejack, vermouth and bitters, skilfully and with the zeal of an artist, while he waited for her, remembering the old lady whom he had seen so often in that room. Also, he remembered the affectionate service that Jacqueline had always lavished on her, cheerfully limiting her own enjoyment of life to meet the demands of an unconscious tyrant who would allow no one else to look after her, and wondered if there was any realistic reason to regret the ending of such a long life. She had, he knew, looked after Jacqueline herself in her time, and had brought her up as her own child since she was left an orphan at the age of three; but life must always belong to the young… He thought that for Jacqueline it must be a supreme escape, but he knew that she would never say so.
She came down punctually in the five minutes which she had promised. She had changed her dress and put a comb through her hair, and with that seemed to have achieved more than any other woman could have shown for an hour's fiddling in front of a mirror.-
"You should have been in pictures," said the Saint, and he meant it.
"Maybe I shall," she said. "I'll have to do something to earn a living now."
"Is it as bad as that?"
She nodded.
"But I can't complain. I never had to work for anything before. Why shouldn't I start? Other people have to."
"Is that why you're moving out?"
"The house isn't mine."
"But didn't the old girl leave you anything?"
"She left me some letters."
The Saint almost spilt his drink. He sat down heavily on the edge of the table.
"She left you some letters? After you'd practically been a slave to her ever since you came out of finishing school? What did she do with the rest of her property — leave it to a home for stray cats?"
"No, she left it to Harry."
"Who?"
"Her grandson."
"I didn't know you had any brothers."
"I haven't. Harry Westler is my cousin. He's — well, as a matter of fact he's a sort of black sheep. He's a gambler, and he was in prison once for forging a check. Nobody else in the family would have anything to do with him, and if you believe what they used to say about him they were probably quite right; but Granny always had a soft spot for him. She never believed he could do anything wrong — he was just a mischievous boy to her. Well, you know how old she was…"
"And she left everything to him?"
"Practically everything. I'll show you."
She went to a drawer of the writing table and brought him a typewritten sheet. He saw that it was a copy of a will, and turned to the details of the bequests.
To my dear granddaughter Jacqueline Laine, who has taken care of me so thoughtfully and unselfishly for four years, One Hundred Dollars and my letters from Sidney Farlance, knowing that she will find them of more value than anything else I could leave her. To my cook, Eliza Jefferson, and my chauffeur, Albert Gordon, One Hundred Dollars each, for their loyal service. The remainder of my estate, after these deductions, including my house and other personal belongings, to my dear grandson Harry Westler, hoping that it will help him to make the success of life of which I have always believed him capable.
Simon folded the sheet and dropped it on the table from his finger tips as if it were infected.
"Suffering Judas," he said helplessly. "After all you did for her — to pension you off on the same scale as the cook and the chauffeur! And what about Harry — doesn't he propose to do anything about it?"
"Why should he? The will's perfectly clear."
"Why shouldn't he? Just because the old crow went off her rocker in the last days of senile decay is no reason why he shouldn't do something to put it right. There must have been enough for both of you."
"Not so much. They found that Granny had been living on her capital for years. There was only about twenty thousand dollars left — and the house."
"What of it? He could spare half."
Jacqueline smiled — a rather tired little smile.
"You haven't met Harry. He's — difficult… He's been here, of course. The agents already have his instructions to sell the house and the furniture. He gave me a week to get out, and the week is up the day after tomorrow… I couldn't possibly ask him for anything."
Simon lighted a cigarette as if it tasted of bad eggs and scowled malevolently about the room.
"The skunk! And so you get chucked out into the wide world with nothing but a hundred dollars."
"And the letters," she added ruefully.
"What the hell are these letters?"
"They're love letters," she said; and the Saint looked as if he would explode.
"Love letters?" he repeated in an awful voice.
"Yes. Granny had a great romance when she was a girl. Her parents wouldn't let her get any further with it because the boy hadn't any money and his family wasn't good enough. He went abroad with one of these heroic young ideas of making a fortune in South America and coming back in a gold-plated carriage to claim her. He died of fever somewhere in Brazil very soon after, but he wrote her three letters — two from British Guiana and one from Colombia. Oh, I know them by heart — I used to have to read them aloud to Granny almost every night, after her eyes got too bad for her to be able to read them herself. They're just the ordinary simple sort of thing that you'd expect in the circumstances, but to Granny they were the most precious thing she had. I suppose she had some funny old idea in her head that they'd be just as precious to me."
"She must have been screwy," said the Saint. Jacqueline came up and put a hand over his mouth. "She was very good to me when I was a kid," she said.
"I know, but—" Simon flung up his arms hopelessly. And then, almost reluctantly, he began to laugh. "But it does mean that I've just come back in time. And we'll have so much fun tonight that you won't even think about it for a minute."
Probably he made good his boast, for Simon Templar brought to the solemn business of enjoying himself the same gay zest and inspired impetuosity which he brought to his battles with the technicalities of the law. But if he made her forget, he himself remembered; and when he followed her into the living room of the house again much later, for a good-night drink, the desolate scene of interrupted packing, and the copy of the will still lying on the table where he had put it down, brought the thoughts with which he had been subconsciously playing throughout the evening back into the forefront of his mind.
"Are you going to let Harry get away with it?" he asked her, with a sudden characteristic directness.
The girl shrugged.
"What else can I do?"
"I have an idea," said the Saint; and his blue eyes danced with an unholy delight which she had never seen in them before.
Mr. Westler was not a man whose contacts with the Law had conspired to make him particularly happy about any of its workings; and therefore when he saw that the card which was brought to him in his hotel bore in its bottom left-hand corner the name of a firm with the words "Attorneys at Law" underneath it, he suffered an immediate hollow twinge in the base of his stomach for which he could scarcely be blamed. A moment's reflection, however, reminded him that another card with a similar inscription had recently been the forerunner of an extremely welcome windfall, and with this reassuring thought he told the bellboy to bring the visitor into his presence.
Mr. Tombs, of Tombs, Tombs, and Tombs, as the card introduced him, was a tall lean man with neatly brushed white hair, bushy white eyebrows, a pair of gold-rimmed and drooping pince-nez on the end of a broad black ribbon and an engagingly avuncular manner which rapidly completed the task of restoring Harry Westler's momentarily shaken confidence. He came to the point with professional efficiency combined with professional pomposity.
"I have come to see you in connection with the estate of the — ah — late Mrs. Laine. I understand that you are her heir."
"That's right," said Mr. Westler.
He was a dark, flashily dressed man with small greedy eyes and a face rather reminiscent of that of a sick horse.
"Splendid." The lawyer placed his finger tips on his knees and leant forward peering benevolently over the rims of his glasses. "Now I for my part am representing the Sesame Mining Development Corporation."
He said this more or less as if he were announcing himself as the personal herald of Jehovah, but Mr. Westler's mind ran in practical channels.
"Did my grandmother have shares in the company?" he asked quickly.
"Ah — ah — no. That is — ah — no. Not exactly. But I understand that she was in possession of a letter or document which my clients regard as extremely valuable."
"A letter?"
"Exactly. But perhaps I had better give you an outline of the situation. Your grandmother was in her youth greatly — ah — enamoured of a certain Sidney Farlance. Perhaps at some time or other you have heard her speak of him."
"Yes."
"For various reasons her parents refused to give their consent to the alliance; but the young people for their part refused to take no for an answer, and Farlance went abroad with the intention of making his fortune in foreign parts and returning in due course to claim his bride. In this ambition he was unhappily frustrated by his — ah — premature decease in Brazil. But it appears that during his travels in British Guiana he did become the owner of a mining concession in a certain very inaccessible area of territory. British Guiana, as you are doubtless aware," continued Mr. Tombs in his dry pedagogic voice, "is traditionally reputed to be the source of the legend of El Dorado; the Gilded King, who was said to cover himself with pure gold and to wash it from him in the waters of a sacred lake called Manoa—"
"Never mind all that baloney," said Harry Westler,
who was not interested in history or mythology. "Tell me about this concession."
Mr. Tombs pressed his lips with a pained expression but he went on.
"At the time it did not appear that gold could be profitably obtained from this district and the claim was abandoned and forgotten. Modern engineering methods, however, have recently revealed deposits of almost fabulous value in the district, and my clients have obtained a concession to work it over a very large area of ground. Subsequent investigations into their title, meanwhile, have brought out the existence of this small — ah — prior concession granted to Sidney Farlance, which is situated almost in the centre of my client's territory and in a position which — ah — exploratory drillings have shown to be one of the richest areas in the district."
Mr. Westler digested the information, and in place of the first sinking vacuum which had afflicted his stomach when he saw the word Law on his visitor's card, a sudden and ecstatic awe localized itself in the same place and began to cramp his lungs as if he had accidentally swallowed a rubber balloon with his breakfast and it was being rapidly inflated by some supernatural agency.
"You mean my grandmother owned this concession?"
"That is what — ah — my clients are endeavouring to discover. Farlance himself, of course, left no heirs, and we have been unable to trace any surviving members of his family. In the course of our inquiries, however, we did learn of his — ah — romantic interest in your grandmother, and we have every reason to believe that in the circumstances he would naturally have made her the beneficiary of any such asset, however problematical its value may have seemed at the time."
"And you want to buy it out — is that it?"
"Ah — yes. That is — ah — provided that our deductions are correct and the title can be established. I may say that my clients would be prepared to pay very liberally—"
"They'd have to," said Mr. Westler briskly. "How much are they good for?"
The lawyer raised his hands deprecatingly.
"You need have no alarm, my dear Mr. Westler. The actual figure would, of course, be a matter for negotiation but it would doubtless run into a number of millions. But first of all, you understand, we must trace the actual concession papers which will be sufficient to establish your right to negotiate. Now it seems, that in view of the relationship between Farlance and your grandmother, she would probably have treasured his letters as women do even though she later married someone else, particularly if there was a document of that sort among them. People don't usually throw things like that away. In that case you will doubtless have inherited these letters along with her other personal property. Possibly you have not yet had an occasion to peruse them, but if you would do so as soon as. possible—"
One of Harry Westler's few Napoleonic qualities was a remarkable capacity for quick and constructive thinking.
"Certainly I have the letters," he said, "but I haven't gone through them yet. My lawyer has them at present and he's in San Francisco today. He'll be back tomorrow morning, and I'll get hold of them at once. Come and see me again tomorrow afternoon and I expect I'll have some news for you."
"Tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Westler? Certainly. I think that will be convenient. Ah — certainly." The lawyer stood up, took off his pince-nez, polished them and revolved them like a windmill on the end of their ribbon. "This has indeed been a most happy meeting, my dear sir. And may I say that I hope that tomorrow afternoon it will be even happier?"
"You can go on saying that right up till the time we start talking prices," said Harry.
The door had scarcely closed behind Mr. Tombs when he was on the telephone to his cousin. He suppressed a sigh of relief when he heard her voice and announced as casually as he could his intention of coming around to see her.
"I think we ought to have another talk — I was terribly upset by the shock of Granny's death when I saw you the other day and I'm afraid I wasn't quite myself, but I'll make all the apologies you like when I get there," he said in an unfamiliarly gentle voice which cost him a great effort to achieve, and was grabbing his hat before the telephone was properly back on its bracket.
He made a call at the bank on his way, and sat in the taxi which carried him up into the hills as if its cushions had been upholstered with hot spikes. The exact words of that portion of the will which referred to the letters drummed through his memory with a staggering significance. "My letters from Sidney Far-lance, knowing that she will find them of more value than anything else I could leave her." The visit of Mr. Tombs had made him understand them perfectly. His grandmother had known what was in them; but did Jacqueline know? His heart almost stopped beating with anxiety.
As he leapt out of the taxi and dashed towards the house he cannoned into a small and weirdly apparelled elderly gent who was apparently emerging from the gate at the same time. Mr. Westler checked himself involuntarily, and the elderly gent, sent flying by the impact, bounced off a gatepost and tottered back at him. He clutched Harry by the sleeve and peered up at him pathetically.
"Glhwf hngwglgl," he said pleadingly, "kngnduk glu bwtlhjp mnyihgli?"
"Oh, go climb a tree," snarled Mr. Westler impatiently.
He pushed the little man roughly aside and went on.
Jacqueline opened the door to him, and Mr. Westler steeled himself to kiss her on the forehead with cousinly affection.
"I was an awful swine the other day, Jackie. I don't know what could have been the matter with me. I've always been terribly selfish," he said with an effort, "and at the time I didn't really see how badly Granny had treated you. She didn't leave you anything except those letters, did she?"
"She left me a hundred dollars," said Jacqueline calmly.
"A hundred dollars I" said Harry indignantly. "After you'd given up everything else to take care of her. And she left me more than twenty thousand dollars and the house and everything else in it. It's — disgusting! But I don't have to take advantage of it, do I? I've been thinking a lot about it lately—"
Jacqueline lighted a cigarette and regarded him stonily.
"Thanks," she said briefly. "But I haven't asked you for any charity."
"It isn't charity," protested Mr. Westler virtuously. "It's just a matter of doing the decent thing. The lawyers have done their share — handed everything over to me and seen that the will was carried out. Now we can start again. We could pool everything again and divide it the way we think it ought to be divided."
"As far as I'm concerned, that's been done already."
"But I'm not happy about it. I've got all the money, and you know what I'm like. I'll probably gamble it all away in a few months."
"That's your affair."
"Oh, don't be like that, Jackie. I've apologized, haven't I? Besides, what Granny left you is worth a lot more than money. I mean those letters of hers. I'd willingly give up five thousand dollars of my share if I could have had those. They're the one thing of the old lady's which really means a great deal to me."
"You're becoming very sentimental all of a sudden, aren't you?" asked the girl curiously.
"Maybe I am. I suppose you can't really believe that a rotter like me could feel that way about anything, but Granny was the only person in the world who ever really believed any good of me and liked me in spite of everything. If I gave you five thousand dollars for those letters, it wouldn't be charity — I'd be paying less than I think they're worth. Let's put it that way if you'd rather, Jackie. An ordinary business deal. If I had them," said Mr. Westler, with something like a sob in his voice, "they'd always be a reminder to me of the old lady and how good she was. They might help me to go straight…"
His emotion was so touching that even Jacqueline's cynical incredulity lost some of its assurance. Harry Westler was playing his part with every technical trick that he knew, and he had a mastery of these emotional devices which victims far more hard-boiled than Jacqueline had experienced to their cost.
"I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself and I want to put things right in any way I can. Don't make me feel any worse than I do already. Look here, I'll give you ten thousand dollars for the letters and I won't regret a penny of it. You won't regret it either, will you, if they help me to keep out of trouble in future?"
Jacqueline smiled in spite of herself. It was not in her nature to bear malice, and it was very hard for her to resist an appeal that was made in those terms. Also, with the practical side of her mind, she was honest enough to realize that her grandmother's letters had no sentimental value for her whatever, and that ten thousand dollars was a sum of money which she could not afford to refuse unless her pride was compelled to forbid it; her night out with the Saint had helped her to forget her problems for the moment, but she had awakened that morning with a very sober realization of the position in which she was going to find herself within the next forty-eight hours.
"If you put it like that I can't very well refuse, can I?" she said, and Harry jumped up and clasped her fervently by the hand.
"You'll really do it, Jackie? You don't know how much I appreciate it."
She disengaged herself quietly.
"It doesn't do me any harm," she told him truthfully. "Would you like to have the letters now?"
"If they're anywhere handy. I brought some money along with me, so we can fix it all up right away."
She went upstairs and fetched the letters from the dressing table in her grandmother's room. Mr. Westler took them and tore off the faded ribbon with which they were tied together with slightly trembling fingers which she attributed to an unexpected depth of emotion. One by one he took them out of their envelopes and read rapidly through them. The last sheet of the third letter was a different kind of paper from the rest. The paper was brown and discoloured and cracked in the folds, and the ink had the rust-brown hue of great age; but he saw the heavy official seal in one corner and strained his eyes to decipher the stiff old-fashioned script.
We, Philip Edmond Wodehouse, Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Bath, Governor in the name of His Britannic Majesty of the Colony of British Guiana, by virtue of the powers conferred upon us by His Majesty's Privy Council, do hereby proclaim and declare to all whom it may concern that we have this day granted to Sidney Parlance, a subject of His Majesty the King, and to his heirs and assigns being determined by the possession of this authority, the sole right to prospect and mine for minerals of any kind whatsoever in the territory indicated and described in the sketch map at the foot of this authority, for the term of nine hundred and ninety-nine years from the date of these presents. Given under our hand and seal this third day of January Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Six.
At the bottom of the sheet below the map and description was scrawled in a different hand: "This is all for you. S.F."
Harry Westler stuffed the letters into his pocket and took out his wallet. His heart was beating in a delirious rhythm of ecstasy and sending the blood roaring through his ears like the crashing crescendo of a symphony. The Gates of Paradise seemed to have opened up and deluged him with all their reservoirs of bliss. The whole world was his sweetheart. If the elderly gent whose strange nasal garglings he had dismissed so discourteously a short time ago had" cannoned into him again at that moment, it is almost certain that Mr. Westler would not have told him to go and climb a tree. He would probably have kissed him on both cheeks and given him a nickel.
For the first time in his life, Harry Westler counted out ten thousand-dollar bills as cheerfully as he would have counted them in.
"There you are, Jackie. And I'm not kidding — it takes a load off my mind. If you think of anything else I can do for you, just let me know."
"I think you've done more than anyone could have asked," she said generously. "Won't you stay and have a drink?"
Mr. Westler declined the offer firmly. He had no moral prejudice against drinking, and in fact he wanted a drink very badly, but more particularly he wanted to have it in a place where he would not have to place any more restraint on the shouting rhapsodies that were seething through his system like bubbles through champagne.
Some two hours later, when Simon Templar drifted into the house, he found Jacqueline still looking slightly dazed. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Simon!" she gasped. "You must be a mascot or something. You'll never guess what's happened."
"I'll tell you exactly what's happened," said the Saint calmly. "Cousin Harry has been here, told you that he'd rather have dear old Granny's love letters than all the money in the world and paid you a hell of a good price for them. At least I hope he paid you a hell of a good price."
Jacqueline gaped at him weakly.
"He paid me ten thousand dollars. But how on earth did you know? Why did he do it?"
"He did it because a lawyer called on him this morning and told him that Sidney Farlance had collared an absolutely priceless mining concession when he was in British Guiana, and that there was probably something about it in the letters which would be worth millions to whoever had them to prove his claim."
She looked at him aghast.
"A mining concession? I don't remember anything about it—"
"You wouldn't," said the Saint kindly. "It wasn't there until I slipped it in when I got you to show me the letters at breakfast time this morning. I sat up for the other half of the night faking the best imitation I could of what I thought a concession ought to look like, and apparently it was good enough for Harry. Of course I was the lawyer who told him all about it, and I think I fed him the oil pretty smoothly, so perhaps there was some excuse for him. I take it that he was quite excited about it — I see he didn't even bother to take the envelopes."
Jacqueline opened her mouth again, but what she was going to say with it remained a permanently unsolved question, for at that moment the unnecessarily vigorous ringing of a bell stopped her short. The Saint cocked his ears speculatively at the sound and a rather pleased and seraphic smile worked itself into his face.
"I expect this is Harry coming back," he said. "He wasn't supposed to see me again until tomorrow but I suppose he couldn't wait. He's probably tried to ring me up at the address I had printed on my card and discovered that there ain't no such lawyers as I was supposed to represent. It will be rather interesting to hear what he has to say."
For once, however, Simon's guess was wrong. Instead of the indignant equine features of Harry Westler, he confronted the pink imploring features of the small and shapeless elderly gent with whom he had danced prettily around the gateposts the day before. The little man's face lighted up and he bounced over the doorstep and seized the Saint joyfully by both lapels of his coat.
"Mnynghlfwgl!" he crowed triumphantly. "Ahkgmp glglgl hndiuphwmp!"
Simon recoiled slightly.
"Yes. I know," he said soothingly. "But it's five o'clock on Fridays. Two dollars every other yard."
"Ogh hmbals!" said the little man.
He let go the Saint's coat, ducked under his arms and scuttled on into the living room.
"Oi!" said the Saint feebly.
"May I explain, sir?"
Another voice spoke from the doorway, and Simon perceived that the little man had not come alone. Someone else had taken his place on the threshold — a thin and mournful-looking individual whom the Saint somewhat pardonably took to be the little man's keeper.
"Are you looking after that?" he inquired resignedly. "And why don't you keep it on a lead?"
The mournful-looking individual shook his head.
"That is Mr. Horatio Ive, sir — he is a very rich man, but he suffers from an unfortunate impediment in his speech. Very few people can understand him. I go about with him as his interpreter, but I have been in bed for the last three days with a chill—"
A shrill war whoop from the other room interrupted the explanation.
"We'd better go and see how he's getting on," said the Saint.
"Mr. Ive is very impulsive, sir," went on the sad-looking interpreter. "He was most anxious to see somebody here, and even though I was unable to accompany him he has called here several times alone. I understand that he found it impossible to make himself understood. He practically dragged me out of bed to come with him now."
"What's he so excited about?" asked the Saint, as they walked towards the living room.
"He's interested in some letters, sir, belonging to the late Mrs. Laine. She happened to show them to him when they met once several years ago, and he wanted to buy them. She refused to sell them for sentimental reasons, but as soon as he read of her death he decided to approach her heirs."
"Are you talking about her love letters from a bird called Sidney Farlance?" Simon asked hollowly.
"Yes sir. The gentleman who worked in British Guiana. Mr. Ive is prepared to pay something like fifty thousand dollars — Is anything the matter, sir?"
Simon Templar swallowed.
"Oh, nothing," he said faintly. "Nothing at all."
They entered the living room to interrupt a scene of considerable excitement. Backing towards the wall, with a blank expression of alarm widening her eyes, Jacqueline Laine was staring dumbly at the small elderly gent, who was capering about in front of her like a frenzied redskin, spluttering yard after yard of his incomprehensible adenoidal honks interspersed with wild piercing squeaks apparently expressive of intolerable joy. In each hand he held an envelope aloft like a banner.
As his interpreter came in, he turned and rushed towards him, loosing off a fresh stream of noises like those of a hysterical duck.
"Mr. Ive is saying, sir," explained the interpreter, raising his voice harmoniously above the din, "that each of those envelopes bears a perfect example of the British Guiana one-cent magenta stamp of 1856, of which only one specimen was previously believed to exist. Mr. Ive is an ardent philatelist, sir, and these envelopes—"
Simon Templar blinked hazily at the small crudely printed stamp in the corner of the envelope which the little man was waving under his nose.
"You mean," he said cautiously, "that Mr. Ive is really only interested in the envelopes?"
"Yes sir."
"Not the letters themselves?"
"Not the letters."
"And he's been flapping around the house all this time trying to tell somebody about it?"
"Yes sir."
Simon Templar drew a deep breath. The foundations of the world were spinning giddily around his ears but his natural resilience was unconquerable. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.
"In that case," he said contentedly, "I'm sure we can do business. What do you say, Jacqueline?"
Jacqueline clutched his arm and nodded breathlessly.
"Hlgagtsk sweghlemlgl," beamed Mr. Ive.