The charitable countess
Simon Templar's mail, like that of any other celebrity, was a thing of infinite variety. Perhaps it was even more so than that of most celebrities, for actors and authors and the other usual recipients of fan mail are of necessity a slightly smaller target for the busy letter-writer than a man who has been publicized at frequent intervals as a twentieth-century Robin Hood, to the despair and fury of the police officials at whose expense the publicity has been achieved. Of those correspondents who approached him under his better-known nom de guerre of "The Saint," about half were made up of people who thought that the nickname should be taken literally, and half of people who suspected that it stood for the exact opposite.
There were, of course, the collectors of autographs and signed photos. There were the hero-worshipping schoolboys whose ideas of a future profession would have shocked their fathers, and the romantic schoolgirls whose ideals of a future husband would have made their mothers swoon. There were also romantic maidens who were not so young, who supplied personal data of sometimes startling candour and whose propositions were correspondingly more concrete.
And then there were the optimists who thought that the Saint would like to finance a South American revolution, a hunt for buried treasure on the Spanish Main, a new night club or an invention for an auxiliary automatic lighter to light automatic lighters with. There were the plodding sportsmen who could find a job in some remote town, thereby saving their wives and children from imminent starvation, if only the Saint would lend them the fare. There were the old ladies who thought that the Saint might be able to trace their missing Pomeranians, and the old gentlemen who thought that he might be able to exterminate the damned Socialists. There were crooks and cranks, fatheads and fanatics, beggars, liars, romancers, idiots, thieves, rich men, poor men, the earnest, the flippant, the gay, the lonely, the time-wasters and the genuine tragedies, all that strange and variegated section of humanity that writes letters to total strangers; and then sometimes the letters were not from one stranger to another, but were no less significant, like a letter that came one morning from a man named Marty O'Connor:
I should of written you before but I didn't want you to think I was asking for a handout. I stuck at that job in Canada and we were doing fine. I thought we were all set but the guy was playing the markit, I didn't know he was that dumb, so the next thing is hes bust, the garage is sold up and I'm out a job. I could not get nothing else there, but I hear the heat is off in New York now so me and Cora hitchike back, I got a job as chaufer and hold that 3 weeks til the dame hears I got a police record, she won't believe I'm going strait now. I got the bums rush, haven't found nothing since, but Cora does odd jobs and I may get a job any day. When I do you got to come see us again, we never fergot what you done for us and would do the same for you anytime if we burn for it…
That was a reminder of two people whom he had helped because he liked them and because he thought they were worth helping, in one of those adventures that made all his lawlessness seem worth while to him, whatever the moralists might say. Marty O'Connor, who put off writing to his friend for fear of being suspected of begging, was a very different character from many others who wrote with no such scruples and with less excuse — such as the Countess Jannowicz, whose letter came in the same mail.
The smile which Simon had had for Marty's letter turned cynical as he read it. On the face of it, it was a very genteel and dignified epistle, tastefully engraved under an embossed coronet, and printed on expensive handmade paper. The Countess Jannowicz, it said, requested the pleasure of Mr. Simon Templar's company at a dinner and dance to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria on the twentieth of that month, in aid of the National League for the Care of Incurables, RSVP.
That in itself would have been harmless enough, but the catch came in very small copperplate at the foot of the invitation, in the shape of the words, "Tickets $25" — and in the accompanying printed pamphlet describing the virtues of the League and its urgent need of funds.
Simon had heard from her before, as had many other people in New York, for she was a busy woman. Born as Maggie Oaks in Weehauken, New Jersey, resplendent later as Margaretta Olivera in a place of honour in the nuder tableaux at the Follies, she had furred her nest with a notable collection of skins, both human and animal, up to the time when she met and married Count Jannowicz, a Polish boulevardier of great age and reputedly fabulous riches. Disdaining such small stuff as alimony, she had lived with him faithfully and patiently until the day of his death, which in defiance of all expectations he had postponed for an unconscionable time through more and more astounding stages of senility, only to discover after the funeral that he had been living for all that time on an annuity which automatically ceased its payments forthwith; so that after nineteen years of awful fidelity his widowed countess found herself the proud inheritor of a few more furs, a certain amount of jewelery, a derelict castle already mortgaged for more than its value and some seventeen kopeks in hard cash.
Since she was then forty-four, and her outlines had lost the voluptuousness which had once made them such an asset to the more artistic moments of the Follies, many another woman might have retired to the companionable obscurity of her fellow unfortunates in some small Riviera pension. Not so Maggie Oaks, who had the stern marrow of Weehauken in her bones. At least she had the additional intangible asset of a genuine title, and during her spouse's doggedly declining years she had whiled away the time consolidating the social position which her marriage had given her; so that after some sober consideration which it would have educated a bishop to hear, she was able To work out a fairly satisfactory solution to her financial problems.
Unlike Mr. Elliot Vascoe, of whom we have heard before, who used charity to promote his social ambitions, she used her social position to promote charities. What the charities were did not trouble her much, so long as they paid her the twenty-five percent of the proceeds which was her standard fee. She had been known to sponsor, in the same day, a luncheon in aid of the Women's Society for the Prosecution of Immorality, and a ball in aid of the Free Hospital for Unmarried Mothers. As a means of livelihood, it had been a triumphant inspiration. Social climbers fought to serve, expensively, on her committees; lesser snobs scrambled to attend her functions and get their names in the papers in such distinguished company; charitable enterprises, struggling against depressions, were only too glad to pass over some of the labour of extracting contributions from the public to such a successful organizer; and the Countess Jannowicz, nee Maggie Oaks, lived in great comfort on Park Avenue and maintained a chauffeur-driven Packard out of her twenty-five percents, eked out by other percentages which various restaurants and hotels were only too glad to pay her for bringing them the business.
The Saint had had his piratical eye on her for a long time; and now, with the apt arrival of that last invitation at a period when he had no other more pressing business on his hands, it seemed as if the discounting of the charitable countess was a pious duty which could no longer be postponed.
He called on her the same afternoon at her apartment, for when once the Saint had made up his mind to a foray the job was as good as done. A morning's meditation had been enough for him to sketch out a plan of campaign, and after that he saw no good reason to put it aside while it grew whiskers.
But what the plan was is of no importance, for he never used it. He had sent in a card bearing his venerable alias of Sebastian Tombs, but when the countess sailed into the luxuriously modernistic drawing room in which the butler had parked him, she came towards him with outstretched hand and a grim smile that promised surprises a split second before she spoke.
"Mr. Templar?" she said coolly. "I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting."
It would be unfair to say that the Saint was disconcerted — in a buccaneer's life nothing could be foreseen, anyway, and you had to be schooled to the unexpected. But a perceptible instant went by before he answered.
"Why, hullo, Maggie," he murmured. "I was going to break it to you gently."
"A man with your imagination should have been able to do better. After all, Mr. Sebastian Tombs is getting to be almost as well known as the great Simon Templar — isn't he?"
The Saint nodded, admitting his lapse, and making a mental note that the time had come to tear himself finally away from the alter ego to which he had clung with perverse devotion for too many years.
"You keep pretty well up-to-date," he remarked.
"Why not?" she returned frankly. "I've had an idea for some time that I'd be getting a visit from you one day."
"Would that be the voice of conscience?"
"Just common sense. Even you can't have a monopoly on thinking ahead."
Simon studied her interestedly. The vats of champagne which had sparkled down her gullet in aid of one charity or another over the past six years had left their own thin dry tang in her voice, but few of her other indulgences had left their mark. The cargoes of caviar, the schools of smoked salmon, the truckloads of foie gras, the coveys of quail, the beds of oysters and the regiments of lobsters which had marched in eleemosynary procession through her intestines, had resolved themselves into very little solid flesh. Unlike most of her kind, she had not grown coarse and flabby; she had aged with a lean and arid dignity. At fifty, Maggie Oaks, late of Weehauken and the Follies, really looked like a countess, even if it was a rather tart and dessicated countess. She looked like one of those brittle fish-blooded aristocrats who stand firm for kindness to animals and discipline for the lower classes. She had hard bright eyes and hard lines cracked into the heavy layers of powder and enamel on her face, and she was a hard bad woman in spite of her successful sophistication.
"At least that saves a lot of explanations," said the Saint, and she returned his gaze with her coldly quizzical stare.
"I take it that I was right — that you've picked me for your next victim."
"Let's call it 'contributor,' " suggested the Saint mildly.
She shrugged.
"In plain language, I'm either to give you, or have stolen from me, whatever sum of money you think fit to assess as a fine for what you would call my misdeeds."
"Madam, you have a wonderful gift of coming to the point."
"This money will be supposedly collected for charity," she went on, "but you will take your commission for collecting it before you pass it on."
"That was the general idea, Maggie."
She lighted a cigarette.
"I suppose I shouldn't be allowed to ask why it's a crime for me to make a living in exactly the same way as you do?"
"There is a difference. I don't set myself up too seriously as a public benefactor. As a matter of fact, most people would tell you that I was a crook. If you want that point of view, ask a policeman."
Her thin lips puckered with watchful mockery.
"That seems to make me smarter than you are, Mr. Templar. The policeman would arrest you, but he'd tip his hat to me."
"That's possible," Simon admitted imperturbably. "But there are other differences."
"Meaning what?"
"Mathematical ones. A matter of simple economy. When I collect money, unless I'm trying to put things right for someone else who's been taken for a mug, between seventy-five and ninety percent of it really does go to charity. Now suppose you collect a thousand dollars in ticket sales for one of your parties. Two hundred and fifty bucks go straight into your pocket — you work on the gross. Other organizing expenses take up at least a hundred dollars more. Advertising, prizes, decorations, publicity and what not probably cost another ten percent. Then there's the orchestra, hire of rooms and waiters and the cost of a lot of fancy food that's much too good for the people who eat it — let's say four hundred dollars. And the caterers give you a fifty-dollar cut on that. The net result is that you take in three hundred dollars and a nice big dinner, and the good cause gets maybe a hundred and fifty. In other words, every time one of your suckers buys one of your thirty-dollar tickets, to help to save fallen women or something like that, he gives you twice as much as he gives the fallen women, which might not be exactly what he had in mind. So I don't think we really are in the same class."
"You don't mean that I'm in a better class?" she protested sarcastically.
The Saint shook his head.
"Oh no," he said. "Not for a moment… But I do think that some of these differences ought to be adjusted."
Her mouth was as tight as a trap.
"And how will that be done?"
"I thought it'd be an interesting change if you practised a little charity yourself. Suppose we set a donation of fifty thousand dollars—"
"Do you really think I'd give you fifty thousand dollars?"
"Why not?" asked the Saint reasonably. "Other people have. And the publicity alone would be almost worth it. Ask your press agent. Besides, it needn't really even cost you anything. That famous diamond necklace of yours, for instance — even in the limited markets I could take it to, it d fetch fifty thousand dollars easily. And if you bought yourself a good imitation hardly anyone would know the difference."
For a moment her mouth stayed open at the implication of what he was saying, and then she burst into a deep cackle of laughter.
"You almost scared me," she said. "But people have tried to bluff me before. Still, it was nice of you to give me the warning." She stood up. "Mr. Templar, I'm not going to threaten you with the police because I know that would only make you laugh. Besides, I think I can look after myself. I'm not going to give you fifty thousand dollars, of course, and I'm not going to let you steal my necklace. If you can get either, you'll be a clever man. Will you come and see me again when you've hatched a plot?"
The Saint stood up also, and smoothed the clothes over his sinewy seventy-four inches. His lazy blue eyes twinkled.
"That sounds almost like a challenge."
"You can take it as one if you like."
"I happen to know that your necklace isn't insured — no company in the country will ever carry you for a big risk since that fraudulent claim that got you a suspended sentence when you were in the Follies. Insurance company black lists don't fade."
Her thin smile broadened.
"I got ten thousand dollars, just the same, and that's more than covered any losses I've had since," she said calmly. "No, Mr. Templar, I'm not worried about insurance. If you can get what you're after I'll be the first to congratulate you."
Simon's brows slanted at her with an impudent humour that would have given her fair warning if she had been less confident. He had completely recovered from the smithereening of his first ingenious plans, and already his swift imagination was playing with a new and better scheme.
"Is that a bet?" he said temptingly.
"Do you expect me to put it in writing?"
He smiled back at her.
"I'll take your word for it… We must tell the newspapers."
He left her to puzzle a little over that last remark, but by the time she went to bed she had forgotten it. Consequently she had a second spell of puzzlement a couple of mornings later when she listened to the twittering voice of one of her society acquaintances on the telephone.
"My dear, how too original! Quite the cleverest thing I ever heard of!.. Oh, now you're just playing innocent! Of course it's in all the papers! And on the front page, too!.. How did you manage it? My dear, I'm madly jealous! The Saint could steal anything I've got, and I mean anything! He must be the most fascinating man — isn't he?"
"He is, darling, and I'll tell him about your offer," said the countess instinctively.
She hung up the microphone and said: "Silly old cow!" There had been another ball the night before, in aid of a seamen's mission or a dogs' hospital or something, and she had had to deal with the usual charitable ration of champagne and brandy; at that hour of the morning after her reactions were not as sharp as they became later in the day. Nevertheless, a recollection of the Saint's parting words seeped back into her mind with a slight shock. She took three aspirins in a glass of whisky and rang for some newspapers.
She didn't even have to open the first one. The item pricked her in the eyes just as the sheet was folded:
SAINT WILL ROB COUNTESS
FOR CHARITY
__________________
"It's a Bet,"
says Society Hostess
___________________
New-York, October 12. — Simon Templar, better known as "The Saint," famous 20th-century Robin Hood, added yesterday to his long list of audacities by announcing that he had promised to steal for charity the $100,000 necklace of Countess Jannowicz, the well-known society leader. But for once the police have not been asked to prevent the intended crime. Templar called on the countess personally last Tuesday to discuss his scheme, and was told that she would be the first to congratulate him if he could get away with it. The twist in the plot is that Countess Jannowicz is herself an indefatigable worker for charity, and the organizer of countless social functions through which thousands of dollars are annually collected for various hospitals and humane societies. Those who remember the countess' many triumphs in roping in celebrities as a bait for her charities believe that she has surpassed herself with her latest "catch." It was whispered that the sensational stunt launching of some new (continued on page nine)
The countess read it all through, and then she put her head back on the pillows and thought about it some more and began to shake with laughter. The vibration made her feel as if the top of her head was coming off but she couldn't stop it. She was still quivering among her curlers when the telephone exploded again.
"It's someone from Police Headquarters," reported her maid. "Inspector Fernack."
"What the hell does he want?" demanded the countess.
She took over the instrument.
"Yes," she squawked.
"This is Inspector Fernack of Centre Street," clacked the diaphragm. "I suppose you've seen that story about the Saint and yourself in the papers?"
"Oh yes," said the countess sweetly. "I was just reading it. Isn't it simply delightful?"
"That isn't for me to say," answered the detective in a laboured voice. "But if this is a serious threat we shall have to take steps to protect your property."
"Take steps — Oh, but I don't want to make it too easy for him. He always seems to get away with everything when the police are looking out for him."
There was a strangled pause at the other end of the wire. Then:
"You mean that this is really only a publicity stunt?"
"Now, now," said the countess coyly. "That would be telling, wouldn't it? Good-bye, Inspector."
She handed the telephone back to her maid.
"If that damn flatfoot calls again, tell him I'm out," she said. "Get me some more aspirin and turn on my bath."
It was typical of her that she dismissed Fernack's offer without a moment's uneasiness. After she had bathed and swallowed some coffee, however, she did summon the sallow and perspiring Mr. Ullbaum who lived a feverish life as her press agent and vaguely general manager.
"There'll be some reporters calling for interviews," she said. "Some of 'em have been on the phone already. Tell 'em anything that comes into your head, but keep it funny."
Mr. Ullbaum spluttered, which was a habit of his when agitated, which was most of the time.
"But what's so funny if he does steal the necklace?"
"He isn't going to get the necklace — I'll take care of that. But I hope he tries. Everybody he's threatened to rob before has gone into hysterics before he's moved a finger, and they've been licked before he starts. I'm going to lick him and make him look as big as a flea at the same time — and all without even getting out of breath. We'll treat it as a joke now, and after he's made a fool of himself and it really is a joke, it'll be ten times funnier. For God's sake go away and use your own brain. That's what I pay you for. I've got a headache."
She was her regal self again by cocktail time, when the Saint saw her across the room at the Versailles with a party of friends, immaculately groomed from the top of her tight-waved head to the toes of her tight-fitting shoes and looking as if she had just stepped out of an advertisement for guillotines. He sauntered over in answer to her imperiously beckoning forefinger.
"I see your press agent didn't waste any time, Mr. Templar."
"I don't know," said the Saint innocently. "Are you sure you didn't drop a hint to your own publicity man?"
She shook her head.
"Mr. Ullbaum was quite upset when he heard about it."
The Saint smiled. He knew the permanently flustered Mr. Ullbaum.
"Then it must have been my bloke," he murmured. "How did you like the story?"
"I thought it was rather misleading in places, but Mr. Ullbaum is going to put that right… Still, the police are quite interested. I had a phone call from a detective this morning before I was really awake."
A faint unholy glimmer crossed the Saint's eyes.
"Would that be Inspector Fernack, by any chance?"
"Yes."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him to leave me alone."
Simon seemed infinitesimally disappointed, but he grinned.
"I was wondering why he hadn't come paddling around to see me and add some more fun to the proceedings. I'm afraid I'm going to miss him. But it's nice to play with someone like you who knows the rules."
"I know the rules, Mr. Templar," she said thinly. "And the first rule is to win. Before you're finished you're going to wish you hadn't boasted so loudly."
"You're not worried?"
She moved one jewel-encrusted hand indicatively.
"Did you notice those two men at that table in the corner?"
"Yes — have they been following you? I'll call a cop and have them picked up if you like."
"Don't bother. Those are my bodyguards. They're armed and they have orders to shoot at the drop of a hat. Are you sure you aren't worried?"
He laughed.
"I never drop my hat." He buttoned his coat languidly, and the impudent scapegrace humour danced in his eyes like sunlight on blue water. "Well — I've got to go on with my conspiring, and I'm keeping you from your friends…"
There was a chorus of protest from the other women at the table, who had been craning forward with their mouths open, breathlessly eating up every word.
"Oh, no!"
"Countess, you must introduce us!"
"I've been dying to meet him!"
The countess' lips curled.
"Of course, my dears," she said, with the sugariness of arsenic. "How rude of me!" She performed the introductions. "Lady Instock was telling me only this morning that you could steal anything from her," she added spikily.
"Anything," confirmed Lady Instock, gazing at the Saint rapturously out of her pale protruding eyes.
Simon looked at her thoughtfully.
"I won't forget it," he said.
As he returned to his own table he heard her saying to a unanimous audience: "Isn't he the most thrilling—"
Countess Jannowicz watched his departure intently, ignoring the feminine palpitations around her. She had a sardonic sense of humour, combined with a scarcely suppressed contempt for the climbing sycophants who crawled around her, that made the temptation to elaborate the joke too attractive to resist. Several times during the following week she was impelled to engineer opportunities to refer to "that Saint person who's trying to steal my necklace"; twice again, when their paths crossed in fashionable restaurants, she called him to her table for the express pleasure of twitting him about his boast. To demonstrate her contempt for his reputation by teasing him on such friendly terms, and at the same time to enjoy the awed reactions of her friends, flattered something exhibitionistic in her that gave more satisfaction than any other fun she had had for years. It was like having a man-eating tiger for a pet and tweaking its ears.
This made nothing any easier for Mr. Ullbaum. The countess was already known as a shrewd collector of publicity, and the seeds of suspicion had been firmly planted by the opening story. Mr. Ullbaum tried to explain to groups of sceptical reporters that the Saint's threat was perfectly genuine, but that the countess was simply treating it with the disdain which it deserved; at the same time he tried to carry out his instructions to "keep it funny", and the combination was too much for his mental powers. The cynical cross-examinations he had to submit to usually reduced him to ineffectual spluttering. His disclaimers were duly printed, but in contexts that made them sound more like admissions.
The countess, growing more and more attached to her own joke, was exceptionally tolerant.
"Let 'em laugh," she said. "It'll make it all the funnier when he flops."
She saw him a third time at supper at "21" and invited him to join her party for coffee. He came over, smiling and immaculate, as much at ease as if he had been her favourite nephew. While she introduced him — a briefer business now, for he had met some of the party before — she pointedly fingered the coruscating rope of diamonds on her neck.
"You see I've still got it on," she said as he sat down.
"I noticed that the lights seemed rather bright over here," he admitted. "You've been showing it around quite a lot lately, haven't you? Are you making the most of it while you've got it?"
"I want to make sure that you can't say I didn't give you plenty of chances."
"Aren't you afraid that some ordinary grab artist might get it first? You know I have my competitors."
She looked at him with thinly veiled derision.
"I'll begin to think there is a risk of that, if you don't do something soon. And the suspense is making me quite jittery. Haven't you been able to think of a scheme yet?"
Simon's eyes rested on her steadily for a moment while he drew on his cigarette.
"That dinner and dance you were organizing for Friday — you sent me an invitation," he said. "Is it too late for me to get a ticket?"
"I've got some in my bag. If you've got twenty-five dollars—"
He laid fifty dollars on the table.
"Make it two — I may want someone to help me carry the loot."
Her eyes went hard and sharp for an instant before a buzz of excited comment from her listening guests shut her off from him. He smiled at them all inscrutably and firmly changed the subject while he finished his coffee and smoked another cigarette. After he had taken his leave, she faced a bombardment of questions with stony preoccupation.
"Come to the dance on Friday," was all she would say. "You may see some excitement."
Mr. Ullbaum, summoned to the Presence again the next morning, almost tore his hair.
"Now will you tell the police?" he gibbered.
"Don't be so stupid," she snapped. "I'm not going to lose anything, and he's going to look a bigger fool than he has for years. All I want you to do is see that the papers hear that Friday is the day — we may sell a few more tickets."
Her instinct served her well in that direction at least. The stories already published, vague and contradictory as they were, had boosted the sale of tickets for the Grand Ball in aid of the National League for the Care of Incurables beyond her expectations, and the final announcement circulated to the press by the unwilling Mr. Ullbaum caused a flurry of last-minute buying that had the private ballroom hired for the occasion jammed to overflowing by eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth. It was a curious tribute to the legends that had grown up around the name of Simon Templar, who had brought premature grey hairs to more police officers than could easily have been counted. Everyone who could read knew that the Saint had never harmed any innocent person, and there were enough sensation-seekers with clear consciences in New York to fill the spacious suite beyond capacity.
Countess Jannowicz, glittering with diamonds, took her place calmly at the head table beside the chairman. He was the aged and harmlessly doddering bearer of a famous name who served in the same honorary position in several charitable societies and boards of directors without ever knowing much more about them than was entailed in presiding over occasional public meetings convened by energetic organizers like the countess; and he was almost stone deaf, an ailment which was greatly to his advantage in view of the speeches he had to listen to.
"What's this I read about some fella goin' to steal your necklace?" he mumbled, as he shakily spooned his soup.
"It wouldn't do you any good if I told you, you dithering old buzzard," said the countess with a gracious smile.
"Oh yes. Hm. Ha. Extraordinary."
She was immune to the undercurrents of excitement that ebbed and flowed through the room like leakages of static electricity. Her only emotion was a slight anxiety lest the Saint should cheat her, after all, by simply staying away. After all the build-up, that would certainly leave her holding the bag. But it would bring him no profit, and leave him deflated on his own boast at the same time; it was impossible to believe that he would be satisfied with such a cheap anticlimax as that.
What else he could do and hope to get away with, on the other hand, was something that she had flatly given up trying to guess. Unless he had gone sheerly cuckoo, he couldn't hope to steal so much as a spoon that night, after his intentions had been so widely and openly proclaimed, without convicting himself on his own confession. And yet the Saint had so often achieved things that seemed equally impossible that she had to stifle a reluctant eagerness to see what his uncanny ingenuity would devise. Whatever that might be, the satisfaction of her curiosity could cost her nothing — for one very good reason.
The Saint might have been able to accomplish the apparently impossible before, but he would literally have to perform a miracle if he was to open the vaults of the Vandrick National Bank. For that was where her diamond necklace lay that night and where it had lain ever since he paid his first call on her. The string she had been wearing ever since was a first-class imitation, worth about fifty dollars. That was her answer to all the fanfaronading and commotion — a precaution so obvious and elementary that no one else in the world seemed to have thought of it, so flawless and unassailable that the Saint's boast was exploded before he even began, so supremely ridiculously simple that it would make the whole earth quake with laughter when the story broke.
Even so, ratcheted notch after notch by the lurking fear of a fiasco, tension crept up on her as the time went by without a sign of the Saint's elegant slender figure and tantalizing blue eyes. He was not there for the dinner or the following speeches, nor did he show up during the interval while some of the tables were being whisked away from the main ballroom to make room for the dancing. The dancing started without him, went on through long-drawn expectancy while impatient questions leapt at the countess spasmodically from time to time like shots from ambush.
"He'll come," she insisted monotonously, while news photographers roamed restively about with their fingers aching on the triggers of their flashlights.
At midnight the Saint arrived.
No one knew how he got in; no one had seen him before; but suddenly he was there.
The only announcement of his arrival was when the music stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar. Not all at once, but gradually, in little groups, the dancers shuffled to stillness, became frozen to the floor as the first instinctive turning of eyes towards the orchestra platform steered other eyes in the same direction.
He stood in the centre of the dais, in front of the microphone. No one had a moment's doubt that it was the Saint, although his face was masked. The easy poise of his athletic figure in the faultlessly tailored evening clothes was enough introduction, combined with the careless confidence with which he stood there, as if he had been a polished master of ceremonies preparing to make a routine announcement. The two guns he held, one in each hand, their muzzles shifting slightly over the crowd, seemed a perfectly natural part of his costume.
"May I interrupt for a moment, ladies and gentlemen?" he said.
He spoke quietly but the loud-speakers made his voice audible in every corner of the room. Nobody moved or made any answer. His question was rather superfluous. He had interrupted, and everyone's ears were strained for what he had to say.
"This is a holdup," he went on in the same easy conversational tone. "You've all been expecting it, so none of you should have heart failure. Until I've finished, none of you may leave the room — a friend of mine is at the other end of the hall to help to see that this order is carried out."
A sea of heads screwed round to where a shorter stockier man in evening clothes that seemed too tight for him, stood blocking the far entrance, also masked and also with two guns in his hands.
"So long as you all do exactly what you're told, I promise that nobody will get hurt. You two" — one of his guns flicked towards the countess' bodyguards, who were standing stiff-fingered where they had been caught when they saw him — "come over here. Turn your backs, take out your guns slowly and drop them on the floor."
His voice was still quiet and matter-of-fact but both the men obeyed like automatons.
"Okay. Now turn round again and kick them towards me… That's fine. You can stay where you are, and don't try to be heroes if you want to live to boast about it."
A smile touched his lips under the mask. He pocketed one of his guns and picked up a black gladstone bag from the dais and tossed it out on to the floor. Then he put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it with a match flicked on the thumbnail of the same hand.
"The holdup will now proceed," he remarked affably. "The line forms on the right, and that means everybody except the waiters. Each of you will put a contribution in the bag as you pass by. Lady Instock, that's a nice pair of earrings… "
Amazed, giggling, white-faced, surly, incredulous, according to their different characters, the procession began to file by and drop different articles into the bag under his directions. There was nothing much else that they could do. Each of them felt that gently waving gun centred on his own body, balancing its bark of death against the first sign of resistance. To one red-faced man who started to bluster, a waiter said tremulously: "Better do what he says. Tink of all da ladies. Anybody might get hit if he start shooting." His wife shed a pearl necklace and hustled him by. Most of the gathering had the same idea. Anyone who had tried to be a hero would probably have been mobbed by a dozen others who had no wish to die for his glory. Nobody really thought much beyond that. This wasn't what they had expected, but they couldn't analyze their reactions. Their brains were too numbed to think very much.
Two brains were not numbed. One of them belonged to the chairman who had lost his glasses, adding dim-sightedness to his other failings."From where he stood he couldn't distinguish anything as small as a mask or a gun but somebody seemed to be standing up on the platform and was probably making a speech. The chairman nodded from time to time with an expression of polite interest, thinking busily about the new corn plaster that somebody had recommended to him. The other active brain belonged to the Countess Jannowicz but there seemed to be nothing useful that she could do with it. There was no encouraging feeling of enterprise to be perceived in the guests around her, no warm inducement to believe that they would respond to courageous leadership.
"Can't you see he's bluffing?" she demanded in a hoarse bleat. "He wouldn't dare to shoot!"
"I should be terrified," murmured the Saint imperturbably, without moving his eyes from the passing line. "Madam, that looks like a very fine emerald ring… "
Something inside the countess seemed to be clutching at her stomach and shaking it up and down. She had taken care to leave her own jewels in a safe place, but it hadn't occurred to her to give the same advice to her guests. And now the Saint was robbing them under her nose — almost under her own roof. Social positions had been shattered overnight on slighter grounds.
She grabbed the arm of a waiter who was standing near.
"Send for the police, you fool!" she snarled.
He looked at her and drew down the corners of his mouth in what might have been a smile or a sneer, or both, but he made no movement.
Nobody made any movement except as the Saint directed. The countess felt as if she were in a nightmare. It was amazing to her that the holdup could have continued so long without interruption — without some waiter opening a service door and seeing what was going on, or someone outside in the hotel noticing the curious quietness and giving the alarm. But the ballroom might have been spirited away on to a desert island.
The last of the obedient procession passed by the Saint and left its contribution in the bag and joined the silent staring throng of those who had already contributed. Only the chairman and the countess had not moved — the chairman because he hadn't heard a word and didn't know what was going on.
The Saint looked at her across the room.
"I've been saving Countess Jannowicz to the last," he said, "because she's the star turn that you've all been waiting for. Will you step up now, Countess?"
Fighting a tangle of emotions, but compelled by a fascination that drove her like a machine, she moved towards the platform. And the Saint glanced at the group of almost frantic photographers.
"Go ahead, boys," he said kindly. "Take your pictures. It's the chance of a lifetime… Your necklace, Countess."
She stood still, raised her hands a little way, dropped them, raised them again, slowly to her neck. Magnesium bulbs winked and splashed like a barrage of artificial lightning as she unfastened the clasp and dropped the necklace on top of the collection in the bag.
"You can't get away with this," she said whitely.
"Let me show you how easy it is," said the Saint calmly. He turned his gun to the nearest man to the platform. "You, sir — would you mind closing the bag, carefully, and taking it down to my friend at the other end of the room? Thank you." He watched the bag on its way down the room until it was in the hands of the stocky man at the far entrance. "Okay, partner," he said crisply. "Scram."
As if the word had been a magical incantation, the man vanished.
A kind of communal gasp like a sigh of wind swept over the assembly, as if the final unarguable physical disappearance of their property had squeezed the last long-held breath out of their bodies. Every eye had been riveted on it in its last journey through their midst, every eye had blinked to the shock of its ultimate vanishment, and then every eye dragged itself dazedly back to the platform from which those catastrophes had been dictated.
Almost to their surprise, the Saint was still standing there. But his other gun had disappeared and he had taken his mask off. In some way, the aura of subtle command that had clung to him before in spite of his easy casualness had gone, leaving the easy casualness alone. He was still smiling.
For an instant the two bodyguards were paralyzed. And then with muffled choking noises they made a concerted dive for their guns.
The Saint made no move except a slight deprecating motion of the hand that held his cigarette.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said into the microphone, "I must now make my apologies, and an explanation."
The bodyguards straightened up, with their guns held ready. And yet something in his quiet voice, unarmed as he was, gripped them in spite of themselves, as it had gripped everyone else in the room. They looked questioningly towards the countess.
She gave them no response. She was rigid, watching the Saint with the first icy grasp of an impossible premonition closing in on her.
Somehow the Saint was going to get away with it. She knew it with a horrible certainty, even while she was wildly trying to guess what he would say. He could never have been so insane as to believe that he could pull a public holdup like that without being arrested an hour after he left the hotel, unless he had had some trick up his sleeve to immobilize the hue and cry. And she knew that she was now going to hear the trick she had not thought of.
"You have just been the victims of a holdup," he was saying. "Probably to nearly all of you that was a novel experience. But it is something that might happen to any of you tonight, tomorrow, at any time — so long as there are men at large to whom that seems like the best way of making a living.
"You came here tonight to help the National League for the Care of Incurables. That is a good and humane work. But I have taken this opportunity — with the kind co-operation of Countess Jannowicz — to make you think of another equally good, perhaps even more constructive work: the Care of Curables.
"I am talking about a class of whom I may know more than most of you — a section of those unfortunates who are broadly and indiscriminatingly called criminals.
"Ladies and gentlemen, not every lawbreaker is a brutalized desperado, fit only for swift extermination. I know that there are men of that kind, and you all know that I have been more merciless with them than any officer of the law. But there are others.
"I mean the men who steal through ignorance, through poverty, through misplaced ambition, through despair, through lack of better opportunity. I mean also men who have been punished for their crimes and who are now at the crossroads. One road takes them deeper and deeper into crime, into becoming real brutalized desperadoes. The other road takes them back to honesty, to regaining their self-respect, to becoming good and valuable citizens. All they need is the second chance which society is often so unwilling to give them.
"To give these men their second chance, has been founded the Society for the Rehabilitation of Delinquents — rather an elaborate name for a simple and straightforward thing. I am proud to be the first president of that society.
"We believe that money spent on this object is far cheaper than the money spent on keeping prisoners in jail, and at the same time is less than the damage that these men would do to the community if they were left to go on with their crimes. We ask you to believe the same thing, and to be generous.
"Everything that has been taken from you tonight can be found tomorrow at the office of the Society, which is in the Missouri Trust Building on Fifth Avenue. If you wish to leave your property there, to be sold for the benefit of the Society, we shall be grateful. If it has too great a sentimental value to you, and you wish to buy it back, we shall be glad to exchange it for a check. And if you object to us very seriously, and simply want it back, we shall of course have to give it back. But we hope that none of you will demand that.
"That is why we ventured to take the loot away tonight. Between now and tomorrow morning, we want you to have time to think. Think of how different this holdup would have been if it had been real. Think of your feelings when you saw your jewelry vanishing out of that door. Think of how little difference it would really make to your lives" — he looked straight at the countess — "if you were wearing imitation stones, while the money that has been locked up idly in the real ones was set free to do good and useful work. Think, ladies and gentlemen, and forgive us the melodramatic way in which we have tried to bring home our point."
He stepped back, and there was a moment of complete silence.
The chairman had at last found his glasses. He saw the speaker retiring with a bow from the microphone. Apparently the speech was over. It seemed to be the chairman's place to give the conventional lead. He raised his hands and clapped loudly.
It is things like that that turn tides and start revolutions. In another second the whole hall was clattering with hysterical applause.
"My dear, how do you think of these things?"
"The most divinely thrilling—"
"I was really petrified …"
The Countess Jannowicz wriggled dazedly free from the shrill jabber of compliments, managed somehow to snatch the Saint out of a circle of clamorous women of which Lady Instock was the most gushing leader. In a comparatively quiet corner of the room she faced him.
"You're a good organizer, Mr. Templar. The head-waiter tells me that Mr. Ullbaum telephoned this afternoon and told the staff how they were to behave during the holdup."
He was cheerfully appreciative.
"I must remember to thank him."
"Mr. Ullbaum did no such thing."
He smiled.
"Then he must have been impersonated. But the damage seems to be done."
"You know that for all your talking you've still committed a crime?"
"I think you'd be rather a lonely prosecutor."
Rage had made her a little incoherent.
"I shall not come to your office. You've made a fool of yourself. My necklace is in the bank—"
"Countess," said the Saint patiently, "I'd guessed that much. That's why I want you to be sure and bring me the real one. Lady Instock is going to leave her earrings and send a check as well, and all the rest of your friends seem to be sold on the idea. You're supposed to be the number one patron. What would they think of you if after all the advertising you let yourself out with a fifty-dollar string of cut glass?"
"I can disclaim—"
"I know you can. But your name will still be Mud. Whereas at the moment you're tops. Why not make the best of it and charge it to publicity?"
She knew she was beaten — that he had simply turned a trick with the cards that for days past she had been busily forcing into his hand. But she still fought with the bitterness of futility.
"I'll have the police investigate this phony charity—"
"They'll find that it's quite legally constituted, and so long as the funds last they'll be administered with perfect good faith."
"And who'll get the benefit of them besides yourself?"
Simon smiled once again.
"Our first and most urgent case will be a fellow named Marty O'Connor. He helped me with the collection tonight. You ought to remember him — he was your chauffeur for three weeks. Anyone like yourself, Countess," said the Saint rather cruelly, "ought to know that charity begins at home."