V

The Treasure of Turk's Lane

There was a morning when Simon Templar looked up from his newspaper with a twinkle of unholy meditation in his blue eyes and a rather thoughtful smile barely touching the corners of his mouth; and to the privileged few who shared all his lawless moods there was only one deduction to be drawn when the Saint looked up from his newspaper in just that thoughtful and unholy way.

"I see that Vernon Winlass has bought Turk's Lane," he said.

Mr. Vernon Winlass was a man who believed in Getting Things Done. The manner of doing them did not concern him much, so long as it remained strictly within the law; it was only results which could be seen in bank accounts, share holdings, income tax returns, and the material circumstances of luxurious living, and with these things Mr. Winlass was very greatly and whole-heartedly concerned. This is not to say that he was more avaricious than any other business man, or more unscrupulous than any other financier. In his philosophy, the weakest went to the wall: the careless, the timid, the foolish, the simple, the hesitant, paid with their misfortunes for the rewards that came naturally to those of sharper and more aggressive talents. And in setting up that elementary principle for his only guiding standard, Mr. Winlass could justifiably claim that after all he was only demonstrating himself to be the perfect evolutionary product of a civilisation whose honours and amenities are given only to people who Get Things Done, whether they are worth doing or not — with the notable exception of politicians, who, of course, are exempted by election even from that requirement.

Simon Templar did not like Mr. Winlass, and would have considered him a legitimate victim for his illegitimate talents, on general principles that were only loosely connected with one or two things he had heard about Mr. Winlass's methods of Getting Things Done; but although the idea of devoting some time and attention to that hard-headed financier simmered at the back of his mind in a pleasant warmth of enthusiasm, it did not actually boil over until the end of the same week, when he happened to be passing Turk's Lane on his return from another business affair.

Turk's Lane is, or was, a narrow cul-de-sac of small two-storey cottages. That description is more or less as bald and unimaginative as anything a hard-headed financier would have found to say about it. In actual fact it was one of those curious relics of the past which may sometimes be discovered in London, submerged among tall modern buildings and ordered squares as if a new century had grown up around it without noticing its existence any more than was necessary to avoid treading on it. The passer-by who wandered into that dark lane at night might have fancied himself magically transported back over two centuries. He would have seen the low ceilings and tiny leaded windows of oak-beamed houses, the wrought-iron lamps glowing above the lintels of the narrow doors, the worn cobblestones gleaming underfoot, the naphtha flares flickering on a riot of foodstuffs spread out in unglazed shop fronts; and he might have thought himself spirited away into the market street of a village that had survived there unaltered from the days when Kensington was a hamlet three miles from London and there was a real Knights' Bridge across the Serpentine where it now flows through sanitary drainpipes to the Thames.

Mr. Winlass did not think any of these things; but he saw something far more interesting to himself, which was that Turk's Lane stood at the back of a short row of shabby early Victorian houses, which were for sale. He also saw that the whole of Turk's Lane — except for the two end houses, which were the freehold property of the occupants — was likewise for sale, and that the block comprised of these two principal properties totalled an area of about three-quarters of an acre, which is quite a small garden in the country, but which would allow plenty of space to erect a block of modern apartments with running hot and cold water in every room for the tenancy of fifty more sophisticated and highly civilised Londoners. He also saw that this projected building would have an impressive frontage on a most respectable road in a convenient situation which the westward trend of expansion was annually raising in value; and he bought the row of shabby early Victorian houses and the whole of Turk's Lane except the two end cottages, and called in his architects.

Those two cottages which had not been included in the purchase were the difficulty.

"If you don't get those two places the site's useless," Mr. Winlass was told. "You can't build a block of flats like you're proposing to put up with two old cottages in the middle."

"Leave it to me," said Mr. Winlass. "I'll Get It Done."

Strolling into Turk's Lane on this day when the ripeness of Mr. Winlass for the slaughter was finally made plain to him, Simon Templar learned how it was getting done.

It was not by any means the Saint's first visit to the picturesque little alley. He had an open affection for it, as he had for all such pathetic rearguards of the forlorn fight against dull mechanical modernity; and he had at least one friend who lived there.

Dave Roberts was a cobbler. He was an old grey-haired man with gentle grey eyes, known to every inhabitant of Turk's Lane as "Uncle Dave," who had plied his trade there since the oldest of them could remember, as his father and grandfather had done before him. It might almost be said that he was Turk's Lane, so wholly did he belong to the forgotten days that were preserved there. The march of progress to which Mr. Vernon Winlass belonged had passed him by. He sat in his tiny shop and mended the boots and shoes of the neighbourhood for microscopical old-world prices; he had a happy smile and a kind word for everyone; and with those simple things, unlike Mr. Vernon Winlass, his philosophy began and ended and was well content. To such pioneers as Mr. Winlass he was, of course, a dull reactionary and a stupid bumpkin; but to the Saint he was one of the few and dwindling relics of happier and cleaner days, and many pairs of Simon's own expensive shoes had gone to his door out of that queer affection rather than because they needed repairing.

Simon smoked a cigarette under the low beamed ceiling in the smell of leather and wax, while Dave Roberts wielded his awl under a flickering gas-jet and told him of the things that were happening in Turk's Lane.

"Ay, sir, Tom Unwin over the road, he's going. Mr. Winlass put him out o' business. Did you see that new shop next to Tom's? Mr. Winlass started that up, soon as he'd got the tenants out. Sold exactly the same things as Tom had in his shop for a quarter the price — practically give 'em away, he did. 'Course, he lost money all the time, but he can afford to. Tom ain't hardly done a bit o' business since then. 'Well,' Tom says to himself, 'if this goes on for another couple o' months I'll be broke,' so in the end he sells out to Mr. Win-lass an' glad to do it. I suppose I'll be the next, but Mr. Winlass won't get me out if I can help it."

The Saint looked across the lane at the garish makeshift shop front next door to Tom Unwin's store, and back again to the gentle old man straining his eyes under the feeble light.

"So he's been after you, has he?" he said.

"Ay, he's been after me. One of his men come in my shop the other day. 'Your place is worth five hundred pounds,' he says. 'We'll give you seven hundred to get out at once, an' Mr. Winlass is being very generous with you,' he says. Well, I told him I didn't want to get out. I been here, man an' boy, for seventy years now, an' I wasn't going to get out to suit him. 'You realise,' he says, 'your obstinacy is holding up an important an' valuable piece of building?' — 'Begging your pardon, sir,' I says, 'you're holding me up from mending these shoes.' —' Very well,' this chap says, 'if you're so stupid you can refuse two hundred pounds more than your place is worth, you're going to be glad to take two hundred less before you're much older, if you don't come to your senses quick,' he says, 'and them's Mr. Winlass's orders,' he says."

"I get it," said the Saint quietly. "And in a day or two you'll have a Winlass shoe repair shop next door to you, working for nothing."

"They won't do work like I do," said Dave Roberts stolidly. "You can't do it, not with these machines. What did the Good Lord give us hands for, if it wasn't that they were the best tools in the world?.. But I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Winlass tried it. But I wouldn't sell my house to him. I told this fellow he sent to see me: 'My compliments to Mr. Winlass,' I says, 'and I don't think much of his orders, nor the manner of anybody that carries 'em out. The way you talk to me,' I says, 'isn't the way to talk to any self-respecting man, an' I wouldn't sell you my house, not now after you've threatened me that way,' I says, 'not if you offered me seven thousands pounds.' An' I tells him to get out o' my shop an' take that message to Mr. Winlass."

"I see," said the Saint.

Dave Roberts finished off his sewing and put the shoe down in its place among the row of other finished jobs.

"I ain't afraid, sir," he said. "If it's the Lord's will that I go out of my house, I suppose He knows best. But I don't want Mr. Winlass to have it, an' the Lord helps them that helps themselves."

The Saint lighted a cigarette and stared out of the window.

"Uncle Dave," he said gently, "would you sell me your house?"

He turned round suddenly, and looked at the old man. Dave Roberts's hands had fallen limply in his lap, and his eyes were blinking mistily.

"You, sir?" he said.

"Me," said the Saint. "I know you don't want to go, and I don't know whether it's the Lord's will or not, but I know that you're going to have to. And you know it too. Winlass will find a way to get you out. But I can get more out of him than you could. I know you don't want money, but I can offer you something even better. I know a village out of London where I can buy you a house almost exactly like this, and you can have your shop and do your work there without anybody troubling you again. I'll give you that in exchange, and however much money there is in this house as well."

It was one of those quixotic impulses that often moved him, and he uttered it on the spur of the moment with no concrete plan of campaign in his mind. He knew that Dave Roberts would have to go, and that Turk's Lane must disappear, making room for the hygienic edifice of mass-production cubicles which Mr. Vernon Winlass had planned: he knew that, whatever he himself might wish, that individual little backwater must take the way of all such pleasant places, to be superseded by the vast white cube of Crescent Court, the communal sty which the march of progress demands for its armies. But he also knew that Mr. Vernon Winlass was going to pay more than seven hundred pounds to dear the ground for it.

When he saw Patricia Holm and Peter Quentin later that night, they had no chance to mistake the light of unlawful resolution on his face.

"Brother Vernon hasn't bought the whole of Turk's Lane," he announced, "because I've got some of it."

"Whatever for?" asked Patricia.

"For an investment," answered the Saint virtuously. "Crescent Court will be built only by kind permission of Mr. Simon Templar, and my permission is going to cost money."

Peter Quentin helped himself to another bottle of beer.

"We believe you," he said dryly. "What's the swindle?"

"You have a mind like Claud Eustace Teal," said the Saint offensively. "There is no swindle. I am a respectable real estate speculator, and if you had any money I'd sue you for slander. But I don't mind telling you that I am rather interested to know what hobby Vernon Winlass has in his spare moments. Go out and do some sleuthing for me in the morning, Peter, and I'll let you know some more."

In assuming that even such a hard-headed business man as Mr. Vernon Winlass must have some simple indulgence, Simon Templar was not taking a long chance. Throughout the ages, iron-gutted captains of industry have diverted themselves with rare porcelain, pewter, tram tickets, Venetian glass, first editions, second mortgages, second establishments, dahlias, stuffed owls, and such-like curios. Mr. Wallington Titus Oates, of precious memory, went into slavering raptures at the sight of pieces of perforated paper bearing the portraits of repulsive monarchs and the magic words "Postage Two Pence." Mr. Vernon Winlass, who entrenched himself during business hours behind a storm battalion of secretaries, under-secretaries, assistant secretaries, messengers, clerks, managers, and office-boys, put aside all his business and opened wide his defences at the merest whisper of old prints.

"It's just an old thing we came across when we were clearing out our old house," explained the man who had successfully penetrated these fortified frontiers — his card introduced him as Captain Tombs, which was an alias out of which Simon Templar derived endless amusement "I took it along to Busby's to find out if it was worth anything, and they seemed to get quite excited about it. They told me I'd better show it to you."

Mr. Winlass nodded.

"I buy a good many prints from Busby's," he said smugly. "If anything good comes their way, they always want me to see it."

He took the picture out of its brown paper wrapping and looked at it closely under the light. The glass was cracked and dirty, and the frame was falling apart and tied up with wire; but the result of his inspection gave him a sudden shock. The print was a discovery — if he knew anything at all about these things, it was worth at least five hundred pounds. Mr. Winlass frowned at it disparagingly.

"A fairly good specimen of a rather common plate," he said carelessly. "I should think it would fetch about ten pounds."

Captain Tombs looked surprised.

"Is that all?" he grumbled. "The fellow at Busby's told me I ought to get anything from three hundred up for it."

"Ah-hum," said Mr. Winlass dubiously. He peered at the print again, and raised his eyes from it in an elaborate rendering of delight. "By Jove," he exclaimed, "I believe you're right. Tricky things, these prints. If you hadn't told me that, I might have missed it altogether. But it looks as if — if it is a genuine… Well!" said Mr. Winlass expansively, "I almost think I'll take a chance on it. How about two hundred and fifty?"

"But the fellow at Busby's—"

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Winlass testily. "But these are not good times for selling this sort of thing. People haven't got the money to spend. Besides, if you wanted to get a price like that, you'd have to get the picture cleaned up — get experts to certify it — all kinds of things like that. And they all cost money. And when you'd done them all, it mightn't prove to be worth anything. I'm offering to take a gamble on it and save you a lot of trouble and expense."

Captain Tombs hesitated; and Mr. Winlass pulled out a cheque-book and unscrewed his fountain-pen.

"Come, now," he urged genially. "I believe in Getting Things Done. Make up your mind, my dear chap. Suppose we split it at two-seventy-five — or two hundred and eighty—"

"Make it two hundred and eighty-five," said Captain Tombs reluctantly, "and I suppose I'd better let it go."

Mr. Winlass signed the cheque with the nearest approach to glee that he would ever be able to achieve while parting with money in any quantity; and he knew that he was getting the print for half its value. When Captain Tombs had gone, he set it up against the inkwell and fairly gloated over it. A moment later he picked up a heavy paper-knife and attacked it with every evidence of ferocity.

But the scowl of pained indignation which darkened his brow was directed solely against the cracked glass and the dilapidated frame. The picture was his new-born babe, his latest ewe lamb; and it was almost inevitable that he should rise against the vandal disfigurement of its shabby trappings as a fond mother would rise in wrath against the throwing of mud pies at her beloved offspring. With the horrible cradle that had sheltered it stripped away and cast into the wastebasket, he set up the print again and gloated over it from every angle. After a long time he turned it over to stow it safely in an envelope — and it was when he did this that he noticed the writing on the back.

The reactions of an equally inevitable curiosity made him carry the picture over to the window to read the almost indecipherable scrawl. The ink was rusty with age, the spidery hand angular and old-fashioned, but after some study he was able to make out the words.

To my wife, On this day 16 Aprille did I lodge in ye houfe of one Thomaf Robertf a cobler and did hyde under hyf herthe in Turkes Lane ye feventy thoufande golde piecef wich I stole of Hyf Grace ye Duke. Finde them if thif letre come to thee and Godes blefsynge, John.

None of the members of Mr. Winlass's staff, some of whom had been with him through ten years of his hard-headed and dignified career, could remember any previous occasion when he had erupted from his office with so much violence. The big limousine which wafted him to Turk's Lane could not travel fast enough for him: he shuffled from one side of the seat to the other, craning forward to look for impossible gaps in the traffic, and emitting short nasal wuffs of almost canine impatience.

Dave Roberts was not in the little shop when Mr. Winlass walked in. A freckle-faced pug-nosed young man wearing the same apron came forward.

"I want to see Mr. Roberts," said Winlass, trembling with excitement, which he was trying not to show.

The freckle-faced youth shook his head.

"You can't see Mr. Roberts," he said. "He ain't here."

"Where can I find him?" barked Winlass.

"You can't find him," said the youth phlegmatically. "He don't want to be found. Want your shoes mended, sir?"

"No. I do not want my shoes mended!" roared Winlass, dancing in his impatience. "I want to see Mr. Roberts. Why can't I find him? Why don't he want to be found? Who the hell are you, anyhow?"

"I do be Mr. Roberts's second cousin, sir," said Peter Quentin, whose idea of dialects was hazy but convincing. "I do have bought Mr. Roberts's shop, and I'm here now, and Mr. Roberts ain't coming back, sir, that's who I be."

Mr. Winlass wrenched his features into a jovial beam.

"Oh, you're Mr. Roberts's cousin, are you?" he said, with gigantic affability. "How splendid! And you've bought his beautiful shop. Well, well. Have a cigar, my dear sir, have a cigar."

The young man took the weed, bit off the wrong end, and stuck it into his mouth with the band on — a series of motions which caused Mr. Winlass to shudder to his core. But no one could have deduced that shudder from the smile with which he struck and tendered a match.

"Thank 'ee, sir," said Peter Quentin, "Now, sir, can I mend thy shoes?"

He admitted afterwards to the Saint that the strain of maintaining what he fondly believed to be a suitable patois was making him a trifle light-headed; but Mr. Vernon Winlass was far too preoccupied to notice his aberrations.

"No, my dear sir," said Mr. Winlass, "my shoes don't want mending. But I should like to buy your lovely house."

The young man shook his head.

"I ain't a-wanting to sell 'er, sir."

"Not for a thousand pounds?" said Mr. Winlass calculatingly.

"Not for a thousand pounds, sir."

"Not even," said Mr. Winlass pleadingly, "for two thousand?"

"No, sir."

"Not even," suggested Mr. Winlass, with an effort which caused him acute pain, "if I offered you three thousand?"

The young man's head continued to shake.

"I do only just have bought 'er, sir. I must do my work somewhere. I wouldn't want to sell my house, not if you offered me four thousand for 'er, that I wouldn't."

"Five thousand," wailed Mr. Winlass, in dogged anguish.

The bidding rose to seven thousand five hundred before Peter Quentin relieved Mr. Winlass of further torture and himself of further lingual acrobatics. The cheque was made out and signed on the spot, and in return Peter attached his signature to a more complicated document which Mr. Win-lass had ready to produce from his breast pocket; for Mr. Vernon Winlass believed in Getting Things Done.

"That's splendid," he boomed, when the formalities had been completed. "Now then, my dear sir, how soon can you move out?"

"In ten minutes," said Peter Quentin promptly, and he was as good as his word.

He met the Saint in a neighbouring hostelry and exhibited his trophy. Simon Templar took one look at it, and lifted his tankard.

"So perish all the ungodly," he murmured. "Let us get round to the bank before they close.

It was three days later when he drove down to Hampshire with Patricia Holm to supervise the installation of Uncle Dave Roberts in the cottage which had been prepared for him. It stood in the street of a village that had only one street, a street that was almost an exact replica of Turk's Lane set down in a valley between rolling hills. It had the same oak-beamed cottages, the same wrought-iron lamps over the lintels to light the doors by night, the same rows of tiny shops clustering face to face with their wares spread out in unglazed windows; and the thundering main road traffic went past five miles away and never knew that there was a village there.

"I think you'll be happy here, Uncle Dave," he said; and he did not need an answer in words to complete his reward.

It was a jubilant return journey for him; and they were in Guildford before he recollected that he had backed a very fast outsider at Newmarket. When he bought a paper he saw that that also had come home, and they had to stop at the Lion for celebrations.

"There are good moments in this life of sin, Pat," he remarked, as he started up the car again; and then he saw the expression on her face, and stared at her in concern. "What's the matter, old darling — has that last Martini gone to your head?"

Patricia swallowed. She had been glancing through the other pages of the Evening News while he tinkered with the ignition; and now she folded the sheet down and handed it to him.

"Didn't you promise Uncle Dave whatever money there was in his house as well as that cottage?" she asked.

Simon took the paper and read the item she was pointing to.

TREASURE TROVE IN LONDON

EXCAVATION

—

Windfall for Winlass

—

The London clay, which has given up many strange secrets in its time, yesterday surrendered a treasure which has been in its keeping for 300 years. Ten thousand pounds is the estimated value of a hoard of gold coins and antique jewellery discovered by workmen engaged in demolishing an old house in Turk's Lane, Brompton, which is being razed to make way for a modern apartment building. The owner of the property, Mr. Vernon Winlass—

The Saint had no need to read any more; and as a matter of fact he did not want to. For several seconds he was as far beyond the power of speech as if he had been born dumb.

And then, very slowly, the old Saintly smile came back to his lips.

"Oh, well, I expect our bank account will stand it," he said cheerfully, and turned the car back again towards Hampshire.