Brighter Buccaneer (25 page)

The Saint’s voice broke, and he averted his face despairingly.

Mr. Parnock gazed down at the silvered ashtray, then at the letter which was still spread open on his blotter, and rubbed his smooth chin thoughtfully. He cleared his throat.

“Come, come!” he said paternally. “It isn’t as bad as all that. With an asset like this invention of yours, you should have nothing to worry about.”

“I told them all about it. They were just polite. Wednesday noon or nothing, and hard cash-no promises. I suppose they’re right. But it’s all so wrong! It’s unjust!”

Simon stood up and shook his fists frantically at the ceiling; and Mr. Parnock coughed.

“Perhaps I could help,” he suggested.

The Saint shook his head.

“That’s what I came to see you about. It was just a desperate idea. I haven’t got any friends who’d listen to me - I owe them all too much money. But now I’ve told you all about it, it all sounds so feeble and unconvincing. I wonder you don’t send for the police right away.”

He shrugged, and picked up his hat. Mr. Parnock, a cumbersome man, moved rather hastily to take it away from him and pat him soothingly on the shoulder.

“My dear old chap, you mustn’t say things like that. Now let’s see what we can do for you. Sit down.” He pressed the Saint back towards his chair. “Sit down, sit down. We can soon put this right. What’s the value of this cheque?”

“A thousand pounds,” said the Saint listlessly. “But it might as well be a million for all the chance I’ve got of finding the money.”

“Fortunately that’s an exaggeration,” said Mr. Parnock cheerfully. “Now this invention of yours - have you patented it?”

Simon snorted harshly.

“What with? I haven’t had a shilling to call my own for weeks. I had to offer it to those people just as it stood, and trust them to give me a square deal.”

Mr. Parnock chuckled with great affability. He opened a drawer and took out his chequebook.

“A thousand pounds, Mr. Smith? And I expect you could do with a bit over for your expenses. Say twenty pounds … One thousand and twenty pounds.” He inscribed the figures with a flourish. “I’ll leave the cheque open so that you can go to the bank and cash it at once. That’ll take a load off your mind, won’t it?”

“But how do you know you’ll ever see it back, Mr. Parnock?”

Mr. Parnock appeared to ponder the point, but the appearance was illusory.

“Well, suppose you left me a copy of your formula? That’d be good enough security for me. Of course, I expect you’ll let me act as your agent, so I’m not really running any risk. But just as a formality …”

The Saint reached for a piece of paper.

“Do you know anything about chemistry?”

“Nothing at all,” confessed Mr. Parnock. “But I have a friend who understands these things.”

Simon wrote on the paper and passed it over. Mr. Parnock studied it wisely, as he would have studied a Greek text.

Cu + Hg + HNO3 + St = CuHgNO3 + H2O +NO2
“Aha!” said Mr. Parnock intelligently. He folded the paper and stowed it away in his pocket-book, and stood up with his smooth fruity chuckle. “Well, Mr. Smith, you run along now and attend to your business, and come and have lunch with me on Thursday and let’s see what we can do about your invention.”

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, Mr. Parnock,” said the Saint almost tearfully as he shook the patent agent’s smooth fat hand; but for once he was speaking nothing but the truth.

He went down to see Inwood again later that afternoon. He had one thousand pounds with him, in crisp new Bank of England notes; and the shabby old chemist’s gratitude was worth all the trouble. Inwood swallowed several times, and blinked at the money dazedly.

“I couldn’t possibly take it,” he said.

“Of course you could, uncle,” said the Saint. “And you will. It’s only a fair price for your invention. Just do one thing for me in return.”

“I’d do anything you asked me to,” said the inventor.

“Then never forget,” said Simon deliberately, “that I was with you the whole of this morning-from half past ten till one o’clock. That might be rather important.” Simon lighted a cigarette ajid stretched himself luxuriously in his chair. “And when you’ve got that thoroughly settled into your memory, let us try to imagine what Augustus Parnock is doing right now.”

It was at that precise moment, as a matter of history, that Mr. Augustus Parnock and his friend who understood those things were staring at a brass ashtray on which no vestige of plating was visible.

“What’s the joke, Gus?” demanded Mr. Parnock’s friend at length.

“I tell you it isn’t a joke!” yelped Mr. Parnock. “That ashtray was perfectly plated all over when I put it in my pocket at lunchtime. The fellow gave me his formula and everything. Look-here it is!”

The friend who understood those things, studied the scrap of paper, and dabbed a stained forefinger on the various items.

“Cu is copper,” he said. “Hg is mercury and HNO3, is nitric acid. What it means is that you dissolve a little mercury in some weak nitric acid; and when you put it on copper the nitric acid eats a little of the copper, and the mercury forms an amalgam. CuHgNO3 is the amalgam-it’d have a silvery look which might make you think the thing had been plated. The other constituents resolve themselves in H2O, which is water, and NO2, which is a gas. Of course, the nitric acid goes on eating, and after a time it destroys the amalgam and the thing looks like copper again. That’s all there is to it.”

“But what about the St?” asked Mr. Parnock querulously. His friend shrugged.

“I can’t make that out at all-it isn’t any chemical symbol,” he said; but it dawned on Mr. Parnock later.

1. The Unusual Ending
   

SIMON TEMPLAR buttered a thin slice of toast and crunched happily.

“I have been going into our accounts,” he said, “and the results of the investigation will amaze you.”

It was half past eleven; and he had just finished breakfast. Breakfast with him was always a sober meal, to be eaten with a proper respect for the gastronomic virtues of grilled bacon and whatever delicacy was mated with it. On this morning it had been mushrooms, a dish that had its own unapproachable place in the Saint’s ideal of a day’s beginning; and he had dealt with them slowly and lusciously, as they deserved, with golden wafers of brown toast on their port side and an open newspaper propped up against the coffee-pot for scanning to starboard. All that had been done with the solemnity of a pleasant rite. And now the last slice of toast was buttered and marmaladed, the last cup of coffee poured out and sugared, the first cigarette lighted and the first deep cloud of fragrant smoke inhaled; and the time had come when Simon Templar was wont to touch on weighty matters in a mood of profound contentment.

“What is the result?” asked Patricia.

“Our running expenses have been pretty heavy,” said the Saint, “and we haven’t denied ourselves much in the way of good things. On the other hand, last year we had a couple of the breaks that only come once in a lifetime, which just helps to show how brilliant we are. Perrigo’s illicit diamonds and dear old Rudolf’s crown jewels.” 1 The Saint smiled reminiscently. “And this current year’s sport and dalliance hasn’t been run at a total loss. In fact, old darling, at this very moment we’re worth three hundred thousand quid clear of all overhead; and if that isn’t something like a record for a life of crime I’ll eat my second-best hat. I’m referring, of course,” said the Saint fastidiously, “to a life of honest crime. Company promoters and international financiers we don’t profess to compete with.” 1 See Saint’s Getaway (Doubleday)
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, on the same day, reviewed the same subject with less contentment, which was only natural. Besides, he had the Assistant Commissioner’s peculiarly sarcastic and irritating sniff as an obbligato.

I gather,” said the Assistant Commissioner, in his precise and acidulated way, “that we are to wait until this man Templar has made himself a millionaire, when presumably he will have no further incentive to be dishonest.”

“I wish I could believe that,” said Teal funereally.

He had a definite feeling of injustice about that interview, for on the whole the past twelve months had been exceptionally peaceful. Simon Templar had actually been on the side of the Law in two different cases, whole-heartedly and without much financial profit; and his less lawful activities, during the period with which Teal’s report dealt, were really little more than rumours. Undoubtedly the Saint had enriched himself, and done so by methods which would probably have emerged somewhat tattered from the close scrutiny of a jury of moralists; but there had been no official complaints from the afflicted parties-and that, Teal felt, was as much as his responsibility required. Admittedly, the afflicted parties might not have known whom to accuse, or, when they knew, might have thought it better not to complain lest worse befall them; but that was outside Teal’s province. His job was to deal in an official manner with officially recognised crimes, and this he had been doing with no small measure of success. The fact that Simon Templar’s head, on a charger, had not been included in his list of offerings, however, appeared to rankle with the exacting Commissioner, who sniffed his dissatisfied and exasperating sniff several times more before he allowed Mr. Teal to withdraw from his sanctum.

It was depressing for Mr. Teal, who had been minded to congratulate the Saint, unofficially, on the discretion with which he had lately contrived to avoid those demonstrations of brazen lawlessness which had in the past added so many grey hairs to Teal’s thinning tally. In the privacy of his own office, Mr. Teal unwrapped a fresh wafer of chewing gum and meditated moodily, as he had done before, on the unkindness of a fate that had thrown such a man as Simon Templar across the path of a promising career. It removed nearly all his enthusiasm from the commonplace task of apprehending a fairly commonplace swindler, which was his scheduled duty for that day.

But none of these things could noticeably have saddened Simon Templar, even if he had known about them. Peter Quentin, intruding on the conclusion of the Saint’s breakfast shortly afterwards, felt that the question, “Well, Simon, how’s life?” was superfluous; but he asked it.

“Life keeps moving,” said the Saint. “Another Royal Commission has been appointed, this time to discuss whether open-air restaurants would be likely to lower the moral tone of the nation. Another law has been passed to forbid something or other. A Metropolitan Policeman has won a first prize in the Irish Sweep. And you?”

Peter helped himself to a cigarette, and eyed the Saint’s blue silk Cossack pyjamas with the unconscious and unreasonable smugness of a man who has dressed for breakfast and been about for hours.

“I can see that I haven’t any real criminal instincts,” he remarked. “I get up too early. And what are the initials for?”

Simon glanced down at the monogram embroidered on his breast pocket.

“In case I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t remember who I am,” he said. “What’s new about Julian?”

“He skips today,” said Peter. “Or perhaps tomorrow. Anyway, he’s been to the bank already and drawn out more money than I’ve ever seen before in hard cash. That’s why I thought I’d better knock off and tell you.”

Mr. Julian Lamantia should be no stranger to us. We have seen him being thrown into the Thames on a rainy night. We have seen him in his J. L. Investment Bureau, contributing to the capital required for buying a completely worthless block of shares.

If Mr. Lamantia had restricted himself to such enterprises as those in which the Saint’s attention had first been directed towards him, we might still have been able to speak of him in the present tense. He had, in his prime, been one of the astutest skimmers of the Law of his generation. Unfortunately for him he became greedy, as other men like him have become before; and in the current wave of general depression he found that the bucket-shop business was not what it was. His mind turned towards more dangerous but more profitable fields.

Out through the post, under the heading of the J. L. Investment Bureau, went many thousands of beautifully printed pamphlets, in which was described the enormous profit that could be made on large short-term loans. The general public, said the pamphlet, was not in a position to supply the sums required for these loans, and therefore all these colossal profits gravitated exclusively into the pockets of a small circle of wealthy financial houses. Nevertheless, explained the pamphlet, as the hymn-book had done before it, little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the tiddly-tum-tum and the tumty-tum. It was accordingly mooted that, under the auspices of the J. L. Investment Bureau, sums of from Ł5 to Ł10 might be raised from private investors and in the aggregate provide the means for making these great short-term loans, of which the profits would be generously and proportionately shared with the investors.

It was a scheme which, in one form or another, is as old as some of the younger hills and as perennially fruitful as a parson’s wife. Helped on by the literary gifts of Mr. Lamantia, it proceeded in this reincarnation as well as it always will. From the first issue of circulars thousands of pounds poured in, and after a very brief interval the first monthly dividend was announced at ten per cent-and paid. In another thirty days the second month’s dividend was announced at fifteen per cent -and paid. The third month’s dividend was twenty per cent- “which,” a second issue of circulars hoped, “should remain as a regular working profit”-and the money was pouring in almost as fast as it could be banked. The original investors increased their investments frantically, and told their friends, who also subscribed and spread the good news. The dividends, of course, were paid straight out of the investors’ own capital and the new subscriptions that were continually flowing in; but any suspicion of such low duplicity was, as usual, far from the minds of the innocent suckers who in a few months built up Mr. Julian Lamantia’s bank balance to the amazing total of Ł85,000.

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, it had its inevitable breaking point, and this Mr. Lamantia knew. “Clean up while it lasts, and get out,” is the only possible motto for its promoter; but a certain fatal doubt has often existed about how long it may safely be expected to last. Mr. Lamantia thought that he had gauged the duration to a nicety. On this morning whose events we have been following, Mr. Lamantia drew out his balance from the bank, packed it neatly in a small leather bag, and called back at his office. Perhaps that was a foolish thing to do, but his new secretary was a very beautiful girl. It was Saturday, and the week-end would give him a long start on his getaway. He had a new passport in another name, his passage was booked from Southampton, his luggage was packed and gone, his moustache ready for mowing: only one more thing was needed.