The Saint in the Sun (9 page)

Now, I know there are dozens of systems on the market, but it should be obvious that none of them can really be any good. If it were, the news would finally get around, and everybody would be using it, and all the bookies would be broke.

But after a lifetime of study I have developed and tested and proved a system which is infallible-which points out winner after winner, week after week, year after year!

Obviously, this system is not for sale. Even if I charged Ł100 for it, somebody would buy it and turn around and sell copies to 200 other people for Ł5 each, and I should be left out in the cold.

I dare not even disclose the names of the horses indicated by the System, because after studying them for a while someone else might be clever enough to deduce the method by which they were found. And in any case, if people all over the country were backing these horses and telling their friends, the prices would come down until they all started at odds on, and there would be nothing in it for anybody.

What I will do is operate the System myself for a limited number of clients who will invest in units of Ł100 with me, to be staked entirely at my discretion, from which I GUARANTEE to pay monthly dividends of Ł5 per unit.

Where else can you buy such an income at such a price? Don’t delay! Send me your CASH today!

TOM GULL
116 WATKINS STREET, MAIDENHEAD, BERKS

The Saint read it as it appeared in print, on a page torn from the Sportsman’s Guide which she gave him, and was profoundly awed.

“I’ve seen some fancy boob-bait in my time,” he said, “but this is about the most preposterous pitch I think I’ve ever come across. Don’t tell me that anyone actually falls for it.”

“They’ve been doing it ever since the first advertisement came out.”

It was she who had found the one-room office and furnished it, on Gull’s insistence that the service was worth a good week’s pay and that he would have to get someone to do it in any case.

“Ain’t no use me going to see the agents,” he said. “The way I look an’ the way I talk, they wouldn’t want to rent me anythink. An’ I don’t know wot you oughter ‘ave in an office to run this job proper. But I can pay for it.” He dug into his trousers and brought out a fistful of crumpled currency. “‘Ere-take this, an’ let me know if you need any more. I got a bit put away, wot I bin saving up till I was ready to start this business.”

“If your system is so perfect, why don’t you just work it for your own benefit?” she argued.

“Because it needs plenty o’ capital, more ‘n I could save up,” he said seriously. “You got to ‘ave reserves to see you through the losing runs, but if you keep going you can’t ‘elp winning in the end. So I got to ‘ave share’olders, just like Woolworth’s.”

When the office was ready and the first advertisements had been placed, he had worked up to his culminating offer.

“I got to ‘ave someone in the office answering letters an’ all that. I wouldn’t be much good at that meself, an’ besides I better ‘ang on to me gardening jobs till I see ‘ow many share’olders I get. An’ after that I’ll ‘ave to be going to the races or the betting shops every day, making the bets.”

“But suppose you don’t get any answers?”

“Then we pack up an’ go ‘ome. That’s my little gamble. But we’ll worry about that when it ‘appens. I know you got to find a job, an’ if you ain’t too proud to take my money I’d be much obliged if you’d give it a try.”

She had finally consented, not without a guilty feeling that she was helping him to throw away the last of his life’s savings, but justifying herself with the thought that since he was stubbornly determined to go through with it she might as well take the job as let anyone else have it. She never dreamed that there would be such a response as she found herself coping with.

In the first week, five of the coupons which concluded the advertisement were returned, each accompanied by Ł100 in cash. In the second week there were ten, and Tom Gull went with her to a bank and opened an account. In the third week she banked Ł1600, and Mr Gull showed up with a shave and a clean shirt and announced that he was going to begin working his System. The following Friday, after she had banked another Ł1400 for that week, he came in smelling more strongly of liquor and pulling packages of five-pound notes from every pocket.

“Not a bad start,” he said. “Now we got to do somethink about paying them dividends.”

He turned down her suggestion of writing checks, on the grounds that since their investments had been made in cash they were entitled to dividends in the same form, and that some people in such circumstances as he had been in himself not long ago might have difficulty in cashing a check. He had her address envelopes to all the subscribers, in which he would put the fivers they were entitled to, and which he would take to the post office himself.

“Not that I don’t trust you,” he said. “But if I post ‘em meself, if there’s ever any question, I can swear that everyone’s bin paid.”

So it had gone on ever since, with new investors enrolling at a rate of between twelve and twenty a week, besides additional Ł100 units sent in by presumably satisfied earlier subscribers. And each week Mr Gull (as she was now used to calling him) displayed thick wads of winnings which he also allowed her to bank, except for what had to be set aside once a month for the payment of dividends, and the thousand pounds which he carried for “operating capital”.

When she suggested that it would be safer for him to open credit accounts with bookmakers, he shook his head.

“Them chaps are all in league,” he said darkly. “They’d soon catch on to wot I was doing, an’ then they’d all close my accounts. They might even put me in ‘ospital to get even. I make my bets on the courses, picking different bookies every time, or sometimes on the tote, or goin’ around the betting shops in London-there’s ‘undreds of ‘em to choose from, so nobody ‘as a chance to get to know me.”

The names and addresses of the subscribers were kept in a card index in the office, and also in a loose-leaf pocket address book which he bought himself and brought in twice a week for her to enter the latest additions. Against each of the names in this private list he made cryptic marks of his own. Altogether, there were now more than 200 members of this extraordinary syndicate, and a total of almost Ł30,000 had been invested. At which point Mr Gull told her to stop the advertisements, and the flow of funds abruptly dried up.

“He told me it was as much as he could handle,” Penelope said, “and if he had to make his bets any bigger he wouldn’t be able to spread them around inconspicuously.”

“And he still is betting?” Simon asked.

“Oh, yes. And he brought in some more winnings last week.”

“Then why is he still living in that broken-down shanty?”

“He says it wouldn’t be right for him to use the money that’s been invested for anything else than it was given him for. And he wants to save all his own winnings till he can pay everyone back and have his own capital to work with.”

“Penelope,” said the Saint, “in spite of your unscrupulous methods, you’ve got me fascinated. But this has angles that need a bit of thinking about.”

She refrained from pressing him until they were at table and the steak-and-kidney pie had been served. The first taste told him that it amply fulfilled her promise, and gratitude alone would have obliged him to give attention to her problem even if it had been less provocative than it was.

“Do you know what I call the Ponzi Routine?” he said. “It’s one of the classical sucker-traps. You offer investors a fantastic return on their money, and for a while you actually pay it-long enough for them to spread the good word and get more and more suckers enrolled. Of course, the ‘dividends’ are coming out of their own capital, but you can afford to pay out as long as enough new money is pouring in. It’s been worked in all sorts of variations, but I call it the Ponzi in honor of the guy who may have been its most successful operator, who racked up several million dollars with it in America before I was around.”

“But Mr Gull is winning more than enough money to pay the dividends.”

“That’s one of the angles I was talking about that doesn’t fit. And wanting to stop the investments rolling in is another. And so is this business of not living it up himself, with all that dough in the bank. And even talking about paying it back.”

“So you don’t think I’m a complete idiot not to have gone to the police?”

“I can see why it might be a bit difficult. Your gardener hasn’t done anything criminal yet. It isn’t a crime to ask people to invest in any wildcat scheme, unless they can prove false pretenses. But under English law a man is innocent until he’s proved guilty; and until Gull stops banking winnings or stops paying dividends, you’d have a job to prove false pretenses. Maybe you’re doing the poor bastard a horrible injustice. Maybe he really has discovered an infallible system. But that’s an awful lot to swallow.”

“Is it impossible?”

Simon shrugged.

“I never heard of one yet. But lots of things are impossible until somebody does them. Like television, or rocket ships to Mars, I believe that some great scientists once proved that it was mathematically impossible for a helicopter to get off the ground. You can’t convict a man of fraud because he claims to have discovered a trick that nobody could do before. Everything about Gull is still legitimate-until he falls on his face. And if and when that happens, he might be in South America-and you could have a tough time proving that you weren’t an active confederate.”

“That’s why I thought it might be such a help if I could talk to you,” she said.

The Saint scowled over his food, which was most unfair to it.

“One of Ponzi’s best ploys,” he said, “was when the first rumor got around that his golden-egg factory was goosey, and a few hundred stockholders panicked and came yelling for their money back. Ponzi produced sacks of bullion and cheerfully paid them off. The scare fizzled out, and in a few days more mugs than ever were begging him to accept their deposits.”

“But nobody’s asked Mr Gull for their money back, yet.”

“Exactly. And so far he’s only talking about this voluntary payoff. If it goes beyond talking, it’ll be something else to get quietly hysterical about. Meanwhile, I promise to lose some sleep over the contradictions you’ve given me already. I wish I could give you the answers right now, all gift-wrapped and tied up with ribbons, but the reports of my supernatural powers are slightly exaggerated. I’m only a human genius.”

For the rest of the day he was nothing but human, but he repeated his promise before he left. And it was not for lack of mental effort that a solution to the mystery of Mr Gull continued to elude him. Some factor seemed to be missing which left all the equations open-ended, but he could not put his finger on it.

Then, on the following Thursday, Penelope Lynch phoned him.

“Well,” she said, “it’s happened.”

His heart sank momentarily.

“What has? He’s skipped?”

“No. He’s going to start giving the money back. He came in this morning and told me to write letters to the first five people who invested, saying that he’s decided to close down his business, thanking them for their help and confidence, and enclosed please find their original hundred pounds. He says he’s planning to pay off at least that many people every week from now on.”

“This I have got to see more of,” said the Saint. “I’ll be down this afternoon.”

He thoughtfully packed a bag and put it in his car, and drove to Maidenhead immediately after lunch.

The office was above a tobacconist and newsagent on a turning off the High Street. It was minimally furnished with a filing cabinet, a book-case which contained only boxes of stationery, and two desks, on one of which was a typewriter, behind which sat Penelope.

She showed him one of the letters which she had finished, but he was less interested in it than in the five envelopes she had prepared. He copied the addresses on a sheet of paper, and then asked to see the card index, but he could find nothing significant in the bare data on when their investments had been received and what dividends had been paid.

“Mr Gull left his own book here this morning,” she mentioned, and Simon recalled what she had said about the cryptic marks that Mr Gull made on his own records.

He went carefully through the lists under each initial. Opposite some of the typewritten names had been pencilled an “O”, and opposite some others appeared an “X”. There were very few ‘X’s-in fact, when he checked back, the total was only seven. He wrote those down also; but neither the names nor the addresses thus distinguished seemed to have any characteristic in common, at least on the surface. Only one of them happened to be among the five to whom the first refunds were going.

“You’re not making out checks for these, either?” he asked.

“No. But they’re to be registered, as you see.”

“That’s about all I can see,” he said wryly. “If something doesn’t click pretty soon, you’re going to wonder how I ever got my reputation. And so am I … Now I’m going to beat it before he comes back, but I’ll expect you for dinner at Skindle’s. Will seven o’clock give you time to run home and change?”

When she arrived, and they had ordered cocktails in the bar, she told him that Gull had come in at five, laden with more money, and had approved and signed the refund letters.

“Then he said I could go home, and he’d make up the refund packages and mail them himself, like he always did the dividends. He had time to do it and get to the post office before it closed.”

“You didn’t happen to hang around outside and see whether he made it?”

“I thought of it, but I got cold feet. I was afraid he might see me, and it might spoil something for you.”

“Well, assuming that he did catch the mail, the letters should be delivered tomorrow morning. And I just think I’ll check on that.”

She was beginning to seem a little troubled.

“Perhaps there is nothing wrong after all, and I’m wasting your time like an old maid who thinks every man on the street at night is Jack the Ripper. If that’s how it turns out, I’ll want to shoot myself.”