Saint Intervenes (8 page)

The Saint
sighed.

“So
that’s what happened to your face,” he remarked, in a
tone of
profound relief. “If you only knew how that had been
bothering
me——
”

“My
mother did that,” said Monty proudly. “No—we
didn’t crash. In fact,
I had a really interesting flight. Either
it must have been a
very good machine, or he was a very
good flier, because he made it do
almost everything except answer questions. I don’t know if you’ve ever been up
in one
of these autogiros—I’ve never been up in any other make, but this one was
certainly everything that he claimed for it.
It went up exactly
like going up in a lift, and came down
the same way. I never
have known anything about the me
chanics of these things, but after having had
a ride in this bus of his I couldn’t help feeling that the Air Age had ar
rived—I
mean, anyone with a reasonable sized lawn could
have kept one of ‘em
and gone tootling off for week-ends
in it.”

“And
therefore,” said the Saint reproachfully, “when he asked you if you’d
like to invest some money in a company
he was forming to turn
out these machines and sell them at
about twenty pounds a time, you hauled
out your cheque-book
and asked him how much he wanted.”

Monty
chuckled good-humouredly.

“That’s
about it. The details don’t really matter, but the
fact is that about
three weeks later I’d bought above five
thousand quids’ worth
of shares.”

“What
was the catch?” Simon asked; and Monty shrugged.

“Well,
the catch was simply that this helicopter wasn’t his
invention at all. He
had really built it himself, apparently,
but it was copied line
for line from one of the existing
makes. There wasn’t a thing in it that
he’d invented. There
fore the design wasn’t his, and he hadn’t any right at all to
manufacture it. So the company couldn’t function.
Of
course, he didn’t put it exactly
like that. He told me that
he’d
‘discovered’ that his designs ‘overlapped’ the existing
patents—he swore
that it was absolutely a coincidence, and
nearly
wept all over my office because his heart was broken
because he’d found out that all his research work
had already been done before. I told him I didn’t believe a word of it, but
that wasn’t any help towards getting my money
back. I hadn’t any evidence against him that I could have
brought into a court of law. Of course he’d told
me that his
design was patented and
protected in every way, but he
hadn’t
put any of that in writing, and when he came and
told me the whole thing was smashed he denied it. He said
he’d
told me he was getting the design patented. I did see a
solicitor about it afterwards, but he told me I hadn’t a chance
of proving a deliberate fraud. Newdick would probably
have
been ticked off in court for
taking money without reasonable
precautions,
but that wouldn’t have brought any of it back.”

“It
was a private company, I suppose,” said the Saint.

Monty
nodded.

“If it
had been a public one, with shares on the open
market, it would have
been a different matter,” he said.

“What
happened to the money?”

“Newdick
had spent it—or he said he had. He told me
he’d paid off all
the old debts that had run up while he was
experimenting, and
spent the rest on some manufacturing
plant and machinery for the company. He
did give me about
six or seven hundred back, and told me he’d work like
hell to produce another invention that would really be original
so he
could pay me back the rest, but that was the last I
heard of him. He’s
probably caught several other mugs with
the same game since then.” Monty
grinned philosophically,
looked at the clock,
and got up. “Well, I must be getting
along. I’ll look in and see you on Saturday—if you haven’t
been arrested and shoved in clink before
then.”

He departed after another
bottle of beer had been lowered;
and when he
had gone Patricia Holm viewed the Saint
doubtfully. She had not missed the quiet attention with
which he had followed Monty Hayward’s narrative;
and she
had known Simon Templar a
long time. The Saint had a
fresh
cigarette slanting from the corner of his mouth, his
hands were in his pockets, and he was smiling at
her with a seraphic innocence which was belied by every facet of the
twinkling tang of mockery in his blue eyes.

“You
know what I told you,” she said.

He laughed.

“About
getting into trouble? My darling, when will you
stop thinking these
wicked thoughts? I’m taking your advice
to heart. Maybe there
is something to be said for going into
business. I think I
should look rather fetching in a silk hat
and a pair of white
spats with pearl buttons; and you’ve no
idea how I could liven
up a directors’ meeting if I set my
mind to it.”

Patricia
was not convinced.

She was
even less convinced when the Saint went out the
next morning. From his
extensive wardrobe he had selected
one of his most elegant suits, a
creation in light-hued saxony of the softest and most expensive weave—a garment
which
could by no possible chance have been worn by a man who
had to
devote his day to honest toil. His tie was dashing, his
silk socks
would have made a Communist’s righteous indig
nation swell to
bursting point, and over his right eye he had
tilted a brand new
Panama which would have made one won
der whether the strange shapeless headgear
of the same breed worn by old gents whilst pottering around their gardens could
conceivably be any relation whatsoever of such a superbly
stylish
lid. Moreover he had taken out the car which was the
pride of his
stable—the new cream and red Hirondel which was in itself the hallmark of a man
who could afford to pay five thousand pounds for a car and thereafter watch a
gallon
of petrol blown into smoke every three or four miles.

“Where’s
the funeral?” she asked; and the Saint smiled
blandly.

“I’m a
young sportsman with far more money than sense,
and I’m sure Comrade
Newdick will be pleased to see me,”
he said; and he kissed
her.

Mr. Oscar
Newdick was pleased to see him—Simon Temp
lar would have been
vastly surprised if he hadn’t been. That
aura of idle
affluence which the Saint could put on as easily
as he put on a coat
was one of his most priceless accessories, and it was never worn for any honest
purpose.

But this
Mr. Oscar Newdick did not know. To him, the
arrival of such a
person was like an answer to prayer. Monty
Hayward’s guess at Mr.
Newdick’s activities since collecting
five thousand pounds from him was
fairly accurate, but only
fairly. Mr. Newdick had not caught several
other mugs, but
only three; and one of them had only been induced to
invest
a paltry three hundred pounds. The helicopter racket had been
failing in
its dividends, and the past year had not shown a
single pennyworth of
profit. Mr. Newdick did not believe in
accumulating pennies:
when he made a touch, it had to be a
big one, and he was prepared to wait
for it—the paltry three
hundred pound investor had been an error of
judgment, a
young man who had grossly misled him with fabulous ac
counts of
wealthy uncles, which when the time came to make the touch had been discovered
to be the purest fiction—but
recently the periods of waiting had exceeded
all reasonable
limits. Mr. Newdick had travelled literally thousands of
miles on the more prosperous suburban lines in search of victims— the
fellow-passenger technique really was his own invention,
and he
practised it to perfection—but many moons had
passed since he
brought a prospective investor home from his
many voyages.

When Simon Templar arrived, in
fact, Mr. Newdick was
gazing mournfully over
the litter of spars and fabric and machinery in one of his corrugated-iron
sheds, endeavouring to
estimate its value in the junk market. The time
had come, he
was beginning to feel, when
that particular stock-in-trade had
paid
the last percentage that could be squeezed out of it; it
had rewarded
him handsomely for his initial investment, but
now it was obsolete. The best solution appeared to be to turn
it
in and concentrate his varied talents on some other subject.
A fat insurance policy, of course, followed by a
well-orga
nized fire, would have been more profitable; but a recent
sensational arson trial and the consequent publicity given to such schemes made
him wary of taking that way out. And he was engrossed in these uninspiring
meditations when the bell
in his
“office” rang and manna fell from Heaven.

Mr. Oscar
Newdick, it must be acknowledged, did not instantly recognise it as manna. At
first he thought it could
only be the rate collector, or another
summons for his unpaid
electric light bill. He tiptoed to a grimy
window which looked
out on the road, with intent to escape rapidly across the
ad
jacent fields if his surmise proved correct; and it was thus
that he
saw the imposing automobile which stood outside.

Mr.
Newdick, a man of the world, was jerry to the fact
that rate collectors
and servers of summonses rarely arrive to
their grim work in
five-thousand-pound Hirondels; and it
was with an easy conscience, if not
yet admixed with undue
optimism, that he went to open the door.

“Hullo,
old bean,” said the Saint.

“Er—hullo,”
said Mr. Newdick.

“I
blew in to see if you could tell me anything about your
jolly old
company,” said the Saint.

“Er—yes,”
said Mr. Newdick. “Er—why don’t you come inside?”

His
hesitation was not due to any bashfulness or even to
offended dignity. Mr.
Newdick did not mind being called an
old bean. He had no instinctive desire
to snub wealthy-looking
young men with five-thousand-pound Hirondels
who added
jollity to his old company. The fact was that he was just
beginning
to recognise the manna for what it was, and his
soul was suffering the
same emotions as those which had
afflicted ,the Israelites in their time when
they contemplated
the miracle. The Saint came in. Mr. Newdick’s
“office” was a small roughly-fashioned cubicle about the size of a
telephone
booth, containing a small table littered with papers and
over
laid with a thin film of dust—it scarcely seemed in keeping
with the
neatly engraved brass plate on the door which pro
claimed it to be the
registered offices of the Newdick Helicopter Company, Limited, but his visitor
did not seem dis
tressed by it.

“What
did you want to know?” asked Mr. Newdick.

Simon
observed him to be a middle-aged man of only
vaguely military appearance,
with sharp eyes that looked at
him unwaveringly. That characteristic alone
might have de
ceived most men; but Simon Templar had moved in disreput
able
circles long enough to know that the ability to look an
other man
squarely in the eye is one of the most fallacious
indices of honesty.

“Well,”
said the Saint amiably, tendering a platinum ciga
rette-case, “the
fact is that I’m interested in helicopters. I
happen to have noticed
your little place several times recently
when I’ve been
passing, and I got the idea that it was quite
a small show, and I
wondered if there might by any chance
be room for another partner in
it.”

“You
mean,” repeated Mr. Newdick, checking back on the
incredible evidence
of his ears, “that you wanted to take an
interest in the firm?”

Simon
nodded.

“That
was the jolly old idea,” he said. “In fact, if the other
partners
felt like selling out, I might take over the whole
blinkin’ show. I’ve
got a good deal of time on my hands, and
I like pottering
about with aeroplanes and what not. A chap’s
got to do something to
keep out of mischief, what? Besides,
it doesn’t look as if you were doing a
lot of business here,
and I might be able to wake the jolly old
place up a bit. Sort
of aerial roadhouse, if you know what I mean.
Dinners—
drinks—dancing—pretty girls… . What?”