Leslie Charteris - The Saint Intervenes

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.

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.

If a great many newspaper cuttings and references to newspapers find their way into these chronicles, it is simply because most of the interesting things that happen find their way into newspapers, and it is in these ephemeral sheets that the earnest seeker after unrighteousness will find many clues to his quest.

Simon Templar read newspapers only because he found collected in them the triumphs and anxieties and sins and misfortunes and ugly tyrannies which were going on around him, as well as the results of races in which chosen horses carried samples of his large supply of shirts; not because he cared anything about the posturing of Transatlantic fliers or the flatulence of international conferences. And it was solely through reading a newspaper that he became aware of the existence of Sir Melvin Flager.