Leslie Charteris - The Saint Intervenes

As a matter of fact he was sauntering down the Strand when he met Louie Fallon. He didn't actually run into him, but he did walk into him; but there was nothing particularly remarkable about that, for the Strand is a street which contains more crooks to the square yard than any other area of ground outside a prison wall — which may be partly accounted for by the fact that it also has the reputation of being the favourite promenading ground of more potential suckers than any other thoroughfare in the Metropolis.

Louie Fallon had a theory that he couldn't walk down the Strand on any day in the week without bumping into a perambulating gold-mine which only required skilful scratching to yield him its gilded harvest.

He walked towards the Saint, fumbling in his pockets with a preoccupied air and the kind of flurried abstraction of a man who has forgotten where he put his season ticket on his way down the platform, with his eyes fluttering over every item of the perspective except those which were included in the direction in which he was going. At any rate, the last person in the panorama whom he appeared to see was the Saint himself. Simon saw him, and swerved politely; but with the quickwitted agility of long practice, Louie Fallon blundered off to the same side. They collided with a slight bump, at the very moment when Louie had apparently discovered the article for which he had been searching.

It fell on to the pavement between them and rolled away between the Saint's feet, sparkling enticingly in the sunlight. Muttering profuse apologies, Louie scuffled round to retrieve it. The movement was so adroitly devised to entangle them that Simon would have had no chance to pass on and make his escape, even if he had wanted to.

But it is dawning — slowly and reluctantly, perhaps, but dawning, nevertheless — upon the chronicler that there can be very few students of these episodes who can still be cherishing any delusion that the Saint would ever want to escape from such a situation.

Simon stood by with a slight smile coming to his lips, while Louie wriggled round his legs and recovered his precious possession with a faint squeak of delight, and straightened up with the object clutched solidly in his hand.

"Phew!" said Mr. Fallon, fanning himself with his hat. "That was near enough. Did you see where it went? Right to the edge of that grating. If it had rolled down…" He blew out his cheeks and rolled up his eyes in an eloquent register of horror at the dreadful thought. "For a moment I thought I'd lost it," he said, clarifying his point conclusively.

Simon nodded. It did not require any peculiar keenness of vision to see that the object of so much concern was a very nice-looking diamond, for Louie was making no attempt to hide it — he was, on the contrary, blowing on it and rubbing it affectionately on his sleeve to remove the invisible specks of grime and dust which it had collected on its travels.

"You must be lucky."

Louie's face fell abruptly. The transition between his almost childish delight and the shadow of awful gloom which suddenly passed across his countenance was quite startling. Mr. Fallon's artistry had never been disputed even by his rivals in the profession.

"Lucky?" he practically yelped, in a rising crescendo of mournful indignation. "Why, I'm the unluckiest man that ever lived!"

"Too bad," said the Saint, with profound sympathy.

"Lucky!" repeated Mr Fallon, with all the pained disgust of a hypochondriac who has been accused of looking well. "Why, I'm the sort of fellow if I saw a five-pound note lying in the street and tried to pick it up, I'd fall down and break my neck!"

It was becoming clear to Simon Templar that Mr. Fallon felt that he was unlucky.

"There are people like that," he said, reminiscently. "I remembered an aunt of mine—"

"Lucky?" reiterated Mr. Fallon, who did not appear to be interested in anyone else's aunt. "Why, right at this moment I'm the unluckiest man in London. Look here" — he clasped the Saint by the arm with the pathetically appealing movement of a drowning man clutching at a straw—"do you think you could help me? If you haven't got anything particular to do?

I feel sort of — well — you look the sort of fellow who might have some ideas. Have you got time for a drink?"

Simon Templar could never have been called a toper, but on such occasions as this he invariably had time for a drink. "I don't mind if I do," he said obligingly.

As a matter of fact, they were standing outside a miraculously convenient hostel at that moment — Louie Fallon had always believed in bringing the mellowing influence of alcohol to bear as soon as he had scraped his acquaintance, and he staged his encounters with that idea in view.

With practised dexterity he steered the Saint towards the door of the saloon bar, cutting short the protest which Simon Templar had no intention whatsoever of making. In hardly any more time than it takes to record, he had got the Saint inside the bar, parked him at a table, invited him to name his poison, procured a double ration of the said poison from the barmaid, and settled himself in the adjoining chair to improve the shining hour. To the discerning critic it might seem that he rushed at the process rather like an unleashed investor plunging after an absconding company promoter; but Louie Fallen's conception of improving shining hours had never included any unnecessary waste of time, and he had learnt by experience that the willingness of the species Mug to listen is usually limited only by the ability of the flatcatcher to talk.

"Yes," said Mr. Fallon, reverting to his subject. "I am the unluckiest man you are ever likely to meet. Did you see that diamond I dropped just now?"

"Well," admitted the Saint truthfully, "I couldn't help seeing it."

Mr. Fallon nodded. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, brought out the jewel again, and laid it on the table.

"I made that myself," he said.

Simon eyed the stone and Mr. Fallon with the puzzled expression which was expected of him.

"What do you mean — you made it?"

"I made it myself," said Mr. Fallon. "It's what you would call synthetic. It took about half an hour, and it cost me exactly threepence. But there isn't a diamond merchant in London who could prove that it wasn't dug up out of the ground in South Africa. Take it to anyone you like, and see if he does swear that it's a perfectly genuine stone."

"You mean it's a fake?" said the Saint.

"Fake my eye!" said Mr. Fallon, with emphatic if inelegant expressiveness. "It's a perfectly genuine diamond, the same as any other stone you'll ever seen. The only difference is that I made it. You know how diamonds are made?"

The Saint had as good an idea of how diamonds are made as Louie Fallon was ever likely to have; but it seemed as if Louie liked talking, and in such circumstances as that Simon Templar was the last man on earth to interfere with anyone's enjoyment. He shook his head blankly.

"I thought they sort of grew," he said vaguely.

"I don't know that I should put it exactly like that," said Louie. "I'll tell you how diamonds happen. Diamonds are just carbon — like coal, or soot, or — or—"

"Paper?" suggested the Saint helpfully.

Louie frowned.

"They're carbon," he said, "which is crystallised under pressure. When the earth was all sort of hot, like you read about in your history books — before it sort of cooled down and people started to live in it and things grew on it — there was a lot of carbon. Being hot, it burnt things, and when you burn things you usually get carbon. Well, after a time, when the earth started to cool down, it sort of shrunk, like — like—"

"A shirt when it goes to the wash?" said the Saint.

"Anyway, it shrunk," said Louie, yielding the point and passing on. "And what happened then?"