Leslie Charteris - The Happy Highwayman

"Anything," confirmed Lady Instock, gazing at the Saint rapturously out of her pale protruding eyes.

Simon looked at her thoughtfully.

"I won't forget it," he said.

As he returned to his own table he heard her saying to a unanimous audience: "Isn't he the most thrilling—"

Countess Jannowicz watched his departure intently, ignoring the feminine palpitations around her. She had a sardonic sense of humour, combined with a scarcely suppressed contempt for the climbing sycophants who crawled around her, that made the temptation to elaborate the joke too attractive to resist. Several times during the following week she was impelled to engineer opportunities to refer to "that Saint person who's trying to steal my necklace"; twice again, when their paths crossed in fashionable restaurants, she called him to her table for the express pleasure of twitting him about his boast. To demonstrate her contempt for his reputation by teasing him on such friendly terms, and at the same time to enjoy the awed reactions of her friends, flattered something exhibitionistic in her that gave more satisfaction than any other fun she had had for years. It was like having a man-eating tiger for a pet and tweaking its ears.

This made nothing any easier for Mr. Ullbaum. The countess was already known as a shrewd collector of publicity, and the seeds of suspicion had been firmly planted by the opening story. Mr. Ullbaum tried to explain to groups of sceptical reporters that the Saint's threat was perfectly genuine, but that the countess was simply treating it with the disdain which it deserved; at the same time he tried to carry out his instructions to "keep it funny", and the combination was too much for his mental powers. The cynical cross-examinations he had to submit to usually reduced him to ineffectual spluttering. His disclaimers were duly printed, but in contexts that made them sound more like admissions.

The countess, growing more and more attached to her own joke, was exceptionally tolerant.

"Let 'em laugh," she said. "It'll make it all the funnier when he flops."

She saw him a third time at supper at "21" and invited him to join her party for coffee. He came over, smiling and immaculate, as much at ease as if he had been her favourite nephew. While she introduced him — a briefer business now, for he had met some of the party before — she pointedly fingered the coruscating rope of diamonds on her neck.

"You see I've still got it on," she said as he sat down.

"I noticed that the lights seemed rather bright over here," he admitted. "You've been showing it around quite a lot lately, haven't you? Are you making the most of it while you've got it?"

"I want to make sure that you can't say I didn't give you plenty of chances."

"Aren't you afraid that some ordinary grab artist might get it first? You know I have my competitors."

She looked at him with thinly veiled derision.

"I'll begin to think there is a risk of that, if you don't do something soon. And the suspense is making me quite jittery. Haven't you been able to think of a scheme yet?"

Simon's eyes rested on her steadily for a moment while he drew on his cigarette.

"That dinner and dance you were organizing for Friday — you sent me an invitation," he said. "Is it too late for me to get a ticket?"

"I've got some in my bag. If you've got twenty-five dollars—"

He laid fifty dollars on the table.

"Make it two — I may want someone to help me carry the loot."

Her eyes went hard and sharp for an instant before a buzz of excited comment from her listening guests shut her off from him. He smiled at them all inscrutably and firmly changed the subject while he finished his coffee and smoked another cigarette. After he had taken his leave, she faced a bombardment of questions with stony preoccupation.

"Come to the dance on Friday," was all she would say. "You may see some excitement."

Mr. Ullbaum, summoned to the Presence again the next morning, almost tore his hair.

"Now will you tell the police?" he gibbered.

"Don't be so stupid," she snapped. "I'm not going to lose anything, and he's going to look a bigger fool than he has for years. All I want you to do is see that the papers hear that Friday is the day — we may sell a few more tickets."

Her instinct served her well in that direction at least. The stories already published, vague and contradictory as they were, had boosted the sale of tickets for the Grand Ball in aid of the National League for the Care of Incurables beyond her expectations, and the final announcement circulated to the press by the unwilling Mr. Ullbaum caused a flurry of last-minute buying that had the private ballroom hired for the occasion jammed to overflowing by eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth. It was a curious tribute to the legends that had grown up around the name of Simon Templar, who had brought premature grey hairs to more police officers than could easily have been counted. Everyone who could read knew that the Saint had never harmed any innocent person, and there were enough sensation-seekers with clear consciences in New York to fill the spacious suite beyond capacity.

Countess Jannowicz, glittering with diamonds, took her place calmly at the head table beside the chairman. He was the aged and harmlessly doddering bearer of a famous name who served in the same honorary position in several charitable societies and boards of directors without ever knowing much more about them than was entailed in presiding over occasional public meetings convened by energetic organizers like the countess; and he was almost stone deaf, an ailment which was greatly to his advantage in view of the speeches he had to listen to.

"What's this I read about some fella goin' to steal your necklace?" he mumbled, as he shakily spooned his soup.

"It wouldn't do you any good if I told you, you dithering old buzzard," said the countess with a gracious smile.

"Oh yes. Hm. Ha. Extraordinary."

She was immune to the undercurrents of excitement that ebbed and flowed through the room like leakages of static electricity. Her only emotion was a slight anxiety lest the Saint should cheat her, after all, by simply staying away. After all the build-up, that would certainly leave her holding the bag. But it would bring him no profit, and leave him deflated on his own boast at the same time; it was impossible to believe that he would be satisfied with such a cheap anticlimax as that.

What else he could do and hope to get away with, on the other hand, was something that she had flatly given up trying to guess. Unless he had gone sheerly cuckoo, he couldn't hope to steal so much as a spoon that night, after his intentions had been so widely and openly proclaimed, without convicting himself on his own confession. And yet the Saint had so often achieved things that seemed equally impossible that she had to stifle a reluctant eagerness to see what his uncanny ingenuity would devise. Whatever that might be, the satisfaction of her curiosity could cost her nothing — for one very good reason.

The Saint might have been able to accomplish the apparently impossible before, but he would literally have to perform a miracle if he was to open the vaults of the Vandrick National Bank. For that was where her diamond necklace lay that night and where it had lain ever since he paid his first call on her. The string she had been wearing ever since was a first-class imitation, worth about fifty dollars. That was her answer to all the fanfaronading and commotion — a precaution so obvious and elementary that no one else in the world seemed to have thought of it, so flawless and unassailable that the Saint's boast was exploded before he even began, so supremely ridiculously simple that it would make the whole earth quake with laughter when the story broke.