Leslie Charteris - The Happy Highwayman

As if the word had been a magical incantation, the man vanished.

A kind of communal gasp like a sigh of wind swept over the assembly, as if the final unarguable physical disappearance of their property had squeezed the last long-held breath out of their bodies. Every eye had been riveted on it in its last journey through their midst, every eye had blinked to the shock of its ultimate vanishment, and then every eye dragged itself dazedly back to the platform from which those catastrophes had been dictated.

Almost to their surprise, the Saint was still standing there. But his other gun had disappeared and he had taken his mask off. In some way, the aura of subtle command that had clung to him before in spite of his easy casualness had gone, leaving the easy casualness alone. He was still smiling.

For an instant the two bodyguards were paralyzed. And then with muffled choking noises they made a concerted dive for their guns.

The Saint made no move except a slight deprecating motion of the hand that held his cigarette.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said into the microphone, "I must now make my apologies, and an explanation."

The bodyguards straightened up, with their guns held ready. And yet something in his quiet voice, unarmed as he was, gripped them in spite of themselves, as it had gripped everyone else in the room. They looked questioningly towards the countess.

She gave them no response. She was rigid, watching the Saint with the first icy grasp of an impossible premonition closing in on her.

Somehow the Saint was going to get away with it. She knew it with a horrible certainty, even while she was wildly trying to guess what he would say. He could never have been so insane as to believe that he could pull a public holdup like that without being arrested an hour after he left the hotel, unless he had had some trick up his sleeve to immobilize the hue and cry. And she knew that she was now going to hear the trick she had not thought of.

"You have just been the victims of a holdup," he was saying. "Probably to nearly all of you that was a novel experience. But it is something that might happen to any of you tonight, tomorrow, at any time — so long as there are men at large to whom that seems like the best way of making a living.

"You came here tonight to help the National League for the Care of Incurables. That is a good and humane work. But I have taken this opportunity — with the kind co-operation of Countess Jannowicz — to make you think of another equally good, perhaps even more constructive work: the Care of Curables.

"I am talking about a class of whom I may know more than most of you — a section of those unfortunates who are broadly and indiscriminatingly called criminals.

"Ladies and gentlemen, not every lawbreaker is a brutalized desperado, fit only for swift extermination. I know that there are men of that kind, and you all know that I have been more merciless with them than any officer of the law. But there are others.

"I mean the men who steal through ignorance, through poverty, through misplaced ambition, through despair, through lack of better opportunity. I mean also men who have been punished for their crimes and who are now at the crossroads. One road takes them deeper and deeper into crime, into becoming real brutalized desperadoes. The other road takes them back to honesty, to regaining their self-respect, to becoming good and valuable citizens. All they need is the second chance which society is often so unwilling to give them.

"To give these men their second chance, has been founded the Society for the Rehabilitation of Delinquents — rather an elaborate name for a simple and straightforward thing. I am proud to be the first president of that society.

"We believe that money spent on this object is far cheaper than the money spent on keeping prisoners in jail, and at the same time is less than the damage that these men would do to the community if they were left to go on with their crimes. We ask you to believe the same thing, and to be generous.

"Everything that has been taken from you tonight can be found tomorrow at the office of the Society, which is in the Missouri Trust Building on Fifth Avenue. If you wish to leave your property there, to be sold for the benefit of the Society, we shall be grateful. If it has too great a sentimental value to you, and you wish to buy it back, we shall be glad to exchange it for a check. And if you object to us very seriously, and simply want it back, we shall of course have to give it back. But we hope that none of you will demand that.

"That is why we ventured to take the loot away tonight. Between now and tomorrow morning, we want you to have time to think. Think of how different this holdup would have been if it had been real. Think of your feelings when you saw your jewelry vanishing out of that door. Think of how little difference it would really make to your lives" — he looked straight at the countess — "if you were wearing imitation stones, while the money that has been locked up idly in the real ones was set free to do good and useful work. Think, ladies and gentlemen, and forgive us the melodramatic way in which we have tried to bring home our point."

He stepped back, and there was a moment of complete silence.

The chairman had at last found his glasses. He saw the speaker retiring with a bow from the microphone. Apparently the speech was over. It seemed to be the chairman's place to give the conventional lead. He raised his hands and clapped loudly.

It is things like that that turn tides and start revolutions. In another second the whole hall was clattering with hysterical applause.

"My dear, how do you think of these things?"

"The most divinely thrilling—"

"I was really petrified …"

The Countess Jannowicz wriggled dazedly free from the shrill jabber of compliments, managed somehow to snatch the Saint out of a circle of clamorous women of which Lady Instock was the most gushing leader. In a comparatively quiet corner of the room she faced him.

"You're a good organizer, Mr. Templar. The head-waiter tells me that Mr. Ullbaum telephoned this afternoon and told the staff how they were to behave during the holdup."

He was cheerfully appreciative.

"I must remember to thank him."

"Mr. Ullbaum did no such thing."

He smiled.

"Then he must have been impersonated. But the damage seems to be done."

"You know that for all your talking you've still committed a crime?"

"I think you'd be rather a lonely prosecutor."

Rage had made her a little incoherent.

"I shall not come to your office. You've made a fool of yourself. My necklace is in the bank—"

"Countess," said the Saint patiently, "I'd guessed that much. That's why I want you to be sure and bring me the real one. Lady Instock is going to leave her earrings and send a check as well, and all the rest of your friends seem to be sold on the idea. You're supposed to be the number one patron. What would they think of you if after all the advertising you let yourself out with a fifty-dollar string of cut glass?"

"I can disclaim—"

"I know you can. But your name will still be Mud. Whereas at the moment you're tops. Why not make the best of it and charge it to publicity?"

She knew she was beaten — that he had simply turned a trick with the cards that for days past she had been busily forcing into his hand. But she still fought with the bitterness of futility.

"I'll have the police investigate this phony charity—"

"They'll find that it's quite legally constituted, and so long as the funds last they'll be administered with perfect good faith."

"And who'll get the benefit of them besides yourself?"

Simon smiled once again.

"Our first and most urgent case will be a fellow named Marty O'Connor. He helped me with the collection tonight. You ought to remember him — he was your chauffeur for three weeks. Anyone like yourself, Countess," said the Saint rather cruelly, "ought to know that charity begins at home."