Leslie Charteris - The Happy Highwayman

"That's what they call me."

"Of course I've read about you, but — Well, it sort of… " The young man petered out incoherently. "And I'd have argued with you about crooks!.. But — well, you ought to know. Do you think I've been a mug?"

The Saint's brows slanted sympathetically.

"If you took my advice," he answered, "you'd let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it off to experience, and don't do it again."

"But I can't!" Mercer's response was desperate. "She — she was telling the truth. I've lost money that wasn't mine. I've only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn't pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They've found me a better job here, starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us twenty thousand dollars to buy it and furnish it, and that's the money I've been playing with. Don't you see? I've got to go on and win it back!"

"Or go on and lose the rest."

"Oh, I know. But I thought the luck must change before that. And yet — But everybody who plays cards isn't a crook, is he? And I don't see how they could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them. I've been looking for it. And I couldn't catch them making a single move that wasn't above-board. Then I began to think about marked cards — we've always played with their cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I've been looking at it this morning. I'll swear there isn't a mark on it. Here, I can show you."

He fumbled feverishly in a pocket of his beach robe and pulled out a pack of cards. Simon glanced through them. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see; and it was then that he remembered Mr. J. J. Naskill.

"Does either of these birds wear glasses?" he asked.

"One of them wears pince-nez," replied the mystified young man. "But—"

"I'm afraid," said the Saint thoughtfully, "that it looks as if you are a mug."

Mercer swallowed.

"If I am," he said helplessly, "what on earth am I going to do?"

Simon hitched himself up.

"Personally, I'm going to have a dip in the pool. And you're going to be so busy apologizing to your fiancee and making friends again that you won't have time to think about anything else. I'll keep these cards and make sure about them, if you don't mind. Then suppose we meet in the bar for a cocktail about six o'clock, and maybe I'll be able to tell you something."

When he returned to his own room the Saint put on Mr. Naskill's horn-rimmed glasses and examined the cards again. Every one of them was clearly marked in the diagonally opposite corners with the value of the card and the initial of the suit, exactly like the deck that Naskill had given him; and it was then that the Saint knew that his faith in Destiny was justified again.

Shortly after six o'clock he strolled into the bar and saw that Mercer and the girl were already there. It was clear that they had buried their quarrel.

Mercer introduced her: "Miss Grange — or you can just call her Josephine."

She was wearing something in black and white taffeta, with a black and white hat and black and white gloves and a black and white bag, and she looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion plate. She said: "We're both ashamed of ourselves for having a scene in front of you this afternoon, but I'm glad we did. You've done Eddie a lot of good."

"I hadn't any right to blurt out all my troubles like that," Mercer said sheepishly. "You were damned nice about it."

The Saint grinned.

"I'm a pretty nice guy," he murmured. "And now I've got something to show you. Here are your cards."

He spread the deck out on the table and then he took the horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and held them over the cards so that the other two could look through them. He slid the cards under the lenses one by one, face downwards, and turned them over afterwards, and for a little while they stared in breathless silence.

The girl gasped.

"I told you so!"

Mercer's fists clenched.

"By God, if I don't murder those swine—"

She caught his wrist as he almost jumped up from the table.

"Eddie, that won't do you any good."

"It won't do them any good either! When I've finished with them—"

"But that won't get any of the money back."

"I'll beat it out of them."

"But that'll only get you in trouble with the police. That wouldn't help. Wait!" She clung to him frantically. "I've got it. You could borrow Mr. Templar's glasses and play them at their own game. You could break Yoring's glasses — sort of accidentally. They wouldn't dare to stop playing on account of that. They'd just have to trust to luck, like you've been doing, and anyway, they'd feel sure they were going to get it all back again later. And you could win everything back and never see them again." She shook his arm in her excitement. "Go on, Eddie. It 'd serve them right. I'll let you play just once more if you'll do that!"

Mercer's eyes turned to the Saint, and Simon pushed the glasses across the table towards him.

The young man picked them up slowly, looked at the cards through them again. His mouth twitched. And then, with a sudden hopeless gesture, he thrust them away and passed a shaky hand over his eyes.

"It's no good," he said wretchedly. "I couldn't do it. They know I don't wear glasses. And I–I've never done anything like that before. I'd only make a mess of it. They'd spot me in five minutes. And then there wouldn't be anything I could say. I–I wouldn't have the nerve. I suppose I'm just a mug after all…"

The Saint leaned back and put a light to a cigarette and sent a smoke ring spinning through the fronds of a potted palm. In all his life he had never missed a cue, and it seemed that this was very much like a cue. He had come to Miami to bask in the sun and be good, but it wasn't his fault if business was thrust upon him.

"Maybe someone with a bit of experience could do it better," he said. "Suppose you let me meet your friends."

Mercer looked at him, first blankly, then incredulously; and the girl's dark eyes slowly lighted up.

Her slim fingers reached impetuously for the Saint's hand.

"You wouldn't really do that — help Eddie to win back what he's lost—"

"What would you expect Robin Hood to do?" asked the Saint quizzically. "I've got a reputation to keep up — and I might even pay my own expenses while I'm doing it." He drew the revealing glasses towards him and tucked them back in his pocket. "Let's go and have some dinner and organize the details."

But actually there were hardly any details left to organize, for Josephine Grange's inspiration had been practically complete in its first outline. The Saint, who never believed in expending any superfluous effort, devoted most of his attention to some excellent lobster thermidor; but he had a pleasant sense of anticipation that lent an edge to his appetite. He knew, even then, that all those interludes of virtue in which he had so often tried to indulge, those brief intervals in which he played at being an ordinary respectable citizen and promised himself to forget that there was such a thing as crime, were only harmless self-deceptions — that for him the only complete life was still the ceaseless hair-trigger battle in which he had found so much delight. And this episode had everything that he asked to make a perfect cameo.

He felt like a star actor waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act of an obviously triumphant first night when they left the girl at the Roney Plaza and walked over to the Riptide — "that's where we usually meet," Mercer explained. And a few minutes later he was being introduced to the other two members of the cast.

Mr. Yoring, who wore the pince-nez, was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit, with white hair and bloodhound jowls and a pathetically frustrated expression. He looked like a retired businessman whose wife took him to the opera. Mr. Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner: he looked like the kind of man that men like Mr. Yoring wish they could be. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Mr. Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.