Michael Avallone: The Saint Magazine. January 1967. Volume 24, No. 5.

“Oh, yes?” The detective was dangerously polite. “Then I suppose it’d give you the surprise of your life if I told you that that package you were carrying contained a diamond necklace valued at about eight thousand pounds?”

“It would,” said the Saint.

Teal turned.

There was a plain-clothes man standing guard by the door, and on the table in the middle of the room was a litter of brown paper and tissue in the midst of which gleamed a small heap of coruscating stones and shining metal. Teal put a hand to the heap of jewels and lifted it up into a streamer of iridescent fire.

“This is it,” he said.

“May I have a look at it?” said the Saint.

He took the necklace from Teal’s hand and studied it closely under the light. Then he handed it back with a brief grin.

“If you could get eighty pounds for it you’d be lucky,” he said. “It’s a very good imitation, but I’m afraid the stones are only jargoons.”

The detective’s eyes went wide. Then he snatched the necklace away and examined it himself.

He turned around again slowly.

“I’ll begin to believe you were telling the truth for once, Templar,” he said, and his manner had changed so much that the effect would have been comical without the back-handed apology. “What do you make of it?”

“I think we’ve both been had,” said the Saint. “After what you’ve told me, I should think the Deacon knew you were watching him, and knew he’d have to get the jewels out of the country in a hurry. He could probably fence most of them quickly, but no one would touch that necklace — it’s too well known. He had the rather artistic idea of trying to get me to do the job—”

“Then why should he give you a fake?”

Simon shrugged.

“Maybe that Deacon is smoother than any of us thought. My God, Teal — think of it! Suppose even all this was just a blind — for you to know he’d been to see me — for you to get after me as soon as the jewels were missed — hear I’d left for Paris — chase me to Croydon — and all the time the real necklace is slipping out by another route—”

“God damn!” said Chief Inspector Teal, and launched himself at the telephone with surprising speed for such a portly and lethargic man.

The plain-clothes man at the door stood aside almost respectfully for the Saint to pass.

Simon fitted his hat on rakishly and sauntered out with his old elegance. Out in the waiting-room an attendant was shouting, “All Ostend and Brussels passengers, please!” — and outside on the tarmac a roaring aeroplane was warming up its engines. Simon Templar suddenly changed his mind about his destination.

“I will give you thirty thousand guilders for the necklace,” said Van Roeper, the little man in Amsterdam to whom the Saint went with his booty.

“I’ll take fifty thousand,” said the Saint; he got it.

He fulfilled another of the qualifications of a successful buccaneer, for he never forgot a face. He had had a vague idea from the first that he had seen the Deacon somewhere before, but it had not been until that morning, when he woke up, that he had been able to place the amiable solicitor who had been so anxious to enlist his dubious services; he felt that fortune was very kind to him.

Old Charlie Milton, who had been dragged away from his breakfast to sell him the facsimile for eighty pounds, felt much the same.

A sequel to THE EXPORT TRADE

Copyright 1933 by Leslie Charteris

It has been said that Simon Templar was a philanderer; but the criticism was not entirely just. A pretty face, or the turn of a slim ankle, appealed to him no more — and not a bit less — than they do to the next man. Perhaps he was more honest about it.

It is true that sometimes, in a particularly buccaneering mood, as he swung down a broad highway leading to infinite adventure, he would sing one of his own inimitable songs against the pompous dreariness of civilisation, as he saw it, with a chorus:

But if red blood runs thin with years,

By God! if I must die, I’ll kiss red lips and drink red wine

And let the rest go by,

My son,

And let the rest go by!

But there was a gesture in that, to be taken with or without salt as the audience pleased; and a fat lot the Saint cared. He was moderate in nothing that he said or did. That insurgent vitality which made him an outlaw first and last and in everything rebelled perhaps too fiercely against all moderation; and if at the same time it made him, to those who knew him best, the one glamorous and romantic figure of his day, that was the judgment which he himself would have asked for.

These chronicles are concerned mainly with episodes in which he provided himself with the bare necessities of life by cunning and strategy rather than daring; but even in those times there were occasions when his career hung on the thread of a lightning decision. That happened in the affair of Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s pink diamond; and if the Saint philandered then, he would have told you that he had no regrets.

“The idea that such a woman should have a jool that keeps me awake at nights,” he complained. “I’ve seen her twice, and she is a Hag.”

This was at dinner one night. Peter Quentin was there; and so was Patricia Holm, who, when all was said and done, was the lady who held the Saint’s reckless heart and knew best how to understand all his misdeeds. The subject of the “Star of Mandalay” had cropped up casually in the course of conversation; and it was worth mentioning that neither of Simon Templar’s guests bothered to raise any philosophical argument against his somewhat heterodox doctrine against the rights of Hags. But it was left for Peter Quentin to put his foot in it.

Peter read behind the wistfulness of the Saint’s words, and said: “Don’t be an idiot, Simon. You don’t need the money, and you couldn’t pinch the Star of Mandalay. The woman’s got a private detective following her around wherever she goes—”

“Couldn’t I pinch it, Peter?” said the Saint, very softly.

Patricia saw the light in his eyes, and clutched Peter’s wrist.

“You ass!” she gasped. “Now you’ve done it. He’d be fool enough to try—”

“Why ‘try’?” asked the Saint, looking round mildly. “That sounds very much like an aspersion on my genius, which I shall naturally have to—”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” protested the girl frantically. “I mean that after all, when we don’t need the money— You said you were thinking of running over to Paris for a week—”

“We can go via Amsterdam, and sell the Star of Mandalay en route,” said the Saint calmly. “You lie in your teeth, my sweetheart. You meant that the Star of Mandalay was too much of a problem for me and I’d only get in a mess if I tried for it. Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of having a dart at it for some time.”

Peter Quentin drank deeply of the Chambertin to steady his nerves.

“You haven’t been thinking anything of the sort,” he said. “I’ll withdraw everything I said. You were just taking on a dare.”

Simon ordered himself a second slice of melon, and leaned back with his most seraphic and exasperating smile.

“Have I,” he inquired blandly, “ever told you my celebrated story about a bobtailed ptarmigan named Alphonse, who lived in sin with a couple of duck-billed platypi in the tundras of Siberia? Alphonse, who suffered from asthma and was a believer in Christian Science...”

He completed his narrative at great length, refusing to be interrupted; and they knew that the die was cast. When once Simon Templar had made up his mind it was impossible to argue with him. If he didn’t proceed blandly to talk you down with one of his most fatuous and irrelevant anecdotes, he would listen politely to everything you had to say, agree with you thoroughly, and carry on exactly as he had announced his intentions from the beginning; which wasn’t helpful. And he had made up his mind, on one of his mad impulses, that the Star of Mandalay was due for a change of ownership. It was not a very large stone, but it was reputed to be flawless; and it was valued at ten thousand pounds. Simon reckoned that it would be worth five thousand pounds to him in Van Roeper’s little shop in Amsterdam, and five thousand pounds was a sum of money that he could find a home for at any time.