Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

Ahead of the exploration lay a large slide of loose dirt brought down by recent rains. He neared it, and all at once the box’s tone slid up an octave. The Saint stopped; he moved the box to the right, away from the hill, and the tone dropped; he swung it toward the slide, and it climbed infinitesimally; he moved toward the slide, and the tone mounted until at the base of the fresh clods it was a banshee wail.

Simon Templar put down the box. In the ensuing sinusoidal silence, he jointed a small collapsible spade and poked tentatively in the dirt.

Suddenly he dived down with one hand, and came up with it held high, and between his thumb and forefinger glittered a tiny pea-sized grain of yellow.

“The Tattersall Prospector never makes a mistake,” he began in his best classroom manner. “I hold in my hand a small nugget of gold. Obviously, somewhere on the hillside above, we will find the source of this nugget. I predict—”

His words were lost in a yell as the small crowd, like one man, started up the steep bank toward the source of the slide. As Simon turned to stare at them, he found the big city observer at his elbow.

“Not good.” The large man shook his head. “If I were you, Professor, I’d get the hell out of here before those boys up there find out that you salted this slide.” He shook his head again. “I just remembered where I saw your face — and I expected something better from the Saint,” he said. “Listen — you may have been a hot shot in your own league, but you didn’t really expect to take Melville Rochborne into camp, did you?”

“It was always worth trying,” said the Saint sheepishly. He poked his spade into the slide and turned over the loose earth.

“All right, Mel,” he said. “You win this time. Have yourself a shoeshine on the house.”

And with a rather childish gesture he spilled a shovelful of dirt deliberately over Mr Rochborne’s shining pointed toes before he threw down the spade and turned away.

Mr Rochborne’s geniality blacked out for a moment, and then he bent to dust off his shoes.

Suddenly he seemed to stiffen. He bent down and picked up a fragment of powdery pale yellow stuff, and crumbled it in his fingers.

A strange look came into his face, and he straightened up quickly, but the Saint was already surrounded by the bored but dutiful news hawks. Mr Rochborne recklessly scuffed his beautifully polished shoes more extensively into the loose earth, bent down to probe it deeper with his manicured fingers...

A mere few hours later, which seemed to him like a few years, he was clutching his hat to his bosom and trying to hold his temperature down to an engaging glow while Mrs Lawrence Phelan, Sr, gushed, “Why, Mr Rochborne! What a pleasant surprise!”

He still felt a little out of breath, but he tried to conceal it.

“As a matter of fact, Mrs Phelan,” he admitted, with the air of a schoolboy caught in the jam closet, “I’m here on business. I hate to impose on you, but...”

“Go on, Mr Rochborne,” she fluted. “Do go on. Business is business, isn’t it?”

“I might as well come right out with it,” Rochborne said wearily. “It’s about that Lucky Nugget stock you bought, Mrs Phelan. I — well, it turns out it was misrepresented to me. I’m not at all sure it’s a good investment.”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs Phelan sat down suddenly. “Oh, dear! But... my... my forty-five thou—”

“Now, Mrs Phelan, don’t excite yourself. If I weren’t prepared to—”

“Telephone, Mrs Phelan.” A maid stood in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” said Mrs Phelan. “Oh, dear!”

“Mrs Phelan,” said a deep mellifluous voice on the wire, “this is Swami Yogadevi.”

“Oh... oh, Swami!” The old lady sighed with relief. “Oh, I am so glad to hear from you!”

“Dear Mrs Phelan, you are in trouble. I know. I could feel the disturbance in your aura. That was why I called.”

“Oh, Swami! If you only knew... I — it’s my mining stock, Swami. The stock you said I should buy, remember? And now—”

“He wants to buy it back from you. Yes.”

“He... does...? Oh, then it’s all right...”

“Sell, Mrs Phelan. But for a profit, of course.”

“But how much should I—”

“Not a penny less than seventy thousand, Mrs Phelan. No, not a penny less. Peace be with you. Your star is in the ascendant. You will not say that I have talked to you, naturally. Good-bye.”

When Mr Melville Rochborne heard the price, he barely escaped being the first recorded case of human spontaneous combustion.

“But, Mrs Phelan... I’ve just told you. The stock is no — well, it’s been misrepresented. It’s not really worth the price you paid me. I thought if I gave you your money back...”

“The stars,” said Mrs Phelan raptly, “control my business dealings. I am asking seventy thousand for the stock.”

“Oh, sure, the stars.” Mr Rochborne thought rapidly. “May I use your telephone?”

He dialed a certain unlisted number for nearly five minutes, with the same negative results that had rewarded him even before he called at Mrs Phelan’s house. At the end of that time he returned, slightly frantic and flushed of face.

“Mrs Phelan,” he said, “we can discuss this, I know. Suppose we say fifty-five thousand.”

“Seventy, Mr Rochborne,” said Mrs Phelan.

“Sixty-two fifty,” cozened Rochborne, in pleading tones.

“Seventy,” repeated the implacable old lady.

Mr Rochborne thought fleetingly of the mayhem he was going to perform upon the luckless frame of Reuben Innowitz when he caught him.

“Very well,” he groaned. “I’ll write you a check.”

“My swami told me all deals should be in cash,” said Mrs Phelan brightly. “I’ll get the stock and go with you to the bank.”

An hour later, minus practically his entire bank roll but grimly triumphant, with the stock of the Lucky Nugget mine in his pocket, Mr Melville Rochborne met Mr Reuben Innowitz on the doorstep of the apartment house on Russian Hill, and finally achieved a much-needed self-expression.

“You stupid worthless jerk!” he exploded. “What’s the idea of being out all day — and on a day like this? You just cost us twenty-five grand!”

“Listen,” shrilled the prophet, “who’s calling who a jerk! What did you do about that mine?”

“I got it back, of course,” Rochborne told him short-windedly. “Even though the old bag took me for twenty-five G’s more than she put into it — just because you weren’t around to cool her down. But I didn’t dare take a chance on waiting. There were some old-time prospectors around, and if any of them recognized the carnotite—”

“The what?” Innowitz said.

“Carnotite — that’s what uranium comes from. The Lucky Nugget is full of it. You know what that’s worth today. If any of those miners spotted it and the story was in the papers tomorrow morning, you couldn’t buy that stock for a million dollars... It was the Saint, of course,” Mr Rochborne explained, becoming even more incoherent, “and he was trying to put over the most amateurish job of mine-salting I ever saw, but when he reads about this—”

The swami was staring at him in a most unspiritual way.

“Just a minute, Mel,” he said. “Are you drunk, or what? First you send me a wire and tell me to meet you at the airport. I watch all the planes come in until my ears are buzzing. Then you send me another wire there about some new buyer for the Lucky Nugget, and tell me to phone the Phelan dame and tell her to hold out for seventy grand—”

A horrible presentiment crawled over Mr Rochborne.

“What are you talking about?” he asked weakly. “I never sent you—”

“I’ve got ’em right here in my pocket.” His colleague’s voice was harsh, edged with suspicion.