Leslie Charteris - The Saint On Guard

The headline in the New York World Telegram said:

SAINT TO SMASH

IRIDIUM BLACK MARKET

The story itself was relatively slight for so much black type, but it was adequately padded with a fairly accurate resume of the Saint's career and exploits, or as much of them as had ever become a matter of record; for while the Saint himself was not naturally a modest man, there are certain feats which the dull legislatures of this century do not allow a person to publicise without fear of landing behind iron bars, and Simon Templar preferred bars with bottles to the less convivial kind.

However, the mere fact that the Saint was involved made the item meaty enough from a journalistic standpoint to justify the expenditure of ink, and it is probable that hardly any of the readers felt that the space could have been more stimulatingly and entertainingly employed.

Inspector John Henry Fernack was one very solid exception. He may have been stimulated, in an adrenal way, but he was certainly not entertained. He was, in fact, a rather solemnly angry man. But he had been conditioned by too many previous encounters with Simon Templar's unique brand of modern buccaneering to view the threat of a fresh outbreak without feeling a premonitory ache somewhere in his sadly wise gray head.

He came all the way uptown from Centre Street to the Saint's suite at the Algonquin, and thrust the paper under Simon's nose, and said grimly: "Would you mind telling me just what this means?"

The Saint glanced over it with lazy and bantering blue eyes.

"You mean I should read it to you, or are you just stuck on the longer words?"

"What do you know about iridium?"

"Iridium," said the Saint encyclopedically, "is an element with an atomic weight of 193.1. It is found in platinum ore, and also in lesser quantities in some types of iron and copper ores. In metallurgical practice it is usually combined with platinum, producing an alloy of great hardness and durability, suitable for the manufacture of electrical contacts or for boring holes in policemen's heads."

Fernack breathed deeply and carefully.

"What do you know about this black market?"

Simon ran a hand through his dark hair.

"I know that there is one. There has to be. That isn't any great secret. Iridium is one of the essential metals for war production, and it's awful scarce — so scarce that after Pearl Harbor the price shot up to about four hundred dollars a Troy ounce. The present official price is about a hundred and seventy dollars, or about two thousand bucks a pound, which is still very expensive groceries. If you can get it. But you can't get it."

"You're supposed to get it if you have the proper priority."

"So the Government gives you a pretty license to buy it. They could probably give you a license to buy a web-footed unicorn, too. And then all you have to do is find it."

"What's wrong with the regular markets?"

"They just haven't got it. There never has been much to spare, and the armament boom has just been going through it like a steak through a shipwrecked sailor. And that consignment that was hijacked in Tennessee about a month ago did as much damage as putting an airplane factory oat of production for six months. It wasn't written up that way, but that's what it amounted to."

The incident he referred to had made enough headlines on its own merits, nevertheless. The sheer callous audacity of the job was obvious front-page material, and the value of the loot ranked it with the great robberies of all time.

Three glass-lined quart containers of iridium powder — the usual method of shipping the metal — were being flown from Brazil to the Fort Wayne laboratories of the Uttershaw Mining Company. They were transhipped from Pan American Airways at Miami; and there was another transfer to be made at Nashville, Tennessee. Since the consignment was insured for three hundred thousand dollars, its actual value, there were two armed guards provided by the insurance company to supervise the transhipment at Nashville; but it is certain that no trouble was expected. Perhaps it was because the value of the cargo was only dimly appreciated, in spite of the figures on the policy: iridium was just a word to most people, it wasn't like jewels or bullion or any of the well publicised forms of boodle that automatically bring exciting thoughts to mind. Perhaps the guards were negligent, or merely bored; perhaps the precautions were simply routine, and nobody took the idea of such an attack seriously. Anyway, the result was already history.

A car drove on to the airfield while the case containing the heavy flasks was being unloaded. The two armed guards were shot down before they even realised what was happening, the case was thrown into the car, and the raiders were gone again before any of the spectators had recovered enough to make a move. It had been as simple as that.

Fernack said: "What do you know about that job?"

"Only what I read in the papers."

"You think some of that stolen iridium is finding its way into the black market?"

"I wouldn't drop dead with shock if it was."

"Then it would really be a thieves' market."

"I wouldn't quibble. I imagine you ought to have a priority number even to buy stolen iridium. The point is that it's an illegal market."

"But how could a respectable manufacturer buy in a market like that?"

"Respectable manufacturers have contracts with the Government. They want to fill those contracts, patriotically or for profit or both. If the only way they can get vital materials is that way, any of them are still liable to buy. It's just about as safe as any form of criminal connivance. Only one or two men in the firm would need to know, and iridium is compact and easy to handle in the quantities they use, and it would be the hell of a thing to track down and hang on them individually. So they have some iridium, and none of the workers who are using it is going to ask questions or give a damn where it came from, and maybe they had it in stock all the time."

"How would they set out to buy it?"

The Saint stretched his long legs patiently, and regarded Fernack with kindly tolerance.

"Henry," he said, "this frightful finesse and subtlety of yours is producing the corniest dialogue. You make us remind me of the opening characters in a bad play, carefully telling each other what it's all about so that the audience can get the idea too."

"I didn't—"

"You did. You know just about as much about iridium and the black market and how and why it works as anybody else, but you're feeding me all the wide-eyed questions to see if I'll let something slip that you don't happen to know. Well, you're wasting a lot of time. I hate to tell you, comrade, but you are."

The detective's rugged forthright face reddened a little deep under the skin.

"I want to know who told you to stick your oar into this."

"Nobody. It was something I thought up in my bath."

"If there is anything in this black market story, it's being taken care of—"

"I know. By the proper authorities. How often have I heard that sweet old phrase before?"

"There are proper authorities to take care of anything like that," Fernack said religiously.

Simon nodded with speculative respect.

"Who?"

It was a little pathetic to see Fernack suffer. He ran a finger around under his collar and floundered in the awful pain of a frustrated mastodon.