Leslie Charteris - The Saint In Action

Simon Templar folded his newspaper with a sigh and laid it reverently to rest in the wastebasket.

"We live in a wonderful country," he observed. "Did you read how two policemen and one policewoman practically lived in a night club in Brighton for about three weeks, drawing their wages from the ratepayers all the time and drinking gallons of champagne at the ratepayers' expense, until they finally managed to lure some poor fathead into the place and get him to buy them a drink after time? And that's what we pay taxes for. Our precious politicians can go to Geneva and swindle the Abyssinians with all the dignity of a gang of bucket-shop promoters and slap the poor deluded Spaniard on the back and tell him he's just dreaming about Italians and Germans helping the rebels in his so-called civil war; but the honour of England has been vindicated. A bloke is fined fifty quid for selling a whisky and soda at half past eleven and another bloke is fined a fiver for drinking it; two policemen and one policewoman have had a wonderful free jag and helped themselves towards promotion, and the world has been shown that England respects the Law. Rule Britannia."

Patricia Holm smiled tolerantly.

"I love you when your gorge rises," she said; and the Saint chuckled.

"It's a beautiful gorge, darling," he answered. "And talking about the Law, it seems a long time since we saw anything of dear old Chief Inspector Teal."

"He doesn't go abroad very much," Patricia pointed out. "If you stayed at home for a bit I expect you'd see plenty of him."

Simon nodded.

"There's plenty of him to see," he agreed, "and I suppose we'll be seeing it. I can't go on being respectable indefinitely."

He got up from the breakfast table and stretched himself lazily by the open windows. The spring sunshine lay in pools between the trees of the park and twinkled on the delicate green of the young leaves that were still too freshly budded for the London air to have dulled their colour; and the same sunshine twinkled in the smile with which the Saint looked back at Patricia. It was a smile that made any disclaimer of respectability seem almost superfluous. Respectability was a disease that could never have attacked a man with a smile in which there was so much unconquerable devilment; it couldn't have found a foothold anywhere in any one of the seventy-two inches of slimly muscular length that separated his crisp black hair from the soles of his polished shoes. And with that smile laughing its Irresistible way into her eyes Patricia felt again as fresh and ageless as if she were only meeting it then for the first time, the gay, disreputable magic of that incomparable buccaneer whom the newspapers had christened the Robin Hood of modern crime and whom the police and the underworld alike had called by many worse names.

"I suppose you can't," she said resignedly and knew that she was stating one of the few immutable certainties of this unsettled world.

Simon lighted a cigarette with an impenitent grin and turned to the door as Orace's walrus face poked itself into the room.

"Someone wantin' to see yer," said Orace; and the Saint raised his eyebrows.

"Does he look like a detective?" he asked hopefully.

Orace shook his head.

"Nossir. 'E looks like a gentleman."

Simon went through into the living room and found his visitor standing by the table flicking over the pages of the New Yorker. He dropped the magazine and turned quickly as the Saint came in. He was a youngish man with brown curly hair and a lantern jaw and rimless glasses. The Saint, whose life had depended more than once on his gift for measuring up strangers with a casual glance, guessed that Orace's diagnosis was probably correct and also that his visitor was slightly agitated.

"Mr Templar? I've never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I've seen your picture and read about you in the papers. I've really got no business to come and take up your time, but—"

The Saint nodded. He was used to people who really had no business to come and take up his time — it was one of the penalties of fame, but it had often turned out to be a profitable penalty. He held out his cigarette case.

"Sit down and let's hear what's on your mind," he said soothingly. "I've never met you either, so anyway we start square."

"My name's Graham — Geoffrey Graham," The young man took a cigarette and sat on the arm of a chair as if he expected to bounce off at any moment.

"I don't know how much you want to know about me — I'm an articled pupil in an architect's office, and I live in Bloomsbury — my family live in Yorkshire, and they aren't very well off—"

"Have you murdered somebody?" asked the Saint gravely.

"No. No, I haven't done that—"

"Or burgled a bank?"

"No, but—"

"It might have been quite exciting if you had," said the Saint calmly. "But as things are, suppose you tell me what the trouble is first, and then we'll decide how far back to go into the story of your life."

"Well—"

The expectation was justified. The young man did bounce off the chair. He pulled a bundle of large folded papers out of his pocket, disengaged one of them and held it out.

"Well, look," he said. "What d' you think this is?"

Simon unfolded the document. It was printed on crisp heavy paper and very beautifully engraved; it looked as if it might have been valuable, but most men would have studied it for some time before venturing to define it. Simon held it up to the light, rubbed it between his fingers and flipped it back onto the table.

"It seems to be one of the new American government short-term loan thousand-dollar bearer bonds," he said in much the same way as he might have said, "It seems to be a bus ticket to Wimbledon"; but his blue had settled into a quiet and rather watchful interestedness.

Graham pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"My God," he said. He breathed heavily once or twice. "Well, that's what I'd come to the conclusion it was, only I couldn't believe it. I thought I'd better make sure. You know, I've read about those things in stories, like everybody else, but I'd never seen one before. My God!"

He blinked down at the handful of papers which he was still clutching and threw them down on the table beside the specimen.

"Look," he said in an awe-stricken voice. "There's thirty-four more of 'em. That's thirty-five thousand dollars — seven thousand pounds — isn't it?"

Simon picked up the collection and glanced through them.

"It was when I was at school," he said. "Are you making a collection or something?"

"Well, not exactly. I got them out of a fellow's desk."

"There must be money in architecture," said the Saint encouragingly.

"No, it wasn't at the office. This was a fellow who lived in the same boardinghouse with me when I was living in Bayswater. You see—"

The Saint studied him thoughtfully. His uninvited callers in the past had included more than one optimistic gentleman who had tried to sell him a machine for making diamonds or turning water into lubricating oil, and he was always glad to listen to a new story. But although the opening he had just listened to might well have served as a prelude to one of those flights of misdirected ingenuity which were the Saint's perennial joy and occasional source of income, there seemed to be something genuine about the young man in front of him which didn't quite fit in with the Saint's shrewdly discriminating suspicions.

"Why not start at the beginning and go on to the end?" he suggested.