He sent for his car and left the office shortly afterwards. The paper which he bought outside told of the panic of P.O.P's, and he read the article with a kind of morbid interest.
There was a letter, delivered by the afternoon post, waiting at his house when he got back.
I sold P.O.P.s and covered to-day. The profits are nearly twelve thousand pounds.
The expenses of this campaign have been unusually heavy; but, even then, after deducting these and my ten percent collecting fee, I hope to be able to forward nine thousand pounds to charity on your behalf.
Received the above-named sum-with thanks.
The Saint.
Enclosed was a familiar card, and one Pasala Oil Products share certificate.
Hugo Campard dined well that night, and, alone, accounted for a bottle of champagne. After that he smoked a cigar with relish, and drank a liqueur brandy with enjoyment.
He had dressed. He felt the occasion deserved it. His mind was clear and untroubled, for in a flash he had seen the way out of the trap.
When his cigar was finished, he exchanged his coat for a dressing gown, and passed into his study. He locked the door behind him, and for some time paced up and down the room in silence, but no one will ever know what he thought. At ten o'clock precisely the pacing stopped.
The constable on guard outside heard the shot; but Hugo Campard did not hear it.
7
The men serving sentences of hard labour in the prison of Santa Miranda are allowed an afternoon siesta of three hours. This is not due to the humanity and loving-kindness of the authorities, but to the fact that nothing will induce the warders to forgo the afternoon nap which is the custom of the country, and no one has yet discovered a way of making the prisoners work without a wide-awake warder to watch them and pounce on the shirkers.
The fetters are struck off the prisoners' ankles, and they are herded into their cells, a dozen in each, and there locked up to rest as well as they can in the stifling heat of a room ventilated only by one small barred window and thickly populated with flies. The warders retire to their quarters above the prison, and one jailer is left on guard, nodding in the passage outside the cells, with a rifle across his knees.
It was so on the third day of the Saint's incarceration, and this was the second hour of the siesta, but the Saint had not slept.
His cell mates were sprawled on the bunks or on the floor, snoring heavily. They were hardened to the flies. Outside, the jailer dozed, his sombrero on the back of his head and his coat unbuttoned. Through the window of the cell a shaft of burning sunlight cut across the moist gloom and splashed a square of light on the opposite wall.
The Saint sat by the gates of the cell, watching that creeping square of light. Each afternoon he had .watched it, learning its habits, so that now he could tell the time by it. When the edge of the square touched a certain scar in the stone it was four o'clock. . . . That was the time he had decided upon. ...
He scrambled softly to his feet.
The jailer's head nodded lower and lower. Every afternoon, the Saint had noted, he set his chair at a certain point in the passage where a cool draught from a cross-corridor would fan him. Therefore, on that afternoon, the Saint had taken pains to get into the nearest cell to that point.
He tore a button off his clothes, and threw it. It hit the jailer on the cheek, and the man stirred and grunted. The Saint threw another button. The man shook his head, snorted, and roused, stretching his arms with a prodigious yawn.
'Senor!' hissed the Saint.
The man turned his head.
'Loathsome disease,' he growled, 'why dost thou disturb my meditations? Lie down and be silent, lest I come and beat thee.'
'I only wished to ask your honour if I might give your honour a present of fifty pesos,' said the Saint humbly.
He squatted down again by the bars of the gate and played with a piece of straw. Minutes passed. . . .
He heard the jailer get to his feet, but did not look up. The man's footsteps grated on the floor and stopped by the cell door. In the cell the other convicts snored peacefully.
'Eater of filth and decomposing fish,' said the jailer's voice gruffly, 'did I hear thy coarse lips speak to me of fifty pesos? How hast thou come by that money?'
'Gifts break rocks,' replied the peon, quoting the Spanish proverb. 'I had rather my gifts broke them than I were compelled to break any more of them. I have fifty pesos, and I want to escape.'
'It is impossible. I searched thee--'
'It was hidden. I will give it to your honour as a pledge. I know where to find much more money, if your honour would deign to release me and let me lead you to where it is hidden. Have you not heard how, when I was arrested, it was testified that in the town I spent, in one evening, enough to keep you for a year? That was nothing to me. I am rich.'
The jailer stroked his stubbly chin.
'Verminous mongrel,' he said, more amiably, 'show me this fifty pesos and I will believe thee.'
The Saint ran his fingers through his tangled hair, and there fell out a note. The jailer recognized it, and his avaricious eyes gleamed.
He reached a claw-like hand through the bars, but the Saint jerked the note out of his reach. The jailer's face darkened.
'Abominable insect,' he said, 'thou hast no right to that. Thou art a convict, and thy goods are forfeit to the State. As the servant of the State I will confiscate that paper, that thy low-born hands may defile it no longer.'
He reached for his keys, but the Saint held up a warning hand.
'If you try to do that, amigo,' he said, 'I shall cry out so loudly that the other warders will come down to see what has happened. Then I shall tell them, and they will make you divide the fifty pesos with them. And I shall refuse to tell you where I have hidden the rest of my money. Why not release me, and have it all for yourself?'
'But how shall I know that thou dost not lie?'
The Saint's hands went again to his hair, and a rain of fifty-peso notes fell to the floor. He picked them up and counted them before the jailer. There were thirty of them altogether.
'See, I have them here!' he said. 'Fifteen hundred pesos is a lot of money. Now open this door and I will give them to you.'
The jailer's eyes narrowed cunningly. Did this fool of a peon really believe that he would be given his liberty in exchange for such a paltry sum? Apparently.
Not that the sum was so paltry, being equal to about two hundred pounds in English money; but if any prisoner escaped, the jailer would be blamed for it, and probably imprisoned himself. Yet this simpleton seemed to imagine that he had only to hand over his bribe and the jailer would risk punishment to earn it.
Very well, let him have his childish belief. It would be easily settled. The door opened, the money paid over, a shot. . . . And then there would be no one to bear witness against him. The prisoner was known to be violent. He had attempted to escape, and was shot. It would be easy to invent a story to account for the opening of the cell door. . . .
'Senor peon,' said the jailer, 'I see now that your honour should not be herded in with these cattle. I will set your honour free and your honour will give me the money, and I shall remember your honour in my prayers.'
He tiptoed back to his chair and picked up his rifle. Then, with elaborate precautions against noise, he unlocked the cell door, and the peon came out into the passage.
The other prisoners still snored, and there was no sound but the droning of the flies to arouse them. The whole colloquy had been conducted in whispers, for it was imperative for the jailer as for the peon that there should be no premature alarm.
'Now give me the money,' said the jailer huskily.
The Saint held out the handful of notes, and one broke loose and fluttered to the floor. As the jailer bent to pick it up, the Saint reached over him and slid the man's knife gently out of his belt. As the man straightened up the
