to push on to Croydon.'
'Croydon!'
Simon heard the word repeated faintly, and grinned. For in a flash he had grasped a flimsy clue, and had seen his way clear; and the repetition had confirmed him in a fantastic hope.
'Why Croydon?'
'It's the nearest aerodrome that's fitted up for night landings. I don't suppose, we shall have much trouble with the customs,' added the Saint thoughtfully.
There was a silence; and the Saint flew on, as low as he dared, searching the darkening country beneath him. And, within himself, he was blessing the peculiar advantages of his favourite hobby.
Times without number, when he had nothing else to do, the Saint had taken his car and set out to explore the unfrequented byways of England, seeking out forgotten villages and unspoiled country inns, which he collected as less robust and simple-minded men collect postage stamps. It was his boast that he knew every other inch of the British Isles blindfolded, and he may not have been very far wrong. There was one village, near the Kent-Surrey border, which had suggested itself to him immediately as the ideal place for his purpose.
'I say, Old Man,' spoke Lemuel again, miserably.
'Hullo?'
'I'm feeling like death. I can't go on much longer. Can't you land in a field around here while there's still a bit of light?'
'I was wondering what excuse you'd make, dear heart,' said the Saint; but he said it to himself. Aloud, he answered cheer fully: 'It certainly is a bit bumpy, sir. I'll have a shot at it, if you like.'
As a matter of fact, he had just sighted his objective, and he throttled off the engine with a gentle smile of satisfaction.
It wasn't the easiest landing in the world to make, especially in that weather; but the Saint put the machine on the deck without a mistake, turned, and taxied back to a sheltered corner of the field he had chosen. Then he climbed out of the cockpit and stretched himself.
'I can peg her out for the night,' he remarked, as Lemuel joined him on the ground, 'and there shouldn't be any harm done if it doesn't blow much harder than this.'
'A little more of that flying would have killed me,' said Lemuel; and he was really looking rather pale. 'Where are we?'
Simon told him.
'It's right off the map, and I'm afraid you won't get a train back to town to-night; but I know a very decent little pub we can stay at,' he said.
'I'll phone for my chauffeur to come down,' said Lemuel. 'I suppose there's a telephone in this place somewhere?'
'I doubt it,' said Simon; but he knew that there was.
Again, however, luck was with him. It was quite dark by the time the aeroplane had been pegged out with ropes obtained from a neighbouring farm, and a steady rain was falling, so that no one was about to watch the Saint climbing nimbly up a telegraph pole just beyond the end of the village street. . . .
Lemuel, who had departed to look up the post office, re joined him later in the bar of the Blue Dragon with a tale of woe.
'A telegraph pole must have been blown down,' he said. 'Anyway, it was impossible to get through.'
Simon, who had merely cut the wires without doing any damage to the pole, nevertheless saw no reason to correct the official theory.
Inquiries about possible conveyance to the nearest main line town proved equally fruitless, as the Saint had known they would be. He had selected his village with care. It possessed nothing suitable for Mr. Lemuel, and no traffic was likely to pass through that night, for it was right off the beaten track.
'Looks as if we'll have to make the best of it, Old Man,' said Lemuel, and Simon concurred.
After supper Lemuel's spirits rose, and they spent a convivial evening in the bar.
It was a very convivial evening. Mr. Lemuel, under the soothing influence of many brandies, forgot his day's misadventures, and embarked enthusiastically upon the process of making a night of it. For, he explained, his conversation with Jacob Einsmann was going to lead to a lot of easy money. But he could not be persuaded to divulge anything of interest, though the Saint led the conversation cunningly. Simon smiled, and continued to drink him level-even taking it upon himself to force the pace towards closing time. Simon had had some opportunity to measure up Francis Lemuel's minor weaknesses, and an adroit employment of some of this knowledge was part of the Saint's plan. And the Saint was ordinarily a most temperate man.
'You're a goo' feller, Ole Man,' Mr. Lemuel was proclaiming, towards eleven o'clock. 'You stick to me, Ole Man, an' don' worrabout wha' people tell you. You stick to me. I gorra-lotta money. Show you trick one day. You stick to me. Give you a berra job soon, Ole Man. Pallomine . . .'
When at length Mr. Lemuel announced that he was going to bed, the Saint's affable 'Sleep well, sir!' would have struck a captious critic as unnecessary; for nothing could have been more certain than that Mr. Lemuel would that night sleep the sleep of the only just.
The Saint himself stayed on in the bar for another hour; for the landlord was in talkative mood, and was not unique in finding Simon Templar very pleasant company. So it came to pass that, a few minutes after the Saint had said good-night, his sudden return with a face of dismay was easily accounted for.
'I've got the wrong bag,' he explained. 'The other two were put in Mr. Lemuel's room, weren't they?'
'Is one of them yours?' asked the publican sympathetically.
Simon nodded.
'I've been landed with the samples,' he said. 'And I'll bet Mr. Lemuel's locked his door. He never forgets to do that, however drunk he is. And we'd have to knock the place down to wake him up now-and I'd lose my job if we did.'
'I've got a master key, sir,' said the landlord helpfully. 'You could slip in with that and change the bags, and he wouldn't know anything about it.'
Simon stared.
'You're a blinkin' marvel, George,' he murmured. 'You are, really.'
With the host's assistance he entered Mr. Lemuel's room, and emerged with the key of the door in his pocket and one of Lemuel's bags in his hand. Mr. Lemuel snored rhythmically through it all.
'Thanks, George,' said the Saint, returning the master key. 'Breakfast at ten, and in bed, I think. . . .'
Then he took the bag into his own room, and opened it without much difficulty.
Its weight, when he had lifted it out of the aeroplane, had told him not to expect it to contain clothes; but the most superficially interesting thing about it was that Mr. Lemuel had not possessed it when he left England, and it was simply as a result of intensive pondering over that fact that the Saint had arrived at the scheme that he was then carrying out. And, in view of his hypothesis, and Mr. Lemuel's reaction to the magic word 'Croydon,' it cannot be said that the Saint was wildly surprised when he found what the bag actually held. But he was very, very interested, nevertheless.
There were rows and rows of neatly packed square tins, plain and unlabelled. Fishing one out, the Saint gently detached the strip of adhesive tape which sealed it, and prised off the lid. He came to a white, crystalline powder . . . but that had been in his mind when he opened the tin. Almost perfunctorily, he took a tiny pinch of the powder between his finger and thumb, and laid it on his tongue; and the Saintly smile tightened a little.
Then he sat back on his heels, lighted a cigarette, and regarded his catch thoughtfully.
'You're a clever boy, Francis,' he murmured.
He meditated for some time, humming under his breath, apparently quite unmoved. But actually his brain was seething.
It would have been quite easy to dispose of the contents of the bag. It would have been equally easy to dispose of Mr. Lemuel. For a while the Saint toyed with the second idea. A strong solution of the contents of one of the tins, for instance, administered with the hypodermic syringe which Simon had in his valise . . . Then he shook his head.
'Try to remember, Old Man,' he apostrophized himself, 'that you are a business organization. And you're not at all sure that Uncle Francis has left you anything in his will.'
The scheme which he ultimately decided upon was simplicity itself-so far as it went. It depended solely upon
