'On the contrary,' said the Saint, 'I'm the Bishop of Bootle and Upper Tooting.'
He held out his wrists resignedly. For a moment the man with the handcuffs was between him and the Baron's automatic, and the Saint took his chance. His left whizzed round in a terrific hook that smacked cleanly to its mark on the side of the man's jaw, and Simon leapt on to the desk. He went through the window in a flying dive, somersaulted over his hands, and was on his feet again in an instant.
He sprinted across the lawn and went over the wall like a cat. A whistle screamed into the night behind him, and he saw Peter Quentin tumble into the car as he dropped down to the pavement. Simon jumped for the Hirondel as it streaked past, and fell over the side into the seat beside the driver.
'Give her the gun,' he ordered briefly, 'and dodge as you've never dodged before. I think they'll be after us.'
'What happened?' asked Peter Quentin; and the Saint unfastened the handkerchief from his face and grinned.
'It looks like they were waiting for someone,' he said.
It took twenty minutes of brilliant driving to satisfy the Saint that they were safe from any possible pursuit. On the way Simon took the heavy jewelled armlet from his pocket and gazed at it lovingly under one of the dashboard lamps.
'That's one thing the Fox didn't put over,' he said cryptically.
He was breakfasting off bacon and eggs the next morning at eleven o'clock when Peter Quentin walked in. Peter carried a morning paper, which he tossed into the Saint's lap.
'There's something for your 'Oh, yeah?' album,' he said grimly.
Simon poured out a cup of coffee.
'What is it-some more intelligent utterances by Cabinet Ministers?'
'You'd better read it,' said Peter. 'It looks as if several people made mistakes last night.'
Simon Templar picked up the paper and started at the double-column splash.
'THE FOX' CAPTURED C.I.D. WAKES UP BRILLIANT COUP IN KENSINGTON
ONE OF THE CLEVEREST STRATAGEMS in the history of criminal detection achieved its object at eleven-thirty last night with the arrest of Jean-Baptiste Arvaille, alleged to be the famous jewel thief known as 'The Fox.'
Arvaille will be charged at the police court this morning with a series of audacious robberies totalling over L70,000.
It will be told how Inspector Henderson, of Scotland Yard, assisted by a woman member of the Special Branch, posed as 'Baron von Dortvenn' and baited the trap with a mythical 'bracelet of Charlemagne' which he was stated to have brought to England for the International Jewellery Exhibition.
The plot owed much of its success to the cooperation of the Press, which gave the fullest possible publicity to the 'Baron's' arrival.
It was stated in this newspaper yesterday that the 'bracelet of Charlemagne' was a circle of gold thickly encrusted with rubies.
In actual fact it is made of lead, thinly plated with gold, and the stones in it are worthless imitations. Workmen sworn to secrecy created it specially for Inspector Henderson's use.
Simon Templar read through the whole detailed story. After which he was speechless for some time..
And then he smiled.
'Oh, well,' he said, 'it isn't everyone who can say he's kissed a woman policeman.'
The Brass Buddha
'HAVE another drink,' said Ambrose Grange.
He was a man with a lot to say, but that was his theme song. He had used it so many times during the course of that evening that Simon Templar had begun to wonder whether Sir Ambrose imagined he had invented a new and extraordinarily subtle philosophy, and was patiently plugging it at intervals until his audience grasped the point. It bobbed up along the line of his conversation like vitamins in a food reformer's menu. Tapping resources which seemed inexhaustible, he delved into the kit-bag of memory for reminiscences and into his trouser pockets for the price of beer; and the Saint obliged him by absorbing both with equal courtesy.
'Yes, sir,' resumed Sir Ambrose, when their glasses had been refilled. 'Business is business. That is my motto, and it always will be. If you happen to know that something is valuable, and the other fellow doesn't, you have every right to buy it from him at his price without disclosing your knowledge. He gets what he thinks is a fair price, you get your profit, and you're both satisfied. Isn't that what goes on every day on the Stock Exchange? If you receive inside information that certain shares are going to rise, you buy as many as you can. You probably never meet the man who sells them to you, but that doesn't alter the fact of what you're doing. You're deliberately taking advantage of your knowledge to purchase something for a fraction of its value, and it never occurs to you that you ought to tell the seller that if he held on to his shares for another week he could make all the profit for himself.'
'Quite,' murmured the Saint politely.
'And so,' said Sir Ambrose, patting the Saint's knee impressively with his flabby hand, 'when I heard that the path of the new by-pass road cut straight through the middle of that old widow's property, what did I do? Did I go to her and say, 'Madam, in another week or two you'll be able to put your own price on this house, and any bank or building society would be glad to lend you enough to pay off this instalment of the mortgage'? Why, if I'd done anything like that I should have been a fool, sir-a sentimental old fool. Of course I didn't. It was the old geezer's own fault if she was too stupid and doddering to know what was going on around her. I simply foreclosed at once; and in three weeks I'd sold her house, for fifteen times as much as I gave her for it. That's business.' Sir Ambrose chortled wheezily over the recollection. 'By gad, if words could break bones I should be wheeling myself about in an invalid chair still. But that kind of thing doesn't worry me! . . . Have another drink.'
