tomorrow.'
The Saint tapped Peter Quentin on the shoulder as the court rose, and they slipped out ahead of the scanty assembly of spectators, bored reporters, dawdling solicitors, and traditionally learned counsel. Simon Templar had sat in that stuffy little room for two hours, bruising his marrowbones on an astonishingly hard wooden bench and yearning for a cigarette; but there were times when he could endure many discomforts in a good cause.
Outside, he caught Peter's arm.
'Mind if I take another look at our plantiff?' he said. 'Just over here-stand in front of me. I want to see what a snurge like that really looks like.'
They stood in a gloomy corner near the door of the court, and Simon sheltered behind Peter Quentin's hefty frame and watched James Deever come out with his solicitor.
It is possible that Mr. Deever's mother loved him. Perhaps, holding him on her knee, she saw in his childish face the fulfilment of all those precious hopes and shy incommunicable dreams which (if we can believe the Little Mothers' Weekly) are the joy and comfort of the prospective parent. History does not tell us that. But we do know that since her death, thirty years ago, no other bosom had ever opened to him with anything like that sublime mingling of pride and affection.
He was a long cadaverous man with a face like a vulture and shaggy white eyebrows over closely-set greenish eyes. His thin nose swooped low down over a thin gash of a mouth, and his chin was pointed and protruding. In no respect whatsoever was it the kind of countenance to which children take an instinctive shine. Grown men and women, who knew him, liked him even less.
His home and business address were in Manchester; but the City Corporation had never been heard to boast about it. Simon Templar watched him walk slowly past, discussing some point in the case he had just won with the air of a parson conferring with a churchwarden after matins, and the reeking hypocrisy of the performance filled him with an almost irresistible desire to catch Mr. Deever's frock-coated stern with the toe of his shoe and start him on one sudden magnificent flight to the foot of the stairs. The Manchester City Corporation, Simon considered, could probably have kept their ends up without Mr. Deever's name on the roll of ratepayers. But the Saint restrained himself, and went on peaceably with Peter Quentin five minutes afterwards.
'Let us drink some Old Curio,' said the Saint.
They entered a convenient tavern, lighting cigarettes as they went, and found a secluded corner in the saloon bar. The court had sat on late, and the hour had struck at which it is lawful for Englishmen to consume the refreshment which can only be bought at any time of the day in uncivilised foreign countries.
And for a few minutes there was silence . . .
'It's wonderful what you can do with the full sanction of the law,' Peter Quentin said presently, in a rather sourly reflective tone; and the Saint smiled at him wryly. He knew that Peter was not thinking about the more obvious inanities of the English licensing laws.
'I rather wanted to get a good close-up of James, and watch him in action,' he said. 'I guess all the stories are true.'
There were several stories about James Deever; but none of them ever found their way into print-for libel actions mean heavy damages, and Mr. Deever sailed very comfortably within the law. His business was plainly and publicly that of a moneylender, and as a money-lender he was duly and legally registered according to the Act which had done so much to bring the profession of usury within certain humane restrictions.
And as a plain and registered money-lender Mr. Deever retained his offices in Manchester, superintending every detail of his business in person, trusting nobody, sending out beautifully-worded circulars in which he proclaimed his readiness to lend anybody any sum from L10 to L50,000 on note of hand alone, and growing many times richer than the Saint thought anyone but himself had any right to be. Nevertheless, Mr. Deever's business would probably have escaped the Saint's attentions if those few facts had covered the whole general principle of it.
They didn't. Mr. Deever, who, in spite of the tenor of his artistically-printed circulars, was not in the money- lending business on account of any urge to go down to mythology as the little fairy godmother of Manchester, had devised half a dozen ingenious and strictly legal methods of evading the limitations placed on him by the Act. The prospective borrower who came to him, full of faith and hope, for the loan of L10 to L50,000 was frequently accommodated-not, one must admit, on his note of hand alone, but eventually on the basis of some very sound security. And if the loan were promptly repaid, there the matter ended-at the statutory rate of interest for such transactions. It was only when the borrower found himself in further difficulties that Mr. Deever's ingenious schemes came into operation. It was then that the victim found himself straying little by little into a maze of complicated mortgages, discounted checks, 'nominal' promissory notes, mysterious 'conversions,' and technically-worded transfers-straying into that labyrinth so gradually at first that it all seemed quite harmless, slipping deeper into it over an easy path of documents and signatures, floundering about in it at last and losing his bearings more and more hopelessly in his struggles to climb back-finally awakening to the haggard realisation that by some incomprehensible jugglery of papers and figures he owed Mr. Deever five or six times as much money as Mr. Deever had given him in cash, and having it proved to him over his own signature that there was no question of the statutory rate of interest having been exceeded at any time.
Exactly thus had it been proved to the widow of a certain victim in the case that they had listened to that afternoon; and there were other similar cases that had come to the Saint's receptive knowledge.
'There were days,' remarked the Saint, rather wistfully, 'when some lads of the village and I would have carved Brother Deever into small pieces and baited lobster-pots with him from the North Foreland to the Lizard.'
'And what now?' queried Peter Quentin.
'Now,' said the Saint, regretfully, 'we can only call on him for a large involuntary contribution to our Pension Fund for Deserving Outlaws.'
Peter lowered the first quarter of his second highball.
'It'll have to be something pretty smart to catch that bird,' he said. 'If you asked me, I should say you couldn't take any story to him that wouldn't have to pass under a microscope.'
'For which reason,' murmured Simon Templar, with the utmost gravity, 'I shall go to him with a story that is absolutely true. I shall approach him with a hook and line that the cleverest detective on earth couldn't criticise. You're right, Peter-there probably isn't a swindle in the encyclopedia that would get a yard past Brother James.
'It's a good thing we aren't criminals, Pete-we might get our fingers burned. No, laddie. Full of righteousness
