11 The Brighter Buccaneer

'All the agencies know him-we refuse to handle his stuff at all, and we aren't the only ones. But there are plenty of pro­spective tenants who've never heard of him. He advertises his flats and lets them himself whenever he can, and then the ten­ants don't find out their mistake till it's too late. It must seem amazing to you that anything like that can go on in this neigh­bourhood; but his petty persecutions are all quite legal, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.'

'I see,' said the Saint softly.

The solution of the mystery, now that he knew it, struck him as being one of the most original, and at the same time one of the meanest and most contemptible, forms of blackmail that he had ever heard of; and the fact that it skulked along under the cover of the law made it twice as sickening. He had no doubt that it was all true-even the worthiest of estate agents are not in the habit of turning down commissions without the strongest possible grounds, and Major Bellingford Smart's nastiness appeared to be common knowledge in the profession. There were some forms of unpleasantness that filled the Saint with an utter loathing, and the meanness of Major Bellingford Smart was one of them. Simon had an en­tirely immoral respect for the wholehearted criminal who gam­bled his liberty on the success of his enterprises, but a livelihood that was gained principally by bullying and swindling fat- headed old women turned his stomach.

'He has quite a lot of property around here,' the exquisite young man was informing him. 'He buys up houses and con­verts them into flats. You'll see what sort of a man he is when I tell you that while his conversions are being carried out it's his habit to hire a room in the neighbourhood from which he can overlook the site, and he prowls around there at odd times with a pair of field-glasses to see if he can catch his workmen slacking. Once he saw a couple of men having a cup of tea in the afternoon, and went around and fired them on the spot.'

'Isn't there anything he doesn't sink to?' asked the Saint.

'I can't think of it,' said the exquisite young man slan­derously. 'A few months ago he had a porter at 17, David Square who'd stayed with him eleven years-I can't think why. The porter's wife acted as a sort of housekeeper, and their daughter was employed in the Major's own flat as a maid. You can imagine what a man like that must be like to work for, and this daughter soon found she couldn't stick it. She tried to give notice, and Smart told her that if she left him her father and mother would be fired out into the street-the porter was an old man of well over sixty. The girl tried to stay on, but at last she had to run away. The first the porter and his wife knew about it was when Smart sent for them and gave them a month's notice. And at the end of the month they duly were fired out, with Smart still owing them three weeks' wages which they tried for weeks to get out of him until the son of one of the tenants went round and saw Smart and damned well made him pay up under the threat of putting his own solicitors on the job. The porter died shortly afterwards. I expect it all sounds incredible, but it's quite true.'

Simon departed with a sheaf of Orders to View which he destroyed as soon as he got outside, and walked round very thoughtfully in the direction of David Square. And the more he thought of it, the more poisonous and utterly septic the personality of Major Bellingford Smart loomed in his con­sciousness. It occurred to the Saint, with a certain honest re­gret, that the calls of his own breezy buccaneering had lately taken his thoughts too far from that unlawful justice which had once made his name a terror more salutary than the Law to those who sinned secretly in tortuous ways that the Law could not touch. And it was very pleasant to think that the old life was still open to him . . .

With those thoughts he sauntered up the steps of No. 17, where he was stopped by a uniformed porter who looked more like a prison warder-which, as a matter of fact, he had once been.

'Can you tell me anything about this flat that's to let here?' Simon inquired, and the man's manner changed.

'You'd better see Major Bellingford Smart, sir. Will you step this way?'

Simon was led round to an extraordinary gloomy and untidy office on the ground floor, where a man who was writing at a desk littered with dust-smothered papers rose and nodded to him.

'You want to see the flat, Mr.-er --'

'Bourne,' supplied the Saint. 'Captain Bourne.'

'Well, Captain Bourne,' said the Major dubiously, 'I hardly know whether it would be likely to suit you. As a matter of fact --'

'It doesn't have to suit me,' said the Saint expansively. 'I'm inquiring about it for my mother. She's a widow, you know, and she isn't very strong. Can't go walking around London all day looking at flats. I have to go back to India myself at the end of the week, and I very much wanted to see the old lady fixed up before I sailed.'

'Ah,' said the Major, more enthusiastically, 'that alters the situation. I was going to say that this flat would be quite ideal for an old lady living alone.'

Simon was astounded once again at the proven simplicity of womankind. Major Bellingford Smart's transparent sliminess fairly assaulted him with nausea. He was a man of about forty-five, with black hair, closely set eyes, and a certain stiff-necked poise to his head that gave him a slightly sinister appearance when he moved. It seemed almost unbelievable that anyone could ever have been taken in by such an obvious excrescence; but the fact remained that many victims had undoubtedly fallen into his net.

'Would you like to see it?' suggested the Major.

Simon registered a mental biographical note that Belling­ford Smart's military rank must have been won well out of sight of the firing line. If that Major had ever gone into action he would certainly have perished from a mysterious bullet in the back-such accidents have happened to unpopular officers before.

The Saint said that he would like to see the fiat, and Bel­lingford Smart personally escorted him up to it. It was not at all a bad flat, with good large rooms overlooking the green oasis of the square; and Simon was unable to find fault with it. This was nice for him; for he would have offered no criticism even if the roof had been leaking and the wainscoting had been perforated with rat-holes till it looked like a colander.

'I believe this is the very thing I've been looking for,' he said; and Major Bellingford Smart lathered his hands with invisible soap.

'I'm sure Mrs. Bourne would be very comfortable here,' he said greasily. 'I do everything I can to make my tenants feel thoroughly at home. I'm on the premises myself all day, and if she wanted any help I'd always be delighted to give it. The rent is as moderate as I can make it-only three hundred and fifty per annum.'

Simon nodded.

'That seems quite reasonable,' he said. 'I'll tell my mother about it and see what she says.'