11 The Brighter Buccaneer

'I haven't,' said Happy Fred lugubriously. 'And the trouble is that I can't. Here am I carrying this wonderful idea about with me, and I can't use it. That's why I've come to you. What I need, Broads, is a partner who won't double-cross me, who's clever with his hands and hasn't got any kind of police record. That's why I can't do it myself. The bloke who does this has got to be a respectable bloke that nobody can say anything against. And that's where you come in. I've been worrying about it for weeks, thinking of all the good money there is waiting for me to pick up, and wondering who I could find to come in with me that I could trust. And then just last night somebody told me that you were back; and I said to myself, 'Fred,' I said, 'Broads Tillson is the very man you want. He's the man who'll give you a square deal, and won't go and blow your idea about.' So I made up my mind to come and see you and see what you felt about it. I'm willing to give you my idea, Broads, and put up the capital-I've got a bit of money saved up-if you'll count me in fifty-fifty.'

'What is this idea?' asked Mr. Tillson cautiously.

Happy Fred helped himself to another drink, swallowed half of it, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

'It goes like this,' he said, with the unconscious reverence of a poet introducing his latest brain-child to the world. 'You go to one of the big jewellers, posing as a rich man who's got a little bit of stuff in Paris, see? That ought to be easy for you. You want to send this girl a lovely big diamond necklace or something out of his stock that you can get for about a thousand quid-that's as much as I can put up. This necklace has got to be sent by post, and so of course it's got to be insured. Now it's made into a parcel; and all this time you've got in your pocket another box about the same size, with pebbles in it to make it about the same weight. This is where the man who does it has got to be clever with his hands, like you are. As soon as the necklace has been packed in its box --'

Mr. Tillson sighed.

'There's nothing new about that,' he protested. 'You haven't got the money to reimburse this jeweller for his neck­lace, and therefore you desire the sealed package to be pre­served in his safe until you post him the money and request him to send it to you. And when he tires of waiting for his instructions he opens the package and discovers that you have absconded with the necklace and left him the receptacle con­taining the pebbles. That's a very old one, Fred, don't you think?'

'Haven't got the money, nothing!' said Happy Fred scorn­fully. 'Of course you've got the money-I tell you I'm putting up a thousand quid for this job. No jeweller would be taken in with that old trick you're thinking of these days-he'd send for the police as soon as you suggested it. You pay cash for this bit of jewellery you buy, and it's all square and above-board. Now listen to what I've got to say.'

Mr. Alfred Tillson listened, and was impressed. Happy Fred's variation on an old theme appeared to have many of the qualities that were claimed for it by its proud inventor; and although it did not exactly come within Mr. Tillson's self-chosen province, it was true that the seasonal falling-off in transatlantic steamship travel had left him particularly recep­tive to ideas that opened up new possibilities of income.

The new swindle is a thing that every confidence man dreams of creating; it is the brain wave that sweeps through the trade once in a generation, and produces a golden harvest for its pioneers before the officious publicity of the press sends the soaring market slumping back again. Life is like that for chevaliers d'industrie like Happy Fred Jorman: the crimi­nological trend of the Sunday newspaper reduces the ranks of the suckers every Sabbath, and the movies they see during the week haven't helped either. But this new swindle looked as if it might enjoy a fair run of success before it went the way of all other brilliant inventions.

Possibly it was because both partners in the new alliance were so pleased with the potentialities of their own brilliance that they temporarily forgot their common ambition to meet Simon Templar again-with a convenient canal and a length of lead pipe thrown in.

Simon himself was not thinking about them, for he had his own views on the kind of acquaintance which he was anxious to renew. Ruth Eden was a very different proposition. The fact that he had been privileged to rescue her in romantic circum­stances from the attentions of the unspeakable Mr. Julian Lamantia, and that subsequently Mr. Lamantia had been one of three men who found themselves unexpectedly poorer for that meeting, included her among the register of people whom Simon Templar would have been pleased to meet again at any time.

He had managed to get her a job with another acquaintance of his, who was such an exclusive jeweller that he had an office instead of a shop, and produced his treasures out of a vast safe instead of leaving them about in glass-topped counters; but after that he had heard nothing of her for some while.

She rang him up one day about this time, and he was delighted to hear her voice. From the date of their first meet­ing she had exhibited commendable symptoms of hero-worship, and Simon Templar had no modesty in his composition.

'Have you forgotten me altogether?' she demanded; and the Saint chuckled into the transmitter.

'To tell you the truth, I've been so busy murdering people that I've hardly had a minute to spare. I thought you must have got married or something. Come and have dinner and see my collection of skulls.'

'I'd love to. When?'

'Why not tonight? What time does Alan let you go?'

'Half past five.'

'I'll call for you at six-that'll just give you time to put your hat on, darling,' said the Saint angelically, and rang off before she could make a suitable reply.

He was engaged in a running commentary on her inevitable feminine manoeuvres in front of a mirror in Alan Emberton's outer office when the glass-panelled door of the inner sanctum opened, and the sound of a voice that seemed vaguely familiar made him break off in the middle of a sentence. In another second, to her intense astonishment, he had vanished under a desk like a rabbit into its burrow; and if she had not turned abruptly back to her mirror while Emberton showed his client out, she would have had to burst out laughing.

But Simon was on his feet again when the jeweller came back and he was completely unruffled by his own extraordi­nary behaviour.

'Hullo, Templar,' said Emberton, noticing him with some surprise. 'Where did you spring from?'

He was a big man, with a jovial red face, who looked more like a retired butcher than an exclusive jeweller, and he liked the Saint in spite of his sins. He held out his beefy hand.

'I was under the desk,' said the Saint unblushingly. 'I dropped a penny and I was looking for it. How's life?'