11 The Brighter Buccaneer

honestly believing that their cow-like utterances might do something to alleviate his burdens, holding a crumbling country together with his own dour stoicism and the stoicism of millions of his own kind . . .

'Will I do?' he asked.

From Benny Lucek's point of view he could scarcely have done better. Benny's keen eyes absorbed the whole atmosphere of him in one calculating glance that took in every detail from the grey hair that was running a little thin on top down to the strenuously polished shoes.

'Pleased to meet you, Mr. Tombs. Come along and have a cocktail-I expect you could do with one.'

He led his guest into the sumptuous lounge, and Mr. Tombs sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair. It is impossible to refer to that man of the Saint's creation as anything but 'Mr. Tombs'-the Simon Templar whom Patricia knew might never have existed inside that stoical stoop-shouldered frame.

'Er-a glass of sherry, perhaps,' he said.

Benny ordered Dry Sack, and knew that the only sherry Mr. Tombs had ever tasted before came from the nearest grocer. But he was an expert at putting strangers at their ease, and the Simon Templar who stood invisibly behind Mr. Tombs's chair had to admire his technique. He chattered away with a disarm­ing lack of condescension that presently had Mr. Tombs lean­ing back and chuckling with him, and ordering a return round of Dry Sack with the feeling that he had at last met a success­ful man who really understood and appreciated him. They went in to lunch with Benny roaring with infectious laughter over a vintage Stock Exchange story which Mr. Tombs had dug out of his memory.

'Smoked salmon, Mr. Tombs? Or a spot of caviare? . . . Then we might have oeufs en cocotte Rossini-done in cream with foie gras and truffles. And roast pigeons with mushrooms and red currant jelly. I like a light meal in the middle of the day-it doesn't make you sleepy all the afternoon. And a bottle of Liebfraumilch off the ice to go with it?'

He ran through menu and wine list with an engaging ex­pertness which somehow made Mr. Tombs an equal partner in the exercise of gastronomic virtuosity. And Mr. Tombs, whose imagination had rarely soared above roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and a bottle of Australian burgundy, thawed still further and recalled another story that had provoked howls of laughter in Threadneedle Street when he was in his twenties.

Benny did his work so well that the sordid business aspect of their meeting never had a chance to obtrude itself during the meal; and yet he managed to find out everything he wanted to know about his guest's private life and opinions. Liquefying helplessly in the genial warmth of Benny's hospitality, Mr. Tombs became almost human. And Benny drew him on with unhurried mastery.

'I've always thought that insurance must be an interesting profession, Mr. Tombs. You've got to be pretty wide awake for it, too-I expect you always have clients who expect to take more out of you than they put in?'

Mr. Tombs, who had never found his job interesting, and who would never have detected an attempted fraud unless another department had pointed it out to him, smiled non­committally.

'That kind of mixed morality has always interested me,' said Benny, as if the point had only just occurred to him. 'A man who wouldn't steal a sixpence from a man he met in the street hasn't any objection to stealing half- crowns from the Government by cutting down his income tax return or smug­gling home a bottle of brandy when he comes across from France. If he's looking for a partner in business he wouldn't dream of putting a false value on his assets; but if his house is burgled he doesn't mind what value he puts on his things when he's making out his insurance claim.'

Mr. Tombs shrugged.

'I suppose Governments and wealthy public companies are considered fair game,' he hazarded.

'Well, probably there's a certain amount of lawlessness in the best of us,' admitted Benny. 'I've often wondered what I should do myself in certain circumstances. Suppose, for in­stance, you were going home in a taxi one night, and you found a wallet on the seat with a thousand pounds in it. Small notes that you could easily change. No name inside to show who the owner was. Wouldn't one be tempted to keep it?'

Mr. Tombs twiddled a fork, hesitating only for a second or two. But the Simon Templar who stood behind his chair knew that that was the question on which Benny Lucek's future hung-the point that had been so casually and skilfully led up to, which would finally settle whether 'Mr. Tombs' was the kind of man Benny wanted to meet. And yet there was no trace of anxiety or watchfulness in Benny's frank open face.

Benny tilted the last of the Liebfraumilch into Mr. Tombs's glass, and Mr. Tombs looked up.

'I suppose I should. It sounds dishonest, but I was trying to put myself in the position of being faced with the temptation, instead of theorising about it. Face to face with a thousand pounds in cash, and needing money to take my wife abroad, I might easily-er-succumb. Not that I mean to imply --'

'My dear fellow, I'm not going to blame you,' said Benny heartily. 'I'd do the same thing myself. I'd reason it out that a man who carried a thousand pounds in cash about with him had plenty more in the bank. It's the old story of fair game. We may be governed by plenty of laws, but our consciences are still very primitive when we've no fear of being caught.'

There was a silence after that, in which Mr. Tombs finished his last angel on horseback, mopped the plate furtively with the last scrap of toast, and accepted a cigarette from Benny's platinum case. The pause gave him his first chance to remember that he was meeting the sympathetic Mr. Lucek in order to hear about a business proposition-as Benny intended that it should. As a waiter approached with the bill, Mr. Tombs said tentatively: 'About your-um-advertisement --'

Benny scrawled his signature across the account, and pushed back his chair.

'Come up to my sitting-room and we'll talk about it.'

They went up in the lift, with Benny unconcernedly puffing Turkish cigarette smoke, and down an expensively carpeted corridor. Benny had an instinctive sense of dramatic values. Without saying anything, and yet at the same time without giving the impression that he was being intentionally reticent, he opened the door of his suite and ushered Mr. Tombs in.

The sitting-room was small but cosily furnished. A large carelessly-opened paper parcel littered the table in the centre, and there was a similar amount of litter in one of the chairs. Benny picked up an armful of it and dumped it on the floor in the corner.

'Know what these things are?' he asked off-handedly.