11 The Brighter Buccaneer

suppose they're right. But it's all so wrong! It's unjust!'

Simon stood up and shook his fists frantically at the ceiling; and Mr. Parnock coughed.

'Perhaps I could help,' he suggested.

The Saint shook his head.

'That's what I came to see you about. It was just a desperate idea. I haven't got any friends who'd listen to me - I owe them all too much money. But now I've told you all about it, it all sounds so feeble and unconvincing. I wonder you don't send for the police right away.'

He shrugged, and picked up his hat. Mr. Parnock, a cumber­some man, moved rather hastily to take it away from him and pat him soothingly on the shoulder.

'My dear old chap, you mustn't say things like that. Now let's see what we can do for you. Sit down.' He pressed the Saint back towards his chair. 'Sit down, sit down. We can soon put this right. What's the value of this cheque?'

'A thousand pounds,' said the Saint listlessly. 'But it might as well be a million for all the chance I've got of finding the money.'

'Fortunately that's an exaggeration,' said Mr. Parnock cheerfully. 'Now this invention of yours - have you patented it?'

Simon snorted harshly.

'What with? I haven't had a shilling to call my own for weeks. I had to offer it to those people just as it stood, and trust them to give me a square deal.'

Mr. Parnock chuckled with great affability. He opened a drawer and took out his chequebook.

'A thousand pounds, Mr. Smith? And I expect you could do with a bit over for your expenses. Say twenty pounds . . . One thousand and twenty pounds.' He inscribed the figures with a flourish. 'I'll leave the cheque open so that you can go to the bank and cash it at once. That'll take a load off your mind, won't it?'

'But how do you know you'll ever see it back, Mr. Parnock?'

Mr. Parnock appeared to ponder the point, but the appear­ance was illusory.

'Well, suppose you left me a copy of your formula? That'd be good enough security for me. Of course, I expect you'll let me act as your agent, so I'm not really running any risk. But just as a formality . . .'

The Saint reached for a piece of paper.

'Do you know anything about chemistry?'

'Nothing at all,' confessed Mr. Parnock. 'But I have a friend who understands these things.'

Simon wrote on the paper and passed it over. Mr. Parnock studied it wisely, as he would have studied a Greek text.

Cu + Hg + HNO3 + St = CuHgNO3 + H2O +NO2 'Aha!' said Mr. Parnock intelligently. He folded the paper and stowed it away in his pocket-book, and stood up with his smooth fruity chuckle. 'Well, Mr. Smith, you run along now and attend to your business, and come and have lunch with me on Thursday and let's see what we can do about your inven­tion.'

'I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Mr. Parnock,' said the Saint almost tearfully as he shook the patent agent's smooth fat hand; but for once he was speaking nothing but the truth.

He went down to see Inwood again later that afternoon. He had one thousand pounds with him, in crisp new Bank of England notes; and the shabby old chemist's gratitude was worth all the trouble. Inwood swallowed several times, and blinked at the money dazedly.

'I couldn't possibly take it,' he said.

'Of course you could, uncle,' said the Saint. 'And you will. It's only a fair price for your invention. Just do one thing for me in return.'

'I'd do anything you asked me to,' said the inventor.

'Then never forget,' said Simon deliberately, 'that I was with you the whole of this morning-from half past ten till one o'clock. That might be rather important.' Simon lighted a cigarette ajid stretched himself luxuriously in his chair. 'And when you've got that thoroughly settled into your memory, let us try to imagine what Augustus Parnock is doing right now.'

It was at that precise moment, as a matter of history, that Mr. Augustus Parnock and his friend who understood those things were staring at a brass ashtray on which no vestige of plating was visible.

'What's the joke, Gus?' demanded Mr. Parnock's friend at length.

'I tell you it isn't a joke!' yelped Mr. Parnock. 'That ashtray was perfectly plated all over when I put it in my pocket at lunchtime. The fellow gave me his formula and everything. Look-here it is!'

The friend who understood those things, studied the scrap of paper, and dabbed a stained forefinger on the various items.

'Cu is copper,' he said. 'Hg is mercury and HNO3, is nitric acid. What it means is that you dissolve a little mercury in some weak nitric acid; and when you put it on copper the nitric acid eats a little of the copper, and the mercury forms an amalgam. CuHgNO3 is the amalgam-it'd have a silvery look which might make you think the thing had been plated. The other constituents resolve themselves in H2O, which is water, and NO2, which is a gas. Of course, the nitric acid goes on eating, and after a time it destroys the amalgam and the thing looks like copper again. That's all there is to it.'

'But what about the St?' asked Mr. Parnock querulously. His friend shrugged.

'I can't make that out at all-it isn't any chemical symbol,' he said; but it dawned on Mr. Parnock later.

The Unusual Ending