13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

got smaller,' hazarded the Saint.

'It caused terrific pressure,' said Mr. Fallen firmly. 'Just imagine it. Thousands of millions of tons of rock—and—'

'And rock.'

'And rock, cooling down, and shrinking up, and getting hard. Well, naturally, any bits of carbon that were floating around in the rock got squeezed. So what happened?' de­manded Louie, triumphantly reaching the climax of his lucid description.

He paused dramatically, and the Saint wondered whether he was expected to offer any serious solution to the riddle; but before he had really made up his mind, Mr. Fallon was solving the problem for him.

'I'll tell you what happened,' said Mr. Fallon impressively, leaning over into a strategic position in which he could tap the Saint on the shoulder. Once again he paused, but there was no doubt that this hiatus at least was motivated solely by the requirements of theatrical suspense. 'Diamonds!' said Mr. Fallon, with an air of patronising pride which almost suggested that he personally had been responsible for the event.

The Saint took a draught from his glass, and gazed at him with that air of slightly perplexed awe which was one of the most precious assets in his infinitely varied stock of facial expressions. It was a gaze pregnant with so much ingen­uous interest, such naive wonder and curiosity, that Mr. Fallon felt the cockles of his heart warming to a temperature at which, on a cold day, he would be tempted to dispense with his overcoat. Since he was not wearing an overcoat, he gave rein to his emotions by insisting that he should stand another round of drinks.

'Yes,' he resumed, when he had refilled their glasses. 'Diamonds. And that's how I make them—not,' he admitted modestly, 'that I mean I make the earth go hot and then cool down again. But I do the same thing on a smaller scale.'

The Saint knitted his brows. It was the most ostentatious sign of a functioning brain that he could permit himself in the part he was playing.

'Now you tell me, I think I have heard something like that before,' he said. 'Hasn't somebody else done the same thing—I mean made synthetic diamonds by cooling chunks of iron under pressure?'

'I did hear of something on those lines,' confessed Mr. Fallon magnanimously. 'But the process wasn't any good. They could only make very small diamonds that weren't worth anything in the market and cost ten times as much as real ones. I make 'em with things that you can buy in any chemist's shop for a few pennies. I don't even need a proper laboratory. I could make 'em in your bathroom.' He drank, wiped his lips and looked at the Saint suddenly with bright plaintive eyes. 'You don't believe me,' he said accusingly.

'Why—yes, of course I do,' protested the Saint, changing his expression with a guilty start.

Mr. Fallon continued to shake his head.

'No, you don't,' he insisted morbidly, 'and I can't blame you. I know it sounds like a tall story. But I'm not a liar.'

'Of course not,' agreed the Saint hastily.

'I'm not a liar,' insisted Mr. Fallon lingeringly, as if he was simply aching to be called one. 'Anyone who calls me a liar is goin' to have to eat his words.' He was silent for a moment, while the idea appeared to develop in his mind; and then he slued round in his seat abruptly, and tapped the Saint on the shoulder again.

'Look here—I'll prove it to you. You're a sport—we ran into each other just now as perfect strangers, and now here you are havin' a drink with me. I don't know whether you be­lieve in concidences,' said Louie, waxing metaphysical, 'but you might be the very fellow I'm lookin' for. I like a chap who isn't too damned stand-offish to have a drink with another chap without being introduced, and when I like a chap there isn't a limit to what I wouldn't mind doin' for him. Why, you might be the very chap. Well, what d'you say?'

'I didn't say anything,' said the Saint innocently.