13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

Louie shook his head.

'Because I haven't a chance to spend the money,' he replied.

He led the way back dejectedly into the living-room and threw himself into a chair, thoughtfully refilling his glass before he did so.

'You see,' he said, when Simon Templar had taken the chair opposite him with his glass also refilled. 'A thing like this has got to be handled properly. It's no good my just making diamonds and trying to sell them. I might get away with one or two, but if I brought a sackful of them into a shop and tried to sell 'em the buyer would start to wonder whether I was trying to get rid of some illicit stuff. He'd want to ask all sorts of questions about where I got 'em, and as likely as not he'd call in the police. And what does that mean? It means that either I've got to say nothing and probably get taken for a crook and put in prison——' Louie's features registered profound horror at this frightful possi­bility. 'Or else I've got to give away my secret. And if I said that I made the diamonds myself, they'd want me to prove it; and if I proved it, everybody would know it could be done, and the bottom would fall out of the diamond market. If people knew that anybody could make diamonds for threepence a time, diamonds just wouldn't be worth any­thing any more.'

Simon nodded. The argument was logical and provided a very intriguing impasse. He waited for Mr. Fallon to point the way out.

'What this thing needs,' said Louie, duly coming up to expectations, 'is someone to run it in a businesslike way. It's got to be scientific, just like the way the diamonds are made.' Mr. Fallon had worked all this out for himself in his day­dreams, and the recital was mechanically easy. 'Someone would have to go off somewhere—not to South Africa, be­cause that's too much controlled, but to South America maybe —and do some prospectin'. After a while he'd report that he'd found diamonds, and set up a mine. We'd set up a company and sell shares to the public, and after a bit the diamonds'd start comin' home and they could all be sold in the regular market quite legitimate.'

'Why don't you do that?' inquired the Saint perplexedly.

'I've got no heart for it,' said Louie with a sigh. 'I'm not so young as I was; and besides, I never had any kind of head for these things. And I don't want to do it. I don't want to get myself tied up in a lot of business worries and office work. I've had that all my life. I want to enjoy myself— travel around and meet some girls and have a good time. Be­tween you and I,' said Mr. Fallon with a catch in his voice and tears glistening in his eyes, 'the doctors tell me that I haven't long to live. I've had a hard life, and I want to make the best of what I have got left. Now, if I had a young fellow like yourself to help me . . .'

He leaned further back in his chair, with his eyes half dosed, and went on as if talking to himself: 'It'd have to be a chap who could keep his mouth shut, a sport who wouldn't mind doing a bit of hard work for a lot of money —someone that I could just leave to manage everything while I went off and had a good time. He'd have to have a bit of money of his own to invest in the company, just to make everything square and aboveboard and legal, and in a year or so he'd be a bloomin' millionaire ridin' around in a Rolls Royce with chauffeurs and everything. You'd think it'd be easy to find a fellow like that, but it isn't. There aren't many chaps that I take a likin' to—not chaps that I feel I could trust with anything as big as this. That's why when I took a fancy to you, I wondered . . .' Mr. Fallon sighed again, a sigh of heart-rending self-pity. 'But I suppose it's no use. Here am I with the greatest discovery in modern science, and I can't do anything with it. I suppose I was just born un­lucky, like I told you.'

The Saint was sublimely sure that Louie Fallon was un­lucky, but he did not dream of saying so. He allowed his face to become illumined with a light of breathless cupidity which was everything that Mr. Fallon had desired.

'Well,' he said hesitantly, 'if you've really taken a fancy to me and I can do anything to help you——'

Louie stared at him for a moment incredulously, as if he had never dared to hope that such a miracle could happen.

'No,' he said at length, covering his eyes wearily, 'it couldn't be true. My luck can't have changed. You wouldn't do a thing like that for a perfect stranger.'

During the conversation that followed, however, it ap­peared that Louie's luck had indeed changed. His new-found friend, it seemed, was quite prepared to do such a service for a perfect stranger. They talked for