Patricia was not convinced.
She was even less convinced when the Saint went out the next morning. From his extensive wardrobe he had selected one of his most elegant suits, a creation in light-hued saxony of the softest and most expensive weave—a garment which could by no possible chance have been worn by a man who had to devote his day to honest toil. His tie was dashing, his silk socks would have made a Communist's righteous indignation swell to bursting point, and over his right eye he had tilted a brand new Panama which would have made one wonder whether the strange shapeless headgear of the same breed worn by old gents whilst pottering around their gardens could conceivably be any relation whatsoever of such a superbly stylish lid. Moreover he had taken out the car which was the pride of his stable—the new cream and red Hirondel which was in itself the hallmark of a man who could afford to pay five thousand pounds for a car and thereafter watch a gallon of petrol blown into smoke every three or four miles.
'Where's the funeral?' she asked; and the Saint smiled blandly.
'I'm a young sportsman with far more money than sense, and I'm sure Comrade Newdick will be pleased to see me,' he said; and he kissed her.
Mr. Oscar Newdick was pleased to see him—Simon Templar would have been vastly surprised if he hadn't been. That aura of idle affluence which the Saint could put on as easily as he put on a coat was one of his most priceless accessories, and it was never worn for any honest purpose.
But this Mr. Oscar Newdick did not know. To him, the arrival of such a person was like an answer to prayer. Monty Hayward's guess at Mr. Newdick's activities since collecting five thousand pounds from him was fairly accurate, but only fairly. Mr. Newdick had not caught several other mugs, but only three; and one of them had only been induced to invest a paltry three hundred pounds. The helicopter racket had been failing in its dividends, and the past year had not shown a single pennyworth of profit. Mr. Newdick did not believe in accumulating pennies: when he made a touch, it had to be a big one, and he was prepared to wait for it—the paltry three hundred pound investor had been an error of judgment, a young man who had grossly misled him with fabulous accounts of wealthy uncles, which when the time came to make the touch had been discovered to be the purest fiction—but recently the periods of waiting had exceeded all reasonable limits. Mr. Newdick had travelled literally thousands of miles on the more prosperous suburban lines in search of victims— the fellow-passenger technique really was his own invention, and he practised it to perfection—but many moons had passed since he brought a prospective investor home from his many voyages.
When Simon Templar arrived, in fact, Mr. Newdick was gazing mournfully over the litter of spars and fabric and machinery in one of his corrugated-iron sheds, endeavouring to estimate its value in the junk market. The time had come, he was beginning to feel, when that particular stock-in-trade had paid the last percentage that could be squeezed out of it; it had rewarded him handsomely for his initial investment, but now it was obsolete. The best solution appeared to be to turn it in and concentrate his varied talents on some other subject. A fat insurance policy, of course, followed by a well-organized fire, would have been more profitable; but a recent sensational arson trial and the consequent publicity given to such schemes made him wary of taking that way out. And he was engrossed in these uninspiring meditations when the bell in his 'office' rang and manna fell from Heaven.
Mr. Oscar Newdick, it must be acknowledged, did not instantly recognise it as manna. At first he thought it could only be the rate collector, or another summons for his unpaid electric light bill. He tiptoed to a grimy window which looked out on the road, with intent to escape rapidly across the adjacent fields if his surmise proved correct; and it was thus that he saw the imposing automobile which stood outside.
Mr. Newdick, a man of the world, was jerry to the fact that rate collectors and servers of summonses rarely arrive to their grim work in five-thousand-pound Hirondels; and it was with an easy conscience, if not yet admixed with undue optimism, that he went to open the door.
'Hullo, old bean,' said the Saint.
'Er—hullo,' said Mr. Newdick.
'I blew in to see if you could tell me anything about your jolly old company,' said the Saint.
'Er—yes,' said Mr. Newdick. 'Er—why don't you come inside?'
His hesitation was not due to any bashfulness or even to offended dignity. Mr.
