13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

Strolling into Turk's Lane on this day when the ripeness of Mr. Winlass for the slaughter was finally made plain to him, Simon Templar learned how it was getting done.

It was not by any means the Saint's first visit to the pic­turesque little alley. He had an open affection for it, as he had for all such pathetic rearguards of the forlorn fight against dull mechanical modernity; and he had at least one friend who lived there.

Dave Roberts was a cobbler. He was an old grey-haired man with gentle grey eyes, known to every inhabitant of Turk's Lane as 'Uncle Dave,' who had plied his trade there since the oldest of them could remember, as his father and grandfather had done before him. It might almost be said that he was Turk's Lane, so wholly did he belong to the forgotten days that were preserved there. The march of progress to which Mr. Vernon Winlass belonged had passed him by. He sat in his tiny shop and mended the boots and shoes of the neighbourhood for microscopical old-world prices; he had a happy smile and a kind word for everyone; and with those simple things, unlike Mr. Vernon Winlass, his philosophy began and ended and was well content. To such pioneers as Mr. Winlass he was, of course, a dull reactionary and a stupid bumpkin; but to the Saint he was one of the few and dwindling relics of happier and cleaner days, and many pairs of Simon's own expensive shoes had gone to his door out of that queer affection rather than because they needed repairing.

Simon smoked a cigarette under the low beamed ceiling in the smell of leather and wax, while Dave Roberts wielded his awl under a flickering gas-jet and told him of the things that were happening in Turk's Lane.

'Ay, sir, Tom Unwin over the road, he's going. Mr. Winlass put him out o' business. Did you see that new shop next to Tom's? Mr. Winlass started that up, soon as he'd got the tenants out. Sold exactly the same things as Tom had in his shop for a quarter the price—practically give 'em away, he did. 'Course, he lost money all the time, but he can afford to. Tom ain't hardly done a bit o' business since then. 'Well,' Tom says to himself, 'if this goes on for another couple o' months I'll be broke,' so in the end he sells out to Mr. Win-lass an' glad to do it. I suppose I'll be the next, but Mr. Winlass won't get me out if I can help it.'

The Saint looked across the lane at the garish makeshift shop front next door to Tom Unwin's store, and back again to the gentle old man straining his eyes under the feeble light.

'So he's been after you, has he?' he said. 'Ay, he's been after me. One of his men come in my shop the other day. 'Your place is worth five hundred pounds,' he says. 'We'll give you seven hundred to get out at once, an' Mr. Winlass is being very generous with you,' he says. Well, I told him I didn't want to get out. I been here, man an' boy, for seventy years now, an' I wasn't going to get out to suit him. 'You realise,' he says, 'your obstinacy is holding up an important an' valuable piece of building?'—'Begging your pardon, sir,' I says, 'you're holdin' me up from mending these shoes.'—'Very well,' this chap says, 'if you're so stupid you can refuse two hundred pounds more than your place is worth, you're going to be glad to take two hundred less be­fore you're much older, if you don't come to your senses quick,' he says, 'and them's Mr. Winlass's orders,' he says.'

'I get it,' said the Saint quietly. 'And in a day or two you'll have a Winlass shoe repair shop next door to you, working for nothing.'

'They won't do work like I do,' said Dave Roberts stolidly. 'You can't do it, not with these machines. What did the Good Lord give us hands for, if it wasn't that they were the best tools in the world? . . . But I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Winlass tried it. But I wouldn't sell my house to him. I told this fellow he sent to see me: 'My compliments to Mr. Winlass,' I says, 'and I don't think much of his orders, nor the manner of anybody that carries 'em out. The way you talk to me,' I says, 'isn't the way to talk to any self-respecting man, an' I wouldn't sell you my house, not now after you've threatened me that way,' I says, 'not if you offered me seven thousands pounds.' An' I tells him to get out o' my shop an' take that message to Mr. Winlass.'

'I see,' said the Saint.

Dave Roberts finished off his sewing and put the shoe down in its place among the row of other finished jobs.

'I ain't afraid, sir,' he said. 'If it's the Lord's will that I go out of my house, I suppose He knows best. But I don't want Mr. Winlass to have it, an' the Lord helps them that helps themselves.'