13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

do you know?' asked Peter suspiciously. 'I can usually guess when he's telling the truth—he makes a face as if it hurt him.'

'He isn't pulling your leg this time, sir,' said the man. 'I happen to be a proof-reader at Parstone's.'

The surprising thing about coincidences is that they so often happen. The mouse-like man was one of those amazing accidents on which the fate of nations may hinge, but there was no logical reason why he should not have been drinking at that bar as probably as at any other hostel in the district. And yet there is no doubt that if Mr. Herbert Parstone could have foreseen the accident he would have bought that par­ticular public-house for the simple pleasure of closing it down lest any such coincidence should happen; but unhappily for him Mr. Herbert Parstone was not a clairvoyant.

This proof-reader—the term, by the way, refers to the occupation and not necessarily to the alcoholic content of the man—had been with Parstone for twelve years, and he was ready for a change.

'I was with Parstone when he was just a small jobbing printer,' he said, 'before he took up this publishing game. That's all he is now, really—a printer. But he's going to have to get along without me. In the last three years I've taken one cut after another, till I don't earn enough money to feed myself properly; and I can't stand it any longer. I've got four more months on my contract, but after that I'm going to take another job.'

'Did you read my book?' asked Peter.

The man shook his head.

'Nobody read your book, sir—if you'll excuse my telling you. It was just put on a shelf for three weeks, and after that Parstone sent you his usual letter. That's what happens to everything that's sent to him. If he gets his money, the book goes straight into the shop, and the proof-reader's the first man who has to wade through it. Parstone doesn't care whether it's written in Hindustani.'

'But surely,' protested Peter half-heartedly, 'he couldn't carry on a racket like that in broad daylight and get away with it?'

The reader looked at him with a rather tired smile on his mouse-like features.

'It's perfectly legal, sir. Parstone publishes the book. He prints copies and sends them around. It isn't his fault if the reviewers won't review it and the booksellers won't buy it. He carries out his legal undertaking. But it's a dirty business.'

After a considerably longer conversation, in the course of which a good deal more beer was consumed, Peter Quentin was convinced; and he was so crestfallen on the way home that Simon took pity on him.

'Let me read this opus,' he said, 'if you've got a spare copy. Maybe it isn't so lousy, and if there's anything in it we'll send it along to some other place.'

He had the book next day; and after ploughing through the first dozen pages his worst fears were realised. Peter Quentin was not destined to take his place in the genealogy of literature with Dumas, Tolstoy, and Conan Doyle. The art of writing was not in him. His spelling had a grand simplicity that would have delighted the more progressive orthographists, his grammatical constructions followed in the footsteps of Gertrude Stein, and his punctuation marks seemed to have more connection with intervals for thought and opening beer-bottles than with the requirements of syntax.

Moreover, like most first novels, it was embarrassingly per­sonal.

It was this fact which made Simon follow it to the bitter end, for the hero of the story was one 'Ivan Grail, the Robbin Hood of modern crime,' who could without difficulty be identified with the Saint himself, his 'beutifull wife,' and 'Frank Morris his acomplis whos hard-biten featurs consealed a very clever brain and witt.' Simon Templar swal­lowed all the flattering evidences of hero-worship that adorned the untidy pages, and actually blushed. But after he had reached the conclusion—inscribed 'FINNIS' in tri­umphant capitals—he did some heavy thinking.

Later on he