Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, like others of his ilk, had a sound working knowledge of the peculiar psychology of wealthy Colonials at large in London—of that open-hearted, almost pathetically guileless eagerness to be good fellows which leads them to buy gold bricks in the Strand, or to hand thousands of pounds in small notes to two perfect strangers as evidence of their good faith—and he was so impressed with the potentialities of Mr. Tombs that he ordered the very choicest pictures in his stock to be included in the filling of the order, and made a personal trip to London the next day to find out more about his Heaven-sent bird from the bush.
The problem of making stealthy inquiries about a guest in a place like the Palace Royal Hotel might have troubled anyone less experienced in the art of investigating prospective victims; but to Mr. Tanfold it was little more than a matter of routine, a case of Method C4
'A tall dark gentleman with glasses—is that him?'
'That's him,' agreed Mr. Tanfold glibly; and learned, as he had hoped, that Mr. Tombs was a regular and solitary patron of the bar.
It did not take him much longer to discover that Mr. Tombs's father was an exceedingly rich and exceedingly pious citizen of Melbourne, a loud noise in the Chamber of Commerce, an only slightly smaller noise in the local government, and an indefatigable guardian of public morality. He also gathered that Mr. Tombs, besides carrying on his father's business, was expected to carry on his moralising activities also, and that this latter inheritance was much less acceptable to Mr. Tombs Jr. than it should have been to a thoroughly well-brought-up young man. The soul of Sebastian Tombs II, it appeared, yearned for naughtier things: the panting of the psalmist's hart after the water-brooks, seemingly, was positively as no pant at all compared with the panting of the heart of, Tombs
Mr. Tanfold did not rub his hands gloatingly; but he ordered another drink, and when it had been served he laid a ten-pound note on the bar.
'You needn't bother about the change,' he said, 'if you'd like to do me a small favour.'
The barman looked at the note, and picked it up. The only other customers at the bar at that moment were two men at the other end of the room, who were out of earshot.
'What can I do, sir?' he asked.
Mr. Tanfold put a card on top of the note—it bore the name of a firm of private inquiry agents who existed only in his imagination.
'I've been engaged to make some inquiries about this fellow,' he said. 'Will you point him out to me when he comes in? I'd like you to introduce us. Tell him I'm another lonely Australian, and ask if he'd like to meet me—that's all I want.'
The barman hesitated for a second, and then folded the note and put it in his pocket with a cynical nod. Mr. Tombs meant nothing to him, and ten pounds was ten pounds.
'That ought to be easy enough, sir,' he said. 'He usually gets here about this time. What name do I say?'
It was, as a matter of fact, almost ridiculously simple—so simple that it never occurred to Mr. Tanfold to wonder why. To him, it was only an ordinary tribute to the perfection of his routine—it is an illuminating sidelight on the vanity of 'clever' criminals that none of Simon Templar's multitudinous victims had ever paused to wonder whether perhaps someone else might not be able to duplicate their brilliantly applied psychology, and do it just a little better than they did.
