Teal's mouth opened, but no sounds came from it. His expression implied that a whole volcano of devastating sarcasm was boiling on the tip of his tongue, but that the Saint's lunacy had soared into realms of waffiness beyond the reach of repartee.
'Costello and Hammel had to do something,' said the Saint. 'International Cottons have been very bad for a long time—as you'd have known if you hadn't packed all your stuff away in a gilt-edged sock. On the other hand, Enstone's interest—Cosmopolitan Textiles—were good. Costello and Hammel could have pulled out in two ways: either by a merger, or else by having Enstone commit suicide so that Cosmopolitans would tumble down in the scare and they could buy them in —you'll probably find they've sold a bear in them all through the month, trying to break the price. And if you look at the papers this afternoon you'll see that all Enstone's securities have dropped through the bottom of the market—a bloke in his position can't commit suicide without starting a panic. Costello and Hammel went to dinner to try for the merger, but if Enstone turned it down they were ready for the other thing.'
'Well?' said Teal obstinately; but for the first time there seemed to be a tremor in the foundations of his disbelief.
'They only made one big mistake. They didn't arrange for Lew to leave a letter.'
'People have shot themselves without leaving letters.'
'I know. But not often. That's what started me thinking.'
'Well?' said the detective again.
Simon rumpled his hair into more profound disorder, and said: 'You see, Claud, in my disreputable line of business you're always thinking'; 'Now, what would A do?—and what would B do?—and what would C do?' You have to be able to get inside people's minds and know what they're going to do and how they're going to do it, so you can always be one jump ahead of 'em. You have to be a practical psychologist —just like the head salesman of a general manufacturer in the Midlands.'
Teal's mouth opened, but for some reason which was beyond his conscious comprehension he said nothing. And Simon Templar went on, in the disjointed way that he sometimes fell into when he was trying to express something which he himself had not yet grasped in bare words:
'Sales psychology is just a study of human weaknesses. And that's a funny thing, you know. I remember the manager of one of the biggest novelty manufacturers in the world telling me that the soundest test of any idea for a new toy was whether it would appeal to a middle-aged business man. It's true, of course. It's so true that it's almost stopped being a joke—the father who plays with his little boy's birthday presents so energetically that the little boy has to shove off and smoke papa's pipe. Every middle-aged business man has that strain of childishness in him somewhere, because without it he would never want to spend his life gathering more paper millions than he can ever spend, and building up rickety castles of golden cards that are always ready to topple over and be built up again. It's just a glorified kid's game with a box of bricks. If all the mighty earth-shaking business men weren't like that they could never have built up an economic system in which the fate of nations, all the hunger and happiness and achievement of the world, was locked up in bars of yellow tooth-stopping.' Simon raised his eyes suddenly— they were very bright and in some queer fashion sightless, as if his mind was separated from every physical awareness of his surroundings. 'Lewis Enstone was just that kind of a man,' he said.
'Are you still thinking of that toy you were playing with,' Teal asked restlessly.
'That—and other things we heard. And the photographs. Did you notice them ?'
'No.'
'One of them was Enstone playing with a clock-work train. In another of them he was under a rug, being a bear. In another he was working a big model merry-go-round. Most of the pictures were like that. The children came into them, of course, but you could see that Enstone was having the swellest time.'
Teal, who had been fidgeting with a pencil, shrugged brusquely and sent it clattering across the desk.
