13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

Louis Fallen had similar ideas, although he was no philoso­pher. The finer abstractions of lawlessness left Louie not only cold but in a condition to make ice cream shiver merely by breathing on it. Neither were Louie's interpretations of those essential ideas particularly novel; but he was a very sound practitioner.

'It's a waste of time tryin' to think up new stunts, Sol,' Louie declared, 'while there's all the mugs you want still fallin' for the old ones. Anyone with a good uncut diamond can draw a dividend from it every day.'

'Anyone who could put down five-hundred quid could float a good uncut diamond, Louie,' replied Mr. Solomon, sympa­thetic but cautious.

'Anyone who could put down five hundred quid could float a company and swindle people like a gentleman,' said Louie.

Mr. Solomon shook his head sadly. His business was pat­ronised by a small and exclusive clientele which was rarely in a position to bargain with him.

'Dot's a pity, Louie. I like to see a good man get on.'

'Now listen to me, you old shark,' said Louie amiably. 'I want a diamond, a real classy bit of ice, and all I can afford is a hundred pounds. Look over your stock and see what you can find. And make it snappy—I want to get started this week.'

'Vun honderd pounds iss for a cheap bit of paste,' said Mr. Solomon pathetically. 'You know I ain't got nothing like dot in my shop, Louie.'

Half an hour later he parted grudgingly with an excellent stone, for which Louie Fallen was persuaded to pay a hun­dred and fifty pounds, and the business-like tension of the in­terview relaxed in an exchange of cheap cigars. In the estima­tion of Mr. Solomon, who had given thirty pounds for the stone, it was a highly satisfactory afternoon's work.

'You got a gift there, Louie,' he said gloomily.

'I've got a gold-mine,' said Louie confidently. 'All I need beside this is psychology, and I don't have to pay for that. I'm just naturally psychological. You got to pick out the right kind of sucker. Then it goes like this.'

The germ of that elusive quality which turns an otherwise normal and rational human being into a sucker has yet to be isolated. Louie Fallon, the man of action, had never both­ered to probe into it: he recognised one when he saw one, without analysing whys and wherefores, exactly as he was ac­customed to recognising a piece of cheese without a thought of the momentous dawn of life which it enshrines. Simon Templar himself had various theories.

Probably the species Mug is the same as the common cold —there is no single bacillus to account for it. Nor is there likely to be any rigid definition of that precise shade of covetous innocence, that peculiarly grasping guilelessness, which stamps the hard-boiled West Country farmer, accus­tomed to prying into the pedigrees of individual oats before disgorging a penny on them, as a potential purchaser of the Tower of London for two hundred pounds down and the balance by installments. But whatever these symptoms may be, Simon Templar possessed them in their richest beauty. He had only to saunter in his most natural manner down the highways of the world immaculate and debonair, with his soft hat slanted blithely over one eye, and the passing pageant of humanity crystallised into men who had had their pockets picked and only needed five shillings to get home, men with gold bricks, men with oil wells in Texas, men needing assistance in the execution of eccentric wills, men with charts showing the authenticated cemetery of Captain Kidd's treas­ure, men with horses that could romp home on one leg and a crutch, and men who just thought he might like a game of cards. It was one of the Saint's most treasured assets; and he never ordered strawberries in December without a toast to the benign Providence that had endowed him with the gift of having all that he asked of life poured into his lap.

As a matter of fact he was sauntering down the Strand when he met Louie Fallon. He didn't actually run into him, but he did walk into him; but there was nothing particularly remarkable about that, for the Strand is a street which con­tains more crooks to the square yard than any other area of ground outside a prison wall—which may be partly ac­counted for by the fact that it also has the reputation of being the favourite promenading ground of more potential suckers than any other thoroughfare in the Metropolis.