16 The Saint Overboard

gave them. 'This is your Uncle Simon. Listen—didn't you tell me that you once had a respectable family?'

'It still is respectable,' Peter Quentin's voice answered indig­nantly. 'I'm the only one who's had anything to do with you.'

Simon grinned gently and slid a cigarette out of the package in front of him.

'Do any of them know anything about Lloyd's?'

'I've got a sort of cousin, or something, who works there,' said Peter, after a pause for reflection.

'That's great. Well, I want you to go and dig out this sort of cousin, or something, and stage a reunion. Be nice to him—re­mind him of the old family tree—and find out something for me about the Chalfont Castle.'

'Like a shot, old boy. But are you sure you don't want an estate agent?'

'No, I don't want an estate agent, you fathead. It's a wreck, not a ruin. She sank somewhere near Alderney about the begin­ning of March. I want you to find out exactly where she went down. They're sure to have a record at Lloyd's. Get a chart from Potter's, in the Minories, and get the exact spot marked. And send it to me at the Poste Restante, St Peter Port, Guernsey— to-night. Name of Tombs. Or get a bearing and wire it. But get something. All clear?'

'Clear as mud.' There was a suspicious hiatus at the other end of the line. 'But if this means you're on the warpath again——'

'If I want you, I'll let you know, Peter,' said the Saint con­tentedly, and rang off.

That was that. . . . But even if one knew the exact spot where things were likely to happen, one couldn't hang about there and wait for them. Not in a stretch of open water where a float­ing bottle would be visible for miles on a calm day. The Saint's next call was to another erstwhile companion in crime.

'Do you think you could buy me a nice diving suit, Roger?' he suggested sweetly. 'One of the latest self-contained contrap­tions with oxygen tanks. Say you're representing a movie company and you want it for an undersea epic.'

'What's the racket?' inquired Roger Conway firmly.

'No racket at all, Roger. I've just taken up submarine geology, and I want to have a look at some globigerina ooze. Now, if you bought that outfit this afternoon and shipped it off to me in a trunk——'

'Why not let me bring it?'

The Saint hesitated. After all, why not? It was the second time in a few minutes that the suggestion had been held out, and each time by a man whom he had tried and proved in more than one tight corner. They were old campaigners, men with his own cynical contempt of legal technicalities, and his own cool disre­gard of danger, men who had followed him before, without a qualm, into whatever precarious paths of breathless filibustering he had led them, and who were always accusing him of hogging all the fun when he tried to dissuade them from taking the same risks again. He liked working alone; but some aspects of Vogel's crew of modern pirates might turn out to be more than one man's meat.

'Okay.' The Saint drew at his cigarette, and his slow smile floated over the wire in the undertones of his voice. 'Get hold of Peter, and any other of the boys who are looking for a sticky end. But the other instructions stand. Ship that outfit to me personally, care of the Southern Railway—you might even make it two outfits, if you feel like looking at some fish—and Peter's to do his stuff exactly as I've already told him. You toughs can put up at the Royal; but you're not to recognise me unless I recognise you first. It may be worth a point or two if the un­godly don't know we're connected. Sold?'

'Cash,' said Roger happily.

Simon walked on air to the stairs. As he stepped down into the foyer, he became aware of a pair of socks. The socks were partic­ularly noticeable because they were of a pale brick-red hue, and intervened between a pair of blue trousers and a pair of brown and yellow co-respondent shoes. It was a combination of colours which, once seen, could not be easily forgotten; and the Saint's glance voyaged idly up to the face of the man who wore it. He had already seen it once before, and his glance at the physiog­nomy of the wearer confirmed his suspicion that there could not be two men simultaneously inhabiting Dinard with the identi­cally horrible taste in colour schemes. The sock stylist was no stranger.