'Yes, boss,' he said apologetically. 'I t'ought ya said I could take it.' He pointed to the table. 'Dey wasn't so much in de bottle, at dat.'
'You immortal ass!' snarled the Saint. 'We aren't talking about the whiskey!'
He turned back to the girl.
'Hoppy didn't take it,' he said. 'And neither did I.
If you don't believe us, you can go ahead and turn us inside out. I didn't even know Joris had a lottery ticket. How much was it worth?'
'You may as well know now,' she said dully. 'It was a ticket in the Christmas lottery. It won the first prize- fifteen million pesetas.'
II How Simon Templar Conversed with a Porter, and a Brace of Guardias Were Happily Reunited
THE SAINT stared at her, and then stared again at Joris Vanlinden.
He felt rather as if it was his own stomach, and not the receptacle of petrified leather which performed the same organic function for Mr Uniatz, that had absorbed the full effects of two thirds of a bottle of scotch. He knew all about the Christmas lottery, had bought tickets himself at various times, and shared the daydreams of almost every other man in Spain until the results were published. There is a Spanish national lottery three times every month; but the Navidad is the great event of the year, the time when nearly three million pounds sterling are distributed in prizes. Simon had read in the papers of men who had awakened to find themselves millionaires overnight; but he had never met one of them, and in his heart, like most other people, he could never quite convince himself that such things really did happen. The actual concrete proof of it, slapped right up in his face like that, made his head reel.
'Did Joris have the whole ticket?' he asked, trying to ease the shock. 'He didn't just have a section?'
The girl shook her head. His blank and stunned bewilderment was so obvious that it must have satisfied her that he had been speaking the truth.
'No, he had it all. He must have been crazy, I suppose. I thought he was. But he said it was the only way. He saved up the little money they gave him now and again until he could buy it. And it won !'
Simon made a rapid mental calculation.
'Why hadn't it been paid yet?'
'Because we're in Tenerife.'
He grinned wryly, half unconsciously.
'Of course, I'd forgotten that.'
'The draw was on the twenty-first.' She was speaking almost mechanically, and yet with an intense sort of eagerness, as if talking kept her mind from dwelling on other things. 'The results were cabled here the next day. That was when Graner cabled to Madrid. . . . But they don't pay on that. A few days ago they published a photographic reproduction of the official list; but they don't pay on that either. You could get a bank to discount it- they charge two per cent commission-but I don't suppose they could handle one of the big prizes. Otherwise you have to wait till the administration chooses to send a set of official lists here.'
'It's a great piece of Spanish organisation, isn't it?' said the Saint aimlessly.
'The lists were supposed to be coming on the boat that got in today,' she said.
Simon gazed at her for a moment longer; and then he lighted another cigarette from the butt of his last one and began to pace restlessly up and down the room, while Hoppy watched him with a kind of dog-like complacency.
It would be unfair to say that the primitive convolutions of what, on account of the limitations of the English language, can only be referred to as Mr Uniatz' brain were incapable of registering more than one idea at a time. To be accurate, they were capable of registering two; although it must be admitted that one of them was a more or less habitual and unconscious background to whatever else was going on. And this permanent and pervasive background was his sublime faith in the infallibility and divine inspiration of the Saint.
For the Saint, as Mr Uniatz had discovered, could think. He could concentrate upon problems and work them out without any perceptible signs of suffering. He could produce Ideas. He could make Plans. Mr Uniatz, a simple- minded citizen, whose intellectual horizons had hitherto been bounded by the logic of automatics and sub-machine guns, had, on their first meetings, observed these supernatural manifestations with perplexity and awe. When they met again in London, some years later, Mr Uniatz, who had been ruminating hazily about it ever since, had just reached the conclusion that if he could only hitch his wagon to such a scintillating star his life would hold no more worries.
Since it fitted in admirably with his plans at the time, Simon had let him do it. Whereupon Mr Uniatz had attached himself with a blind and unshakable allegiance from which, short of physical violence, it was impossible to pry him loose for more than a few weeks at a time. Left to himself, Hoppy would wander moodily about the earth, a spiritual Ishmael, until he could place his destiny once again in the hands of this superman, this invincible genius, who could find his way with such apparent ease through the terrifying and tormenting labyrinths of Thought. Whatever the problem in hand might be, then or at any other time, Hoppy Uniatz knew that the Saint would solve it.
He leaned forward and tapped Christine on the shoulder.
'It's okay, miss,' he said encouragingly. 'De boss 'll fix it. Wit' a nut like his, he could of bin a big shot in de States.'
'I was a big shot,' Simon retorted. 'But there are limits.'
He was beginning to get the finer details of the situation sorted out into a certain amount of order, but without making much difference to the dizzy turmoil into which his mind had been whirled. The more he thought about it, the more fantastic it became.
For a Spanish lottery ticket is a documento del portador, a bearer bond of the most comprehensive and
