undiscriminating kind in the world. Short of the most elaborate and irrefutable evidence to the contrary, combined with warrants and court orders and God knows how many other formalities, the ticket itself is the only legal claim under heaven to any prize which it may draw. There are not even any counterfoils to be retained by the original seller; so that, without that law, the administration of the lottery would be impossible. In other words, the piece of paper which Joris Vanlinden had lost, a folded sheet no more than seven inches long by four inches wide, with the thickness of the twenty sections into which a Navidad ticket is divided, was the strongest existing claim to a payment of fifteen million pesetas, two million dollars or four hundred thousand pounds at the most conservative rate of exchange-more than seven hundred pounds or thirty-five hundred dollars per square inch if you opened it out-one of the most compact and negotiable and untraceable concentrations of wealth that the world can ever have seen. The Saint had known boodle in almost every shape and form under the sun, had handled what everybody except himself would have called more than his fair share of it, but there was something about this new and hitherto tmconsidered species of it that took his breath away.
He stopped walking and looked at Vanlinden again. The old man, shivering with nervous reaction and clinging pathetically to his daughter's hand, had sunk back exhausted on to the pillow. His weak, tired eyes stared mutely up at the Saint; but even he must have been convinced that Simon knew nothing, for the fire had died out of them and left only the anguish.
Simon turned to the girl.
'If Graner's idea was what you say it was, why did he let you go at all?'
'He didn't. He said he was going to, but I never, believed him. Every day I was terrified that something - something would happen to Joris. When I knew that the official lists were supposed to arrive tonight, I was ... I was sure they . . . they would see that something happened to Joris before he woke up tomorrow.'
'So you decided to make a dash for it.'
She nodded.
'We said we were going to bed early and we got out of a window. Graner hadn't let the dogs out then. . . .'
'There are dogs, are there?'
He heard her catch her breath.
'Yes. But they weren't out. . . . We got away, and we ran. But they must have missed us. They came after us and caught us on the road. That was when you arrived.'
The Saint blew two smoke rings, very carefully putting the second through the middle of the first.
'So they took the ticket,' he said. 'But they didn't have to kill Joris. Or did they?' His eyes pinned her again, very clear and level and bright like sapphires. 'Does anything strike you about that?'
She pushed her fingers through her disordered hair.
'My God,' she said, 'how can I think?'
'Well, doesn't anything strike you? They may have wanted to put Joris away because he knew too much. But there may have been another reason. If he was running about loose after they'd pinched his ticket, he might make a fuss about it. It wouldn't be easy, but I suppose he could make a fuss. People don't buy a whole two-thousand- peseta Navidad ticket all to themselves so often, especially in a place like this, that the shop wouldn't be likely to remember him. If he was dead, anybody could say they bought it off him; but if he was alive and raising hell --'
'How could he? He couldn't go near the police --'
'That's a matter of opinion. Admittedly he'd be getting himself into trouble at the same time; but anyone who turns state's evidence can usually count on a good deal of leniency, and Joris has a lot less to lose than the others have. Just looking at it theoretically, when a bloke is in Joris' position, and a miracle has tossed him up within a finger's length of getting everything he wants most in the world, and then somebody snatches it away from him at the last moment and shoves him back again, it's liable to make him crazy enough to do anything for revenge. I don't know what sort of a psychologist Reuben Graner is, but I'd be inclined to look at it that way if I were in his place. What do you think, Hoppy?'
The unornamental features of Mr Uniatz marshalled themselves into an expression of reproachful anguish. Even in their moments of most undisturbed serenity, they tended to resemble something which an amateur sculptor had beaten out of a lump of clay with a large hammer, in the vain hope that his most polite friends would profess to recognise it as a human face; but when twisted out of repose they looked even more like an unfortunate essay in ultrafuturistic art, and could probably have commanded a high price from an advanced museum. Mr Uniatz, however, was not concerned about his beauty. A man of naive and elemental tastes, there was something about the mere sound of the word 'think' which made him wince.
'What-me?' he said painfully.
'Yes, you.'
Mr Uniatz bit another piece off the end of his cigar and swallowed it absent-mindedly.
'I dunno, boss,' he began weakly; and then, with the Saint's clear and accusing blue eye fixed on him, he returned manfully to his torment. 'Dis guy Graner,' he said. 'Is he de guy wit' de oughday?'
'We were hoping he had some.'
'De guy wit' de ice?'
'That's right.'
'De guy ya tell me about in Madrid?'
'Exactly.'
'De guy we come here to take?'
'The same.'
'De lottery guy?' said Hoppy, leaving no stone unturned in his anxiety to make sure of his ground before committing himself.
