He ran over everything he could recall about Nordsten. The name was not on the tip of every tongue, like the names of Rockefeller, or Morgan, but it was a name that was no less famous in other fields of finance; and it was part of Simon Templar's business to have at least a passing knowledge of those fields where millions are dealt with which are outside the limited ken of the average man in the street. Ivar Nordsten reaped in those fields; and the Saint had heard of him.
To the few people whose interests brought them in contact with the less publicized kingdoms of industry, he was known as the Paper King. Start-, ing from one small factory in Sweden, he had built up a chain of production units which controlled practically the whole output of Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Holland, until more than half the paper which was consumed in Europe was manufactured under his management. Not long ago he had taken over the most important mills in Austria and Denmark, and penetrated the British industry with an amount of capital which completed a virtual financial monopoly of the most considerable manufacturing and consuming countries in Europe. Not even content with that, he was rumoured to be negotiating for a series of loans and amalgamations which would link up the major concerns of Canada and the United States in the gigantic organization of which he was dictator--an invulnerable world trust that would practically be able to write its own checks on every industry in which paper was used, and which would in a few years lift his already fabulous fortune into astronomical figures. This was the Ivar Nordsten of whom Annette Vickery had never heard; but it is a curious commentary on this civilization that the average man and woman hears of comparatively few of the great financial wizards until those wizards are trying to conjure themselves out of the dock in a criminal court. And this was the Ivar Nordsten who required a convicted forger to counterfeit twelve different 'series of foreign government bonds.
Simon Templar sat in the armchair and turned the specimen bonds over on his knee; and his second cigarette smouldered down till it scorched his fingers. There was only one possible explanation that he could see, and it made him feel giddy to think of it.
At one o'clock the saturnine butler brought him an excellent cold lunch on a tray and asked him what he would like to drink. Simon suggested a bottle of Liebfraumilch, and it was brought at once.
'Mr. Nordsten told me to ask if you would like a letter posting to your sister,' said the man when he returned with the wine.
Simon thought quickly. He would be expected to communicate with his 'sister' in some way, but there were obvious reasons why he could not ring up his own house.
'I'll give you a note right away, if you'll wait a sec,' he said.
He scribbled a few conventional phrases on a sheet of notepaper that was produced for him, and addressed it to Miss Annette Vickery at an entirely fictitious address in north London.
At half-past two the butler came for the tray, asked him if there was anything else he wanted, and went out again. After a while the Saint strolled over to the drawing board, pinned out one of the certificates on it, covered it with a sheet of tracing paper, and began to pick out a series of lines in the engraving. Beyond that point the mechanics of counterfeiting would stump him, but he thought it wise to produce something to show that he had made a start on his commission. The future would have to take care of itself.
He worked for two hours, and then the saturnine butler brought him tea. The Saint poured out a cup and carried it to the window with a cigarette. He had something else to think of; and that something was the sweltering spleen of Chief Inspector Teal, which by that time could scarcely be very far below the temperature at which its possessor would burst into flame if he scratched himself incautiously. Certainly the rear number plate of the taxi had been unreadable, and no one could have positively id ntified the eccentric driver with the Saint; but Claud Eustace Teal had seen him and spoken with him in Bond Street only a few minutes before the disastrous events which had followed, and Simon was only too familiar with the suspicious and uncharitable grooves in which Mr. Teal's mind locomoted along its orbit. That would provide an additional complication which had been ordained from the beginning, but the Saint could see no way of avoiding it.
It was rather stuffy in the workshop, and the panorama of cool greenery which he could see from the window was immensely inviting. The Saint felt an overpowering desire to stretch his legs and take his problems out for a saunter in the fresh air; and he did not see how Ivar Nordsten could object. He went to the outer door of the suite; and then, as he turned the handle, his heart stopped beating for an instant.
The door was locked; and he appreciated for the first time some of the qualities which made Ivar Nordsten such a successful man.
VI
'CURIOUSER and curiouser,' said the Saint mildly and went back to the armchair to do some more thinking.
He realized that when he had surmised that Nordsten would not have let him depart easily with his knowledge if he had refused his commission, he hadn't guessed the half of it. Nordsten would not let him depart easily with His knowledge anyhow. Simon had a sudden grim foreboding that there could be only one end, in Nordsten's mind, to that strange employment. He saw the financier's point of view very clearly, but it didn't help him far with his own plans.
He lighted another cigarette in the chain that had already filled two ashtrays, and strolled back to the window. The casements were only half opened, and he flipped one of the props off its peg and flung the window wide. Leaning out with his forearms folded on the sill to admire the view and take in his fresh air as best he could, he saw a black-haired man with a scarred face walk round the corner of the house and look up. Simon restrained a prompt impulse to wave cheerily to him and watched the man saunter up underneath the window and stop there seemingly wrapped in intense contemplation of a cluster of antirrhinums. Even then he did not quite grasp the significance of the scarred stroller until the door behind him opened and he looked round to see the saturnine features of the butler.
'Did you require anything, Mr. Vickery?' he said.
Simon completed his turn and rested his elbows on the ledge behind him.
'How did you know?' he asked.
'I thought I heard you moving about, sir.'
Simon nodded.
'I went to the door,' he said, 'and it was locked.'
The butler's sallow features were expressionless.
'It was locked by Mr. Nordsten's instructions, sir. He wished to make certain that none of the staff except
