Sunken in the coma of utter exhaustion, Flager did not even feel himself being unstrapped and unhandcuffed from his perch; he did not feel the clothes being replaced on his inflamed back, nor did he even rouse as he was carried into his own car and driven swiftly away.
And then again he was being shaken by the shoulder, woken up. Whimpering, he groped for the steering wheel— and did not find it. The shaking at his shoulder went on.
"All right," he blubbered. "All right. I'm trying to do it. Can't you let me sleep a little—just once. . . ."
"Sir Melvin! Sir Melvin!"
Flager forced open his bloodshot eyes. His hands were free. He was sitting in his own car, which was standing outside his own house. It was his valet who was shaking him.
"Sir Melvin! Try to wake up, sir. Where have you been? Are you ill, sir?"
Flager found strength to move his head from one side to the other.
"No," he said. "I just want to sleep."
And with a deep groan he let his swollen eyelids droop again, and sank back into soothing abysses of delicious rest.
When he woke up again he was in his own bed, in his own bedroom. For a long time he lay without moving, wallowing in the heavenly comfort of the soft mattress and cool linen, savouring the last second of sensual pleasure that could be squeezed out of the most beautiful awakening that he could remember.
"He's coming round," said a low voice at last; and with a sigh Flager opened his eyes.
His bed seemed to be surrounded with an audience such as a seventeenth-century monarch might have beheld at a levee. There was his valet, his secretary, his doctor, a nurse, and a heavy and stolid man of authoritative appearance who held an unmistakable bowler hat. The doctor had a hand on his pulse, and the others stood by expectantly.
"All right, Sir Melvin," said the physician. "You may talk for a little while now, if you want to, but you mustn't excite yourself. This gentleman here is a detective who wants to ask you a few questions."
The man with the bowler hat came nearer.
"What happened to you, Sir Melvin?" he asked.
Flager stared at him for several seconds. Words rose to his lips, but somehow he did not utter them.
"Nothing," he said at length. "I've been away for the week-end, that's all. What the devil's all this fuss about?"
"But your back, Sir Melvin!" protested the doctor. "You look as if you'd had a terrible beating——"
"I had a slight accident," snapped Flager. "And what the devil has it got to do with you, sir, anyway? Who the devil sent for all of you?"
His valet swallowed.
"I did, Sir Melvin," he stammered. "When I couldn't wake you up all day yesterday—and you disappeared from the theatre without a word to anybody, and didn't come back for two days ——"
"And why the devil shouldn't I disappear for two days?" barked Flager weakly. "I'll disappear for a month if I feel like it. Do I pay you to pry into my movements? And can't I sleep all day if I want to without waking up to find a lot of quacks and policemen infesting my room like vultures? Get out of my house, the whole damned lot of you! Get out, d'you hear?"
Somebody opened the door, and the congregation drifted out, shaking its heads and muttering, to the accompaniment of continued exhortations in Flager's rasping voice.
His secretary was the last to go, and Flager called him back.
"Get Nyson on the telephone," he ordered. "I'll speak to him myself."
The secretary hesitated for a moment, and then picked up the bedside telephone and dialled the number dubiously.
Flager took the instrument as soon as his manager answered.
"Nyson?" he said. "Get in touch with all our branch depots immediately. From now on, all our drivers will be on a five-hour day, and they get a twenty per cent rise as from the date we took them on. Engage as many more men as you need to make up the schedules."
He heard Nyson's incredulous gasp over the line.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Melvin—did you say ——"
"Yes, I did!" snarled Flager. "You heard me all right. And after that, you can find out if that cyclist Johnson killed left any dependents. I want to do something for them. . . ."
His voice faded away, and the microphone slipped through his fingers. His secretary looked at him quickly, and saw that his eyes were closed and the hemispherical mound of his abdomen was rising and falling rhythmically.
Sir Melvin Flager was asleep again.
VII
The Uncritical Publisher
Even the strongest men have their weak moments.
Peter Quentin once wrote a book. Many young men do, but usually with more disastrous results. Moreover he did it without saying a word to anyone, which is perhaps even more uncommon; and even the Saint did not hear about it until after the crime had been committed.
"Next time you're thinking of being rude to me," said Peter Quentin, on that night of revelation, "please remember that you're talking to a budding novelist whose work has been compared to Dumas, Tolstoy, Conan Doyle, and others."
Simon Templar choked over his beer.
"Only pansies bud," he said severely. "Novelists fester. Of course, it's possible to be both."
"I mean it," insisted Peter seriously. "I was keeping it quiet until I heard the verdict, and I had a letter from the publishers this morning."
There was no mistaking his earnestness; and the Saint regarded him with affectionate gloom. His vision of the future filled him with overwhelming pessimism. He had seen the fate of other young men—healthy, upright, sober young men of impeccable character—who had had books published. He had seen them tread the downhill path of pink shirts, velvet coats, long hair, quill pens, cocktail parties, and beards, until finally they sank into the awful limbos of Bloomsbury and were no longer visible to the naked eye. The prospect of such a doom for anyone like Peter Quentin, who had been with him in so many bigger and better crimes, cast a shadow of great melancholy across his spirits.
"Didn't Kathleen try to stop you?" he asked.
"Of course not," said Peter proudly. "She helped me. I owe——"
"—it all to her," said the Saint cynically. "All right. I know the line. But if you ever come out with 'My Work' within my hearing, I shall throw you under a bus . . . You'd better let me see this letter. And order me some more beer while I'm reading it—I need strength."
He took the document with his fingertips, as if it were unclean, and opened it out on the bar. But after his first glance at the letter-head his twinkling blue eyes steadied abruptly, and he read the epistle through with more than ordinary interest.
Dear Sir,
We have now gone into your novel THE GAY ADVENTURER, and our readers report that it is very entertaining and ably written, with the verve of Dumas, the dramatic power of Tolstoy, and the ingenuity of Conan Doyle.
We shall therefore be delighted to set up same in best small pica type to form a volume of about 320 p.p., machine on good antique paper, bind in red cloth with title in gold lettering, and put up in specially designed artistic wrapper, at cost to yourself of only £300 (Three Hundred Pounds) and to publish same at our own expense in the United Kingdom at a net price of 5/- (Five Shillings); and believe it will form a most acceptable and popular volume which should command a wide sale.
We will further agree to send you on date of publication twelve presentation copies, and to send copies for review to all principal magazines and newspapers, and further to pay you a royalty of 25% (twenty-five per cent) on all copies sold of this Work.