"Penwick," he said, "whatever that snivelling squirt has given you, I'll pay twice as much."
"I'll pay three times that," said Willie feverishly. "Four times—five times—I'll give you twenty per cent of anything I get out of the estate—"
"Twenty-five per cent," Walter shrieked wildly. "Twenty-seven and a half——"
The Saint raised his hand.
"One minute, boys," he murmured. "Hadn't you better hear the terms of the will first?"
"I know them," barked Walter.
"So do I," bellowed Willie. "Thirty per cent ——"
The Saint smiled. He took a large sealed envelope from his breast pocket, and opened it.
"I may have misled you," he said, and held up the document for them to read.
They crowded closer, breathing stertorously, and read:
I, Joseph Kinsall, hereby give and bequeath everything of which I die possessed, without exception, to the Royal London Hospital, believing that it will be better spent than it would have been by my two worthless sons.
It was in the late Sir Joseph Kinsall's own hand; and it was properly signed, sealed, and witnessed.
Simon folded it up and put it carefully away again; and Willie looked at Walter, and Walter looked at Willie. For the first time in their lives they found themselves absolutely and unanimously in tune. Their two minds had but a single thought. They drew deep breaths, and turned. ...
It was unfortunate that neither of them was very athletic. Simon Templar was; and he had promised Mr. Penwick that the will should come to no harm.
XI
The Tall Timber
The queer things that have led Simon Templar into the paths of boodle would in themselves form a sizable volume of curiosities; but in the Saint's own opinion none of these strange starting-points could ever compare, in sheer intrinsic uniqueness, with the moustache of Mr. Sumner Journ.
Simon Templar's relations with Chief Inspector Teal were not always unpleasant. On that morning he had met Mr. Teal in Piccadilly Circus and insisted on standing him lunch; and both of them had enjoyed the meal.
"And yet you'll probably be trying to arrest me again next week," said the Saint.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Teal heavily.
They stood in the doorway of Arthur's, preparing to separate; and Simon was idly scanning the street when the moustache of Mr. Sumner Journ hove into view.
Let it be said at once that it was no ordinarily overgrown moustache, attracting attention by nothing but its mere vulgar size. It was, in fact, the reverse. From a slight distance no moustache was visible at all; and the Saint was looking at Mr. Journ simply by accident, as a man standing in the street will sometimes absent-mindedly follow the movements of another. As Mr. Journ drew nearer, the moustache was still imperceptible; but there appeared to be a slight shadow on his upper lip, as if it were disfigured by a small mole. And it was not until he was passing a yard away that the really exquisite singularity of the growth dawned upon Simon Templar's mind.
On Mr. Sumner Journ's upper lip, approximately fourteen hairs had been allowed to grow, so close together that the area they occupied could scarcely have been larger than a shirt button. These fourteen hairs had been carefully parted in the middle; and each little clique of seven had been carefully waxed and twisted together so that they stuck out about half an inch from their patron's face like the horns of a snail. In the whole of Simon Templar's life, which had encountered a perhaps unusual variety of developments of facial hair, ranging from the handlebar protuberances of the South-shire Insurance Company's private detective to the fine walrus effect sported by a Miss Gertrude Tinwiddle who contributed the nature notes in the Daily Gazette, he had never seen any example of hair culture in which such passionate devotion to detail, such a concentrated ecstasy of miniaturism, such an unostentatious climax of originality, had simultaneously arrived at concrete consummation.
Thus did the moustache of Mr. Journ enter the Saint's horizon and pass on, accompanied by Mr. Journ, who looked at them rather closely as he went by; and lest any suspicious reader should be starting to get ideas into his head, the historian desires to explain at once that this moustache has nothing more to do with the story, and has been described at such length solely on account of its own remarkable features qua face-hair. But, as we claimed at the beginning, it is an immutable fact that if it had not been for this phenomenal decoration the Saint would hardly have noticed Mr. Journ at all, and would thereby have been many thousands of pounds poorer. For, shorn of that incomparable appendage, Mr. Journ was quite an ordinary-looking business man, thin, dark, hatchet-faced, well and quietly dressed; and although he was noticeably hard about the eyes and mouth, there was really nothing else about him which would have caused the Saint to stare fascinatedly after him and ejaculate in a hushed voice: "Well, I am a piebald pelican balancing rubber balls on my beak!"
Wherefore Mr. Teal would have had no reason to turn his somnolent gaze back to the Saint with a certain dour and puzzled humour, and to say: "I should have thought he was a fellow you'd be sure to know."
"Never set eyes on him in my life," said the Saint. "Do you know who he is?"
"His name's Sumner Journ," Mr. Teal said reluctantly, after a slight pause.
Simon shook his head.
"Even that doesn't ring a bell," he said. "What does he do? No bloke who cultivated a nose-tickler like that could do anything ordinary."
"Sumner Journ doesn't," stated the detective flatly.
He seemed to have realised that he had said too much already; and it was impossible to draw any further information from him. He took his leave rather abruptly, and Simon gazed after his plump departing back with a tiny frown. The only plausible explanation of Teal's sudden taciturnity was that Mr. Journ was engaged in some unlawful or nearly unlawful activities—Teal had had enough trouble with the victims whom the Saint found for himself, without conceiving any ambition to press fresh material into his hands. But if Chief Inspector Teal did not want the Saint to know more about Mr. Sumner Journ, that was sufficient reason for the Saint to become abnormally inquisitive; and as a matter of fact, his investigations had not proceeded very far when a minor coincidence brought them up to date without further effort.
"This might interest you," said Monty Hayward one evening.
"This" was a very tastefully prepared booklet, on the cover of which was printed: "BRAZILIAN TIMBER BONDS: A Gold Mine for the Small Investor." Simon took it and glanced at it casually; and then he saw something on the first page of the pamphlet which brought him to attention with a delighted start:
Managing Director:
SUMNER JOURN Esq., Associate of the Institute of Timber Planters, Fellow of the International Association of Wood Pulp Producers; formerly Chairman of South American Mineralogical Investments, Ltd., etc., etc.
"How did you get hold of this, Monty?" he asked.
"A young fellow in the office gave it to me," said Monty. "Apparently he was trying to make a bit of money on the side by selling these bonds; but lots of people seem to have heard about 'em. I pinched the book, and told him not be an ass because he'd probably find himself in clink with the organisers when it blew up; but I thought you might like to have a look at it."
"I would," said the Saint thoughtfully, and opened another bottle of beer.
He read the booklet through at his leisure, later, and felt tempted to send Monty Hayward a complimentary case of Carlsberg on the strength of it; for the glow of contentment and goodwill towards men which spreads over the rabid entomologist who digs a new kind of beetle out of a log is as the frosts of Siberia to the glow which warms the heart of the professional buccaneer who uncovers a new swindle.