"But I don't mind taking it in the bag," Simon said quietly.
Mr. Journ looked up. There was a subtle implication in the way the words were said which struck a supernatural chill into his blood. And in the next second he knew why; for his lifting eyes looked straight into the muzzle of an automatic.
Slowly Mr. Journ's eyes dilated. He stopped breathing. A cold intangible hand closed round his heart in a vice-like grip; and the muscles of his face twitched spasmodically.
"But you can't do that!" he screamed suddenly. "You can't take it all!"
"That is a matter of opinion," said the Saint equably; and then, before Mr. Journ really knew what was happening, a strong brown hand had shot out and grasped the brief-bag and twitched it out of Mr. Journ's desperate grip with a deft twist that was too quick for the eye to follow.
With a guttural gasp Sumner Journ lurched forward to tear it back, and found himself pushed away like a child!
"Now don't be silly," said the Saint. "I don't want to hurt you—much. You've lived like a prince for four years on the sucker crop, and a bloke like you can always think up a new racket. Don't take it so much to heart. Disguise yourself and make a fresh start. Shave off your moustache, and no one will recognise you."
"But what am I going to do?" Sumner Journ shrieked at him as he seated himself again in the car. "How am I going to get away?"
Simon stopped with his foot on the clutch.
"Bless my soul!" he said. "I almost forgot."
He dipped a long arm into the tonneau and brought up a small article which he pushed into Mr. Journ's trembling hands. Then the great car leapt away with a sudden roar from the exhaust, and Mr. Journ was left staring at his consolation prize with a face that had gone ashen grey.
It was a little toy aeroplane; and tied to it was a tag label on which was written:
With the compliments of the Saint.
XII
The Art Photographer
"It becomes increasingly obvious," said the Saint, "that the time has arrived when we shall have to squash Mr. Gilbert Tanfold."
He did not utter this prophecy within the hearing of Mr. Tanfold, for that would have been a gesture of a kind in which Simon Templar indulged more rarely now than he had once been wont to do. If the time had arrived when the squashing of Mr. Tanfold became a public service which no altruistic freebooter could refuse to perform, the time had also passed when the squashing could be carried out with full theatrical honours, with a haloed drawing on a plain card left pinned to the resultant blob of grease to tell the world that Simon Templar had been there. There was too much interest in his activities at Scotland Yard for anything like that to be entered upon without an elaborate preparation of alibis, which was rather more trouble than he thought Mr. Tanfold was worth. But the ripeness for squashing, the zerquetschenreiftichkeit, if we may borrow a word which the English language so unhappily lacks, of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, even if it could not be made a public ceremony, could not be overlooked altogether for any such trivial reason.
The advertisements of Mr. Tanfold appeared in the black pages of several appropriate journals, and were distinguished by their prodigality of exclamation marks and their unusual vagueness of content. The specimen which was answered by a certain Mr. Tombs was fairly typical.
PARISIAN ART PHOTOS !!!!!!!!
rare ! extraordinary !!
Special offer! (Cannot be repeated!) 100
unique poses, 3/6 post free. Exceptional
rarities, 10/-, 15/-, £1, £5 each!! Also
BOOKS!!!!
all editions, curiosities, eroticæ, etc.!
"Garden of Love" (very rare) 10/6.
Send for illustrated catalogue and samples!!!
G. TANFOLD & CO., Gaul St., Birmingham.
It was an advertisement which regularly brought in a remarkable amount of business, considering that it left so much to the imagination; but certain imaginations are like that.
The imagination of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, however, soared far above the ordinary financial possibilities of this commonplace catering to pornography. If ever there was a man who did not believe in Art for Art's sake this man walked the earth with his ankles enveloped in the spats of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold. Where any other man trading in these artistic lines would have been content with the generous profit from the sale of his "exceptional rarities," Mr. Tanfold had made them merely stepping-stones to bigger things; which was one of the reasons for his tempting zerquetschenreiflichkeit aforesaid.
Every letter which came to his cheap two-roomed office in Birmingham was examined with an interest that would have astonished the unsuspecting writer. Those which, by inferior notepaper, cheaply printed letterheads, and/or clumsy handwriting, branded their authors as persons of no great substance, merely had their orders filled by return, as specified; and that, so far as Mr. Tanfold was concerned, was the end of them. But those letters which, by expensive paper, die-stamped letterheads, and/or an educated hand, hinted at a client who really had no business to be collecting rude pictures or "curiosities," came under the close scrutiny of Mr. Tanfold himself; and their orders were merely the beginning of many other things.
Mr. Tombs wrote on the notepaper of the Palace Royal Hotel, London, which was so expensive that only millionaires, film stars, and buccaneers could afford to live there; and it is a curious fact that Mr. Tanfold entirely forgot that third category of possible guests when he saw the letter. It must be admitted, in extenuation, that Simon Templar misled him. For as his profession (which all customers were asked to state with their order) he gave "Business man (Australian)."
Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, like others of his ilk, had a sound working knowledge of the peculiar psychology of wealthy Colonials at large in London—of that open-hearted, almost pathetically guileless eagerness to be good fellows which leads them to buy gold bricks in the Strand, or to hand thousands of pounds in small notes to two perfect strangers as evidence of their good faith—and he was so impressed with the potentialities of Mr. Tombs that he ordered the very choicest pictures in his stock to be included in the filling of the order, and made a personal trip to London the next day to find out more about his Heaven-sent bird from the bush.
The problem of making stealthy inquiries about a guest in a place like the Palace Royal Hotel might have troubled anyone less experienced in the art of investigating prospective victims; but to Mr. Tanfold it was little more than a matter of routine, a case of Method C4 (g). He knew that lonely men in a big city will always talk to a barman, and simply followed the same procedure himself. To a man as practised as he was in the technique of drawing gossip out of unwitting informants, results came quickly. Yes, the barman at the Palace Royal knew Mr. Tombs.
"A tall dark gentleman with glasses—is that him?"
"That's him," agreed Mr. Tanfold glibly; and learned, as he had hoped, that Mr. Tombs was a regular and solitary patron of the bar.
It did not take him much longer to discover that Mr. Tombs's father was an exceedingly rich and exceedingly pious citizen of Melbourne, a loud noise in the Chamber of Commerce, an only slightly smaller noise in the local government, and an indefatigable guardian of public morality. He also gathered that Mr. Tombs, besides carrying on his father's business, was expected to carry on his moralising activities also, and that this latter inheritance was much less acceptable to Mr. Tombs Jr. than it should have been to a thoroughly well-brought-up young man. The soul of Sebastian Tombs II, it appeared, yearned for naughtier things: the panting of the psalmist's hart after the water-brooks, seemingly, was positively as no pant at all compared with the panting of the heart of, Tombs fils after those spicy improprieties on which it was the devoted hobby of Tombs père to bring down all the weight of public indignation. The barman knew this because the younger Tombs had sought his advice on the subject of wild-oat sowing in London, and had confessed himself sadly disappointed with the limited range of fields available to the casual sower. He was, in fact, living only for the day when the business which had brought him to England would be over, and he would be free to continue his search for sin in Paris.