"You see," he said, when Simon Templar had taken the chair opposite him with his glass also refilled. "A thing like this has got to be handled properly. It's no good my just making diamonds and trying to sell them. I might get away with one or two, but if I brought a sackful of them into a shop and tried to sell 'em the buyer would start to wonder whether I was trying to get rid of some illicit stuff. He'd want to ask all sorts of questions about where I got 'em, and as likely as not he'd call in the police. And what does that mean? It means that either I've got to say nothing and probably get taken for a crook and put in prison——" Louie's features registered profound horror at this frightful possibility. "Or else I've got to give away my secret. And if I said that I made the diamonds myself, they'd want me to prove it; and if I proved it, everybody would know it could be done, and the bottom would fall out of the diamond market. If people knew that anybody could make diamonds for threepence a time, diamonds just wouldn't be worth anything any more."
Simon nodded. The argument was logical and provided a very intriguing impasse. He waited for Mr. Fallon to point the way out.
"What this thing needs," said Louie, duly coming up to expectations, "is someone to run it in a businesslike way. It's got to be scientific, just like the way the diamonds are made." Mr. Fallon had worked all this out for himself in his daydreams, and the recital was mechanically easy. "Someone would have to go off somewhere—not to South Africa, because that's too much controlled, but to South America maybe —and do some prospectin'. After a while he'd report that he'd found diamonds, and set up a mine. We'd set up a company and sell shares to the public, and after a bit the diamonds'd start comin' home and they could all be sold in the regular market quite legitimate."
"Why don't you do that?" inquired the Saint perplexedly.
"I've got no heart for it," said Louie with a sigh. "I'm not so young as I was; and besides, I never had any kind of head for these things. And I don't want to do it. I don't want to get myself tied up in a lot of business worries and office work. I've had that all my life. I want to enjoy myself— travel around and meet some girls and have a good time. Between you and I," said Mr. Fallon with a catch in his voice and tears glistening in his eyes, "the doctors tell me that I haven't long to live. I've had a hard life, and I want to make the best of what I have got left. Now, if I had a young fellow like yourself to help me . . ."
He leaned further back in his chair, with his eyes half dosed, and went on as if talking to himself: "It'd have to be a chap who could keep his mouth shut, a sport who wouldn't mind doing a bit of hard work for a lot of money —someone that I could just leave to manage everything while I went off and had a good time. He'd have to have a bit of money of his own to invest in the company, just to make everything square and aboveboard and legal, and in a year or so he'd be a bloomin' millionaire ridin' around in a Rolls Royce with chauffeurs and everything. You'd think it'd be easy to find a fellow like that, but it isn't. There aren't many chaps that I take a likin' to—not chaps that I feel I could trust with anything as big as this. That's why when I took a fancy to you, I wondered . . ." Mr. Fallon sighed again, a sigh of heart-rending self-pity. "But I suppose it's no use. Here am I with the greatest discovery in modern science, and I can't do anything with it. I suppose I was just born unlucky, like I told you."
The Saint was sublimely sure that Louie Fallon was unlucky, but he did not dream of saying so. He allowed his face to become illumined with a light of breathless cupidity which was everything that Mr. Fallon had desired.
"Well," he said hesitantly, "if you've really taken a fancy to me and I can do anything to help you——"
Louie stared at him for a moment incredulously, as if he had never dared to hope that such a miracle could happen.
"No," he said at length, covering his eyes wearily, "it couldn't be true. My luck can't have changed. You wouldn't do a thing like that for a perfect stranger."
During the conversation that followed, however, it appeared that Louie's luck had indeed changed. His new-found friend, it seemed, was quite prepared to do such a service for a perfect stranger. They talked for another hour, discussing ways and means, and occasionally referring in a gentlemanly way to terms of business; then they went out to lunch in an aura of mutual admiration and regard, and discussed the fortunes which they would assist each other to make; and when they finally separated, the Saint had agreed to meet Mr. Fallon again the following day, bringing with him (in cash) the sum of two thousand pounds which he was to invest in the new industry, on an equal partership basis, as a guarantee of his good faith.
Simon went off with Louie Fallon's diamond in his pocket. As a purely formal precaution, he took it round to a diamond merchant of his acquaintance who pronounced it to be unquestionably genuine; and then he proceeded somewhat light-headedly to make some curious purchases.
The clouds of ill-starred melancholy seemed to have dispersed themselves from Mr. Fallon's sky overnight; for when he opened the door to Simon Templar the next day he was beaming. The flat, Simon noticed, was in some disorder, and there were three freshly labelled suitcases standing in the hall.
"I hope I'm not late," said the Saint anxiously.
"Only a minute or two," said Louie heartily. "It's my own fault that it seems longer. I was just nervous. I guess I couldn't believe that my luck had really changed until I saw you on the step. You see, I've got my tickets and everything —I'm ready to go as soon as everything's fixed up."
The Saint believed him. As soon as everything had been fixed up in the way Louie intended, Mr. Fallon would be likely to go as fast and far as the conveniences of modern travel would take him. Simon made vague noises of sympathy and encouragement, and followed his benefactor into the living-room.
"There's the contract, all drawn up ready," said Louie, producing a large and impressive-looking document with fat red seals attached to it. "All you've got to do is to sign on the dotted line and put in your capital, and you're in charge of the whole business. After that, if you send me two or three hundred pounds a week out of the profits, I'll be quite happy, and I don't much care what you do with the rest."
With all the eagerness that was expected of him, Simon sat down at the table, glanced over the document, and signed his name over the dotted line as requested. Then he took out his wallet and counted out a sheaf of crisp new banknotes; and Louie picked them up and counted them again with slightly unsteady fingers.
"Well, now," said the Saint, "if that's all settled, hadn't you better show me your process?"
"I've written it all out for you——"
"Oh, yes, I'd want that. But couldn't we try it over now just to make sure that I understand it properly?"
"Certainly, my dear chap—certainly." Mr. Fallon pushed up his sleeve to look at his watch, and appeared to make a calculation. "I don't know whether I'll have time to see the experiment right through to the end, but once you've got it started you can't possibly go wrong. It's absolutely foolproof. Come along."
They went into the bathroom and Simon poured out magnesium and iron filings into the crucible exactly as he had seen Louie doing the previous day. The composition of the powder from which the diamonds were actually made gave him more trouble—it was apparently made up of the contents of various other unlabelled bottles, mixed up in certain complicated proportions. It was at this stage in the proceedings that the Saint appeared to become unexpectedly stupid and clumsy. He poured out too much from one bottle and spilt most of the contents of another on to the floor.
"You'll have to be more careful than that," said Louie, pursing his lips, "but I can see you've got the idea. Well, now, if I'm goin' to catch my train——"