“I’m not here to stir up trouble with you, either. I just don’t want you to start it.”
“How could I resist that graceful speech?” Simon said. “I’m genuinely touched. Let’s drink to a new era of peace and harmony. Luckily there’s a pub just round the corner.”
He took Mr Teal’s arm and hustled him along the pavement. The inspector held back and protested.
“Fat men didn’t ought to drink—”
“Think of it as a late lunch,” said the Saint cheerfully. “On a hot day like this, who would take solid food so early in the afternoon?”
Chief Inspector Teal almost refused to go, merely on the principle that he should automatically resist anything that Simon Templar wanted him to do. For the man who had been looking into the Leonardo Galleries was that very Simon Templar who had upset Mr Teal’s applecarts with such embarrassing frequency and efficiency in the name of a Robin-Hood standard of behaviour which the inspector felt was completely out of keeping with the integrity of British justice. Mr Teal also had strictly personal reasons for not appreciating the Saint’s individualistic ethics, beneficial to humanity’s more honest members though they might be in the long run. It was not fair that he, Chief Inspector Teal, should have to operate within the confines of the legal code and in consequence be made to look silly by a privateer who could invent his own rules as he went along. But on this occasion Teal had been on his feet for a long time, it was an exceptionally hot day, and if he had to endure the unpleasant experience of a confrontation with the Saint, it might as well be in comfort and with refreshment.
So a few minutes later they were sitting in the cool dimness of a saloon bar now largely deserted by the lunch-hour crowd of businessmen, salesclerks, and shoppers. Simon Templar raised his pint of bitter and toasted Teaclass="underline" “To the continued success of our joint endeavours!”
He said it without detectable sarcasm, but Teal sipped his small lime-and-water suspiciously, somehow making it clear that he was merely drinking and not solemnising the Saint’s sentiment with a ceremonial libation.
“Templar,” he said, “word has come to me that you’ve been taking a lot of interest in the Leonardo Galleries.”
“I like that,” Simon mused. “Word has come to me...” He rolled it round his tongue like a vintage port: “Word has come to me...”
“I’d like to know just why you’re looking into that particular place, and what you expect to gain by it.”
“I should think it’d be your business to know the answer to the first part of that question without having to ask me,” said the Saint. “The fact that you have to ask shows why your career has been, shall we say, a little halting. Fairly steady, but unspectacular. A little like a dung-ball being rolled up a hill by industrious but clumsy beetles. I’m sure you won’t take offence at this constructive criticism, Claud, but your failure to know anything about the Leonardo Galleries also shows why you still, even at your advanced age, have to depend on me, a mere amateur, for so much of your information.”
Mr Teal had turned the colour of a ripe radish, and might have damaged his teeth if his chewing gum had not been between them to cushion their impact.
“I probably know a great deal more about the Leonardo Galleries than you do,” he rumbled, keeping the volume of his voice very low in spite of his anger. “The owner specialises in selling questionable works of art to rich clients who don’t know any better. Of course he sells some good stuff too, but he makes his big profits touting so-called undiscovered geniuses—”
“Who never quite get discovered,” Simon supplied. “He also likes convincing nouveau-riche English clients that some American artist is going great guns on the other side of the Atlantic, and that they just barely have time to invest in him before he catches on over here. His mark-up runs in the neighbourhood of 8,000 per cent in some cases. And he has other little tricks, like putting ‘attributed to’ or ‘attributed to the school of ‘ on some old canvas, or even on some imitation-old canvas, and running up the price.”
“But you can’t arrest a man for that,” Teal stated.
The Saint smiled.
“Exactly,” he said, and the smile continued to be transmitted to Teal through the unearthly blue eyes as Simon raised his beer mug to his lips again.
“Now see here, Templar,” Teal said trenchantly. “That’s what I’m getting at: If I can’t arrest a man for what Cyril Pargit is doing, you’ve no right to do anything else to him either. He’s not committing any crime.”
“Caveat emptor?” murmured the Saint. “Well, I know of a case where Pargit got his hooks into a gullible old lady of seventy-three soon after her husband died. When Pargit met this widow, she had some fine paintings and a reasonable amount of cash. She needed to invest. Cyril Pargit told her her paintings were practically junk, generously bought them at junk prices, and sold her some real junk for most of her cash. So now she has had to sell her car to pay the rent, and God knows what she’ll have to live on in another couple of years.”
“So you are after Pargit!” Teal challenged triumphantly.
“I didn’t say that,” Simon replied calmly. “I’m aiding the ordained authorities by supplying information.”
“Well, I hope you aren’t going to put me in the position of defending a rascal like Pargit against you — which is exactly what will happen if you try to give him what you think he deserves.”
The Saint drained the last of his bitter and stood up.
“Just to show you how honorable my intentions are, would you like to accompany me on a tour of brother Pargit’s emporium? I apologise for my earlier slurs on your cultural status. You’re obviously more knowledgeable about the local art scene than I thought you were.”
Teal gulped the last dregs of his watered lime-juice and followed Simon out of the pub and down the street. The Saint suddenly drew up short, about twenty paces from the entrance to the Leonardo Galleries.
“Now there,” he said to Teal in a low, admiring voice, “is a genuine Gainsborough.”
Teal blinked.
“Where?”
“Right there. Take a good look. You’ll probably see only one in a lifetime.”
“That young lady?” Teal asked.
“That young lady,” the Saint affirmed reverently.
She was standing outside the window of the gallery, looking in. She was slender but gracefully curved, her blond hair so fine that in the sunshine it seemed a flowing condensation of light rather than a material substance. Her pale skin seemed almost translucent, and although she had none of the obvious prettiness of a magazine cover girl, her features had an almost flowerlike innocence that made the elegantly outfitted women passing her seem as homely as cabbages.
“Very nice,” Teal said. “Do you know her?”
“Only in visions, unfortunately.”
“I always knew you must be truly balmy!” Teal said. “Do you really have visions?”
“Oh, Claud,” the Saint sighed. “Let’s go on and have a look at Cyril’s sucker trap.”
He herded the detective ahead of him through the gallery door. The display rooms were rich in thick carpeting and velvet drapery. The acoustics of the place were such that sound vanished almost before it could be perceived; moving there was like walking through puddles of silence. At the opposite end of the first large room a distinguished-looking man was speaking to a thirtyish woman who appeared completely mesmerised by his words. She herself looked as if a whole stable of grooms had been occupied for half the morning putting every platinum hair and dark eyelash and crimson fingernail in perfect order before she had allowed herself to be seen in the streets. Wealth seemed to have expanded her girth more than her mind, if her stature and blank facial expression were any indices. He walked her back towards the entrance door, his gestures spiralling softly like the smoke of incense. Her wide eyes and half-open mouth made her look for all the world like a fish that has already been hooked and landed, and is simply waiting to expire completely while the cook prepares the sauce.