"In a week's time you will be ruined."
An easy boast to make. A tremendous task to carry out.
And yet, even while he had been racking his brains to find out how the Saint might carry out his threat, he had his answer.
For a long time he stared blindly at the cablegram, until every letter of the message was burned into his brain as with a hot iron. When he roused himself it was to clutch at a straw.
He telephoned to the telegraph company, and verified that the message had actually been received from Santa Miranda via Barbadoes and Pernarubuco. Even that left a loophole. He cabled to an agent in New York, directing him to obtain authentic information from Washington at any cost; and by the evening he received a reply confirming Shannet's statement. The U.S.S. Michigan was on its way to Santa Miranda in response to an appeal from the President.
There was no catch in it. Shannet's code message was not a bluff, not even from an agent of the Saint in Santa Miranda. It was a grimly sober utterance of fact.
But the gigantic thoroughness of it! The colossal impudence of the scheme! Campard felt as if all the strength and fight had ebbed out of him. Me was aghast at the revelation of the resources of the Saint. Against a man who apparently thought nothing of engineering a war to gain his ends, he felt as puny and helpless as a babe.
His hand went out again to the telephone, but he checked the impulse. It was no use telling the police that. They could do nothing-and, far too soon as it was, the news would be published in the press. And then, with the name of Campard behind them, P.O.P shares would tumble down the market to barely the value of their weight in waste paper.
Before he left the office that night he sent a return code in cable to Santa Miranda: Believe war organized by criminal known as Saint, who has threatened me. Obtain particulars of any strange Englishman in Pasala or Maduro. Give descriptions. Report developments.
What the Saint had started, Campard argued, the Saint could stop. Campard might have a chance yet, if he could bargain. ...
But the declaration of war was announced in the evening paper which he bought on his way home, and Hugo Campard knew then it was too late.
He had no sleep that night, and by nine o'clock next morning he was at the office, and speaking on the telephone to his broker.
"I want you to sell twenty thousand P.O.P.s for me," he said. "Take the best price you can get."
"I wish I could hope to get a price at all," came the sardonic answer. "The market's full of rumours and everyone's scared to touch the things. You're too late with your selling- the bears were in before you."
"What do you mean?" asked Campard in a strained voice.
"There was a good deal of quiet selling yesterday and the day before," said the broker. "Somebody must have had information. They're covering to-day, and they must have made thousands."
During the morning other backers of the company came through on the telephone and were accusing or whining according to temperament, and Campard dealt with them all in the same formula.
"I can't help it," he said. "I'm hit twice as badly as any of you. It isn't my fault. The company was perfectly straight; you know that."
The broker rang up after lunch to say that he had managed to get rid of six thousand shares at an average price of two shillings.
"Two shillings for two-pound shares?" Campard almost sobbed. "You're mad!"
"See if you can do any better yourself, Mr. Campard," replied the broker coldly. "The market won't take any more at present, but I might be able to get rid of another couple of thousand before we close at about a bob each-to people who want to keep them as curios. A firm of wall-paper manufacturers might make an offer for the rest--"
Campard slammed down the receiver and buried his face in his hands.
He was in the same position three hours later when his secretary knocked on the door and entered with a buff envelope.
"Another cable, Mr. Campard."
He extracted the flimsy and reached out a nerveless hand for the code book. He decoded: Maduro armies advancing into Pasala. Only chance now sell any price. Answer inquiry. Man arrived nearly four months ago-- With a sudden impatience, Campard tore the cablegram into a hundred pieces and dropped them into the waste-paper basket. There was no time now to get in touch with the Saint. The damage was done.
A few minutes later came the anticipated message from the firm that he had induced to back him over Pasala Oil Products. Rich as he had become, he would never have been able to acquire his large holding in the company without assistance. How, with his reputation, he had got any firm to back him was a mystery. But he had been able to do it on the system known as "margins"-which, in this instance, meant roughly that he could be called upon immediately to produce fifty percent of the amount by which the shares had depreciated, in order to "keep up his margin."
The demand, courteously but peremptorily worded, was delivered by special messenger; and his only surprise was that it had not come sooner. He scribbled a check, which there was no money in the bank to meet, and sent it back by the same boy.
He sent for his car and left the office shortly afterwards. The paper which he bought outside told of the panic of P.O.P's, and he read the article with a kind of morbid interest.
There was a letter, delivered by the afternoon post, waiting at his house when he got back.
I sold P.O.P.s and covered to-day. The profits are nearly twelve thousand pounds.
The expenses of this campaign have been unusually heavy; but, even then, after deducting these and my ten percent collecting fee, I hope to be able to forward nine thousand pounds to charity on your behalf.
Received the above-named sum-with thanks.
The Saint.
Enclosed was a familiar card, and one Pasala Oil Products share certificate.
Hugo Campard dined well that night, and, alone, accounted for a bottle of champagne. After that he smoked a cigar with relish, and drank a liqueur brandy with enjoyment.
He had dressed. He felt the occasion deserved it. His mind was clear and untroubled, for in a flash he had seen the way out of the trap.
When his cigar was finished, he exchanged his coat for a dressing gown, and passed into his study. He locked the door behind him, and for some time paced up and down the room in silence, but no one will ever know what he thought. At ten o'clock precisely the pacing stopped.
The constable on guard outside heard the shot; but Hugo Campard did not hear it.
7
The men serving sentences of hard labour in the prison of Santa Miranda are allowed an afternoon siesta of three hours. This is not due to the humanity and loving-kindness of the authorities, but to the fact that nothing will induce the warders to forgo the afternoon nap which is the custom of the country, and no one has yet discovered a way of making the prisoners work without a wide-awake warder to watch them and pounce on the shirkers.
The fetters are struck off the prisoners' ankles, and they are herded into their cells, a dozen in each, and there locked up to rest as well as they can in the stifling heat of a room ventilated only by one small barred window and thickly populated with flies. The warders retire to their quarters above the prison, and one jailer is left on guard, nodding in the passage outside the cells, with a rifle across his knees.
It was so on the third day of the Saint's incarceration, and this was the second hour of the siesta, but the Saint had not slept.
His cell mates were sprawled on the bunks or on the floor, snoring heavily. They were hardened to the flies. Outside, the jailer dozed, his sombrero on the back of his head and his coat unbuttoned. Through the window of the cell a shaft of burning sunlight cut across the moist gloom and splashed a square of light on the opposite wall.