“It is. You don’t know the offers I’ve turned down. Why, only the other day... But it’s out of the question. That’s one invention she always knew I was working on. I could never get away with it. Unless — so we’re back where we started — unless I had a completely honest friend.”
“What could he do?”
“I’d sell him all rights to the Preservator,” said Mr Quigg. “It’d have to be a bona fide deal, for something that might look like a genuine price. Say ten thousand dollars. All right, she’d get her half of that. But this friend would make a fortune. And I’d have to trust him to slip a fair share of it back to me, without any contract or lien or anything, in cash handouts when I asked for it, so’s there’d be no record and she couldn’t get her claws on it.”
“I see,” said the Saint. “You’d be absolutely at his mercy.”
“And how many people could you be sure wouldn’t fall for a temptation like that? Unless it was someone like yourself. Now you know what I was getting at. I can’t presume on our few hours’ acquaintance, I know. I’m pipe-dreaming. But if only you were interested, what a difference it would make to my life!”
Simon reached for what was left of the Château Fuissé with a smile that did not have to worry about how thinly it veiled its excitement.
“Don’t throw that pipe away yet, Ollie,” he said. “I’m going to think it over.”
It was another hour before he could plausibly take his leave, on the valid excuse that he had been up since before dawn and wanted to be out on the river at dawn again the next morning, but the truth was that he was desperately afraid of casting some inadvertent damper on Mr Quigg’s pathetically incoherent optimism, and after a while his facial muscles began to ache.
The fishing was still slow at the start of the next day, but he took two nice eating-size trout before the sun was high enough to strike the water and he decided that he might as well knock off for breakfast. As he was walking back along the higher ground towards his cabin, Mr Irving Jardane came blundering up the bank, looking more than ever like a piscatorial pack mule, and trudged beside him.
“I see you’re still doing okay,” observed the transport tycoon aggrievedly. “And I’m still skunked. I don’t get it. What the hell do these trout want, anyway?”
“What are you offering them?” Simon asked.
“Nothing but the best. I had a chap who makes ’em design ’em specially for me.” Mr Jardane tore off his trick hat and stared at its multi-colored adornments with baffled indignation. “Did you ever see anything prettier? What do you catch ’em on?”
Simon reversed his rod and exhibited the drab and tattered fly on the end of his leader, hooked into a keeper ring near the butt.
“This.”
“That?” The other peered at the relic with barely concealed disgust. “What d’you call that?”
“A Gray Hackle — much the worse for wear.”
“You mean they bite on that? If I were a fish—”
“But you aren’t,” Simon pointed out gently. “Those hat trimmings of yours look beautiful to you, but to the trout around here they just don’t suggest anything edible. This tattered piece of fuzz makes its mouth water — if a fish’s mouth can do that. You have to see it through the eyes of a trout.”
“Dad blast it,” growled Mr Jardane, “you must be another fish psychologist. Like a fellow I got talking to on the pier the other day.”
“A little wispy guy with a theory about salmon eggs?”
“That’s him. Name of Quigg. A genius, too. But crazy. Got an invention that couldn’t help making millions, but he won’t do a thing about it.”
“He showed you his Preservator?”
“You too? Sure he did. We got talking about my business, and some of my problems, and it came up. I tell you, it’s sensational. Revolutionary. If anyone else was working on anything like it, I’d know. I have to keep up with these things in my business. Hell, I offered him three thousand dollars just for the right to test it myself for three months, with an option to take it over on a royalty basis with a twenty-thousand-a-year minimum guarantee, and he turned me down flat.”
“I got the impression that I could make a deal with him,” Simon said.
By then they had walked as far as the Saint’s cabin, but this could not have been responsible for bringing Mr Jardane to such an abrupt halt. He scrutinized the Saint with a cold deliberation that was supremely unconcerned with its rudeness.
“If you can, you’re a lot better talker than I am,” he said. “But if you do, I’ll make you the same offer.”
“What would you do with the Preservator?”
“Make it, man! Make it and sell it. I manufacture my own truck refrigeration equipment already. I’m set up. I’ll change over to this. And after I’ve outfitted my own fleet, I’ll expand. I’ve got all the contacts. Let me worry about the merchandising. You just send in your auditor every year to make sure I haven’t short-changed you.”
“I’ll see if I can talk to Quigg again after breakfast,” said the Saint.
He found Mr Quigg contentedly reading a science-fiction magazine, but cordially willing to be interrupted, and came to his point without much ado.
“Certainly I meant it,” Mr Quigg said. “Why should I have changed my opinion of you overnight? But I’m a little overwhelmed. It’s so much more than I ever really dared to hope for. You are serious?”
“I’ll give you exactly what you asked for,” said the Saint most seriously. “Would you care to put it in writing?”
“By all means.”
The little man bumbled around the cottage, found some paper in a drawer, and sat down and wrote thoughtfully but decisively. Then he handed the sheet to Simon.
“Will that do?”
I hereby offer to sell to Mr Sebastian Tombs, for the sum of $10,000, all rights in my food-preserving process called the Preservator.
(signed)
Oliphant Quigg
“It should take care of everything for now,” said the Saint.
“Mr Jardane might want something much more elaborate,” said the little man calmly. “But whatever you need to satisfy anyone’s lawyers, I’ll sign it.”
Simon’s eyebrows went up.
“How did you know I’d talked to Jardane?”
“Oh, so you have? I was guessing. But I’m not surprised. And believe me, I don’t mind a bit. You ought to be able to make a good deal with him. And I’d rather make you a present of half the profits than pay them to that greedy woman and her conniving lawyer. Besides, you’ll be doing something to earn your share. I think Mr Jardane is a pretty hardboiled business man, which is why I couldn’t be at all ready to trust him with the same proposition that I made to you. But you strike me as being well able to take care of yourself. Good luck to you!”
Simon went back to Mr Jardane’s cottage and displayed the paper. The haulage hot-shot glared at it for long enough to have read it four times and then transferred his incredulous scowl directly to the Saint.
“D’you mind if I ask Quigg if he really signed this?” he demanded. “Because I’m going to, whatever you say.”
“Go ahead,” said the Saint generously.
Mr Jardane went out like a fire-eating lion and came back in less than ten minutes like a somewhat dyspeptic lamb.
“Okay,” he grumbled, handing back the document. “You must be a terrific operator. Wish I had you working for me. But I know when I’m licked. All right. So you’ve got this Preservator sewed up. My offer still goes. Yes or no?”
“Mr Quigg put his offer in writing,” said the Saint mildly, laying down the magazine with which he had been passing the time. “Would you do the same?”