"By post. Mr. Tillson — Broads is coming in tomorrow to see it off and enclose a letter, and a man from the insurance company is coming down as well — that seems an awful lot of formality, but I suppose they have to be careful. Now what do you think will happen? Will Broads pull out a gun and hold us all up?"
"I doubt it," murmured the Saint mildly. "Broads isn't a violent man. Besides, if there was anything like that in the air he'd have done it yesterday. Let me think."
He leaned back and scowled thoughtfully into space. More than once he had truthfully admitted that the solving of ancient mysteries wasn't in his line; but the imaginative construction of forthcoming ones was another matter. The Saint's immoral mind worked best and most rapidly along these lines… And then, as he scowled into space, a headline in the evening paper that was being read by a fat gent at an adjoining table percolated into his abstracted vision; and he sat up with a start that made the fat gent turn round and glare at him.
"I've got it!" he cried. "Whoops — and what a beauty!"
She caught at his sleeve.
"Tell me, Simon."
"No, darling. That I can't do — not till afterwards. But you shall hear it, if you like to meet me again on Saturday. What time is this posting party?"
"Eleven o'clock. But listen — I must tell Mr. Emberton —"
"You must do nothing of the sort." The Saint shook his head at her sadly. "What do you want to do, Ruth — ruin the only bit of business the poor man's done this week? He's got his money, hasn't he? The rest of the show is purely private."
When she continued to try and question him he returned idiotic answers that made her want to smack him; and she went home, provoked and disappointed, and not entirely consoled by his repeated promise to tell her the whole story after it was over.
But her sense of excitement returned when Mr. Tillson presented himself at the office next morning. Looking at that rather pathetically horse-faced gentleman in his faintly clerical garb, it was difficult to believe that he could possibly be the man that the Saint had described. He was punctual to the minute; and the insurance company's representative came in soon afterwards.
She showed them into the inner office, and found it easy to stay around herself while the package was being prepared and sealed. She watched the entire proceedings with what she would always believe was well-simulated unconcern, but which actually would have seemed like a hypnotic stare to anyone who had noticed her; and yet, when it was all over and the various parties had shaken hands and departed, she could not recall the slightest incident that had deviated from the matter-of-fact formality which should have been expected of the affair.
She even began to wonder, with a feeling that her doubt was almost sacrilegious, whether the Saint could have been mistaken…
Mr. Alfred Tillson was not so reassured. He was perspiring a little when he met Happy Fred Jorman on the street corner.
"Yes, I effected the substitution," he said shortly, in answer to his partner's questions. "I trust I have aroused no suspicion. There was a kind of girl amanuensis in the room all the time, and she stared at me from the minute I arrived until the minute I left. I expected her to make some comment at any moment but she took her eyes off me for a second when I knocked my hat off the desk. Let's get back to my hotel."
They took a taxi to the hotel in Bloomsbury where Mr. Tillson had taken a modest suite — Broads Tillson had luxurious tastes which had never helped him to save money, and he had insisted that this setting was necessary for the character he had to play. Happy Fred Jorman, whose liberty was not in jeopardy, was elated.
"That was just your imagination, Broads," he said as they let themselves in. "She was probably wishing she had a friend who sent her thousand-pound bracelets. It's just the newness of it that's upset you — you'll get used to it after you've done it a few times. I was saying to myself all the time you were practising. 'Fred,' I was saying. 'Broads Tilson rings the changes better than anyone else you've ever met in your life. You've picked the best partner—' "
Mr. Tillson poured himself out a whisky-and-soda and sank into a chair. From his breast pocket he drew a packet with one seal on it — it was the exact replica of the packet that had been mailed to Paris, as it had appeared after the first seal had been placed on it in Mr. Emberton's office.
"You'll have to fence the article, Fred," said Mr. Tillson. "I've never had anything to do with such things."
"I'll fence it all right," said Happy Fred. "We'll get four hundred for it easily. And then what happens? That other little packet I registered at the same time blows off and sets the mailbag on fire in the train, and when they've cleared up the mess they find your bracelet is missing. Then there's just another sensational mail-bag robbery for the newspapers, and everybody's wondering how it was done; while we just collect the insurance money. That's four hundred pounds profit for a couple of hours' work, and we can turn that over every week while it lasts."
Happy Fred slapped his thigh. "Gosh, Broads, when I think of the money we're going to make out of that idea of mine —"
"You might live to make it," remarked a very pleasant voice behind them, "if you both sat quite still."
The two men did not sit quite still. They would have been superhuman stoics if they had. They spun around as if they had each been hit on the side of the jaw with a blackjack. And they saw the Saint.
The door of Mr. Tillson's private bathroom had opened and closed while they were talking without them hearing it; and now it served as a neat white background for the lean and smiling man who was propping himself gracefully up against it. There was an automatic in his hand, and it turned from side to side in a lazy arc that gave each of them an opportunity to blink down its black uncompromising barrel.
"Possibly I intrude," murmured the Saint, very pleasantly; "but that's just too bad."
On the faces of the two men were expressions of mingled astonishment, fear, indignation, horror and simple wrath, which would have done credit to a pair of dyspeptic cows that had received an electric shock from a clump of succulent grass. And then Mr. Tillson's voice returned.
"Good God!" he squeaked. "It's the man I was telling you about —"
"The bloke I was telling you about!" ejaculated Happy Fred savagely. "The skunk who took thirty pounds of my money in the Alexandra, and then —"
The two men's heads revolved until they looked into each other's eyes and gazed into the souls beyond. And the Saint. hitched himself off the door and came towards them.
"A very neat piece of work, if I may say so, Fred," he remarked. "Not so original as it might have been, perhaps, but new enough. It's very kind of you to have worked so hard for me."
"What are you going to do?" asked Mr. Tillson weakly.
Simon took the packet out of his hands.
"Relieve you of this encumbrance, brother. It's a very pretty bracelet, but I don't think you could wear it. People might think it was rather odd."
"I'll have the police on to you for this, you —"
Simon raised his eyebrows. "The police? To tell them that I've stolen your bracelet? But I understood your bracelet was in the mail, on its way to your little girl in Paris? Can I be mistaken, Alfred?"
Mr. Tillson swallowed painfully; and then Happy Fred jumped up.
"Damn the police!" he snarled. "I'll settle with this bluffer. He wouldn't dare to shoot —"
"Oh, but you're quite wrong about that," said the Saint gently. "I shouldn't have any objection to shooting you if you asked for it. It's quite a long time since I last shot anyone, and I often feel afraid that if I abstain for too long I may get squeamish. Don't tempt me, Fred, because I'm feeling nervous enough already."
But the Saint's blue eyes were as steady as the gun in his hand, and it was Happy Fred's gaze that wavered.