She laughed.
"Are we fellow passengers?"
"I do not know. I'm for Paris."
"I'm for Ostend."
The Saint sighed.
"Couldn't you change your mind and come to Paris?"
He had taken one puff from the cigarette. Now he took a second, while she eyed him impudently. The smoke had an unfamiliar, slightly bitter taste to it. Simon drew on the cigarette again thoughtfully, but this time he held the smoke in his mouth and let it trickle out again presently, as if he had inhaled. The expression on his face never altered, although the last thing he had expected had been trouble of that sort.
"Do you think we could take a walk outside?" said the girl. "I'm simply stifling."
"I think it might be a good idea," said the Saint.
He walked out with her into the clear morning sunshine, and they strolled idly along the gravel drive. The rate of exchange had done a great deal to discourage foreign travel that year, and the airport was unusually deserted. A couple of men were climbing out of a car that had drawn up beside the building; but apart from them there was only one other car turning in at the gates leading from the main road, and a couple of mechanics fussing round a gigantic Handley-Page that was ticking over on the tarmac.
"Why did you give me a doped cigarette?" asked the Saint with perfect casualness, but as the girl turned and stared at him his eyes leapt to hers with the cold suddenness of bared steel.
"I–I don't understand. Do you mind telling me what you mean?"
Simon dropped the cigarette and trod on it deliberately.
"Sister," he said, "if you're thinking of a Simon Templar who was born yesterday, let me tell you it was someone else of the same name. You know, I was playing that cigarette trick before you cut your teeth."
The girl's hand went to her mouth; then it went up in a kind of wave. For a moment the Saint was perplexed; and then he started to turn. She was looking at something over his shoulder, but his head had not revolved far enough to see what it was before the solid weight of a sandbag slugged viciously into the back of his neck. He had one instant of feeling his limbs sagging powerlessly under him, while the book he carried dropped from his hand and sprawled open to the ground; and then everything went dark.
He came back to earth in a small barely-furnished office overlooking the landing-field, and in the face that was bending over him he recognized the round pink countenance of Chief Inspector Teal, of Scotland Yard.
"Were you the author of that clout?" he demanded, rubbing the base of his skull tenderly. "I didn't think you could be so rough."
"I didn't do it," said the detective shortly. "But we've got the man who did — if you want to charge him. I thought you'd have known Kate Allfield, Saint."
Simon looked at him.
"What — not 'the Mug'? I have heard of her, but this is the first time we've met. And she nearly made me smoke a sleepy cigarette!" He grimaced. "What was the idea?"
"That's what we're waiting for you to tell us," said Teal grimly. "We drove in just as they knocked you out. We know what they were after all right — the Deacon's gang beat them to the necklace, but that wouldn't make the Green Cross bunch give up. What I want to know is when you started working with the Deacon."
"This is right over my head," said the Saint, just as bluntly. "Who is this Deacon, and who the hell are the Green Cross bunch?"
Teal faced him calmly.
"The Green Cross bunch are the ones that slugged you. The Deacon is the head of the gang that got away with the Palfrey jewels yesterday. He came to see you twice yesterday afternoon — we got the wire that he was planning a big job and we were keeping him under observation, but the jewels weren't missed till this morning. Now I'll hear what you've got to say; but before you begin I'd better warn you —"
"Wait a minute." Simon took out his cigarette-case and helped himself to a smoke. "With an unfortunate reputation like mine, I expect it'll take me some time to drive it into your head that I don't know a thing about the Deacon. He came to me yesterday and said he was a solicitor — he wanted me to look after a valuable sealed packet that he was sending over to Paris, and I took on the job. That's all. He wouldn't even tell me what was in it."
"Oh, yes?" The detective was dangerously polite. "Then I suppose it'd give you the surprise of your life if I told you that that package you were carrying contained a diamond necklace valued at about eight thousand pounds."
"It would," said the Saint.
Teal turned.
There was a plain-clothes man standing guard by the door, and on the table in the middle of the room was a litter of brown paper and tissue in the midst of which gleamed a small heap of coruscating stones and shining metal. Teal put a hand to the heap of jewels and lifted it up into a streamer of iridescent fire.
"This is it," he said.
"May I have a look at it?" said the Saint.
He took the necklace from Teal's hand and studied it closely under the light. Then he handed it back with a brief grin.
"If you could get eighty pounds for it, you'd be lucky," he said. "It's a very good imitation, but I'm afraid the stones are only jargoons."
The detective's eyes went wide. Then he snatched the necklace and examined it himself.
He turned around again slowly.
"I'll begin to believe you were telling the truth for once, Templar," he said, and his manner had changed so much that the effect would have been comical without the back-handed apology. "What do you make of it?"
"I think we've both been had," said the Saint. "After what you've told me, I should think the Deacon knew you were watching him, and knew he'd have to get the jewels out of the country in a hurry. He could probably fence most of them quickly, but no one would touch that necklace — it's too well known. He had the rather artistic idea of trying to get me to do the job —"
"Then why should he give you a fake?"
Simon shrugged.
"Maybe that Deacon is smoother than any of us thought. My God, Teal — think of it! Suppose even all this was just a blind — for you to know he'd been to see me — for you to get after me as soon as the jewels were missed — hear I'd left for Paris — chase me to Croydon — and all the time the real necklace is slipping out by another route —"
"God damn!" said Chief Inspector Teal, and launched himself at the telephone with surprising speed for such a portly and lethargic man.
The plain-clothes man at the door stood aside almost respectfully for the Saint to pass.
Simon fitted his hat on rakishly and sauntered out with his old elegance. Out in the waiting room an attendant was shouting, "All Ostend and Brussels passengers, please!" — and outside on the tarmac a roaring aeroplane was warming up its engines. Simon Templar suddenly changed his mind about his destination.
"I will give you thirty thousand guilders for the necklace," said Van Roeper, the little trader of Amsterdam to whom the Saint went with his booty.
"I'll take fifty thousand," said the Saint; and he got it.
He fulfilled another of the qualifications of a successful buccaneer, for he never forgot a face. He had had a vague idea from the first that he had seen the Deacon somewhere before, but it had not been until that morning, when he woke up, that he had been able to place the amiable solicitor who had been so anxious to enlist his dubious services; and he felt that fortune was very kind to him.
Old Charlie Milton, who had been dragged away from his breakfast to sell him the facsimile for eighty pounds, felt much the same.
3. The Unblemished Bootlegger
Mr. Melford Croon considered himself a very prosperous man. The brass plate outside his unassuming suite of offices in Gray's Inn Road described him somewhat vaguely as a "Financial Consultant"; and while it is true that the gilt-edged moguls of the city had never been known to seek his advice, there is no doubt that he flourished exceedingly.