"Where are they?" he snarled savagely.
"Where are who?" asked the Saint densely.
"You know damn well what I'm talking about," Corrio said through his teeth. "What have you done with the stuff you stole from Oppcnheim's last night? Where are the Vanderwoude emeralds?"
"Oh, them," said the Saint mildly. "That's a funny question for you to ask." He leaned lazily on the wall against which Corrio had forced him, took out his cigarette case and looked at Fernack.
"As a matter of fact," he said calmly, "that's what I wanted to see you about. If you're particularly interested I think I could show you where they went to."
The laugh died away on Fernack's lips, to be replaced by the startled and hurt look of a dog that has been given an unexpected bone and then kicked almost as soon as it has picked it up.
"So you do know something about that job," he said slowly.
"I know plenty," said the Saint. "Let's take a cab."
He straightened up off the wall. For a moment Corrio looked as if he would pin him back there, but Fernack's intent interest countermanded the movement without speaking or even looking at him. Fernack was puzzled and disturbed, but somehow the Saint's quiet voice and unsmiling eyes told him that there was something there to be taken seriously. He stepped back, and Simon walked past him unhindered and opened the door of a taxi standing by the curb.
"Where are we going to?" Fernack asked, as they turned south down Fifth Avenue.
The Saint grinned gently and settled back in "his corner with his cigarette. He ignored the question.
"Once upon a time," he said presently, "there was a smart detective. He was very smart because after some years of ordinary detecting he had discovered that the main difficulty about the whole business was that you often have to find out who committed a crime, and since criminals don't usually leave their names and addresses behind them this is liable to mean a lot of hard work and a good many disappointments. Besides which, the pay of a police lieutenant isn't nearly so big as that amount of brainwork seems to deserve. So this guy, being a smart fellow, thought of a much simpler method, which was more or less to persuade the criminals to tell him about it themselves. Of course, he couldn't arrest them even then, because if he did that they might begin to suspect that he had some ulterior motive; but there were plenty of other ways of making a deal out of it. For instance, suppose a crook got away with a tidy cargo of loot and didn't want to put it away in the refrigerator for icicles to grow on; he could bring his problem to our smart detective, and our smart detective could think it over and say, 'Well, Elmer, that's pretty easy. All you do is just go and hide this loot in an ash can on Second Avenue or hang it on a tree in Central Park, or something like that, and I'll do a very smart piece of detecting and find it. Then I'll collect the reward and we'll go shares in it.' Usually this was pretty good business for the crook, the regular fences being as miserly as they arc, and the detective didn't starve on it either. Of course the other detectives in the bureau weren't so pleased about it, being jealous of seeing this same guy collecting such a lot of credits and fat insurance company checks; but somehow it never seemed to occur to them to wonder how he did it."
He finished speaking as the taxi drew up at an apartment hotel near the corner of East Twelfth Street.
Fernack was sitting forward, with his jaw square and hard and his eyes fixed brightly on the Saint's face.
"Go on," he said gruffly.
Simon shook his head and indicated the door.
"We'll change the scene again."
He got out and paid off the driver and the other two followed him into the hotel. Corrio's face seemed to have gone paler under its olive tan.
Simon paused in the lobby and glanced at him.
"Will you ask for the key, or shall I? It might be better if you asked for it," he said softly, "because the clerk will recognize you. Even if he doesn't know you by your right name."
"I don't quite know what you're talking about," Corrio said coldly, "but if you think you can wriggle out of this with any of your wild stories, you're wasting your time." He turned to Fernack. "I have got an apartment here, sir — I just use it sometimes when I'm kept in town late and I can't get home. It isn't in my own name, because — well, sir, you understand — I don't always want everybody to know who I am. This man has got to know about it somehow, and he's just using it to try and put up some crazy story to save his own skin."
"All the same," said Fernack with surprising gentleness, "I'd like to go up. I want to hear some more of this crazy story."
Corrio turned on his heel and went to the desk. The apartment was on the third floor — an ordinary two-room suite with the usual revolting furniture to be found in such places. Fernack glanced briefly over the living room into which they entered and looked at the Saint again.
"Go on," he said. "I'm listening."
The Saint sat down on the edge of the table and blew smoke rings.
"It would probably have gone on a lot longer," he said, "if this smart detective hadn't thought one day what a supremely brilliant idea it would be to combine business with profit, and have the honour of convicting a most notorious and elusive bandit known as the Saint — not forgetting, of course, to collect the usual cash reward in the process. So he used a very good-looking young damsel — you ought to meet her sometime, Fernack, she really is a peach — having some idea that the Saint would never run away very fast from a pretty face. In which he was damn right… She had a very well-planned hard-luck story, too, and the whole act was most professionally staged. It had all the ingredients that a good psychologist would bet on to make the Saint feel that stealing Oppenheim's emeralds was the one thing he had left glaringly undone in an otherwise complete life. Even the spadework of the job had already been put in, so that she could practically tell the Saint how to pinch the jewels. So that our smart detective must have thought he was sitting pretty, with a sucker all primed to do the dirty work for him and take the rap if anything went wrong — besides being still there to take the rap when the smart detective made his arrest and earned the reward if everything went right."
Simon smiled dreamily at a particularly repulsive print on the wall for a moment.
"Unfortunately, I happened to drop in on this girl one time when she wasn't expecting me, and I heard her phoning a guy named Corrio to tell him I was well and truly hooked," he said. "On account of having read in the Daily Mail some talk by a guy of the same name about what he was going to do to me, I was naturally interested."
Corrio started forward.
"Look here, you—"
"Wait a minute." Fernack held him back with an iron arm. "I want the rest of it. Did you do the job, Saint?"
Simon shook his head sadly. It was at that point that his narrative departed, for the very first time, from the channels of pure veracity in which it had begun its course — but Fernack was not to know this.
"Would I be such a sap?" he. asked reproachfully. "I knew I could probably get away with the actual robbery because Corrio would want me to; but as soon as it was over, knowing in advance who'd done it, he'd be chasing round to catch me and recover the emeralds. So I told the girl I'd thought it all over and decided I was too busy." The Saint sighed as if he was still regretting a painful sacrifice. "The rest is pure theory; but this girl gave me a checkroom ticket on Grand Central this morning and asked me if I'd collect a package on it this afternoon and take it along to an address on Fifty-second Street. I didn't do it because I had an idea what would happen; but my guess would be that if somebody went along and claimed the parcel they'd find emeralds in it. Not all the emeralds, probably, because that 'd be too risky if I got curious and opened it; but some of them. The rest are probably here — I've been looking around since we've been here, and I think there's some new and rather amateurish stitching in the upholstery of that chair. I could do something with that reward myself."