The Saint had had his piratical eye on her for a long time; and now, with the apt arrival of that last invitation at a period when he had no other more pressing business on his hands, it seemed as if the discounting of the charitable countess was a pious duty which could no longer be postponed.
He called on her the same afternoon at her apartment, for when once the Saint had made up his mind to a foray the job was as good as done. A morning's meditation had been enough for him to sketch out a plan of campaign, and after that he saw no good reason to put it aside while it grew whiskers.
But what the plan was is of no importance, for he never used it. He had sent in a card bearing his venerable alias of Sebastian Tombs, but when the countess sailed into the luxuriously modernistic drawing room in which the butler had parked him, she came towards him with outstretched hand and a grim smile that promised surprises a split second before she spoke.
"Mr. Templar?" she said coolly. "I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting."
It would be unfair to say that the Saint was disconcerted — in a buccaneer's life nothing could be foreseen, anyway, and you had to be schooled to the unexpected. But a perceptible instant went by before he answered.
"Why, hullo, Maggie," he murmured. "I was going to break it to you gently."
"A man with your imagination should have been able to do better. After all, Mr. Sebastian Tombs is getting to be almost as well known as the great Simon Templar — isn't he?"
The Saint nodded, admitting his lapse, and making a mental note that the time had come to tear himself finally away from the alter ego to which he had clung with perverse devotion for too many years.
"You keep pretty well up-to-date," he remarked.
"Why not?" she returned frankly. "I've had an idea for some time that I'd be getting a visit from you one day."
"Would that be the voice of conscience?"
"Just common sense. Even you can't have a monopoly on thinking ahead."
Simon studied her interestedly. The vats of champagne which had sparkled down her gullet in aid of one charity or another over the past six years had left their own thin dry tang in her voice, but few of her other indulgences had left their mark. The cargoes of caviar, the schools of smoked salmon, the truckloads of foie gras, the coveys of quail, the beds of oysters and the regiments of lobsters which had marched in eleemosynary procession through her intestines, had resolved themselves into very little solid flesh. Unlike most of her kind, she had not grown coarse and flabby; she had aged with a lean and arid dignity. At fifty, Maggie Oaks, late of Weehauken and the Follies, really looked like a countess, even if it was a rather tart and dessicated countess. She looked like one of those brittle fish-blooded aristocrats who stand firm for kindness to animals and discipline for the lower classes. She had hard bright eyes and hard lines cracked into the heavy layers of powder and enamel on her face, and she was a hard bad woman in spite of her successful sophistication.
"At least that saves a lot of explanations," said the Saint, and she returned his gaze with her coldly quizzical stare.
"I take it that I was right — that you've picked me for your next victim."
"Let's call it 'contributor,' " suggested the Saint mildly.
She shrugged.
"In plain language, I'm either to give you, or have stolen from me, whatever sum of money you think fit to assess as a fine for what you would call my misdeeds."
"Madam, you have a wonderful gift of coming to the point."
"This money will be supposedly collected for charity," she went on, "but you will take your commission for collecting it before you pass it on."
"That was the general idea, Maggie."
She lighted a cigarette.
"I suppose I shouldn't be allowed to ask why it's a crime for me to make a living in exactly the same way as you do?"
"There is a difference. I don't set myself up too seriously as a public benefactor. As a matter of fact, most people would tell you that I was a crook. If you want that point of view, ask a policeman."
Her thin lips puckered with watchful mockery.
"That seems to make me smarter than you are, Mr. Templar. The policeman would arrest you, but he'd tip his hat to me."
"That's possible," Simon admitted imperturbably. "But there are other differences."
"Meaning what?"
"Mathematical ones. A matter of simple economy. When I collect money, unless I'm trying to put things right for someone else who's been taken for a mug, between seventy-five and ninety percent of it really does go to charity. Now suppose you collect a thousand dollars in ticket sales for one of your parties. Two hundred and fifty bucks go straight into your pocket — you work on the gross. Other organizing expenses take up at least a hundred dollars more. Advertising, prizes, decorations, publicity and what not probably cost another ten percent. Then there's the orchestra, hire of rooms and waiters and the cost of a lot of fancy food that's much too good for the people who eat it — let's say four hundred dollars. And the caterers give you a fifty-dollar cut on that. The net result is that you take in three hundred dollars and a nice big dinner, and the good cause gets maybe a hundred and fifty. In other words, every time one of your suckers buys one of your thirty-dollar tickets, to help to save fallen women or something like that, he gives you twice as much as he gives the fallen women, which might not be exactly what he had in mind. So I don't think we really are in the same class."
"You don't mean that I'm in a better class?" she protested sarcastically.
The Saint shook his head.
"Oh no," he said. "Not for a moment… But I do think that some of these differences ought to be adjusted."
Her mouth was as tight as a trap.
"And how will that be done?"
"I thought it'd be an interesting change if you practised a little charity yourself. Suppose we set a donation of fifty thousand dollars—"
"Do you really think I'd give you fifty thousand dollars?"
"Why not?" asked the Saint reasonably. "Other people have. And the publicity alone would be almost worth it. Ask your press agent. Besides, it needn't really even cost you anything. That famous diamond necklace of yours, for instance — even in the limited markets I could take it to, it d fetch fifty thousand dollars easily. And if you bought yourself a good imitation hardly anyone would know the difference."
For a moment her mouth stayed open at the implication of what he was saying, and then she burst into a deep cackle of laughter.
"You almost scared me," she said. "But people have tried to bluff me before. Still, it was nice of you to give me the warning." She stood up. "Mr. Templar, I'm not going to threaten you with the police because I know that would only make you laugh. Besides, I think I can look after myself. I'm not going to give you fifty thousand dollars, of course, and I'm not going to let you steal my necklace. If you can get either, you'll be a clever man. Will you come and see me again when you've hatched a plot?"
The Saint stood up also, and smoothed the clothes over his sinewy seventy-four inches. His lazy blue eyes twinkled.
"That sounds almost like a challenge."
"You can take it as one if you like."
"I happen to know that your necklace isn't insured — no company in the country will ever carry you for a big risk since that fraudulent claim that got you a suspended sentence when you were in the Follies. Insurance company black lists don't fade."