He took it out of his hip pocket--it was a very large parcel, and the bulge would have been easy to notice if anyone had got behind him.
Vascoe let out a hoarse yell, jumped at it and wrenched it out of his hands. He ripped it open with clawing fingers.
"My miniatures!" he sobbed. "My medallions--my cameos! My----"
"Here, wait a minute!"
Fernack thrust himself forward again, taking possession of the package. For a second or two the denouement had blown him sky-high, turned him upside down and left him with the feeling that the pit of his stomach had suddenly gone away on an unauthorized vacation; but now he had his bearings again. He faced the Saint with homicidal determination.
"It's a fine story," he said raspily. "But this is one time you're not going to get away with it. Yeah, I get the idea. You pull the job so you can win your bet and then you bring the stuff back with that fairy tale and think everything's going to be all right. Well, you're not going to get away with it! What happened to the guy you say you knocked out and tied up, and who else saw him, and who else saw all these things happen?"
The Saint smiled.
"I left him locked up in the garage," he said. "He's probably still there. As for who else saw him, Martin Ingerbeck was with me."
"Who?"
"Ingerbeck himself. The detective bloke. You sec, I happened to help him with a job once, so I didn't see why I shouldn't help him with another.* So as soon as I guessed what was going to happen, I called him up and he met me at once and came along with me. He even recognized the bloke who opened the window, too."
*See Saint Overboard (Crime Club).
"And who was that?" Fernack demanded derisively, but somehow his derision sounded hollow.
The Saint bowed.
"I'm afraid," he said, "it was the Earl of East-ridge."
His lordship stared at him pallidly.
"I think you must be mad," he said.
"It's preposterous !" spluttered Vascoe. "I happen to have made every inquiry about Lord Eastridge. There isn't the slightest doubt that he's----"
"Of course he is," said the Saint calmly. "But he wasn't always. It's a curious old English custom--a fellow can go around with one name for most of his life and then he inherits a title and changes his name without any legal formalities. It's funny that you should have been asking me about him, Fernack. His name used to be Dennis Umber. As soon as Meryl mentioned the Earl of Eastridge I remembered what it was that I'd read about him in the papers. I'd noticed that he came into an earldom when his uncle died. That's why I thought something like this might happen, and that's why I made that bet with Vascoe."
The night guard fizzed suddenly out of his retirement.
"That's right!" he exploded excitedly. "I'll bet it was him. I wondered why I went off to sleep like that. Well, about two o'clock he came downstairs--said he was looking for something to read because he couldn't get to sleep--and got me to have a drink with him. It was just after he went upstairs again that I fell off. That drink must've been doped!"
Eastridge looked from side to side and his face twitched. He made a sudden grab at his pocket, but Fernack was too quick for him.
Simon Templar hitched himself off the armchair as the brief scuffle subsided.
"Well, that seems to be that," he observed languidly. "You'll have to wait for another chance, Fernack. Go home and take some lessons in detecting, and you may do better next time." He looked at Vascoe. "I'll see my lawyers later and find out what sort of a suit we can cook up on account of all the rude things you've been saying, but meanwhile I'll collect my check from Morgan Dean." Then he turned to Meryl. "I'm going to lend Bill Fulton the profits to pay off his debts with," he said. "I shall expect a small interest in his invention and a large slice of wedding cake."
Before she could say anything he was gone. Thanks didn't interest him: he wanted breakfast.
VI THE STAR PRODUCERS
Mr homer quarterstone was not, to be candid, a name to conjure with in the world of the Theatre. It must be admitted that his experience behind the footlights was not entirely confined to that immortal line: "Dinner is served." As a matter of fact, he had once said "The Baron is here" and "Will there be anything further, madam?" in the same act; and in another never-to-be-forgotten drama which had run for eighteen performances on Broadway, he had taken part in the following classic dialogue:
Nick: Were you here?
Jenkins (Mr Homer Quarterstone) : No sir.
Nick: Did you hear anything?
Jenkins : No sir.
Nick : A hell of a lot of use you are.
Jenkins : Yes sir.
(Exit, carrying tray.)
In the executive line, Mr Quarterstone's career had been marked by the same magnanimous emphasis on service rather than personal glory. He had not actually produced any spectacles of resounding success but he had contributed his modest quota to their triumph by helping to carry chairs and tables on to the stage and arrange them according to the orders of the scenic director. And although he had not actually given his personal guidance to any of the financial manoeuvres associated with theatrical production, he had sat in the box office at more than one one-night stand, graciously controlling the passage over the counter of those fundamental monetary items without which the labours of more egotistical financiers would have been fruitless.
Nevertheless, while it is true that the name of Quar-terstone had never appeared in any headlines, and that his funeral cortege would never have attracted any distinguished pallbearers, he had undoubtedly found the Theatre more profitable than many other men to whom it had given fame.
He was a man of florid complexion and majestic bearing, with a ripe convexity under his waistcoat and a forehead that arched glisteningly back to the scruff of his neck; and he had a taste for black homburgs and astrakhan-collared overcoats which gave an impression of great artistic prosperity. This prosperity was by no means illusory, for Mr Homer Quarterstone, in his business capacity, was now the principal, president, director, owner and twenty-five percent of the staff of the Supremax Academy of Dramatic Art, which according to its frequent advertisements had been the training ground, the histrionic hothouse, so to speak, of many stars whose names were now household words from the igloos of Greenland to the tents of the wandering Bedouin. And the fact that Mr Quarterstone had not become the principal, president, director, owner, etc., of the Supremax Academy until several years after the graduation of those illustrious personages, when in a period of unaccustomed affluence and unusually successful borrowing he had purchased the name and good will of an idealistic but moribund concern, neither deprived him of the legal right to make that claim in his advertising nor hampered the free flow of his imagination when he was expounding his own experience and abilities to prospective clients.
Simon Templar, who sooner or later made the acquaintance of practically everyone who was collecting too much money with too little reason, heard of him first from Rosalind Hale, who had been one of those clients; and she brought him her story for the same reason that many other people who had been foolish would often come to Simon Templar with their troubles, as if the words "The Saint" had some literally supernatural significance, instead of being merely the nickname with which he had once incongruously been christened.
"I thought it was only the sensible thing to do--to get some proper training--and his advertisements looked genuine. You wouldn't think those film stars would let him use their names for a fraud, would you?
... I suppose I was a fool, but I'd played in some amateur things, and people who weren't trying to flatter me said I was good, and I really believed I'd got it in me, sort of instinctively. And some of the people who believe they've got it in them must be right, and they must do something about it, or else there wouldn't be any actors and actresses at all, would there? . . . And really I'm--I--well, I don't make you shudder when you look at me, do I ?"