He said apologetically: "I'm just one of those lazy people. I believe they call it 'independent means.' "
This was true enough for an idle moment. The Saint could have exhibited a bank account that would have' dazzled many men who called themselves wealthy, but it was on the subject of how that wealth had been accumulated that several persons who lived by what they had previously called their wits were inclined to wax profane.
Mr Naskill sighed.
"I don't blame you," he said. "Why work if you don',t have to? Wish I was in your shoes myself. Wasn't born lucky, that's all. Still, I've got a good business now, so I shouldn't complain. Expect you recognize the name."
"Naskill?" The Saint frowned slightly. When he repeated it, it did have a faintly familiar ring, "It sounds as if I ought to know it----"
The other nodded.
"Some people call it No-skill," he said. "They're about right, too. That's what it is. Magic for amateurs. Look."
He flicked a card out of his pocket on to the table between them. It was the ace of diamonds. He turned it over and immediately faced it again. It was the nine of clubs. He turned it over again and it was the queen of hearts. He left it lying face down on the cloth and Simon picked it up curiously and examined it. It was the three of spades, but there was nothing else remarkable about it.
"Used to be a conjuror myself," Naskill explained. "Then I got rheumatism in my hands, and I was on the rocks. Didn't know any other job, so I had to make a living teaching other people tricks. Most of 'em haven't the patience to practise sleight of hand, so I made it easy for 'em. Got a fine trade now, and a two-hundred-page catalogue. I can make anybody into just as good a magician as the money they like to spend, and they needn't practise for five minutes. Look."
He took the card that the Saint was still holding, tore it into small pieces, folded his plump fingers on them for a moment and spread out his hands--empty. Then he broke open the cigarette he was smoking and inside it was a three of spades rolled into a tight cylinder, crumpled but intact.
"You can buy that one for a dollar and a half," he said. "The first one I showed you is two dollars. It's daylight robbery, really, but some people like to show off at parties, and they give me a living."
Simon slid back his sleeve from his wrist watch and glanced out of the window at the speeding landscape. There was still about an hour to go before they would be in Miami, and he had nothing else to take up his time. Besides, Mr Naskill was something novel and interesting in his experience; and it was part of the Saint's creed that a modern brigand could never know too much about the queerer things that went on in the world.
He caught the eye of a waiter at the other end of the dining car and beckoned him over.
"Could you stand a drink?" he suggested.
"Scotch for me," said Mr Naskill gratefully. He wiped his face again while Simon duplicated the order. "But I'm still talking about myself. If I'm boring you----"
"Not a bit of it." The Saint was perfectly sincere. "I don't often meet anyone with an unusual job like yours. Do you know any more tricks?"
Mr Naskill polished a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, fitted them on his nose and hitched himself forward.
"Look," he said eagerly.
He was like a child with a new collection of toys. He dug into another of his sagging pockets, which Simon was now deciding were probably loaded with enough portable equipment to stage a complete show, and hauled out a pack of cards which he pushed over to the Saint.
"You take 'em. Look 'em over as much as you like. See if you can find anything wrong with 'cm. . . . All right. Now shuffle 'em. Shuffle 'em all you want." He waited. "Now spread 'em out on the table. You're doing this trick, not me. Take any card you like. Look at it-- don't let me see it. All right. Now, I haven't touched the cards at all, have I, except to give 'em to you ? You shuffled 'em and you picked a card without me helping you. I couldn't have forced it on you or anything. Eh? All right. Well, I could put any trimmings I wanted on this trick--any fancy stunts I could think up to make it look more mysterious. They'd all be easy because I know what card you've got all the time. You've got the six of diamonds."
Simon turned the card over. It was the six of diamonds.
"How's that?" Naskill demanded gleefully.
The Saint grinned. He drew a handful of cards towards him, face downwards as they lay, and pored over the backs for two or three minutes before he sat back again with a rueful shrug.
Mr Naskill chortled.
"There's nothing wrong with your eyes," he said. "You could go over 'em with a microscope and not find anything. All the same, I'll tell you what you've got. The king of spades, the two of spades, the ten of hearts----"
"I'll take your word for it," said the Saint resignedly. "But how on earth do you do it?"
Naskill glowed delightedly.
"Look," he said.
He took off his glasses and passed them over. Under the flat lenses Simon could see the notations clearly printed in the corners of each card--KS, 2S, 10H. They vanished as soon as he moved the glasses and it was impossible to find a trace of them with the naked eye.
"I've heard of that being done with coloured glasses," said the Saint slowly, "but I noticed that yours weren't coloured."
Naskill shook his head.
"Coloured glasses are old stuff. Too crude. Used to be used a lot by sharpers but too many people got to hear about 'em. You couldn't get into a card game with coloured glasses these days. No good for conjuring, either. But this is good. Invented it myself. Special ink and special kind of glass. There is a tint in it, of course, but it's too faint to notice." He shoved the cards over the cloth. "Here. Keep the lot for a souvenir. You can have some fun with your friends. But don't go asking 'em in for a game of poker, mind."
Simon gathered the cards together.
"It would be rather a temptation," he admitted. "But don't you get a lot of customers who buy them just for that?"
"Sure. A lot of professionals use my stuff. I know 'em all. Often see 'em in the shop. Good customers--they buy by the dozen. Can't refuse to serve 'em--they'd only get 'em some other way or buy somewhere else. I call it a compliment to the goods I sell. Never bothers my conscience; Anybody who plays cards with strangers is asking for trouble, anyway. It isn't only professionals, either. You'd be surprised at some of the people I've had come in and ask for a deck of readers --that's the trade name for 'em. I remember one fellow ..."
He launched into a series of anecdotes that filled up the time until they had to separate to their compartments to collect their luggage. Mr Naskill's pining for company was understandable after only a few minutes' acquaintance; it was clear that he was constitutionally incapable of surviving for long without an audience.
Simon Templar was not bored. He had already had his money's worth. Whether his friends would allow him to get very far with a programme of card tricks if he appeared before them in an unaccustomed set of horn-rimmed windows was highly doubtful; but the trick was worth knowing, just the same.
Almost every kind of craftsman has specialized journals to inform him of the latest inventions and discoveries and technical advances in his trade, but there is as yet no publication called the Grafter's Gazette and Weekly Skulldugger to keep a professional freebooter abreast of the newest devices for separating the sucker from his dough, and the Saint was largely dependent on his own researches for the encyclopedic knowledge of the wiles of the ungodly that had brought so much woe to the chevaliers d'industrie of two hemispheres. Mr Naskill's conversation had yielded a scrap of information that would be filed away in the Saint's well-stocked memory against the day when it would be useful. It might lie fallow for a month, a year, five years, before it produced its harvest: the Saint was in no hurry. In the fulness of time he would collect his dividend--it was one of the cardinal articles of his faith that nothing of that kind ever crossed his path without a rendezvous for the future, however distant that future might be. But one of the things that always gave the Saint a particular affection for this story was the promptness with which his expectations were fulfilled.