"What fellow?"
"His name's David Ingleston. I knew him quite slightly, the way you know people in a boardinghouse, but he seemed all right, and he said he'd pay me back in a week. He hasn't paid me back yet. He kept promising to pay me back, but when the time came he'd always have some excuse or other. When I moved my digs to Bloomsbury it got worse — if I rang up or went to see him he'd be out or he'd have been sent abroad by his firm or something, and if I wrote to him he didn't answer, and so on. I'm not very well off, as I told you, and a tenner means quite a bit to me. I was getting pretty fed up with it."
The young man stared resentfully at the sheaf of bonds on the table, as if they personified the iniquity of their owner.
"Well, the other day I found out that he was back in England and that he'd moved into a flat in Chelsea. That made it seem worse, because I thought if he could afford to move into a flat he could afford to pay me my ten quid. I rang him up, and I happened to catch him at home for once, so I told him what I thought of him. He was very apologetic, and he asked me to go round and have a drink with him last night and he'd pay me the tenner then. I was there at half past eight, and he was out, but the maid said I could wait. I kicked my heels for half an hour, and then I began to get angry. After I'd waited an hour I was thoroughly furious. I guessed that he'd forgotten the appointment, or he just wasn't going to keep it, and I could see I'd be waiting another ten years before I got my tenner back. The only thing I could think of was to take it out of him some other way. I couldn't see anything worth pinching that was small enough for me to sneak out under my coat, so I pulled open a drawer of the desk, and I saw those things."
"So you borrowed them for security."
"I didn't really stop to think about it. I didn't know what they were, but they looked as if they might be valuable, so I just shoved them into my pocket. Then the maid came in and said she was going home because she didn't sleep in the flat, and she didn't think she'd better leave me there alone. I was just boiling by that time, so I told her she could tell Ingleston I'd have something to say to him later and marched off. When I got home and had another look at what I'd pinched I began to get the wind up. I couldn't very well take the things into a bank and ask about them, but I thought that you… Well, you know, you—"
"You don't have to feel embarrassed," murmured the Saint kindly. "I have heard people say that they thought my principles were fairly broad-minded. Still, I'm not thinking of sending for the police, although for an amateur burglar you do seem to have got off to a pretty good start."
The young man's lantern jaw became even longer and squarer.
"I don't want Ingleston's beastly bonds," he said, "but I do want my tenner."
"I know," said the Saint sympathetically. "But the Law doesn't allow you to pinch things from people just because they owe you money. It may be ridiculous, but there it is. Hasn't Ingleston rung you up or anything since you pushed off with his bonds?"
"No; but perhaps he hasn't missed them yet."
"If he had you'd probably have heard from him — the maid would have told him you'd been waiting an hour for him last night. Let's hope he hasn't missed them, because if he felt nasty you might have had the police looking for you."
Graham looked slightly stunned.
"But I didn't mean to keep the things—"
"You pinched them," Simon pointed out. "And the police don't know anything about what people mean. Do you realize that you've committed larceny on a scale that'd make a lot of professionals jealous and that you could be sent to prison for quite a long time?"
The other's mouth fell open.
"I hadn't thought of it like that," he said feebly. "It was all on the spur of the moment — I hadn't realized — My God, what am I going to do?"
"The best thing you can do, my lad," said the Saint sensibly, "is to put them back before there's any fuss."
"But—"
There was something so comical about the young man's blankly horrified paralysis that Simon couldn't help taking pity on him.
"Come on," he said. "He can't eat you, and the sooner he gets his bonds back the less likely he is to try. Look here — I'll drive over with you if you like and see that he behaves himself, and we'll take a tenner off him at the same time."
"It's awfully good of you," Graham began weakly; and the Saint grinned and stood up.
"We always try to oblige our customers," he said.
He picked up the bundle of bonds and stuffed them into his own pocket. On the way out he looked in at the dining room to wrinkle his nose at Patricia.
"You'll have to button your own boots," he said. "I'm tottering out for an hour or so to do my Boy Scout act. Where's my bugle?"
He thought of it no more seriously than that, as a mildly amusing interlude to pass the morning between a late breakfast and a cocktail before lunch. The last idea in his head was that he might be setting out on an adventure whose brief intensity would rank with the wildest of his many immortal escapades; and perhaps if it had not been for all those other adventures he might have missed this one altogether. But the heritage of those other adventures was an instinct, the habit of a lifetime, a sixth sense too subtle to define, that fell imperceptibly and unconsciously into tune with the swift smoky rhythm of danger; and that queer intuition caught him like an electric current as the long shining Hirondel purred close to the address that Graham had given him. It caught him quicker than his mind could work — so quickly that before he could analyze his thoughts he had smacked the gear lever down into second, whipped the car behind the cover of a crawling taxi and whirled out of sight of the building around the next corner.
II
"That was the house," Graham protested. "You just passed it."
"I know," said the Saint.
He locked the hand brake as the car pulled in to the curb, and turned to look back at the corner they had just taken. The movement was automatic, although he knew that he couldn't see the entrance of the house from where they had stopped; but in his memory he could see it as clearly as if the angle of the building which hid it from his eyes had been made of glass — the whole little tableau that had blazed those high-voltage danger signals into his brain.
Not that there had been anything sensational about it, anything that would have had that instantaneous and dynamic effect on the average man's reactions. Just seven or eight assorted citizens of various but quite ordinary and unexciting shapes and sizes, loafing and gaping inanely about the pavement, with the door of the house which Simon had been making for as a kind of vague focus linking them roughly together. A constable in uniform standing beside the door, and a rotund, pink-faced man in a bowler hat who had emerged from the hall to speak to him at the very moment when the Saint's eye was grasping the general outlines of the scene. Nothing startling or prodigious; but it was enough to keep the Saint sitting there with his eyes keen and intent while he went over the details in his mind. Perhaps it was the memory of that round man with a face like a slightly apoplectic cherub, who had come out to speak to the policeman…
Graham was staring at him perplexedly.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
The Saint looked at him almost without seeing him, and a faint aimless smile touched his lips.
"Nothing," he said. "Can you drive a car?"
"Fairly well."
"Drive this one. She's a bit of a handful, so you'd better take it easy. Don't put your foot down too quickly, or you'll find yourself a mile or two ahead of yourself."
"But—"
"Go back to my place. You'll find a girl there — name of Patricia Holm. I'll phone her and tell her you're on your way. She'll give you a drink and prattle to you till I get back. I'd like to pay this call alone."