The Saint was silent for a longer time. His mouth opened, and he gaped at the financier more or less as he would have expected the real Tim Vickery to gape, in startlement and incredulity and a swelling hunger of greed; and not all of that was an effort. The same queer tingle of supernatural expectation touched his spine as had touched it when he discovered that quartet of detectives gathering in Bond Street eight hours ago; the same tiny pulse beat in his brain, but those were things that Ivar Nordsten could not see.
"What do I have to do?" he asked at last; and that humourless twitch moved the corners of the financier's thin mouth again.
"I'll show you."
Nordsten got up and opened the door. Following him out into the hall and up the broad oak staircase, the Saint's face relaxed in a fleeting smile that hardly reached beyond the corners of his eyes. It was, he reflected, only in keeping with the rest of his madcap existence that he should have been in such a situation at that moment--it was the only logical sequel to the crazy impulse which had put him into the driving seat of that prehistoric taxi such a short while ago. Adventures were still to the adventurous. One-saw the tail of a wild goose whisk by in the arid deserts of the commonplace and grabbed it; and the chase led inevitably to a land flowing with un-godliness and boodle. And he would not have had his life ordered on any other lines. . . .
They went down a long corridor carpeted ins rich purple; and Nordsten opened a door at the end. It gave onto a kind of small lobby, from which other doors opened on three sides. Nordsten opened the one on the left and led him in.
It was a fairly large room with windows opening onto the falling view which the Saint had seen when he approached the house. There was a good rug on the floor, and a couple of armchairs; but it was the rest of the furnishings which were unusual. Looking them over slowly, Simon grasped their purpose. The room was fitted up as a complete engraving and printing plant in miniature. There was a drawing board with a green-shaded light, a workbench at one end of which were set out orderly rows of tools and a neat stack of steel plates, an electric warming plate, bottles of printing ink of every conceivable colour, and larger containers of acid and etching ground. In one cor-ner was a new hand press of the most modern design, and in another corner were boxes of paper of various sizes.
"I think you'll find everything you could want," Nordsten said suavely; "but if you should require anything else, it will be procured as soon as you ask for it."
Simon moistened his lips.
"What do you want me to copy?" he asked.
Nordsten went to the drawing board and picked up a small sheaf of papers which had been placed at one side of it.
"As many of these as you can manage," he said. Some will be more difficult than others--perhaps you would do better to start on the easiest ones, You will have to work hard, but not so fast that you cannot do your best work. I will pay you one hundred thousand pounds as an indefinite retainer, and fifty thousand pounds for every plate you complete to my satisfaction. Do I take it that the proposition appeals to you?"
The Saint nodded. He held in his hands the sheaf of papers which Nordsten had given him-- Italian national bonds, Norwegian national bonds, Argentine conversion bonds--a complete sample packet of international gilt-edge securities.
"All right," he said. "I'll start on Monday."
The financier shook his head.
"If you intend to accept my offer you must start at once. I have arranged your accommodation so that you can always be near your work. This is a small self-contained suite--there is a bedroom next door and a bathroom opposite. Anything you need to make yourself comfortable can be obtained in an hour or two."
"But my sister------"
"You can write to her, or telephone whenever you like--there is an extension in your bedroom. Naturally you will not tell her what you are doing; but you will doubtless be able to explain your stay easily enough."
"I shall have to match the paper."
"It is already matched." Nordsten indicated the piles of boxes in the corner. "In fact, you have here sheets of the original papers. Many of the inks, also, are those which were used in the original printings. The only things I have been unable to obtain are the original plates; but those, of course, were destroyed. That is why I sent for you. Are you ready to start?"
There was something in his voice which made Simon look at him quietly for a moment; and then he remembered again that he was supposed to be Tim Vickery and swallowed.
"Yes," he said. "I'm ready."
Ivar Nordsten smiled; Hut there was no more softening behind the smile than there had been behind any of the previous infinitesimal movements of his lips.
"Really, it's the only sensible decision," he said genially. "Well, Vickery, I'll leave you to make your preparations. There is a bell beside the fire-place, and it will be answered as soon as you ring. Perhaps you will have dinner with me?"
"Thank you," said the Saint.
When his host had gone, he threw his cigar into the fireplace and lighted a cigarette. Later on he lighted another. For half an hour he wandered about the workshop, stopping sometimes to examine the implements that had been provided for . his use, stopping often to look at the sheaf of specimen bonds which he was asked to copy, with his brows knitted in a straight line of intense thought. And once his hand went to his hip for a reassuring feel of the weight of the automatic which he had not forgotten to put on when he dressed for the occasion; for there had been something in Ivar Nordsten's persuasive voice which told him that no Tim Vickery who refused the offer would have been allowed to take his knowledge of that strange proposition back into the open world.
Nordsten required forgeries of a round dozen government bonds of as many nationalities. Why? Not for any ordinary purpose to which such counterfeits might have been put--the very idea was absurd. What for, then?
He ran over everything he could recall about Nordsten. The name was not on the tip of every tongue, like the names of Rockefeller, or Morgan, but it was a name that was no less famous in other fields of finance; and it was part of Simon Templar's business to have at least a passing knowledge of those fields where millions are dealt with which are outside the limited ken of the average man in the street. Ivar Nordsten reaped in those fields; and the Saint had heard of him.
To the few people whose interests brought them in contact with the less publicized kingdoms of industry, he was known as the Paper King. Start-, ing from one small factory in Sweden, he had built up a chain of production units which controlled practically the whole output of Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Holland, until more than half the paper which was consumed in Europe was manufactured under his management. Not long ago he had taken over the most important mills in Austria and Denmark, and penetrated the British industry with an amount of capital which completed a virtual financial monopoly of the most considerable manufacturing and consuming countries in Europe. Not even content with that, he was rumoured to be negotiating for a series of loans and amalgamations which would link up the major concerns of Canada and the United States in the gigantic organization of which he was dictator--an invulnerable world trust that would practically be able to write its own checks on every industry in which paper was used, and which would in a few years lift his already fabulous fortune into astronomical figures. This was the Ivar Nordsten of whom Annette Vickery had never heard; but it is a curious commentary on this civilization that the average man and woman hears of comparatively few of the great financial wizards until those wizards are trying to conjure themselves out of the dock in a criminal court. And this was the Ivar Nordsten who required a convicted forger to counterfeit twelve different 'series of foreign government bonds.