For the rest of the day he was nothing but human, but he repeated his promise before he left. And it was not for lack of mental effort that a solution to the mystery of Mr. Gull continued to elude him. Some factor seemed to be missing which left all the equations open-ended, but he could not put his finger on it.
Then, on the following Thursday, Penelope Lynch phoned him.
"Well," she said, "it's happened."
His heart sank momentarily.
"What has? He's skipped?"
"No. He's going to start giving the money back. He came in this morning and told me to write letters to the first five people who invested, saying that he's decided to close down his business, thanking them for their help and confidence, and enclosed please find their original hundred pounds. He says he's planning to pay off at least that many people every week from now on."
"This I have got to see more of," said the Saint. "I'll be down this afternoon."
He thoughtfully packed a bag and put it in his car, and drove to Maidenhead immediately after lunch.
The office was above a tobacconist and newsagent on a turning off the High Street. It was minimally furnished with a filing cabinet, a book-case which contained only boxes of stationery, and two desks, on one of which was a typewriter, behind which sat Penelope.
She showed him one of the letters which she had finished, but he was less interested in it than in the five envelopes she had prepared. He copied the addresses on a sheet of paper, and then asked to see the card index, but he could find nothing significant in the bare data on when their investments had been received and what dividends had been paid.
"Mr. Gull left his own book here this morning," she mentioned, and Simon recalled what she had said about the cryptic marks that Mr. Gull made on his own records.
He went carefully through the lists under each initial. Opposite some of the typewritten names had been pencilled an "O", and opposite some others appeared an "X". There were very few 'X's — in fact, when he checked back, the total was only seven. He wrote those down also; but neither the names nor the addresses thus distinguished seemed to have any characteristic in common, at least on the surface. Only one of them happened to be among the five to whom the first refunds were going.
"You're not making out checks for these, either?" he asked.
"No. But they're to be registered, as you see."
"That's about all I can see," he said wryly. "If something doesn't click pretty soon, you're going to wonder how I ever got my reputation. And so am I. Now I'm going to beat it before he comes back, but I'll expect you for dinner at Skindle's. Will seven o'clock give you time to run home and change?"
When she arrived, and they had ordered cocktails in the bar, she told him that Gull had come in at five, laden with more money, and had approved and signed the refund letters.
"Then he said I could go home, and he'd make up the refund packages and mail them himself, like he always did the dividends. He had time to do it and get to the post office before it closed."
"You didn't happen to hang around outside and see whether he made it?"
"I thought of it, but I got cold feet. I was afraid he might see me, and it might spoil something for you."
"Well, assuming that he did catch the mail, the letters should be delivered tomorrow morning. And I just think I'll check on that."
She was beginning to seem a little troubled.
"Perhaps there is nothing wrong after all, and I'm wasting your time like an old maid who thinks every man on the street at night is Jack the Ripper. If that's how it turns out, I'll want to shoot myself."
"Somehow, I'm sure you'll never turn out to be an old maid," he said cheerfully.
"But if Mr. Gull really has a system — you said it was always possible—"
"It could still be just as dangerous. Perhaps I haven't been careful enough how I phrased some of the things I've said. There are theoretically infallible systems — but in practice they eventually blow up. For instance, it's a fact that about two out of five favorites win. So in theory, you only have to double your stake after each loser, and fairly soon you must hit a winner and show a net profit. According to you, Uncle Tom is a rather simple soul, and he may have figured this out in his little head and thought he'd discovered something like atomic energy. But the snag is that the average two-out-of-five is the end result of a lot of very erratic winning and losing runs. There are plenty of days when no favorites win at all. Now, suppose you started with a bet of ten pounds; doubling up, you bet twenty, forty, eighty, a hundred and sixty, then three hundred and twenty on the sixth race. The next day, you have to start off betting six hundred and forty, twelve hundred and eighty, twenty-five hundred and sixty, five thousand one hundred and twenty — and if that one wins at even money, you net exactly ten pounds. If it goes down, your next bet would be more than ten thousand — and where would you find the bookies to take it?"
"And I suppose there have been two days in a row without a winning favorite?"
"There have. Perhaps not often, but now and again they happen. I don't say that that's Uncle Tom's system, but it could be something along those lines. If so, he may have been lucky so far, but one day it's going to blow up with an almighty bang, as sure as there'll be a frost before summer."
"Then I only hope it lasts long enough for him to give everyone their money back."
"That'll take about ten months, on the present schedule," he said. "I don't think I can hold my breath that long."
It was hard enough for him to wait until after breakfast the next day and an hour at which the morning mail could be safely assumed to have been delivered and opened.
The one subscriber of the five earmarked for the first refunds who was also marked with an X on Mr. Gull's private list had an address in North London and a telephone number in the directory.
"This is the Sportsman's Guide," said the Saint, to the cantankerous elderly voice that answered. "We understand that you were a client of one of our advertisers, Mr. Tom Gull."
"That is correct."
"Mr. Gull tells us that he is going out of business and is refunding all investments. Has he notified you of that?"
"I received a letter to that effect this morning, enclosing my money."
Simon took a deep breath.
"Until then, did you receive your dividends regularly?"
"I did. It was a most satisfactory service. In fact, I think it's most inconsiderate of him to discontinue it so arbitrarily. But there you are. Nothing seems to have any stability these days."
"That's what comes of keeping horses in them," said the Saint sympathetically, and hung up.
Another of the five was also in the London directory, but the number did not answer.
The other three addresses were in Beaconsfield, Windsor, and Staines. It took some time to find out and connect with the next number through the hotel switchboard — he had taken a room at Skindle's to remain closer to the subject of his investigation — but when he introduced himself with the same formula, the response was startlingly different.
"I never heard of him."
"You are Mr. Eric Botolphome?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
"But you haven't had any dealings with Mr. Gull."
"I have not. And I never heard of your publication, either."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Botolphome," said the Saint slowly. "We must have been misinformed."