“No checks,” sneered the waitress as she galloped by.
Simon mentally reduced her tip to a penny and started thumbing through the bank book. Cassie, bouncing up and down as energetically as ever, peered at him over a forkful of fish.
“Counting your money?” she asked.
“Counting Perry Loudon’s.”
Her eyes grew wider. The fish remained suspended.
“You stole that?”
“I confiscated it, as material vital to my investigation of this case. Does that satisfy your moral scruples?”
Cassie shrugged and popped the fish into her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t have any moral scruples.”
Simon glanced up at her with a quizzical glint in his eyes.
“We’ll test that out later.” He went on talking to her as he studied the bank book. “My personal theory is that you’re a phony.”
“A phony?” squealed Cassie.
“Yes. An escapist who’d run off and hide from any tough situation at the first chance she got.”
Simon stole a quick look to see whether his use of reverse psychology was having the intended effect. Cassie had stopped bouncing, and her mouth was compressed with outrage.
“Also,” the Saint said, “I imagine your sophomoric braggadocio about moral scruples is just that: you’d probably crumple up and start crying if I so much as nibbled your ear.”
“I... I’m still with you, aren’t I?” she demanded.
He gave her a charming smile.
“I haven’t nibbled your ear, yet.”
“Well, I could have run away a long time ago.”
“That’s true, and I’m proud of you. Keep it up, because the worst is yet to come.”
She pushed her plate away and watched him with worried, clouded-turquoise eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve found something interesting here.” He tapped the bank book. “And I don’t just mean the exorbitant prices people paid Loudon for those metal doodles of his.”
“Well, tell me,” said Cassie, starting to jiggle again.
“I will. In the meantime we’ll be on our way to pay a visit.”
“Where?”
“To a patron of the arts.”
6
Simon hailed a cab and directed it to Upper Berkeley Mews. He was not expecting that Longbottom or one of his confreres would be waiting to pick up his trail there, because that was exactly where they would not expect him to have the cool insolence to go. He anticipated a good deal of travelling that night, and he would prefer the facilities of his own car. Cassie wanted to see the inside of his house, but he had rarely felt the pressure of time more urgently. He only let her into the downstairs garage, and in a matter of seconds they were on their way again, in the white Volvo which was his latest acquisition.
As he turned out of the Mews, he gave her the bank book he had taken from Perry Loudon’s apartment and suggested that she look at it with a flashlight he always kept in the glove compartment.
Her first reaction, after a few seconds of scrutiny, was a low whistle.
“I had no idea he was so rich,” she said. “I knew he was supposed to be a genius, but so are half the people on the same block. Here’s seven hundred pounds. Five hundred pounds.” Her voice became more excited. “Two thousand pounds.”
“If you’ll notice,” said the Saint, “he’s written the names of 140 people against the checks he deposited, presumably for various chunks of that scrap metal of his. Those are the payments that are in the hundreds. But look at those large payments. There aren’t any names by them,” Cassie said. “They’re all shown as cash.”
“Yes. But do you notice that those big entries always seem to follow right after a certain purchaser’s name?” Cassie studied the book. “Yes,” she said. “Is it Finlay Thorpe-Jones?”
“He’s the one.”
“Here’s five thousand pounds. Another two thousand. Three thousand. What is it? Do you figure this Finlay Thorpe-Jones was paying him extra for some reason?”
“Possibly.”
“But why? And even if he did, nothing’s wrong with that, is there?”
“No,” Simon agreed. “But it’s odd, wouldn’t you agree? To pay somebody by check for art works, and then slip the really big money to him in cash. Of course if Loudon hadn’t been murdered it wouldn’t be any of my business how he got paid for what. But since I’m already suspected of having done something violent to him, I have an avid interest in all his affairs — particularly in the ones involving money, the ones that might motivate somebody to knock him off.”
They had made the one-way circuit of Berkeley Square, and were heading westward on Charles Street. “I have an idea,” Cassie said.
She turned excitedly to Simon, who had to admit to himself inwardly that he had little confidence in her inspirations. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Maybe Perry Loudon was a blackmailer. Maybe he had something on this Thorpe-Jones character and this was his way of collecting payments. You know — give the man a chunk of steel he doesn’t really want and charge him five thousand pounds for it?”
The Saint’s opinion of his companion went up a little. “Quite a nice theory,” he admitted. “I’d wonder, though, why he didn’t make it look more respectable by having the whole amount paid by check. Unless — it might have been a dodge to make most of the money look tax-exempt.” Cassie put away the bank book and the flashlight.
“How?”
“Like gambling winnings, for instance... But among the many things I’ve learned in a long and virtuous life is not to try to build bridges until you have enough spans. Why waste our time theorizing until we have more to go on? Especially when in just a few minutes I’ll be able to talk to Mr Finlay Thorpe-Jones in person.”
Cassie looked startled in the light of a street lamp they were passing.
“You know who he is? Are we going to his house? I didn’t know you’d looked up his address.”
“I don’t need to,” said Simon. “He has what you might call a business address. He owns a gambling club. One of the plushest in London.”
“You’ve been there?”
Simon smiled at the surprise in Cassie’s question.
“I have. I’ve been almost everywhere. That’s because I chose not to spend my life holed up in a garret as a plaster Saint.”
She chose to ignore the dig. With one leg tucked under her, she was starting to vibrate up and down with nervous enthusiasm.
“Is this Thorpe-Jones a crook?”
“Not that I know of,” Simon said. “No more than most people who’ve managed to grab a good share of what the world has to offer. A man with the house percentage of roulette wheels and blackjack tables in his favor doesn’t need to be a crook.”
The Saint stopped his car opposite one of several formerly private mansions just off the upper end of Park Lane.
“This is it,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
Cassie looked alarmed.
“Can’t I come?”
“I’m afraid you’re not dressed in quite the approved fashion.”
“You’re ashamed of me!”
She was pouting, glaring at the floor.
“No, I’m not. But they have certain rules in these places. You don’t have to sit in the car, but don’t go far away, please. I have enough to do without hunting you.”
He was standing by the car now, looking in at her. She softened slightly.
“You’d hunt for me?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She looked sullenly suspicious again.
“Why? Because I might go tell on you?”