“It’s been a long time, Monty,” said the Saint. “And now you’re a Director of the Consolidated Press, with an expense account and a chauffeured limousine and all the trimmings, and you wouldn’t get mixed up in any of my shenanigans for anything. Don’t you ever get tired of this awful respectability?”
“Never,” declared Monty firmly. “It’s too nice to be able to look a policeman in the eye.”
“I never saw one with such beautiful eyes, myself,” said the Saint.
“I ran into another reformed friend of yours the other day, incidentally. I’d been to Cambridge with the Chairman about one of our scholarship projects, and on the way back in the evening we felt thirsty. We were going through a little village called Listend, which you won’t even find on most maps, but it’s just off the main road not far from Hertford, and we spotted a very quaint pub called the Golden Stag, so we stopped there. And who do you think was standing there behind the bar?”
“I’ll try one guess. Gypsy Rose Lee.”
“Sam Outrell — the fellow you had for a janitor when you lived at Cornwall House.”
The Saint’s face lighted up.
“Good old Sam! I’ve often wondered what happened to him.”
“Well, he always said he was a country boy, you remember, and I suppose all those years of tipping you off when Inspector Teal was waiting in the lobby to see you, and inventing alibis for you when you weren’t there, must have convinced him that the city life was too strenuous for the likes of him. So after he’d earned his pension, he took his savings and bought this pub.”
“That’s wonderful. How’s he doing?”
“Not too well, right now... He’s run into a bit of trouble.”
Some of the blue in the Saint’s gaze seemed to gently change latitude, from Mediterranean to Arctic.
“Has he? What kind?”
“He was caught selling drinks after hours — and to a minor, what’s more. It looks pretty bad.”
“What ever made him do a stupid thing like that? I mean, getting caught.”
“He swears he didn’t do it, it was a frame-up. But he doesn’t think he’s got a chance of beating it. He’s expecting to lose his license.”
“This is something that could only happen in Merrie England,” said the Saint sulfurously. “I love this country, but the equating of morality with the precise hour at which somebody wants a drink is one refinement where they lost me. I am so depraved that I still admire the good sense of all those barbarous countries which cling to the primitive notion that a citizen should be entitled to a drink any time he can pay for it.”
“Even a minor?”
“The kids take a glass of wine with the family in France, or beer in Germany, and I’ve never noticed that it seemed to do them any harm. Personally, I’d say it was a lot better for them than the soda-pop-slop they swill by the gallon in America, and that’s already infiltrated here.”
“Well, the chap that Sam swears he was shopped by wouldn’t agree with you,” Monty said. “Particularly since he’s apparently got an interest in one of those soda-pop-slop factories, as you call ’em.”
“This may ruin a beautiful dinner,” Simon said grimly. “And the chicken pie here, which I ordered for us, is merely the best in England. But at the risk of acute indigestion, I must hear more about this ineffable excrescence.”
“His name,” Monty said reluctantly, “is Isaiah Thoat.”
“I can hardly believe it,” said the Saint, rubbing his hands together ecstatically. “But do go on.”
If Mr Isaiah Thoat’s ears had begun to burn at this juncture, they would actually have added little luminosity to his complexion, in spite of their impressive size, for his facial capillaries had already endowed him with the rosy coloration which is popularly believed to be engendered by over-indulgence in ferments and distillates. It was an incongruous tint for his mournful cast of countenance, and attained its zenith of infelicity at the end of his long nose, which was positively purple. The combination, with his unfortunately rheumy eyes and the somber clothes which he preferred, made him look like a bibulous undertaker. This was a cruel injustice, for he had never tasted anything even as potent as lager beer, and the only burial he aspired to supervise was that of the allegorical figure personified as John Barleycorn.
Even Mr Thoat’s bitterest opponents, who were legion, had never found grounds for questioning his sincerity. But it could be claimed with equal truth that the Emperor Nero, the directors of the Spanish Inquisition, and the hierarchy of the Nazi Party were also sincere, according to their lights. And Isaiah Thoat would not have had to take second place to any of them for the fanaticism with which he was prepared to persecute dissenters from his dogma that liquor was the root of all evil.
“There he stood, Mr Templar,” said Sam Outrell, “right where you are, an’ no witnesses, of course, an’ sez, ‘Between you an’ me, I’d borrow the devil’s own pitchfork if I could use it to help toss some of you traders in Satan’s poison into his own Hades.’ ”
“And he used his own daughter to coax a drink out of you?” Simon asked.
“As true as I’m standin’ here, so help me. I wouldn’t have no cause to lie to you, sir, you know that, much as I’ve done it for you in the old days. She’s just as ’omely as he is, what you’d expect, with that breeding, an’ it makes her look a lot older. But I didn’t have the foggiest who she was, an’ I fell for the whole swindle like a ton o’ bricks.”
“What did she do?”
“It’s closing time, an’ she’s about the last customer left, an’ she sez she feels faint. Now, she ain’t had nothing to account for that, I know, ’cause I served her meself all evening, an’ all she drank was that Sanitade stuff her father makes — though I didn’t know then he was her father. So I gets everybody else out, while the wife is fussin’ over her, an’ this young woman sez, ‘Could I have a sip of brandy?’ ”
“She asked for it herself?”
“Oh, yes — very weak like, as if she might die any minute. Well, sir, what would you do?”
Simon nodded in anticipation.
“And as soon as you gave it to her, the door opens—”
“Which I’d bin too bothered to lock up, an’ there’s a bobby comin’ in. ‘I seen you through the window,’ he sez, ‘selling this girl a drink.’
“ ‘She’s a friend of ours an’ a guest in the house,’ I sez, knowin’ the Law. ‘We didn’t sell her nothing, we gave it to her.’
“Right away she ain’t faintin’ no more, but sittin’ up as fine as you please, an’ she sez, ‘That’s a lie,’ she sez, ‘I bought and paid for it.’ An’ there she’s pointing to a half-crown on the bar which she must’ve put down while we were talkin’. I ask you, sir, what chance did I have?”
The Saint took a sympathetically thoughtful swig from his tankard.
“Did you tell all this to the Beak?”
“Of course I did. An’ he sez he has a mind to send me to jail for perjury. Because this girl, which ain’t what I’d like to call her, is there in court with her father, Mr Thoat, an’ he backs her up.”
“They were in it together?”
“It looks like it. ‘She’s a wayward girl and a cross I have to bear, your Honour,’ he sez. ‘In spite of all I’ve done, this craving for the devil’s brew comes over her. That’s why I asked the constable to keep an eye out for her. It only takes an opportunity like this despicable publican gave her,’ he sez, ‘to undo all my loving care. I ask your Honour to make an example of him.’ ”