“And he did?”
“This magistrate is a teetotaller himself, an’ a real holy terror. He fines me a hundred quid, an’ sez he’ll consider havin’ my license taken away. I don’t think I’ve got an earthly, Mr Templar.”
Outrell looked around the low-ceilinged room with its age-blackened beams and yellowed plaster, the honestly worn chairs and tables of uncertain vintage, the bare floor eroded in ancient contours compounded of the vagaries of its own wood grain and the most-used routes between bar and bench and dart-board, all exposed in their nakedest simplicity by the bright morning light that streamed through the leaded windows, and his big hands tightened into stolid pain-enduring fists. It was just after opening time, and there were no other customers to listen or interrupt.
“This is all I ever wanted, sir. Even when I went to work in London, to earn more money for bringing up the kids than I could as a farm hand. A place like this to put what was left of our savings in, where the wife and me could make enough to get along without being a burden to anyone includin’ the other taxpayers, an’ we could have good company every day, with the kind o’ plain country people we like. Thank God the old English country pub is still goin’ strong, Mr Templar, in spite of Mr Thoat an’ his Sanitade. It’s as English as the changin’ of the Guard, or the Derby, or them orators in Hyde Park: it’s the little man’s club an’ debating society an’ a place to get away from the missus when she’s actin’ up without gettin’ into no real trouble, where he can have his mug o’ beer an’ good company an’ not get hurt or hurt nobody. I thought I could be a good publican, though he sez it as if it was a rude word... It hurts, Mr Templar, but p’raps after all I wasn’t cut out for it. It hurts, but me an’ the wife are readin’ the advertisements, lookin’ for something else. We might have to take a little tobacco an’ sweet shop, something like that, somewhere. But it won’t be the same.”
“Have you any idea why they picked on you?’
“I suppose that’s not hard to see, if you make yourself think like he does. His Sanitade company bought all the land next to me, from here to the main road, for their new Garden Factory. You must’ve noticed the foundations goin’ in when you drove up. That’s it. He thinks it’d be terrible to have a common pub right next to the plant where his Angels of Abstinence Association are mixin’ up their swill — not to mention the danger to his precious workers who might be tempted to drop in here for a quick one at lunch time or on the way home. He tried to get me to sell, when I moved in here, that time I started off tellin’ you about, an’ when I said I was goin’ to stay, an’ couldn’t we live an’ let live, that’s when he swore he’d get me out whatever it took. But what’s the use of telling that to a magistrate, especially one like that one? He’s against you from the start, an’ anything you say is just tryin’ to wriggle out of a conviction. I know when I ain’t got a chance.”
“You’re putting me in the hell of a spot, Sam,” said the Saint. “All these years I’ve had a dim hope that Prohibition might really take over in England, and then we could all become bootleggers and get rich. But if this front man for the Cause has to be mowed down, for your sake, I’ll see what can be done. Don’t give up yet.”
He went back to London to make some inquiries of his own, of which the most delicate concerned the constable who had played an essential part in the conviction of Sam Outrell. Obtaining the police records of policemen is about as ticklish an assignment as any outsider can undertake, especially when he is as traditionally non grata in police circles as the Saint, and when it might later become vital that nobody should recall that he had been inquiring about the officer in question.
There is however a section in the War Office which can request such information without having to give reasons, and which at certain periods has gratefully accepted the services of even more irregular characters than the Saint. There was a gray colonel still there who had not forgotten an obligation incurred during the days of the Swastika, who called the Saint back very promptly and without any fuss.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him except that he may be a bit too ambitious. He put in for the Scotland Yard training school, but he failed the written examination and went back to the Hertford constabulary. He’s entered for another try next year. They give him good marks locally except for taking himself too seriously and trying to get ahead too fast.”
The supplementary data on Isaiah Thoat were much easier to get, being mostly matters of public record. A former lay preacher, food faddist, pacifist, and anti-vivisectionist, he had finally settled on spiritus frumenti as the ideal lifelong adversary, and in that cause had formed and dedicated and made himself President of the Angels of Abstinence Association. But unlike the creators of many similar organizations, Mr Thoat had a hard head as well as a chip on his shoulder, and he had learned from other efforts to divert the human race from doom and damnation that Mammon is a powerful ally in righteous as well as unrighteous persuasion, and that the Righteous are often uncomfortably short of this assistance. Therefore he had arranged for the subscriptions, donations, and other funds picked up by the Angels of Abstinence to be funnelled into the manufacture and marketing of a potion that they could all themselves enjoy without fear of divine or digestive retribution, which they could personally propagandize wherever they went with the comforting assurance that no souls would be even superficially scorched, but that the coffers of salvation would be enriched by every sip.
Thus was born Sanitade, a nectar loosely based on a chocolated broth which Mr Thoat’s mother had made for him when he broke out in teen-age pimples, fortified with fruit juices chosen for their vitamin content, this horrendous concoction being well pasteurized, carbonated, and sealed in non-returnable bottles. The cachet of manufacture by the Angels of Abstinence gave it the same sort of distinction as is enjoyed, in the opposing camp, by the liqueur brewed by the Benedictine monks, and practically forced its acceptance and endorsement by all other groups dedicated to the same tenets as the Angels even under different management. It had thus become almost the official potion of all dry crusaders, and from them had spread to the membership of many equally zealous if less monophobic organizations, until Mr Thoat could congratulate himself on having been rewarded with quite a thriving business for his battle against those other beverages which, he maintained, also fuelled the fires of Hell, causing them to burn with a blue flame.
“We must do something about him, Monty,” Simon Templar said at another encounter.
“Why?” Monty argued. “Live and let live. Let him enjoy preaching prohibition and let us enjoy our drinks. Then everybody’s happy.”
“Except Sam.”
“He might do better selling cigarettes and gum drops, after all. The country-pub business isn’t what it used to be when you and I were a bit younger, anyway. And if you want to start that Robin Hood stuff again, you should do it on something important. There are still people smuggling dope into this country, for instance. It was in the papers only yesterday that Scotland Yard is baffled—”
“Maybe I’ll help them with that, too,” said the Saint. “As soon as I can spare the time. But, Monty, have you ever tasted Sanitade?”
“No, and I don’t want to. I have a rather sensitive stomach—”
“I understand that. It looks sensitive, since you became an Editorial Director. So you should have more sympathy for other people who are being afflicted. It’s almost a sacred duty to get that swill off the market. And if we can strike a blow against crackpots and help Sam at the same time, wouldn’t it make you feel young again?”