“But, sir... Mr Thoat — a receiver of stolen goods!” Yelland’s voice almost choked on the enormity of the thought as well as its possible value to his record. “They’d laugh at me, and I wouldn’t blame ’em!”
“The thieves knew just where to unload the stuff, didn’t they, only a few hours after it was stolen? And there aren’t so many people who could use all that cocoa. Didn’t his daughter say it was a bargain? And where do you get some of the best bargains — if you don’t ask any questions?”
“I know, sir, but—”
“Don’t disappoint me, Robert,” Monty insisted, and this time the constable was too spellbound to reprove him on the name. “I’m trying to do something for you, and all I want in return is that you’ll see that the Consolidated Press gets the official news first. But if anyone goes on laughing at you, you suggest phoning the managing director of Latropic Import himself, and he’ll tell you that they haven’t sold or delivered that much cocoa to anyone, Mr Thoat or anyone else, for more than a week. I’ll give you his name and home address. Take this down...”
For Mr Isaiah Thoat it was also destined to be a climactic day. After a chapel service at which he had been invited to read the First Lesson, a performance which always left him feeling that at least part of the mantle of some Old Testament prophet remained clinging to his shoulders, he had huddled with the captains of his Angels of Abstinence over last-minute parade arrangements until he was only able to arrive an apologetic five minutes late at the address on Grosvenor Street which Simon Templar was using for that operation.
The apartment itself actually belonged to a stalwart pillar of the House of Lords, who stayed there only when Parliament was in session, and even then retreated every weekend to his estate in the Cotswolds, who would have been most surprised to know what unauthorized use was being made of it. But with the sole aid of this elementary knowledge of his lordship’s habits, and a certain persuasive skill with a lock, the mythical personality of Sebastian Tombs had been provided for the brief necessary time with a physical abode which could not possibly be linked to Simon Templar by any thread of proof.
“Come in, come in,” said the Saint heartily, brushing off Mr Thoat’s excuses on the threshold. “I know it must have been hard for you to get away.”
“I took the liberty of bringing my daughter Selina,” Mr Thoat said, disclosing her as he entered.
“Delighted,” said the Saint, without flinching. “She can help with the salad. I’m all alone here — I don’t approve of making a servant work on Sunday, even for a special occasion. But I think we can look after ourselves. I was just experimenting with something I thought of yesterday — a Sanitade cocktail. I know Sanitade is wonderful by itself, but people like to mix things, it makes them feel smart and creative. Might be another sales angle for you. Here, try it.”
He poured from a silver cocktail shaker.
Mr Thoat and Selina tasted, and tasted again.
“It’s very good,” Mr Thoat said politely.
“Just some Angostura, ginger, peppermint, and a couple of other things,” said the Saint. “I’ll send you the recipe when it’s perfected, and perhaps a few others. You could put out a little booklet. There’s nothing wrong about fighting the Devil with his own weapons, is there? And I think this mixture has quite a refreshing tang for a hot day.”
Mr Thoat and Selina drank some more. It was a hot day.
“Very good indeed,” Mr Thoat said.
His tone was a little less perfunctory, a little warmer. The combination certainly seemed to do something. Although it obscured the pure flavor of Sanitade, which to him was delicious, it indeed had a zest which developed like a sort of delayed deeper echo to the first impact on the palate.
“I haven’t forgotten our time limit,” said the Saint. “So if your daughter would take over in the kitchen, we can get right down to business. Would you like to start reading the deed while I show her where everything is?”
It was an impressive document on which Simon had labored conscientiously for some hours, loading it with all the whereases and heretofores that his sense of legal jargon could supply, and typing it on a grade of paper only slightly less heavy than the stone tablets which its verbiage deserved. After stretching to the limit the details of periodicity of payment, it proceeded, as he had warned at their luncheon, to prohibit at great length a list of highly improbable ways in which the money could not be spent, such as financing disorderly houses or lewd publications. From there it went on to enumerate the even more fanciful covenants assumed by Isaiah Thoat, who personally undertook to eschew such practices as nudism, consorting with astrologers, or dancing in a ballet, on down to receiving stolen goods or being charged with drunkenness, upon the least of which breaches the whole deal was off.
All this was gone through, clause by clause, while Mr Thoat had two more Sanitade cocktails and Simon took another one out to the kitchen.
“I know it sounds almost insulting,” Simon said unhappily. “But that’s the kind of man my father was. Don’t take anything for granted, was one of his principles. Even I had to sign the same thing myself.”
“I am not offended,” said Mr Thoat, with an almost benign superciliousness. “No man need be ashamed of reaffirming his principles. And with such a lot of money involved, you can’t be coo tareful — I mean, too careful.”
He scrawled his signature in the places provided, and handed the papers back with a grandiose flourish which almost upset his glass.
“Thish ish a great moment in my life,” he announced. “The climaxsh of thirty yearsh of vedotion... Do you have a lil more of that tocktail?”
Simon figured that Mr Thoat had already absorbed about four and a half ounces of vodka under the heading of the “couple of other things” in his concoction, and he did not want to overdo it.
“I’ve got something else, a Sanitade punch, to go with the salad,” he said. “And I think we ought to be starting on it. I don’t want to make you late.”
Selina Thoat was bringing in the salad, and Simon went to the refrigerator for the punch. In this the motive power consisted of rum and gin, but in milder dilution with Sanitade and pineapple juice than the alcohol in the cocktail. Their necessary aroma was masked by liberal twists of orange peel, and the strength was carefully calculated to counteract the sobering effect of food and keep the consumer at the elevation he started at, without boosting him to a more dangerous altitude.
Mr Thoat talked garrulously, often boastfully, and with many stumbles of enunciation which sometimes seemed to puzzle him, about his past achievements and future projects; Simon made the essential minimum of admiring and encouraging noises to keep him going, and Selina spent most of the time staring at the Saint with bewilderedly enlarged and rapturous eyes while she chewed her cud, which gave her a disconcerting resemblance to a lovesick cow. A preposterously long time seemed to crawl by before a clock struck two and Simon could initiate the adjournment.
“I’ll do the dishes,” volunteered Selina, “while you and Papa wash your hands.”
Simon tidied the dining-living-room, thankful that there had been no smoking to add its problems of telltale ashes and odors, and joined Selina in the kitchen while Mr Thoat was completing the euphemistic lavage. He was glad to see that she had cleaned up as meticulously as her upbringing would have predicted — he only wanted to be sure that an inoffensive earl would find no trace of vandalism, and might even staunchly deny that anyone could have used his flat in the way Mr Thoat might subsequently claim that it had been used.
Selina Thoat, however, was ruminating a different idea.
“If your servant has the day off,” she said, “would you like me to come back and cook dinner for you?”
“You’re very kind,” said the Saint. “But I’m having dinner with a business associate, who’s taking me to the airport.”
“When you come back, then. Any Sunday when you’re alone. Just call me.”
“Thank you,” said the Saint, and was able to sound more grateful because Mr Thoat returned at that moment. “But now you really must be going.”
He herded them to the door, picking up the deeds from the coffee-table on the way.
“You won’t want to have this stuff bulging out of your pockets in the parade,” he said. “Let me mail you your copy.”
“You are mos’ conshidrate, Mr Tombs,” Mr Thoat said portentously. He amplified the thought, with an air of inspiration: “You have cast your bread upon the warrers. It will come back to you in good measure, preshed down an’ run over.”
He essayed a courtly bow, lurched a little, and proceeded down the stairs with extreme precision.
The deputation of Angels of Abstinence was already marshalled in military formation when Mr Thoat and Selina located them in the irregular column of demonstrators which blocked half the old Carriage Road on the east of Park Lane. While they waited for the promenade to get under way, they were ringing the welkin with a song which Mr Thoat himself had authored, to an accompaniment of drums, bazookas, and harmonicas played by the more talented members of the party: