Trust The Saint

The intemperate reformer

Copyright © 1961 by Fiction Publishing Company

Somewhere around 1933 or 1934, in a collection of short stories, I had one about a self-righteous teetotaller whom the Saint dealt with by treacherously getting him drunk and causing him to make a public spectacle of himself. On this story, the Hodders of that era lowered the boom: it was too much of an affront to a bogey known in those days as “the Non-conformist Conscience.” So out it came, and somehow or other the manuscript was actually destroyed.

But I sometimes have a long and relentless memory, and I always did like the story. So with malice aforethought, in about 1961, I re-wrote it from memory — and I think even better than the original — and another generation at Hodders, quite unaware of its tainted past, swallowed it without a peep of protest. This story is “The Intemperate Reformer” (the same original title) which can be found in Trust the Saint.

— Leslie Charteris (1962)

Simon Templar watched with a remorselessly calculating eye the quantity of caviar that was being spooned on to his plate, with the eternal-springing hope that this would intimidate the head waiter into serving a more than normally generous portion, and said, “If I had to answer such a silly question as why I want to be rich, I’d say it was so I could afford to eat those unhatched sturgeon twice a day. There must be some moral in the thought that they’re considered the national delicacy of Russia, the self-styled protector of the underprivileged.”

He waved away the tray of minced onion and chopped whites and yolks of eggs proffered by a lesser servitor, and signalled the wine steward who waited nearby with a frosted bottle.

“Romanoff caviar and Romanoff vodka — what a wonderful proletarian combination!”

“I always did like your ideas of the simple life,” said Monty Hayward comfortably.

The Saint piled a small mound of black grains on a thin slice of brown toast, tasted it reverently, and raised his glass.

“I read somewhere that the scientists have discovered a rare vitamin in caviar which greatly increases the human system’s ability to stand up to alcohol — I’m not kidding,” he remarked. “I suppose the Russians, who always claim to have discovered everything, would say that they knew this all along. That’s why they put away so much of this stuff at their banquets. Well, don’t quote me to the FBI, but I prefer this to the American excuse for vodka-tippling.”

“And what’s that?” Monty asked unguardedly.

“The sales pitch that it doesn’t change the flavor of whatever slop you dilute it with, and that it doesn’t taint your breath — so that if you wreck a few cars on the way home, and you can still stand up, the cops presumably won’t dream you’ve been drinking. This may be predicated on the erroneous assumption that cops can’t read advertisements, too, but I suppose it gives some people confidence. I shall let you drive us home, Monty. Na zdorovye!”

“Here’s to crime,” Monty said.

Simon regarded him affectionately.

They were dining at the East Arms at Hurley, a one-time English country pub which was its own sufficient answer to some of the old traditional gibes at British gastronomical facilities, and it was their first reunion in many years. It was a very far cry from the days when Monty Hayward had sometimes found himself involved in the fringes of the Saint’s lawless activities, and in particular had been embroiled in one incredible adventure which had whirled them across Austria and Bavaria in a fantastic flight that may still be remembered by senior students of these chronicles.

“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.’ ”

“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?”

The old hypnotic devilment danced in the Saint’s blue eyes, and Monty Hayward groaned.

“It makes me wish I’d had the sense to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

No such rueful presentiment clouded the horizon of Mr Isaiah Thoat as he watched the first rather unceremonious activation of the Sanitade Garden Plant — that would be a better name than “Factory,” he was thinking, and fitted the “Garden” motif so nicely.

The activation in fact consisted only of the delivery of a truck-load of cacao to an old but well-built barn which had been the only edifice on the plant site when he acquired it, which he had thriftily decided to preserve and use for miscellaneous storage. Though the new buildings were barely starting to rise from their footings, his shrewdness was already being vindicated: he had had the chance to pick up this consignment of essential raw material at a giveaway price, but would have had to turn it down if he had been limited to the storage facilities of the outgrown original Sanitade Factory which he was preparing to replace.

“You see, my dear Selina,” he observed to his daughter, who was with him, “Fortune does not only aid the wicked. Good luck is usually the reward of good judgment.”

“And you deserve all that you get, Papa,” she said.

She was one of those unlucky young females who seem to have been created solely to boost the morale of their nearest competitors. Beside her, no other creature in a skirt could have felt hopeless. It might be kinder not to detail her specifications, but simply to say that for every apparently ultimate disaster in feminine architecture there must be something worse, and she was it.

Mr Thoat signed the driver’s receipt and himself closed and locked the barn doors. He was just completing this when County Constable George Yelland rode by on his bicycle, and stopped.

“Good morning, sir — and Miss Selina,” said the young man, saluting smartly. “I see that you’re moving in already, in quite a big way.”

“Good morning, officer,” said Mr Thoat agreeably. “But what gave you the idea—”

“A large lorry has just stopped here, sir,” said the constable airily. “The tracks are quite plain, where it pulled in, and considerably lighter where it pulled out. Therefore, it discharged quite a load. It rained this morning from 5:10 a.m. until 7:35. The tracks were made since the rain, and since I find you here locking the door I conclude that the delivery has just taken place.”

“Excellent,” said Mr Thoat. “I only wish that some of those vulgar popular writers who seem to take such a delight in deriding the British police could be forced to observe you on your rounds. I shall write another letter to the Chief Constable about you — you are the young officer who took such good care of my daughter recently, aren’t you?”

He had not noticed that his offspring had returned the constable’s greeting with the swooning adoration of a dyspeptic sheep.

“Yes, Mr Thoat, I had that privilege... But what I’m concerned about now is whether it’s wise for you to leave anything valuable in this barn. I’ve noticed the contractor doesn’t keep a night watchman here.”

“I declined to underwrite that expense,” Mr Thoat said primly. “It’s up to him to see that there aren’t so many materials left lying around that it’s worth some professional loafer’s wages just to protect them from petty pilfering.”

“Yes, sir, but building jobs do catch the eye of a certain type of petty thief, and then a building like this barn becomes a sort of attraction, out here in the middle of nowhere, so to speak, where nobody would be likely to hear anyone breaking in.”

“Then I shall rely on you to keep an especially sharp watch on it, Constable—”

“Yelland, sir.”

“Ah, yes. I must remember that name, so that your services will be properly credited by the Authorities if my property is protected — or vice versa. I’m sure we are leaving everything in good hands — are we not, Selina?”

“Yes, indeed, Papa,” said Selina, with more than dutiful ardour.

Mr Thoat consulted his watch.

“I must be going, or I shall be late for my appointment in town. That wretched plumber should have been here an hour ago. Now he’ll just have to come back another time.”

“I could wait for him, Papa, and go back on the bus. I can tell him what you decided about the wash-rooms.”

“An excellent idea. And be sure he understands that I refuse to pay extra for such frivolities as coloured tiles.”

Mr Thoat drove himself back to London — he had a nine-year-old car which he never propelled beyond twenty miles an hour, thereby having caused several accidents to happen to other drivers who had been goaded to recklessness by the sheer exasperation of dragging behind him. But he had allowed plenty of time for his customary average, and arrived at the modest South Kensington tea-shoppe where he had made his luncheon rendezvous a few minutes before his guest, who had dallied until the last moment at the nearest tavern, taking prophylaxis against the aridity of the impending meal...

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Thoat.”

“Not at all, Mr Tombs, I was early,” Mr Thoat said generously.

He took out his wallet, extracted from it a neatly written check, and passed it across the table.

Simon Templar took it, verified the amounts, and put it away in his own billfold with equal gravity. He was wearing an old-fashioned double-breasted suit and tie of almost canonical drabness, and only the most assiduous students of his techniques of disguise would have recognized him. With a heavy powdering of white in the hair, the roughed-up eyebrows, and the untidy false moustache, behind an eye-shield of tinted glasses, and bowed in a concave-chested slouch, there was little to recall the dynamic exuberance that he wore like a halo when he chose to live up to more appropriate names than Tombs.

“The delivery was all right then, was it, Mr Thoat?”

“Oh, yes, Mr Tombs. Perfectly correct. I hope you aren’t offended by my reserving payment until it was completed, but after all, in making such a purchase from a total stranger, at so much below the current market price—”

“Don’t think any more about it, Mr Thoat. I understand. Of course I’m losing money. But I’m helping a good cause. And I can take the loss off my income tax. That makes it about the same as a donation, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, certainly, but—”

“But I can’t go on selling to you at a loss, Mr Thoat. I’m supposed to make my living in the commodity market. The Government would begin to get suspicious. I have been looking for another approach.”

“Do you gennelmun wanta order?” inquired an impatient waitress, leaning over with a threatening notebook.

The menu offered the grisly alternatives of boiled sausages, fricassée of veal, or a Health Salad compounded of raw vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It was obvious which of these delicacies Mr Thoat would order. Simon settled for the boiled sausages, steeling himself against Mr Thoat’s slightly pained expression with a placating bottle of Sanitade, and hoped that he would be able to get it down without a visible shudder.

“I’m not a capitalist, Mr Thoat — the income tax system has seen to that,” he resumed. “But I do receive the income from a trust fund set up by my late father, which I don’t really need. Since he accumulated this money by putting aside and investing each year the amount which he estimated he would have spent on drink if he had been a drinker, I think he would approve of my passing it on to help you in your wonderful work.”

“It would certainly be well employed,” said Mr Thoat, a trifle shakily. “And I’m flattered that you should have chosen me, out of all the possible—”

“That was not flattery, or a random selection, Mr Thoat. Frankly, I have investigated several deserving organizations of the same type as yours. What impressed me, as a business man, about the Angels of Abstinence, is that they are run on a practical businesslike basis which actively aids and in no way compromises their idealistic objectives. I understand that you alone are responsible for this. That makes you the man for me. To get the most out of the income I am talking about calls for a business man as well as a crusader. It amounts to about sixteen thousand pounds a year.”

Mr Thoat somehow managed not to choke on the first mouthful of shredded fodder which had just been set before him.

“I think I shall be able to justify your confidence, Mr Tombs.”

“There are, of course, a few conditions.”

“Of what kind?”

“Purely technical, in your case, but I feel I must pass them on to you, since they’re the same as the ones which the trust imposes on me. What they amount to is that your life must be absolutely blameless, even above suspicion. That you must never be convicted of an offense against public decorum, of riotous behavior, scandalous conduct, criminal associations, drunkenness or even having taken a drink — all that sort of thing. It’s all in the deed which I’ve told my lawyer to draw up.”

“I hardly think that will be any problem,” said Mr Thoat, with a certain indulgent smugness.

“I’m sure it won’t — but in the fantastic event that any such thing should occur, all payments would automatically stop, or never start. We have to take that precaution, the lawyers tell me. Then you will have to give a few simple undertakings on how the money will not be spent — such as advertising in periodicals which also accept liquor advertising, you know the sort of thing...”

They talked of this and kindred matters for the rest of the meal — if that word can be applied to the ingestion of such provender as they had been served.

“I hope we can meet and sign this deed the day after tomorrow,” Simon said finally.

“The day after tomorrow?” Mr Thoat’s eyebrows went up remonstratively. “But that’s Sunday!”

“I know. But I had enough trouble getting my lawyer to work tomorrow to get it done. And I hardly think that signing a couple of papers like these would be called working on the Lord’s Day. Unfortunately I have to be in New York on business the first thing Monday morning — I’m taking a plane at midnight Sunday. I’d like to have this done before I leave. Just in case of accidents, you know.”

Mr Thoat nodded. The prospect of Mr Sebastian Tombs being jet-propelled to his eternal rest by some mechanical malfunction in mid-Atlantic, with this munificent endowment uncompleted, gave him a cold shiver.

“I understand. But as I think I’ve mentioned, this Sunday is rather a busy day for me.”

Simon knew that, too. There was about to break out in London another of those international conventions with which every major city must periodically be afflicted; only this was not the type which has consolations for saloon-keepers, night club impresarios, and ladies of flexible morality, like the average run of these jamborees, being billed as a World Temperance Congress of groups whose avowed objective was the ruin of all such iniquitous entrepreneurs. It was to be launched that Sunday by a grand parade of delegates from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, intended to dramatize the fact of their presence in town and to draw expectant attention to the week of speech-making and resolution-adopting which was to follow, during which some of the world’s most talented firebrands would denounce assorted forms of fun with all the hyperbolic savagery and violence to be expected of proper advocates of temperance.

“The parade is supposed to start at two-thirty, isn’t it?” said the Saint. “I know that nothing would stop you leading the Angels of Abstinence yourself, but surely you could get away for lunch? My apartment is just off Park Lane, only two minutes from the park. If you could be there at one, I’ll have a nice salad waiting, and promise to get you back with ten minutes to spare.”

Mr Thoat pursed his lips.

“Yes, I suppose I could manage that. It seems to be the only way.”

“Splendid! I’ll have the papers and everything ready. Now I must run — I have another appointment which just won’t wait.”

This was literally true, the appointment being dictated by the still unrevised licensing laws of England, which in a few minutes would ruthlessly compel the pub around the corner to close for the afternoon, thus making it impossible to satisfactorily wash away the taste of the boiled sausages and Sanitade which Simon Templar had been unable to finish. But he left Mr Thoat in an obliviously happy daze through which even the fact that the bill for their deplorable repast still remained to be paid did not penetrate until too late.

Mr Thoat had already relegated the transaction through which the beneficent Sebastian Tombs had introduced himself to the category of past business, but it was not so easily filed away by County Constable George Yelland, who had lingered on at the barn after Mr Thoat took his sedate departure.

“What exactly are you keeping here?” asked the earnest young officer.

“Cocoa beans,” said Selina Thoat airily.

“Oh. I suppose they’re not really too valuable to leave here.”

“Not unless somebody stole all of them. That would come to quite a lot. Papa got these at a bargain. Are you married?”

Constable Yelland managed not to jump.

“No, miss.”

“There’s a dance in Hertford tomorrow night. I wish I could go.”

“I hadn’t heard about it.”

“I wish you could take me.”

“I don’t think your father would approve of that, miss.”

“Papa will be busy in London, with a welcoming dinner for some of our people. But he could do a lot for you — putting in a word about you in the right places — if I asked him to.”

“Thank you, miss. But I’m afraid I’m on duty Saturday night. It’s always a busy time.”

“I could help you, too. Like I did that night at the Golden Stag.”

Constable Yelland tried to ignore a sensation of extraordinary discomfort.

“I hope you didn’t do anything beyond your duty to tell the truth, miss. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of miles to cover on this round...”

She watched him thoughtfully as he mounted his bicycle and pedalled away.

George Yelland, however, as an aspirant to the higher honors of the CID, was not the kind of policeman to remove a thought from his mind, once it had entered it, as efficiently as he had been taught to remove his person from unprofessional situations. The responsibility of Mr Thoat’s barn stayed with him, accentuated by a vaguely unsatisfied query about its contents, which caused him to keep it under even closer surveillance than was called for by simple self-interest.

He made a particular point of passing by several times the next day, since the workmen were observing the union Sabbath, and it was in the afternoon that he discovered a car parked off the road where the builder’s trucks had furrowed an entrance, and a man studying the barn with a kind of interest that could be definitely described as calculating.

This was no insignificant tribute to the histrionic ability of Monty Hayward, who on the Saint’s instructions had been trying to maintain that effect for more than an hour before the constable arrived.

“May I ask what you’re doing here?” Yelland said, as the book prescribed.

“Casing the joint,” Monty said easily.

“May I have your name, sir?”

The “sir” was another sort of tribute, not so much to Monty’s air of confidence as to his distinctly unburglar-like appearance. Monty produced a card which gave his address with the Consolidated Press but made no mention of his status as a director — apart from a genuine natural modesty which he did his best to conceal, it still amused him at times to play at being an ordinary reporter again, a game which those unostentatious cards made perpetually possible.

“Now that I’ve identified myself,” Monty said amiably, “what’s your name?”

“Yelland, sir.”

“Yelland? Where have I heard that name recently?... Oh, yes. You’re the Robert who raided the pub down the road, and caught ’em selling a drink after hours to the young daughter of the chap who’s building this factory.”

“It wasn’t exactly a raid, sir. Mr Thoat asked me to keep an eye on his daughter, and it’s my duty to look out for violations of the law.”

“Of course. But didn’t you think there was something a bit fishy about that conviction?”

Constable Yelland had another of those remotely unsettling qualms which had afflicted him since the previous morning.

“That isn’t for me to say, sir. I only gave evidence as to what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. It’s the magistrate who makes the conviction.”

“Oh, come off it, Robert!”

“The name is George, sir.”

“All right, Robert George. You’ve got opinions of your own, haven’t you?

“It’s against regulations for me to discuss the decision of a court in which I have been a witness, sir,” said the constable, taking refuge in asperity from his own uncertainty. “And anyhow, what are you so interested about?”

Monty Hayward grinned, and brought out a pipe and tobacco-pouch which he began to work together with a disarming assurance which he had practised in some considerably more risky situations than this one.

“Suppose I was doing an article on Mr Thoat,” he said. “I’d be interested in a lot of things. Not just that business about his daughter, though that might come into it. But about what’s going on here, too. For instance, do you know what he’s got in this barn?”

“Yes. Cocoa.”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean, Ah?”

“I only mean that items like that are what sometimes make headlines.”

“I don’t see what’s a headline in that.”

“Do you know where he got this cocoa?”

“No, sir. Only that it was a bargain.”

“He told you that, did he?”

“His daughter did.”

“That was careless of her.”

“Look here, sir,” Yelland said, with increasing impatience, “if you know something that I ought to know, it’s your duty to tell me, not tease me with it.”

“I don’t definitely know anything,” Monty replied. “Not yet. Suspicions aren’t evidence, as you know. But I am investigating what sounded like a rather hot tip—”

“Where did it come from?”

Monty gave a reproachful look.

“Now, officer, you know very well that no reporter would give away the source of some kinds of information, and even a judge couldn’t force him to. I can only tell you that it came from an acquaintance of mine who isn’t always on good terms with the police, but who usually knows what he’s talking about. I’ve got a few more inquiries to make here and there, and if they confirm each other there may be an interesting arrest. Would you like to make an interesting arrest?”

The spontaneous gleam in the young policeman’s eye was replaced almost instantly by a dampening recognition of fact.

“I’m not in the CID yet, sir.”

“But you’d like to be, wouldn’t you? You’re a lot smarter than a lot of chaps on a beat, I’ve noticed that. I wish I could give you a—”

Suddenly Monty Hayward froze, staring fixedly, one hand extending with his pipe pointing in the direction of the stare.

“Robert George, do you see that?”

“What, sir?”

“That piece of paper, just sticking out from under the barn door! Go and get it. This may save us all the trouble of applying for a search warrant!”

Constable Yelland perplexedly retrieved the fragment. It appeared to be the corner of a label, but the only printing that could be read on it was the words: Latropic Import Company, Cutts Lane, Stepney.

“Cocoa is a tropical product,” Monty said. “I think we can assume that that label came from some of the stuff that was delivered here.”

“Very likely, sir. But I still don’t see—”

“Of course not. But you will... Hang on to the clue, officer. And let me know where you can be reached tomorrow morning, especially if you’re off duty. I’ll pass the tip on to you before anyone else, if it turns out to be a sound one, and you can make the most of it. Meanwhile, mum’s the word.” Constable Yelland found himself left in a dreamy cloud not entirely unlike the one which had befogged Mr Thoat when Simon Templar took leave of him the day before. Which was not a fantastic coincidence, since the technique for creating both befuddlements had originated in the same disgracefully handsome head.

“A very nice job, Monty,” said the Saint, when he had listened to an almost verbatim report. “I don’t think you missed a trick. With a little more practice and a few less suburban scruples, you could soon be the perfect partner in crime again.”

“Thanks very much,” Monty said. “But I never was. This was an easy job, and it can’t get me into any trouble, whatever happens. I can still hide behind the Consolidated Press and the professional secrecy excuse. But when I think what it would be like if we’d been caught breaking into that Latropic warehouse, I wonder if I was ever qualified to be a company director.”

“Lots of them have ended up in jail,” Simon pointed out reassuringly. “But I’d’ve got you out of it somehow. Didn’t I always?”

“Like you did in that business about Prince Rudolf and his crown jewels. Yes, but my aging nerves can’t take so much any more. And suppose Young Sherlock identifies me as the driver of the truck that delivered the cocoa yesterday?” The Saint laughed at him shamelessly.

“He never saw you. And Isaiah never looked at you twice — you said that yourself. And anyhow, I made you up and messed you up until even I wondered what you really looked like. And I stole the truck myself while you were in a board meeting with some of the best alibis on Fleet Street. Now will you stop worrying long enough to work out the timing for tomorrow?”

“It seems to me that our timing’s a bit off already. I’ve been watching for a report on that Latropic robbery, and there still doesn’t seem to have been one.”

“Because their warehouse isn’t opened every day, only when shipments are coming in or going out. We did a nice quiet job that didn’t attract any attention in the neighbourhood, and obviously they didn’t have any reason to go to the place on Friday. That’s the first thing to take care of. You just use your reporter’s immunity again, call the head man at home and say you’ve heard through the underworld grapevine that his storehouse was cracked, and what does he know about it? If it hasn’t been discovered yet, he’ll soon find out. Then you see that it gets in the Sunday papers. Then tomorrow morning...”

At eight o’clock the next morning, George Yelland was just starting his breakfast and his Sunday paper simultaneously when his landlady called him to the telephone.

“This is the scoop I promised you, officer,” Monty Hayward said, after identifying himself. “Have you seen a newspaper yet?”

“I was just starting it, sir.”

“You’ll find a report that the Latropic Import Company — remember that label? — had their warehouse broken into on Thursday night and a lorry load of cocoa beans stolen, but the theft wasn’t discovered till yesterday afternoon, some time after I talked to you. Item two: if you check with Scotland Yard, you’ll find that they have a report of a lorry being stolen from a garage on Thursday afternoon which was found abandoned at Highgate on Friday afternoon. You might find out about its tires, and have another look at the tracks at Thoat’s barn. If you want to get credit for some fast thinking, you put that together with what Thoat’s daughter told you and take it to your Inspector. You needn’t bring me into it — tell him you figured it all out yourself. It should be good enough to take to any magistrate you can catch on his way to church, and get a search warrant for that barn.”

“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:

Emotionally stirred to the depths of his soul by the familiar melody and the uplifting words, Mr Thoat was moved as he approached to adopt the rôle of conductor, waving his arms with an ecstatic exuberance that could only have been surpassed by Leonard Bernstein. The fact that this change of balance almost made him trip over his own feet he attributed to the unevenness of the ground.

“There he is,” said Constable Yelland excitedly, standing in the fringe of the spectators in his best Sunday suit, beside an older man in somewhat plainer clothes on which the brand of Sir Robert Peel was nevertheless almost legible.

“Him?” said the Scotland Yard man, half incredulously. “I thought he was one of the top teetotallers.”

Isaiah Thoat, suffused with a delirious sense of power which he attributed to the encouraging smiles of his flock, led them more vehemently into another stanza:

“Boom-boom-boo-rah,” added Mr Thoat, stamping his feet up and down in a martial manner, at which point the Scotland Yard man tapped him on the shoulder and presented himself with the time-honored introduction.

“And I have a warrant for your arrest on a charge of receiving stolen goods knowing the same to have been stolen. It is my duty to warn you—”

“Ridiclush,” said Mr Thoat, leaning on him heavily. “I’ll report you to your shuprir offcer. Why, do you know, I’ve jus’ bin incrusted with a trush fund... lemme tell you...”

Simon Templar had followed at a very discreet distance, merely to make sure that nothing remediable went wrong with the situation on which he had toiled so honestly. But even at that range he was able to appreciate the extra bulge of Selina Thoat’s bovine eyes as she recognized Constable Yelland even in his horrible tailoring, and flung her arms around his neck.

“My dream man,” she moaned.

The standard-bearer of Scotland Yard was sniffing Isaiah Thoat at almost equally close quarters, and his verdict was fast and seasoned.

“He’s reeking of it — rum, whisky, and I don’t know what else. She must be the same. Probably celebrating the haul they made. We’d better take ’em both in. Blow your whistle, stupid!”