Send for the Saint

1

It was on a searingly hot August afternoon in 1950 that Simon Templar uncoiled his lean seventy-four-inch frame from the seat he had occupied for interminable hours in the creaking Parnassian Airways Dakota, and stepped down on to the tarmac of Athens Airport.

From above, as the plane had begun to sink into its droning circuitous approach. Simon had looked down on the city with the same sense of unreality as he had felt on previous visits. There below, scarcely believable in their exact correspondence to all the tourist guidebook photographs, lay the monumental relics of the Old Greece: and there in less than comfortable juxtaposition with them were strewn the lesser glories of the New — those stark and faceless hotel and office blocks that were even then beginning to crawl like a blight across the green and ochre landscape. To anyone possessing, as the Saint possessed, a nodding acquaintance with the history and art of ancient Greece, the thought was inescapable that here was a nation whose architecture had deteriorated along with its Olympic athletes.

The thought being inescapable, Simon had not tried to escape it. He had merely sighed, and promised himself a longer visit before the rot went much farther.

On this occasion, he didn’t mean to get on speaking terms with so much as a single Ionic column. He was purely and simply passing through, en route to London from Lebanon. In Beirut his attention had recently been occupied with one Elil Azziz, a large-scale flesh-trader and particularly unpleasant pustule on the face of humanity. Even the Saint had never been mixed up in a nastier bit of business: and even he had never come closer to death or had more cause to be grateful for the steel-spring nerves and reflexes with which a thoughtful providence had seen fit to equip him. In the end, he had succeeded in administering his own harsh yet poetic brand of justice to the excrescence in question, and in escaping not only with his own life but with some of the excrescence’s more negotiable property, chiefly in the convenient form of banknotes. And the Saint now proposed to spend an indefinite period in London enjoying Mr Azziz’s money on a lavish celebratory scale.

For the sake of accuracy, then, let it be recorded that he intended to remain on Greek soil for a period of just thirty-one minutes, this being the scheduled interval before the connecting flight. And let it be added that he was at that moment — aside from what might be called a certain constitutional readiness of the blood — definitely not in search of further Saintly adventure.

But he had failed to reckon with the persuasive charms of a certain Ariadne...

Despite the heat, no one could have looked more sublimely, insolently relaxed than Simon Templar as he sauntered into the airport passenger building. He had been entertaining himself by guessing at the occupations, preoccupations, and amorous propensities of his fellow passengers; and a faint smile hovered on his tanned piratical features as he wondered idly which of that motley crowd would contrive to smuggle the greatest weight, bulk, or value of contraband goods past the deceptively somnolent-looking Greek customs officers.

Simon had not been slow to notice the girl in the blue-and-gold airport staff uniform. She was armed with a clipboard on which she appeared to be keeping count as the incoming passengers filed past, and Simon had just drawn level with her when she spoke. “Sir! One moment please!”

The Saint turned, cocking a quizzical eyebrow, and looked into level wide-apart hazel eyes topped by a mop of dark curly hair. The eyes were set in a youthful elfin face, and the hair asserted itself defiantly against the restraint of the uniform-cap. Simon took in these and certain other details — including the way she filled the well-cut uniform — in a single comprehensively appraising and approving glance, and replied with a seraphic smile, after scarcely an instant’s hesitation:

“How can I help you? Only ask, and if it should lie within my power...”

“It is my pleasure to inform you that you are the two-millionth passenger to pass through Athens Airport,” said the girl, in the slightly formal tones of one who had rehearsed the sentence; and with a flourish of finality she made a large pencilled tick on the top sheet of the wad attached to her clipboard.

As she spoke she returned his smile and found her gaze met by a pair of the most amazingly clear blue eyes she had ever seen. Still more remarkable was the sublime innocence of their expression; but in them too, for a few moments, anyone who knew him well might have detected a faint, elusively mocking light as the Saint digested her announcement, weighed, considered, and formed a sceptical but open-minded judgement, before replying enthusiastically:

“What fun! This must be what my dear old Granny had in mind when she used to say I was fated to do something historic one day.”

“The management would like to make a small presentation,” the girl continued. “And there’s some champagne. Please come this way.”

“Well...” Simon hesitated. “I don’t want to risk missing my plane—”

“Please — it will take a few minutes only.”

The Saint possessed, as he sometimes modestly reminded himself, a surprising number of natural assets that were invaluable in his hazardous freebooting trade. Not least among these aptitudes useful to any buccaneer with a hankering to stay in the business was his acute sense of the probable and the improbable — and when the notorious Simon Templar was stopped as the two-millionth passenger, or customer, or for that matter male visitor wearing shoes in a particular shade of brown... then it was entirely to be expected that the notorious Simon Templar should have his reservations concerning the probable truth of the claim.

But it was equally in character that he should have been swayed by his curiosity, and by the pleading in the eyes of a girl in a well-cut uniform. Wherefore the Saint replied, with an even more seraphic smile:

“All right. If you say so, I’ll be delighted. Lead on, darling.”

He followed her through a door marked Official Use Only in English and Greek, into a short corridor leading to another door. They passed through the second door into the open air.

“Are we having the champagne alfresco?” asked the Saint with interest. “Or — forgive my suspicious mind — have you been deceiving me?”

A gleaming new Rolls-Royce in opulent purple stood near by, a grey-uniformed chauffeur behind the wheel. At a nod from the girl, this worthy made some minimal movement of his body, and the Saint heard the abrupt muffled cough of the starter, giving way instantly to the Rolls engine’s well-bred, barely audible throb.

“Would you step into the car, please?” The girl’s voice was still polite, but more matter-of-fact than before. The pleading had left her eyes.

“I think I’d rather not,” Simon replied evenly. “I told you — I’ve got a plane to catch. If I’m going to make it, this is where I leave the party. Sorry. Now, if you’d really had some bubbly on the premises —”

He turned to go back through the same doorway, but even before he did so he knew with virtual certainty what he would encounter. The exact form taken by the expected obstruction was that of an extremely large Greek, dressed in the same grey chauffeur’s livery and holding a squat automatic which he pointed unwaveringly at the Saint’s chest.

“You will get into the car — Mr Templar,” he rasped. For a few moments the Saint soberly contemplated the bulky chauffeur-gunman, whom he instantly christened Big Spiro. In an automatic response — born of long experience of threats and physical struggles and mayhem and all manner of antagonists, large and small, who had pointed guns in his direction down the years — he rapidly measured the distance between them, pictured accurately the leap that would bring him within reach of Big Spiro’s gun hand, gauged the other’s probable speed of reaction and the strength in those massive arms — and concluded that for the time being he had little option but to do as he was told. He shrugged and obeyed the injunction, following the girl into the back of the car.

Big Spiro somehow managed to ease his own gigantic chassis through the same door and to wedge it into the seat beside the Saint’s altogether more practical whipcord proportions without even a momentary deflection of the automatic protruding from his hamlike fist. Next he used the other ham of the pair to conduct an expert and thorough search of Simon’s person: but he found nothing, for the Saint on his ordinary travels had long since ceased to go armed.

Simon was more than a little annoyed — in the first place with himself for allowing his curiosity to lead him so easily into a trap, but more particularly with whoever was behind the abduction.

“Just where are we going?” he demanded tersely, as the big car glided silently away from the airport.

“You will see in good time,” answered the girl. “And by the way — in case you should be so rash as to try to escape — all the car doors are electrically locked and only the driver can release them. Why not just relax? We do not mean you any harm, but if you attempt any heroics you will certainly be shot.”

“We’d make a lovely couple, you and I,” murmured the Saint, but if the girl understood she gave no sign.

She pressed a button in front of her, and a panel slid back to reveal a telephone. She picked up the handset, dialled, and after a moment’s delay spoke softly into it. Simon had a sufficient smattering of Greek to understand.

“Ariadne reporting, sir. We have Mr Templar. We shall be with you by two-thirty.”

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was two-fifteen.

“Just how long is this pantomime scheduled to last?” he inquired. A veneer of laziness in his voice thinly covered the iron-hard core of anger beneath. “Hours? Days?”

“Please, do not be impatient.”

The mocking eyes danced like chips of blue steel.

“I’ve two main reasons for asking,” he drawled. “One — before long I may very well tire of humouring your giant teddy-bear chum with the popgun. I’ve handled plenty of bigger dumb heavies in my time,” he added, not entirely veraciously in view of Big Spiro’s six feet eight and more than proportional width. “And two — do you realise that about now they’ll be loading my suitcase into a London plane. I have — and I make no secret of it — certain eccentric habits. For example, every once in a while 1 change my socks. Now if I’m to be shortly separated from my spare Argylls... well, I’d prefer to avoid indelicacy, but my company could rapidly—”

“Your suitcase is in the boot of the car,” interrupted Ariadne laconically: and Simon Templar blinked with something very like surprise, and mentally chalked up another point to his anonymous abductor.

With philosophic resignation, he sank farther back into the car’s luxurious air-conditioned comfort and crossed one leg over the other, making the movements with slow careful deliberation in deference to Big Spiro’s trigger finger. No doubt that worthy colossus was under strict orders to deliver his prize alive and well, and no doubt he had been selected for his post with due care: yet however phlegmatically imperturbable he might appear, still a Greek is a Greek — quintessentially and forever a man of impulse and hot blood. And the Saint, knowing this well, saw no reason to take rash risks with the only skin he possessed.

He began to piece together what he knew or could deduce about the man from whom Ariadne and Big Spiro took their instructions. Who would want to kidnap the Saint? He had plenty of enemies with old scores to settle, but none in Greece that he knew of. For a moment his mind went back to recent events in Beirut; but on sober reflection he doubted if even the incendiary malevolence of Elil Azziz — especially bearing in mind the somewhat incapacitated condition in which the Saint had left him and his principal henchman that very morning — could have pursued him so swiftly.

As the purple Rolls whispered its insulated way through the Athens suburbs, groups of children gawped after it. Simon Templar, who had his moments of insight, had already categorised it as a far from discreet and inconspicuous vehicle. Not to mince words, it was the very latest model, announced only a month before; the colour was by special order, and Simon had already made a mental list of all the other custom features, among them the air-conditioning system, which together testified to the owner’s flamboyant taste as well as to his ability and readiness to pay for every conceivable luxury. Without doubt this was a wealthy and powerful man, someone used to impressing himself on the world and moulding his surroundings, and who took for granted that he would always get his own way... It might be one of those repulsive nouveaux riches tycoons who had grown newly fat on their lack of scruples in the aftermath of the war and of the civil wars that followed. And this was a man — the Saint felt a momentary grudging admiration — who worked with dazzling speed and efficiency; at most he had had a few hours’ advance notice of Simon’s arrival — and even for that he would have needed direct access to the airline’s passenger list — yet the airport operation had been smooth and unobtrusive, and the uniformed Ariadne had somehow been installed with the connivance or toleration of genuine airport staff.

That, more than anything, gave the Saint his clue. How could this postulated potentate have worked that particular trick, short of actually buying the whole airport?

A bell rang in Simon Templar’s brain.

Of course — he could already own the airport. Or, very nearly the equivalent in practice, he could own the airline — Parnassian — that Simon had used. In which case... His lips came together in a silent whistle. This was no minor tycoon; this was a big boy — one of the biggest.

It was something of an inspired guess. But the Saint’s inspired guesses had so often proved uncannily accurate in the past that he would have been more than mildly surprised now to find that he had sired even a partial dud.

In the Saint’s experience, powerful men sought him out either in a blood-lust for revenge or in the hope of somehow employing him towards their own further aggrandisement. Having mentally ruled out the first, he plumped for the second.

“What makes your Mr Patroclos think he can buy me?” he asked casually, and Ariadne’s head swung suddenly around to face him.

“How did you—?”

The hazel eyes had widened.

“It could hardly be anyone else, sweetheart.”

The Saint was conscious of the exaggeration, but he had something of the showman and the conjuror in his make-up, and like any producer of unexpected rabbits he relished the effect upon his audience. Likewise he noted with satisfaction that when he had pronounced the name Patroclos — placing the stress correctly on the first syllable — even Big Spiro had shown visible surprise, and for all the Saint knew he might well have swallowed his dentures.

“Whoever was behind that stunt at the airport more or less had to own the place,” Simon went on. “I’d guess you were on stage for only a few minutes, while I and the other passengers came through. But even that could have been long enough for you to be spotted by someone on the real airport staff.”

“Unless they had been paid not to notice,” Ariadne pointed out reasonably.

“And the customs men? No, this had to be more than ordinary bribery. This Johnny had to have really special influence. And I can’t think of anyone in Greece who’d come anything like as close to that as our Diogenes, bless his puissant heart.”

The girl hesitated for a moment.

“Well, it will do no harm to confirm your guesswork. Mr Patroclos wishes to see you on an important and confidential matter. But I cannot tell you what it is. You’ll meet him soon enough.”

2

Diogenes Patroclos...

(The first name, which English speakers, for their own peculiar reasons, vocalise as “Dye-odgen-eez”, was pronounced by his compatriots as “Thee-o-yen-ess”, abbreviated by his familiars — by irreverent journalists to “Thee-o”.)

The Saint was already scanning his card-index memory for everything he could remember about the man who was indisputably the wealthiest and most powerful living Greek, a man who controlled a vast and many-tentacled business empire, who was reputed to be among the world’s shrewdest manipulators, and in whom the Saint, for certain reasons, had sometimes been tempted to take a sharpened interest.

He had read somewhere that Patroclos had come of a poor fishing family who had lived a few miles outside the capital. At fourteen, it was said (admittedly mostly by his critics) that he was the leader of a gang of young Athens pickpockets. At seventeen he was a seasoned merchant seaman, and besides piling up a tidy heap of drachmae, which he won in gambling with his shipmates, he had begun to get a grasp of the logistics of the business on which he later founded his fortune. His talent for figure-work and planning was exceptional; and he managed before long to manoeuvre himself into an office job with the same shipping company, and soon began climbing what is known as the management ladder. By the time he was twenty-one and fluent in three foreign languages he had already begun to amass capital by astute investment. At twenty-three or thereabouts, he launched out, so to speak, on his own, with one — battered cargo steamer and an equally battered wharfside office in the Piraeus; and only a few years later he bought out his original employer. In the next twenty years he was in his element — assembling and consolidating a vast complex web of companies, mainly in shipping, air transport, investment, and insurance.

By all accounts Patroclos was a man of immense personal magnetism. His financial touch was a byword among his business contemporaries, and the timing of his acquisitions and divestments was generally regarded as next to uncanny. He was a Midas-figure who pulled strings and then — so it seemed — amused himself by watching the golden marionette-future respond exactly as he had willed.

That was Diogenes Patroclos, as pieced together from the Saint’s mental file of the information scraps he had accumulated on the subject. But colossal and diversified as the Patroclos interests were, his first love, Simon knew, was still shipping. And it was the incidental uses of some of Mr Patroclos’ ships in particular that had begun to arouse the Saint’s speculation.

The Patroclos headquarters occupied one of the more salubriously situated, better camouflaged, and (as Greek estate agents or their counterparts anywhere in the world might have put it) more mature of the office blocks whose incursions Simon had lamented from the air. Which is simply to say that the physical centre of Mr Patroclos’ aforementioned web of businesses was an edifice of manifestly superior quality, decently separated by a protective peripheral cushioning of verdure — including a few decorative citrus groves — from the nearest hubs of lesser commercial universes.

The Rolls disgorged its three passengers at the main entrance, and Ariadne ushered the Saint through the smoked-glass doors, where a plaque of suitably impressive dimensions depicted the chief constellations of the Patroclos cosmos. Big Spiro, his automatic no longer prominently on display, lumbered along behind; and the Saint flashed him a winning smile.

“Does Diogenes keep many other pet performing elephants?” he inquired with genuine interest.

Neither the mammoth nor Ariadne deigned to answer; and the Saint shrugged, and abandoned the attempt at polite conversation.

They proceeded into a large office labelled “D. Patroclos — General Staff” where male and female secretaries were busying themselves with typewriters and telephones. A male secretary got up after a few respectful words into a white telephone and opened the heavy double doors that led to Patroclos’ inner office.

The room was spacious, though smaller than Simon had expected, sumptuously carpeted, and sparsely but superbly furnished in rich heavy browns with splashes of silver and glass here and there.

Patroclos stood up from his desk — a heavy, aggressive-looking man, exuding power like the room itself.

“Sir,” began the girl, “This is Mr—”

“Out,” snapped Patroclos. “I want no calls or interruptions.”

He bundled her out and slammed the doors shut behind her: and the Saint meanwhile calmly installed himself in the mogul’s reclining leather and silver chair, and rested his feet on the elegant walnut desk.

Patroclos turned and eyed the Saint penetratingly, making a lightning appraisal of the debonair ice-cool man who was lounging so insolently before him. And Patroclos saw a lean tanned buccaneer’s face in which the lines of mirth and steel determination somehow coincided; a long relaxed frame that tapered from broad shoulders to the polished shoes that had taken defiant possession of the desk-top; and about the whole person of the Saint an indefinably yet almost tangibly dangerous swashbuckling air. And the Saint stared back at Diogenes Patroclos with ice-blue eyes that had narrowed fractionally as they observed the brusque treatment of Ariadne.

“What the Saint saw was a broad, shortish, almost squat figure, a thickset powerful body, a strong face, black musketballs of eyes under bushy black eyebrows, and still plenty of matching hair atop the somewhat cro-magnon head. Patroclos was wearing a blue serge suit, stiff gleaming linen, and a ring with a diamond in it as big as a cob-nut.

The Saint saw all these things. And then his anger surfaced.

“Dio, old toad,” he began, in a voice thinly edged with silk, “you have made a serious blunder. I am about to give you a graphically detailed rundown on your antecedents, your future prospects of happiness, and a few of the unpleasant experiences which I’ve decided will have to befall you. Besides which I expect to describe — if I can bring myself to look at you — some of the many repellent features of your gross person.”

Patroclos inclined his head slightly and studied the Saint for a few moments longer.

“So you are the famous Simon Templar,” he said, baring his teeth in a mechanical half-smile. “I am very pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all yours,” said the Saint evenly. “I never liked very much of what I’d heard of you, Dio, and now I’ve seen you I like you even less.”

“Naturally you are angry,” said Patroclos in a conciliatory tone. “Your journey has been interrupted. You have been brought here against your will. You have been threatened. I too, in your place, would be angry — very angry.” He made a pantomime gesture of expanding his chest and throwing his arms wide as if breaking out of bondage. “But...”

“I am much more than very angry,” the Saint cut in. “If there’s one species of humanity I abhor above all others it’s a bloated plutocratic string-puller who calmly assumes that there’s nothing and nobody on earth his money can’t buy. I am so angry that I’m on the point of taking you apart piece by piece and scattering the bits in the Aegean — except that I’d have a conscience about poisoning the fish. Afterwards I might just start on your maritime operations. There have been nasty whispers lately about some of your cargoes and their destinations, and I’m enough of an old-fashioned puritan to get hot under the collar about such things. All in all, from where I sit, your future looks distinctly less than rosy.”

The black eyes flashed and the heavy brows swooped. Diogenes Patroclos controlled himself with difficulty.

“Yes, yes,” he said hurriedly, “you are a remarkable man. I have heard many tales of your exploits. I do not doubt that you could do me damage. But I do not desire your enmity. Templar, you are a man I admire. Yes — I, Diogenes Patroclos! I possess money, power, organisations, everything. But you — you are a man of daring... we would say a klephtes — a robber-hero—”

Simon interrupted.

“Now get this straight. Whatever I may be — or may have been in the past — I was just now on my way to London. I was taking a well-earned holiday. Which you have had the temerity, the super-heterodyne gall, to interrupt with your—”

“Yes, yes. It will all be made good. But please — you are here now. Listen to me. I need help — and you are the best man in the world to give it. I will pay a lot of money.”

“Dio, you’re up a gum-tree. Your information is faulty. I work for myself. I don’t take commissions under pressure.”

“The pressure was regrettable — but a temporary expedient only. I give you my word, Templar — if you reject my proposition you will be free to leave at once and no harm will be done to you.”

“Goodbye, then,” said the Saint, getting up from Patroclos’ chair.

“Wait! You will change your mind when you hear. This must interest you, a man of your experience, your abilities. I am being impersonated, Templar! No, a better word, duplicated!”

“Disgusting!” said the Saint with feeling.

“Think of a carbon copy, a photograph, so accurate in every detail as to be identical. There are two of me, Templar, two!”

“The thought quite turns my stomach,” said the Saint, with an elaborate shudder.

For a few moments the bullet eyes smouldered and the muscles tensed and untensed around Patroclos’ prominent jaw.

“That is your only comment?”

The Saint sighed.

“Apart from the obvious — that it’s impossible.”

“So we agree. Impossible.”

“Those old fairy-tales about perfect doubles are factual baloney.”

“Yes, yes — to imitate clothes, that is simple. Mannerisms, even. But beneath them is the man — me!”

“Quite,” said the Saint, becoming bored.

“Me! Unique. Unrepeatable! These lines—” Patroclos thrust his jaw forward and outlined its contour with a hairy hand. “No man can have these things without being me.”

“Right. Case solved. You can put my cheque in the post.”

Patroclos moved up very close to Simon and took a deep breath. The black eyes bulged.

“But, Templar, though we both know it is impossible, there is such a man.”

The Saint cocked an eyebrow.

“You’ve seen him, of course?”

“No. But friends say to me ‘I saw you last week in Paris.’ But I tell them I have not been in Paris. I have been here in Athens.”

The Saint’s interest, against his will, was beginning to be aroused. He meant exactly what he had said about the proposition that any man could have a “perfect double”. The variability of humankind, in behaviour, voice, and appearance, was so infinitely manifold that two people in practice rarely turned out to be even approximate doubles. And yet, here was a man seriously claiming such an impersonation.

“I find entries in my bank statements,” Patroclos continued, “showing I have made purchase of a new car, a piece of jewellery, when I have made no such purchase!”

“Did you ask to see the cheques?”

“Of course. My own signature! Indistinguishable! But I did not sign them... Now, listen. I have houses, apartments, offices. All over the world. This man uses them! Wherever I am not, he is! He knows my every movement.”

“Interesting,” the Saint mused.

“And for every suit I possess, it seems he has had made another, identical!” Patroclos was becoming emotional: the voice rose and fell excitedly: the words came out in clusters, a few at a time, under immense pressure. “I tell the London Police, I am being impersonated. They must find the man quick. A week later they arrest me!”

Simon laughed.

“Yes.... ha ha!” Patroclos went on. “But I am proceeding to a big meeting. I tell the police this. But no. I must go first to Scotland Yard. They see my passport... all the things. At last they are convinced. I am the real Patroclos. I may go. So I precipitate myself to this meeting. But what is this? It is finished without me.”

“You’re not telling me,” Simon said in amazement, “that he—”

“Yes! This masquerader has been there! I was then to learn that he had blocked a deal I was planning. In place of it he had negotiated another.”

“Now that really is interesting,” said the Saint softly.

“So, the impossible happens. But Templar, even that was just the beginning. Since then there have been many such deals.”

The Saintly blue eyes searched the mogul’s face.

“What kind of deals?”

Patroclos hesitated.

“Shipping. All shipping.”

“Your favourite game...” Simon said slowly, his brain struggling to make a connection. “Were the deals successful?”

“Very successful. But not deals I would have made. Unprincipled deals.”

“In what way?” asked the Saint, without much doubt about the answer.

Patrocles hesitated again.

“Heroin to the United States. Arms to... certain powers, supplies and aid to others. Earlier, Templar, you spoke of your heat under the collar at these things. You had heard rumours — yes? But no proof...”

“The American authorities are pretty certain that your ships have been carrying these cargoes. Admittedly they’ve yet to catch you red-handed.”

“But that is the point! It is not me. My ships are being used — yes... but only under the direction of this — this double!”

The Saint smiled.

“And you want me to catch him?”

“I will pay you twenty thousand pounds if you do.”

“Well, I won’t,” said the Saint firmly. “I’m on holiday. I told you.”

Patroclos looked crestfallen.

“But Templar, the matter does interest you. Obviously. And twenty thousand pounds — that is a lot of money. Then why—”

Simon sighed.

“Dio,” he began with exemplary surface patience, “a little while ago I explained very clearly that I disliked your approach. I told you I was annoyed. I still am annoyed. You messed up my plans, and I was contemplating various ways of making your life uncomfortable in return. But since this repulsive-looking doppelganger of yours seems to be doing the job pretty well on his own, I’m willing to forego the pleasure of pinning your ears back myself. Now if you’ll just see that I get on the next plane to London, I’ll be generous and forget what a nuisance you’ve been.”

And the Saint pushed through the double doors into the outer office, leaving a seething Patroclos behind him.

3

He found Ariadne sheafing through some files.

“Darling,” he said, “you arrange things so cleverly. I want a seat on the next flight to London. Mr Patroclos and I have concluded our business, you might say.”

The girl looked up; and not by so much as a flicker of an eyebrow did she acknowledge what she saw beyond the Saint’s dangerous form — her boss’s squarer, squatter physique framed in the doorway as he shook his head at her vigorously.

“There isn’t another flight until the morning, I’m afraid,” she told him with only a fractional hesitation.

“Really?” Simon was bluntly sceptical.

“Really,” she said more firmly. “But since we do have a suite booked for you at the Grande Bretagne tonight...”

“Oh, we do? On the house, I suppose?”

“Naturally.”

The Saint reflected.

“Hmm... I suppose a night in Athens could have its compensations.”

Ariadne looked relieved to have no further argument on her hands.

“The morning flight is at ten-fifteen. I will make the booking now, and you can exchange your existing ticket at the airline desk in the morning. Now I will order the car to take you to the hotel.”

Simon flipped a hand in a goodbye gesture and strolled out, arriving at the front door simultaneously with the Rolls. He had kept his cool composure throughout, but during the drive to the hotel he reflected on the encounter with an obscure feeling of dissatisfaction.

Patroclos was right on one point: it was a fascinating problem, and one that could hardly have failed to arouse the Saint’s professional curiosity. But Simon Templar danced to no man’s tune, but only to the music of his own individual ideals — which mainly concerned justice, and a comfortable living for buccaneers who took on the dangerous task of administering it. It had always been so with him and probably always would. Therefore he had refused the job, exactly as he had meant to do.

And yet he felt an undefined disquiet, as though he had nonetheless been manipulated in some way that eluded his grasp. Somewhere deep in the underlayers of his subconscious mind a tiny premonitory bell was tinkling out the merest ghostly half-echo of a warning; but it was somehow too far off and too subtle to be grasped and interpreted, though the Saint creased his brow with the effort for several minutes.

He had not seen, did not guess, how abruptly the thunderclouds fell from Patroclos’ features as soon as he was alone. Nor had he seen how swiftly those same features formed themselves into an expression of triumphant cunning that would have made Machiavelli look like a dewy-eyed innocent. Nor could he have any knowledge of the brief phone call that Patroclos next made. Had he known of these things, he would also have known at once that Diogenes Patroclos was even more astute than he had supposed.

The Grande Bretagne was one of the institutions of Athens, and there was nowhere Simon would rather have stayed. The reception clerk, a thin sallow youth, was evidently expecting him.

“Ah yes, Mr Templar. One of our best suites. Would you sign, please.”

While the Saint was signing the name whose syllables were known with approximately equal unpopularity to both the underworld and the police forces of several countries, the sallow clerk produced a long envelope.

“This contains your papers, Mr Templar. They were sent from the airport.”

He reached down and handed the Saint a second smaller envelope. “And this was left for you a short while ago.”

Simon opened the second envelope, and found inside it an air ticket for London and a handwritten note which said simply:

While he was reading the anonymous message, Simon became aware of two thickset Greeks wearing off-white suits and dark glasses who had appeared at either side of him.

“You understand?” said the first, flashing a mouthful of gold teeth in the Saint’s general direction. “A car is waiting outside to take you to the airport.”

“How thoughtful,” said the Saint. “But a bit premature. I’m leaving in the morning. Ask the driver to come back then.”

“No. You must leave now. Patroclos may try again, and you may change your mind.”

“So just pick up your bag,” said the other Greek, pressing a gun into Simon’s ribs in a manner that made it difficult to ignore.

The Saint’s eyes narrowed fractionally and the muscles of his jaw tightened. To be abducted at gunpoint twice in one day was coming close to being repetitious; and the Saint found that he was already tired of the game. But Big Spiro was one thing, and two amateurs in an open hotel lobby were quite another. The Saint shrugged, picked up the suitcase, and strode rapidly towards the exit.

“Mr Templar...!” The clerk stared after him in blank puzzlement. But his stare grew more pop-eyed still as he watched the Saint go into action.

Gold-teeth’s gun, if he had one, was not in his hand. That was a mark of amateurism, and a serious mistake. And if Simon Templar knew anything, he knew how to take advantage of the mistakes of the ungodly.

When he began striding towards the door, Gold-teeth and his companion with the gun immediately followed, hurrying to keep up with the Saint’s long strides.

And the Saint suddenly stopped dead.

What happened next was etched into the fascinated hotel clerk’s memory in graphic detail.

There were two “wmph”s in perfect unison as the big suitcase slammed its outer corners symmetrically into the midriffs of Gold-teeth and his colleague; and then five steely fingers fastened with uncanny speed on the wrist attached to the gun-holding hand, and the gun fell to the ground. Simon kicked it away, and in the same instant the outside edge of his right hand arched up suddenly from out of nowhere and chopped devastatingly into the narrow target formed by Gold-teeth’s upper lip where it joined his nose. Gold-teeth reeled back gasping from the back-handed blow whose surprising incapacitating power the Saint had learned years before in Shanghai, and with the toe of his left shoe the Saint kicked the other man hard in the shins — a manoeuvre of less exotic provenance which also had its moments of usefulness. The reflex impulse to bend over and clutch at the wounded shin in these circumstances is a strong one, and unfortunately for him the gunman yielded to it. As his head came down, it met Simon’s fist travelling rapidly in the opposite direction in a long looping uppercut that connected with the point of his chin and sent him off into the land of dreams.

As he staggered and began to fall, the Saint steered him towards the crumpling Gold-teeth until a final shove brought their two heads into loud collision, and both slumped to the ground together with no further interest in the proceedings. Simon smoothed back his hair, recovered the gun, and said to the open-mouthed clerk: “Sorry about that. Would you arrange to have them taken away? I suggest the garbage collectors. Oh, and would you have a porter take my bag to my room?”

And the Saint strolled into the hotel bar.

Over an ice-cool lager, he reflected. Somebody was obviously very anxious to prevent his involvement in the Patroclos affair; and if the Saint disliked being pressured into a certain line of action, he disliked even more being warned off.

Twenty minutes later he paid off a taxi in front of the Patroclos HQ building and strode past the receptionist and through the outer office, waving to Ariadne; then he opened the big double doors to reveal Patroclos at his desk.

“Templar!”

“I’ve thought things over,” said the Saint simply.

“And changed your mind? Splendid. I knew you would not be able to resist opposing yourself to the cleverness of this impersonator...”

“Is there anything else I should know?” asked the Saint.

“Yes. There is my codebook. This man or his agents have been to my safe!”

Simon nodded.

“I figured as much when you said he’d been able to use your cheques. But what’s in the codebook?”

Patroclos made an all-embracing gesture.

“Everything crucial. Details of my entire business empire: details which I need in order to direct operations. No one else is permitted to have access to all of these details together — none of my employees, even the most senior and trusted. But he has them! Plus — the most important of all — the codes I use to communicate vital instructions to my key executives.”

“Which you immediately cancelled, I trust,” said the Saint.

“Naturally I attempted to. But he is clever, Templar — very clever. He had already contacted — this you will not believe — he had already notified my major companies that an impostor is at large and would attempt to change the codes! He tells them in my name! They are to ignore any such attempt — they must respond only to the established codes!”

“And I suppose you’ve no other copy of the codes?”

Patroclos sighed.

“For security reasons, I kept only one book. I realise now this was bad security. He has the codes and he can give vital instructions, but I cannot even cancel his orders. Do you not see what this means, Templar?”

“I think I’m beginning to get the picture,” said the Saint mildly.

The black eyes bulged and the hairy hands gesticulated excitedly as Patroclos continued.

“This is the crucial step in taking over my business — my entire life. He becomes me. He acquires a greater claim to my existence than I myself! He overtakes me, turns me into the impostor. He forces me out and takes my place. So — Templar — please find this masquerader and get back my codebook.”

“And where do I start?”

“London.”

“London?” The Saint raised an eyebrow.

“It should not be so inconvenient for you. You were on your way there. Now you can continue your journey. Next week I have an important series of meetings in London. He will almost certainly be intending to be there. Your job is to find him — forestall him. And, Templar,” he added with some further eyebulging and gesticulating, “most important — get back my codebook. Quickly!”

“I’ll be on my way in the morning,” said the Saint.

“There is a flight at half past five,” Patroclos said.

“Ariadne didn’t seem to think so earlier.”

“So. Perhaps she forgot — this is Tuesday. There is an evening flight. I will tell her to arrange your ticket.”

“Oddly enough,” said the Saint with quiet thoughtfulness, “I’ve got one already.”

4

Simon Templar arrived in London in the small hours and went straight to the compact mews house behind Queen’s Gate that had served his needs so well for several years. Its position and construction offered certain natural advantages — which was why he had chosen it in the first place — and the Saint had added a unique range of refinements, including some highly unorthodox gadgetry that had proved invaluable in his dealings with both the underground and the law.

Outside the street door he consulted a tiny light-bulb which was tucked away in a hidden recess; and with some further precautions he went in. Some quick checks confirmed that no one had been in the house in his absence. These were merely routine actions that had become semi-automatic for a privateer like the Saint with an instinct for survival.

He slept until nine, which he regarded as a moderately civilised hour at which to rise, swing a pair of Indian clubs vigorously for a few minutes, shower, and consume quantities of bacon, eggs, toast and coffee. The Saint did all these things, and in that order: and then, fit and ready to punch the world on the nose, he sallied forth.

The first object on which his energies impinged was the long-nosed cream and red Hirondel in the garage. Simon spent a few minutes preparing it for the road, and after re-setting his various household devices he snaked the big car through the traffic to the offices of the Daily Express, where a sub-editor on the paper, Joe Daly, had often helped out in the past by allowing him access to files and photographs.

Joe was in cheerful form as always, and the Saint’ grinned as the short square figure appeared and slapped him on the back.

“Simon, you old son of a gun!” he exclaimed in his chirrupy brogue. “How’s business? Been keeping the nose clean then, I see,” he added, referring to the lack of recent news stories about the Saint’s exploits.

“I’ve been out of the country for a while, Joe. What can you give me on Diogenes Patroclos?”

“Patroclos? Old golden guts?”

“The same. Joe, I’d be obliged if you’d show me what you’ve got in the photo library.”

They went together into the long room that housed the paper’s main collection of personal data. Daly rummaged in a cabinet.

“Strictly against the rules, this, Simon, y’know. Ah, here we are, Diogenes Patroclos.” Daly pulled out a hefty file and gave it to Simon. “And there’s references to a whole string of his companies — you can have a look at the files on them if you like. Mostly pictures of aircraft and ships as I remember.”

“Thanks, Joe. Just now it’s the man himself that I’m interested in,” explained the Saint as he riffled through the photos.

Daly peered over his shoulder.

“Ugly bugger, isn’t he. What’s he been up to?”

“You tell me,” said the Saint.

Daly looked reflective.

“Wait — there was something. His ships’ve been carrying some dodgy cargoes lately. There was some rumbling here and there about it.”

The Saint nodded.

“I’d heard that much. But it never made the papers, did it?”

“We tried to work up a feature, but the old man said let it ripen a bit first.”

“What about women?” the Saint asked, still thumbing through the photographs.

“The man’s a monk. Only thing he takes home is bits of glass.”

“Glass?”

“Tinkle, tinkle, you know. Stuff you drink out of. He’s got one of the best collections in the world. Antique goblets — all that sort of thing...”

The Saint had stopped and extracted two photos from the file.

“Joe — look at these.”

Daly took them, glanced at the pictures, and then read the description on the reverse.

“Diogenes Patroclos presenting the Out Islands Yachting Trophy — Nassau... Diogenes Patroclos party-going in Lisbon. So what?”

“Read the dates when they were taken,” suggested the Saint. Daly read the date stamped in the corner on the back of each print.

“Tenth July 49... Tenth July 49.” Daly frowned, puzzled. “Well, he couldn’t have been in two places at once... Wait a minute, the photos must have been taken a few hours apart — Nassau in the afternoon or evening, Lisbon later on... No, that’s no good, no plane would get him there that fast. Must be a misprint.”

Simon nodded thoughtfully.

“Mind if I borrow these two?”

“Help yourself — just don’t flash ’em around on your way out.”

The Saint was willing to admit to himself that this duplicate tycoon had him, at that moment, completely perplexed. He was as reluctant to believe in the possibility of perfect impersonation as in the existence of talking dogs; yet here was this Patroclos double, seemingly breaking all the rules. And the two photographs appeared to clinch the issue. Simon’s reasoning on that had followed much the same course as Joe Daly’s: two photos had been taken no more than a few hours apart, and each showed unmistakeably a man who appeared to be Patroclos; but it was an inescapable fact that no aircraft could possibly have flown him from Nassau to Lisbon in those few hours. In any case there was a time lag of several hours, which made it all the more inconceivable that he could have travelled from one engagement to the other.

After leaving the Express building Simon drove to Berkeley Square, where Patroclos had his London house. Simon cruised around the square until he came to the number Patroclos had given him. And then, to put it mildly, he blinked his eyes in disbelief.

True, the Patroclos house was one of the most expensive and elegant residences in that expensive and elegant quarter. That was exactly as the Saint had expected. But what he had not expected was to see Diogenes Patroclos and Ariadne getting out of a silver Bentley and going into the house.

For perhaps a minute, the Saint stared after them at the closed door. They had given no sign of noticing his presence, but he had been close enough to them to see that the likeness, if they were doubles of the real Patroclos and Ariadne, was incredible. Certainly, the Saint mused, from a distance of a few feet it was utterly convincing visually. Whether the effect could be sustained at closer quarters, and when voices and mannerisms could be studied, remained to be seen. The Saint had every intention of taking a close look at the two of them, but first there was one obvious check that had to be made.

He drove back to Manson Place and phoned Athens.

After the usual delay he was connected with the Patroclos HQ. He asked for Patroclos, and Ariadne came on the line.

“No, of course we are not in London. We are here in Athens.”

“But I’ve just seen someone here — he could be him.”

“That is impossible. Mr Patroclos is here in his office.”

“Let me speak to him,” said the Saint.

Ariadne hesitated.

“He is in conference. He gave strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed.”

“Get him to the phone — now,” Simon said flatly, “or I quit the job.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“All right,” Ariadne replied. “But he will be very angry. And you will have to wait while I interrupt the meeting.”

After some delay Simon heard Patroclos’ familiar accents on the line.

“Templar — I am told you have seen the impostor. Why are you wasting time telephoning, instead of watching him?”

“I just wanted to be quite sure,” explained the Saint, “that it was the impostor I saw.”

“I am here in Athens. If you have seen the impostor, it should make your job easier. Now I am very busy. Please do not waste my time telling me that I am being impersonated. That I already know. Goodbye.”

There was a definitive clunk on the line, followed by a silence that effectively terminated all argument.

The Saint hung up and remained wrapped in thought for many minutes afterwards.

However, he had certain other private interests of some insistence with legitimate demands on his time, so that it was not until the evening that his meditations reverted entirely to the problems of Diogenes Patroclos, as his peregrinations took the Hirondel again through Berkeley Square. And it happened that he was cruising past Patroclos’ house just as an easily recognisable “society” couple in evening dress got out of a chauffeur-driven car. They rang the bell; the door opened, and they were admitted at once, but not so quickly that Simon missed catching a glimpse of someone shaped like Ariadne who was doing the reception. By the time he had a chance to stop without creating a block of honking traffic, another evening-dressed and equally publicised couple arrived and were admitted by Ariadne’s double in the same manner. And then the Saint’s eyes widened in amazement as he realised the extent of the fake Patroclos’ sheer barefaced audacity.

5

The impostor was giving a party.

For a few blissful minutes, the Saint sat in the car and savoured the full rich succulence of the situation. He watched as more guests — a dozen or so more — arrived. And then he spoke philosophically calming words to himself and went home to change into a more suitable costume than he was wearing.

Thirty minutes later, immaculately tuxedoed for the occasion, he knocked at the door of the Berkeley Square house. It was opened by the girl who looked like Ariadne; and the likeness was passable enough; but Simon was certain that this was not the girl he had met in Athens.

“Ariadne!” cried the Saint, with a complete show of spontaneous warmth. “And looking more beautiful than ever!”

The girl’s eyes flickered with puzzlement.

“Have we met somewhere?”

“Monte Carlo. Simon Templar. We shared a langouste at the Hotel de Paris, I seem to remember.”

“I... I think you must be mistaken,” said the girl slowly.

Simon’s brain was racing to make her reaction add up to some kind of sense. If she was impersonating the real Ariadne, he reasoned, surely she should be bluffing it out?

“Oh dear, forgotten incident, are we?” Simon did his best to look hurt. “Well, never mind — just tell Dio Tin here, would you?”

Ariadne Two flushed and hesitated; she must have known that the name Simon Templar appeared nowhere on the guest list, but she was reluctant to turn him away in case Patroclos himself had invited this tall and insolently handsome man and forgotten to let her know.

“I suppose it’s all right,” she said reluctantly. “You’d better come in.”

“Right ho,” said the Saint, who was already halfway into the hall.

His keen glance took in the crystal chandeliers and bracket-lights, the magnificent gilt mirror, the marble floor and columns, the elegant carved staircase. Georgian classic at its best. Coats and furs bulged from the cloaks recess behind the front door, and an upper-class babble of voices issued from the drawing room into which Simon followed the dubious-faced Ariadne Two.

About twenty people were standing about in typical party groups, drinking champagne and talking, and making more noise about both activities than was strictly necessary. Most of the guests were instantly recognisable, as Simon had already noted, as bigwigs of one sort or another — cultural, social, financial, or in some cases all three.

“Do you know anyone?” Ariadne Two asked.

“Probably,” replied the Saint. “I don’t see Dio, though.”

“He’s busy at the moment. But I’ll tell him you’re here.”

Ariadne Two beckoned over the footman with a tray of drinks; and then, with a last uncertain glance at the Saint’s innocent features, she disappeared through a door at the far end of the room.

Simon sampled the fine champagne appreciatively while his eyes absorbed the scene. Next to him a group were conversing loudly, trying to make themselves heard above the general hubbub.

“Well, you know Dio,” a famous merchant banker was explaining. “Once he gets his claws into a man...”

“Don’t we know!” chuckled another well-known financier. “Rends him limb from limb. What exactly did he do to this Kellner?”

“Sold the company. And him along with it — bound by contract for the next five years. Sold it to a firm of East End bookmakers, if you please!”

“Ha! Sold him into slavery, eh?”

“Exactly!”

“Marvellous!” put in the large operatic contralto who was part of the same group.

“Good old Dio,” said a younger, very decorative woman in the group. “Never changes, does he?”

The cue was too perfect for the Saint to resist.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked. “Wouldn’t you say he’d changed a bit recently?”

Six pairs of eyes turned to look at the newcomer; and one of the financiers asked, “How d’you mean?”

Simon hesitated.

“I’m not exactly sure. I can’t put my finger on it somehow. There’s something... Maybe his appearance. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Well, none of us gets any younger,” suggested the more ornamental of the women, with an appreciatively appraising glance at the Saint’s youthfully lean and elegant form.

“I don’t mean he’s aged, exactly,” he explained. “Just... changed.”

“Well, I haven’t noticed it,” put in the large contralto decisively, as if that must be the end of the matter.

The Saint shrugged.

“Oh well, it was just an impression. Perhaps I’m wrong.” And then, as Ariadne Two appeared at his side and touched him on the arm, he added, “Will you excuse me?” and followed the girl through the far doorway.

“Mr Patroclos would like to talk to you privately,” she explained, as they passed through a small communicating room into the library beyond.

The room was fully pine-panelled, its walls lined with sunken bookshelves stuffed full of leather-bound volumes. Two big showcases full of choice glassware dominated one side of the room; and from a solid compact mahogany desk in one corner, the double of Diogenes Patroclos stared at Simon Templar with piercing interest.

Ariadne Two closed the door softly, leaving them alone.

The likeness was incredible. To any ordinary observation this was the same Diogenes Patroclos as the Saint had met in Athens: the same heavy figure, the same powerful set to the head and jaw, and the same sallow Greek complexion, the same bushy black brows and musketball eyes. And yet, to the Saint’s acutely perceptive scrutiny, there were minute, infinitesimal differences, which were well-nigh impossible to analyse — perhaps a fractional discrepancy here in the sweep of the hair, or there in a line or two of the face — but which nevertheless added up to just enough of an identifiable distinction to make the Saint feel fairly sure he would now be able to tell Patroclos One and Patroclos Two apart.

He went straight to Patroclos Two, hand extended.

“Dio. Good to see you!”

“Templar! What brings you here at this hour?”

The voice and handshake were noncommittal; Patroclos Two was not refusing to recognise the Saint, as the girl had done, but neither was he playing it up to the hilt. He was waiting and watching. But Simon marvelled at the double’s achievement with the voice, as much as with the appearance: again the difference from the man in Athens was so slight and elusive that no one would have detected it who was not listening for it — and listening with an ear as acute as the Saint’s.

“I was just passing,” Simon replied. “There seemed to be a party going on, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I dropped in and said hullo. How was Athens?”

“Not good. You know — the political situation.” Patroclos made a seesaw movement in the air with one hand. “Anyhow, you are welcome. You look well.”

“I hope so. But I was beginning to wonder. Ariadne gave me the cold shoulder just now. She didn’t seem to recognise me at all.”

Patroclos Two shrugged.

“Ariadne meets a lot of people... Now, will you have a drink? A cigar?”

The Saint accepted a Peter Dawson, declined a jumbosize cigar, and settled into a deep leather chair. The Patroclos double watched.

“What have you been doing with yourself, Templar?” he asked casually. “Since Monte Carlo?”

And he blew a cloud of heavy cigar smoke into the room. Evidently this copy-Patroclos was in no hurry. For the present he could afford to bide his time, waiting for the Saint to explain his presence. But still the black bullet eyes watched.

“Oh, I’ve been scouting around — you know, finding a good piece here and there. Nothing very energetic. But as a matter of fact” — here Simon adopted a confidential tone — “and this is actually the reason I wanted to see you, I may have found you another Millefiori.”

Patroclos Two’s eyebrows swooped in a sharp reaction.

“Have you really?”

Simon nodded. He had begun with the idea of getting into the impostor’s house and then playing it by ear from there; and now the imps of devilry were urging him on to see how far he could get this impostor out on a limb.

“A matching piece to the one I sold you in Monte Carlo,” he said, wondering if he was overreaching himself. “You have still got it, I hope?”

Patroclos Two hesitated for a moment, and then the hint of a crafty smile crossed his features as he beckoned the Saint over to one of the glass-cabinets.

“See for yourself.” He indicated the cabinet.

“Ah, yes...” Simon began, seeing no easy way out of the trap that he himself had set; and Patroclos Two’s voice cut in suddenly.

“Which one?”

Simon made a last attempt to carry it off.

“I’m hardly likely to forget!” he laughed.

“Which one?” repeated Patroclos, watching him, hawklike.

With an air of supreme confidence, the Saint pointed.

“That one.”

Patroclos Two nodded thoughtfully, as if to say that matters stood much as he had expected, and he moved back to sit behind the desk again.

“I am glad to see that you have done some homework, Templar. But... not... quite... enough. That piece came from the Andersen collection. I bought it in Copenhagen two years ago.”

“Well, I never,” said the Saint, scratching his head. “You know, Dio, I could have sworn...”

“Enough games!” The voice cut across the room like a whiplash. “We have never met before, and you never sold me anything. Now what do you want?”

And the Saint knew that the masks were off. The bluff had failed.

“You should be able to guess what I want,” he said in a level voice.

Patroclos Two regarded him scowlingly from under the bushy black brows.

“You think I might make a deal with you, is that it?”

“Possibly,” said the Saint slowly. “It might just save your bacon.”

The double eyed him impassively for a few moments.

“Sit down, Templar,” he invited.

Simon sat down again in the leather chair; and the dancing blue eyes under his quizzically tilted brows looked more innocent than ever.

“When Ariadne says you are here,” Patroclos Two began, “I say to myself, what is the famous, the notorious Saint doing in my house? It was very puzzling to me. At first.”

“At first?” queried the Saint.

“My dear Templar.” Patroclos Two beamed. “It is very clear. You have heard that I am being impersonated. It has been kept out of the newspapers, yes — but you have your own contacts, your own sources of information — perhaps even in Scotland Yard. So — you know about this masquerader. As an adventurer, naturally you are intrigued. And you resolve to investigate on my behalf!”

If Simon Templar’s self-control had been less than impeccable, his jaw would undoubtedly have dropped as soon as he realised the trend of Patroclos Two’s words. But long training had equipped the Saint for an automatic, reflex kind of facial dissemblance which operated in almost any circumstances as the need arose. His jaw therefore on this occasion maintained an unperturbed outline, although beneath the surface air of conversational attention he was gripped by an amazement of such stupendous proportions that it could have sent a hundred jaws plummeting to the centre of the earth.

“You’re very shrewd,” he said slowly.

“So you confirm it. That you are here to investigate this impostor?”

“I can’t deny it,” replied the Saint with a faint smile.

“Then it would be ungrateful of me not to accept such an offer. What fee would you ask to find this so-called double and put a stop to his interference in my affairs?”

“Twenty thousand pounds,” replied the Saint with a perfectly straight face; and Patroclos Two stood up at once and held out his hand.

“Templar — you’re hired.”

6

It was, Simon Templar considered, a situation worthy of inclusion in a cosmic museum of mind-bogglers.

There existed on this earth, indubitably, a billionaire of highly flexible ethics but fabulous efficiency, named Diogenes Patroclos. He was, apparently, being impersonated with incredible brilliance by an identical double, to the point where his globe-girdling empire was in danger of being smoothly and completely taken over by this perfect imitation of himself. The Saint had now met both the authentic and the spurious Patroclos, and had been hired by both of them to discover and expose the fraud. True, he had not yet collected any down payment on his fees, but that was a minor detail. If he accomplished his job, the real Patroclos could certainly be persuaded to assume the other obligation as one of the incidental expenses of the operation. In fact, if a few more ersatz Patroclos’s would turn up, the mission of sorting them out might almost develop into an interesting career.

The only snag was that as of this starting point, the Saint still had to find out who was his real employer and who was the impostor.

However, since there was nothing he could think of for the moment that would hasten a solution of that riddle, he was cheerfully prepared to let it wait and enjoy the liberal dispensations of caviar sandwiches and champagne, whoever was footing the bill for them.

Much later, as the last of the guests were gulping their last stirrup cups, Patroclos Two joined him again and called the footman over.

“Fetch Bainter.”

“I... I think he’s gone to bed, sir.”

“Then get him up.”

“Yes, sir.”

The duplicate mogul turned to Ariadne Two.

“Templar is moving in. Have a room prepared at once.”

The girl looked bemused. She glanced from her boss to the Saint and back to her boss again.

“He’s moving in tonight?”

“Tonight,” asserted Patroclos Two. “Tomorrow you will familiarise him with my itinerary for the next two weeks.”

“But Mr Patroclos—” She broke off, eyeing the Saint with evident mistrust.

“I trust him,” said Patroclos Two, as if he had read her thoughts. “As of now, Templar is in full charge of my personal security.”

The girl stared at the Saint suspiciously while Patroclos Two moved away to pour himself a cognac; then she quickly left the room.

“Starting next week, Templar, I have a series of vitally important meetings. This impostor will probably try to worm his way into some of them. I want you to—”

“I know, make sure he doesn’t horn in and gum up the works.”

“Exactly. So that is your immediate assignment. To protect my interests during these meetings. And until the commencement of the meetings, you must accompany me wherever possible, and you must otherwise remain permanently in this house.”

“I must what?” demanded the Saint.

Patroclos Two took a liberal mouthful of cognac.

“That is the condition of your employment. I am sure you will see the necessity.”

Simon nodded.

“Bottling me up... just in case I should decide to get in contact with your other half.”

“Nothing personal, you understand.” Patroclos Two spread his hands apologetically. “But one cannot be too careful while this double is at large. And once you become separated from me, he could take my place — even convince you that he is me!”

“And we don’t want that, do we?” said Simon with his most Saintly mocking smile. “Has it occurred to you, I wonder, what fun and games we could have if I bumped into the other Patroclos and he offered me twenty thousand pounds to remove the impostor — you — from the scene?”

Patroclos Two made an impatient gesture.

“Ha ha, very amusing, yes. But to me, Templar, this is a serious, a grave matter. My very existence, my identity, is at stake.”

“And he — the impostor — is trying to take it over,” supplied the Saint. “Right?”

“Just so.”

“That’s exactly what he’d say about you, if I met him”

There was an apologetic throat-clearing sound beside them, and a small, neat, balding man in a black coat and pin-striped trousers came deferentially forward. Patroclos Two beckoned impatiently, hurrying him closer.

“Bainter, this is Mr Templar. Take a car, go to his home. Pack enough clothes to last two weeks. Bring them back here.”

“I’ll go with you,” Simon added promptly.

“I prefer you to remain here,” said Patroclos Two. “I have explained why.”

“You also explained a while ago that you trust me with your personal security,” Simon pointed out. “You really can’t have it both ways. If I go with Bainter here, I’ll be under his eye the whole time, and he can report any suspicious behaviour on my part to you afterwards. Anyway, if Bainter tries to open my front door on his own — even with my key — he’ll be in for a nasty shock or two. Besides, I prefer to pack my own clothes.”

Patroclos Two regarded the Saint for a few moments, and noted the calm determination in his eye.

“All right, Bainter. Bring a car to the door. Mr Templar will go with you.”

The valet nodded efficiently and left the room. As soon as he had gone, the Saint said quietly:

“I didn’t want to start an argument in front of the servants. I’m going along with your condition of employment, as you called it, because if I’m doing the job it makes sense for me to be here — for the time being. But I shall remain in this house not one minute longer than I choose.”

Patroclos Two shrugged.

“As far as I am concerned, you accept the conditions or go. And now I must say goodnight to my last guests. Remember one thing: I am suspicious of everyone. I have not discussed this impostor with any of my staff — not even Ariadne. I expect you to keep your mission just as confidential... I will see you in the morning.”

Simon nodded. He was still searching for one concrete landmark to give him a bearing on this whole improbable affair; but patches of the all-enveloping fog were beginning to clear. He had done a great deal of almost subconscious groping during the evening, and made a little progress. One obvious question needed to be asked about his brief from Patroclos Two.

“What about the codebook?”

Patroclos Two swung around, and the musketball eyes bulged.

“What do you know of the codebook?”

“Only that you keep one,” said the Saint easily. “Doesn’t it contain some details that are rather crucial in running your businesses? And codes you use to give key instructions to your companies?”

“So...?” Patroclos Two’s manner was guarded and suspicious.

“It just occurred to me,” the Saint went on, “that this codebook of yours would be a real prize to the impostor, if he chanced to get hold of it.”

“Templar, you are absolutely right!” Patroclos Two drummed his fingers together in agitation, and then smashed his fist into the palm of the other hand. “It would be everything he needed. The last step in taking over the life of Diogenes Patroclos. Me! He would be able to control my businesses. I would not be able to cancel his orders... The code... Templar, the codes must be changed!”

“Have you still got the codebook?” asked the Saint.

“Of course I—” Patroclos Two broke off. “Unless — unless he has already... But surely he could not! Even he—” Suddenly his agitation found a focus. “Ariadne!” he snapped at the girl who appeared almost on telepathic cue at his elbow. “Quickly, go to the bedroom safe and fetch my codebook!”

Ariadne Two hurried off, taking a key that Patroclos Two gave her from a bunch he took from his pocket. A minute or two later she returned holding a small black book. Patroclos Two grabbed it from her impatiently and flicked through its pages.

“Thank goodness. The codebook is intact. But tomorrow I will begin work on new codes.” He handed the book back to Ariadne. “Put it back in the safe — and return the key to me at once.”

Bainter reappeared and said: “I have the car outside, sir.”

Simon Templar thought his own thoughts: another patch of mist in the Patroclos landscape was beginning to clear.

7

“I suppose, Bainter,” said the Saint conversationally, “you’ve been with Mr Patroclos a long time.”

“Fourteen years, sir,” replied the valet, continuing to unpack and hang up Simon’s clothes with deft efficiency.

“You travel with him?”

“No, sir. I just work here.”

Simon lounged on the bed and reflected.

“I should think it’s quite a problem for a valet, sometimes — keeping track of his employer’s changing moods, or tastes.”

“I don’t quite follow you, sir.”

“Well, for example,” Simon explained, “just at the moment I’m going through what you might call a discreet-necktie phase. Next month I shall probably get fed up with so much sobriety and break out in jazzed-up jobs that look like chintz chair covers.”

Bainter turned from the wardrobe.

“Funny you should say that, sir. Colours, now — well, Mr Patroclos usually wears whatever I lay out for him. A very conservative dresser. But just recently, he brought home some shirts in what I would call quite startling stripes...” Bainter tailed off, as if he felt he had been indiscreet.

“Not at all the sort of thing you would approve, Bainter?”

“Well,” the valet conceded reluctantly, “I expect I’m a bit old-fashioned. But I think it must have been only a momentary aberration on his part, if I may use the expression. At any rate, the next time he came back from Athens, and I laid out one of those new shirts, he was quite shocked, and asked me where I’d found it.”

“He’d forgotten that he bought it himself?”

“It was hardly a shirt that one would forget so quickly.”

“Perhaps he was regretting his — aberration — and was trying to save face.”

“Possibly, sir. Although Mr Patroclos wouldn’t normally be bothered to make that sort of pretence.”

Simon could scarcely have hoped for more from the obliging Bainter, who had now finished the unpacking.

“There we are, sir. I trust we haven’t forgotten anything.”

“Not a thing. We’re very efficient, Bainter.”

“Thank you, sir... I won’t keep you, sir. I expect you’ll be wanting to get some sleep.”

In the doorway the valet turned and added:

“Just one thing, sir. If you should wish to open the window — six inches is the limit, sir. Wider than that, and the alarms start to ring.”

“Oh, they do, do they?” said the Saint to himself after Bainter had gone. “We’ll see about that.”

He undressed and brushed his teeth, but did not change into pyjamas. He lay awake skimming through books from the bedside shelf until three o’clock, when he felt absolutely sure that everyone else in the house would be asleep. Then he got up and dressed again, this time in a sports shirt and slacks, but nothing more. Barefoot, he switched off the light and slipped silently out into the corridor.

It has been easy enough, in the most innocent and casual way, when Bainter was showing him to his room, to learn the exact location of Patroclos’ master suite. A pencil flashlight, its bulb masked with the piece of black insulating tape pierced only with a small hole, provided a needle beam of illumination that was all the Saint needed to show him his way.

Patroclos’ door was not locked. Simon would have been astonished if it had been, even though he could have easily coped with it — such defensiveness, in the man’s own home, would have been almost a symptom of paranoia. And whatever their failings, neither Patroclos had ever impressed him as a neurotic type.

In fact, the millionaire — or his impersonator — was snoring with a steady and assertive resonance which proclaimed with every rhythmic decibel the total relaxation and self-confidence of its source.

The Saint moved in like a wraith, guarding even the reduced ray of his torch from directly touching the huddled shape under the bedclothes. He allowed only enough of a glow to escape from it under his cupped hand to give him bearings, and show him the evening clothes draped over a hanger stand at the foot of the bed; the gold fountain pen, loose change, cigar-clipper, wallet, and diary spread out on the bedside table; and the bunch of keys carelessly dumped among them.

To abstract a bunch of keys from within a yard of the ear of a sleeping man, no matter how profoundly sunk in slumber, without making a single metallic clink that might disturb the sleeper’s dreams, requires a skill and steadiness of hand that would dismay any ordinarily adept pickpocket, but Simon Templar accomplished it without any perceptible effect on his pulse rate. Even so, with the keys in his grasp, he stood for long moments as immobile as the Sphinx, watching the recumbent figure in the bed and listening to the regular stertorous breathing, until he was quite sure that his host was not going to be aroused even by an intuitive alarm.

The next problem was to find the safe that the keys fitted. The Saint did not even waste a moment searching for it behind one of the pictures on the walls — that hackneyed hiding place beloved of fiction writers, which on that account must be the first place where any burglar who ever read a book would look. A man as astute as Patroclos would never permit such a crudely obvious installation. The rich wall-to-wall carpet ruled out any trap-door in the floor. The modernistically papered walls precluded the time-honoured secret panel, and there was no fireplace to embody some device of dummy bricks.

To Simon Templar, there was no call for random groping and ferreting, which could have been noisy as well as ineffectual. It was, rather, an interesting exercise in applied ratiocination, which could be performed in pensive immobility.

Patroclos Two began threshing about restlessly as if he might be on the point of waking up; and Simon froze for perhaps thirty seconds until the man in the bed had settled back into apparent slumber.

The direct and logical solution, if there was no reasonable possibility of complicated concealment, would simply be to rely on the sturdiness of the safe itself, and plant it in the handiest place that would be out of the way and out of obtrusive sight. The kind of solution that would be reached in moments by such an exponent of direct action as Diogenes Patroclos.

When the Saint moved, he went straight into the dressing alcove which led off the bedroom, and silently opened the first of the doors of a row of wardrobe closets. And there it was, arrogantly undisguised — a medium sized but massive steel cube that would have been a major problem to cart away and a total impossibility to break open without considerable uproar.

The Saint had encountered — not to say opened — a good many safes in his time; but in this case he had secured what a purist might have called an unfair advantage. He examined the lock and the bunch of keys in his hand, selected one to try, reached forward... and hesitated.

Could the safe be connected to the alarm system? Simon was mentally kicking himself for having neglected to put it out of action before he started on the burglary expedition. But having got that far, it was not in his temperament to turn back. He steeled himself for the jangling of alarm bells, held his breath, and opened the safe.

There was no sound from the machined and well-oiled hinges as the heavy door swung open; and the Saint’s long and controlled exhalation of breath that followed was less audible still.

He reached inside the safe and quickly found and extracted the codebook. He flicked through its pages by the fine beam of the pencil torch, only enough to be sure that it was what he wanted, and then in an amazingly short space of seconds he had relocked the safe, shut the wardrobe, put the keys back on Patroclos’ bedside table and crept out as silently as he had arrived.

8

Back in his own room, the Saint stopped only long enough to seal the codebook in one of the envelopes thoughtfully provided by the secretaire for the convenience of guests who might be seized by an urge to communicate with the outside world, and to pull on his socks. His shoes, for the time being, he preferred to carry, as he found his way down to the ground floor.

Burglar alarms, as a safe general rule, are designed to detect or deter the unwelcome would-be guest who is outside and trying to get in. To anyone who is inside and wanting to get out they constitute only the most minor of nuisances.

Simon stood on a chair to reach the alarm mechanism, which was prominently in view above the front door, and took die simple course of switching it off. Then he replaced the chair and let himself quietly out, leaving the front door on the latch.

The Hirondel was still parked around the corner in Bruton Street, where he had left it the night before. He headed west, and stopped at his mews house to make a phone call to Athens, where he left a brief message. Then he drove out on Cromwell Road, making for the airport.

He was somewhere near Hounslow when his keenly tuned antennae for such matters told him that the big headlights in his rear-view mirror were showing rather more than chance persistence. Few drivers cared to keep pace for long with Simon Templar just for the hell of it; and yet he had no doubt that the same headlights had maintained their position behind him for at least five miles. The Saint had registered their presence from the first; or rather, some idle circuit in his subconscious mind, part of the automatic pilot that was so indispensable to a modern buccaneer, had registered them and had then monitored them moment by moment as he drove until their continued presence began to seem noteworthy, whereupon the appropriate signal had surfaced. Only then did he become conscious of the phenomenon and begin to consider what it might imply.

He slowed abruptly, stepping hard on the brake, and watched in the mirror as the car behind bore down rapidly for a few seconds and then dropped back to its original distance. He speeded up again, and the other car kept pace. And the Saint smiled, hearing the battle trumpets begin to sing in his ears as of old.

Even at its closest the car had been too far behind for him to identify the model. But he guessed that it must be a big car, perhaps a Rolls — or a Bentley.

The Saint’s mouth tightened into the fighting lines which had heralded defeat for so many of his adversaries in the past. There were many questions still to be answered, but he knew now with an ice-crisp certainty that there was more to this particular game than he had supposed. The option was there, he knew, to leave it gracefully, but because the Saint was what he was, he knew he could never have done anything but play it out move by move to the final checkmate, or thrust by thrust to the last clash of steel against steel.

He drove on in a mood of fresh thoughtfulness, with the light of battle in his eyes mingling with an amazed conjecture. And before he reached the airport he had laughed aloud, slapped the steering-wheel with both hands, and shaken his head in sheer helpless disbelief.

At the airport he went to the Parnassian Airways desk and handed the sleepy girl on night duty a small manilla envelope addressed FOR THE PERSONAL ATTENTION OF D. PATROCLOS, ATHENS.

“This is very urgent,” he stressed. “I’ve telephoned for it to be collected from Athens airport.”

The girl examined the envelope.

“Of course. Mr Patroclos. A very important man. Our own — our own big boss-man. I will see that it goes by the next plane.”

“Thanks. And would you see that your people at the other end notify Mr Patroclos’ office as soon as the package arrives there?” It didn’t surprise the Saint to see that the car which had been following was no longer in evidence during the drive back to Patroclos’ house in Berkeley Square. He let himself in through the front door, making no particular attempt at silence, and reset the alarm more from neatness than a sense of necessity.

From his room he could see the street at the front of the house; and after a few minutes, as he had expected a silver Bentley glided to a halt. Out of it stepped Patroclos Two.

Simon heard him enter almost soundlessly by the front door, presumably after somehow disconnecting the alarm from outside. He had only been in view for a few seconds, but that was long enough for Simon to see the confirmation he was looking for.

Patroclos Two was carrying a small manilla envelope.

9

“What do you mean — how do I know?” snapped Patroclos Two down the telephone. “It is here in the newspaper. What for do I pay you thousands when I can buy a paper for pennies, hah?”

Patroclos Two was surrounded by newspapers, mail, and breakfast things; Ariadne Two sat nearby taking shorthand notes. They both looked up as the Saint, fresh and relaxed but poised for trouble, was ushered in by Bainter the valet.

Ariadne Two nodded a preoccupied greeting. Patroclos Two held the phone receiver briefly aside and bared his teeth in a mechanical smile.

“Good morning, Templar. I trust you slept well. Help yourself from the sideboard. And pour me some more coffee.”

And Patroclos Two returned to the phone.

The Saint murmured an equally casual greeting and attended to the coffee. The tycoon or his substitute’s manner gave no hint that anything at all untoward had taken place during the night, and for one instant Simon wondered half-seriously if he could have dreamt the entire episode. And yet he knew that it had happened — that he had seen clearly, with his own two eyes, Patroclos Two returning about half-past four in the morning with what could only have been the codebook.

Obviously he must have recovered it from the Parnassian Airways girl at the airport — an undertaking that would have been easy enough for the man who, certainly as far as she knew or could tell, was ultimately her employer, and to whom the package was addressed. Simon could well imagine how the scene might have gone: unseen eyes had almost certainly watched as he handed in the envelope; and after that Patroclos Two need only have happened to walk by the Parnassian desk and the girl would be sure to recognise him and mention the package, which he would promptly have claimed there and then, with perhaps a remark to the effect that his presence in London was being kept quiet for business reasons.

Therefore Patroclos Two’s strenuous snoring the night before had been as phoney as anything else in this tangle of fakes: he must have been lying awake, fully dressed, waiting for the visit that he guessed the Saint would make. And when Simon left the house, Patroclos Two had followed, taken the car which he had waiting in the square, and settled down on an easy trail.

But why had he chosen, first, to allow the theft of his codebook, next to recover it secretly, and finally to behave as if the whole incident had simply never happened? Simon still had only one answer that would fit, fantastic though it was; and again he went over the reasoning that had led him to it.

If Patroclos Two were the real Patroclos and not the impostor, he would hardly have stood or lain idle while the Saint strolled out with his codebook. Or if he had — perhaps in the hope that the Saint would lead him to the other Patroclos, the impostor — he would certainly have had no need to continue the play-acting once the Saint had parted with the book at the airport. Ergo, this was not the real Patroclos. But on the other hand, if he were the fake, again why should he employ Simon Templar and turn a blind eye to his treachery?

Enjoying his eggs and bacon with an appetite undiminished by such perplexities, the Saint realised that there was a third branch to the maze; and that was the path along which he had travelled some way during the events of the night.

He sipped his coffee reflectively. As a background to his thoughts he had automatically taken in what Patroclos Two was saying on the telephone, and if he had considered it relevant he could easily have recalled every salient point. But now, at the tail-end of the conversation, he switched back to full attention.

“Well, check again! Call me back.” Patroclos Two slammed down the phone and made a gesture of despair. “They bleed me, those people. Advance Information Limited. Hah! Should read the limited in front.” He turned to Ariadne. “Today you will go over all the schedules with Templar. But first, take a note. Corinthian Tankers...”

At a quarter to one, the Saint and Ariadne Two were seated side by side on the sofa in the drawing-room, going over the last of the schedules and notes for Patroclos’ meetings. Abruptly Simon stood up and stretched.

“Well, I think that’s enough for this morning. It’s getting near lunch time. Can we have a drink?”

“Thanks,” said Ariadne Two, with perceptibly more warmth in her voice than previously. “That’s a cocktail cabinet, over in the corner. I’ll have a medium sherry. A large one.”

She watched as he poured her drink and mixed himself a dry martini on the rocks. She had begun by mistrusting him, but now she was less sure. About this man with the cavalier smile there was something wildly, untameably adventurous, reckless even, and yet at the same time something innocent and... saintly. The word came to her of its own accord, though she knew, from what her boss had told her, that this was the man whom people called the Saint — a man who had known many dangerous adventures across the globe, and who lived always by his own individual, perhaps peculiar, code of justice.

“It’s funny,” she mused aloud. “Now I know you better it makes even less sense.”

Simon handed her a brimming glass of Dry Sack and took an appreciative sip of the cocktail he had poured for himself.

“What does?”

“That you should bluff your way into this house... All that nonsense about knowing me before!”

He eyed her curiously.

“You mean you still don’t remember that langouste in Monte Carlo?”

Of course, there had never been any such meeting. But he would have expected an impostor, afraid of being tripped up, to pretend to recall it.

“No, I don’t. Look, Mr Templar —”

“Simon,” he put in quickly.

“Well — Simon.” She looked him straight in the eye, ingenuously. “But I’ve never even been to Monte Carlo.”

The blue eyes widened; they wore their most saintly expression, but in them was a hint of the clear mocking light that the girl had seen before.

“Strange,” he said speculatively. “I wonder — could there be two Ariadnes?”

The Saint watched her closely as he spoke the line which of all lines must put her acting or her innocence to the test. And the girl looked genuinely puzzled still, seeming not to have taken his remark as seriously meant. She sipped her drink defensively, and had still not answered when the telegram arrived.

They heard the doorbell ring, and the murmur of voices; and then a footman knocked and handed the telegram to Ariadne. She opened and read it, frowned, looked perplexed, read it again, and finally waved away the footman, who was waiting for instructions.

Simon crossed the room and shamelessly read the telegram over her shoulder. It was addressed to Patroclos, and said simply:

It was unsigned, but Simon had little doubt that it was intended for him to see. Which was interesting, given that it must be a fake, since he knew that the codebook had never reached Athens.

Ariadne Two shrugged.

“I don’t know what it’s about. Maybe a secret deal — I don’t always travel with him and he doesn’t tell me everything.”

She took the telegram into the library where Patroclos Two was busy with work of his own, and the Saint heard phrases of their conversation that drifted through the open door.

“No!” Patroclos Two’s voice was raised in anger. “...know what the hell it is about? Why couldn’t the idiot put his name?”

Then a pause, with Ariadne’s voice occasionally murmuring. And then the Saint heard the man say: “Did you show it to Templar? Well, he is my detective for the moment — let him detect.”

Ariadne returned looking more puzzled than ever.

“He says he doesn’t know whom it is from,” she told the Saint with careful grammar. “And he made a joke that you as a clever detective should be able to work it out.”

The Saint smiled faintly, knowing that he was beginning to get the measure of the impostor, and that he could see a vaguely forming outline of the last scene in the present act of the elaborate charade that was being played out with himself as one of the principals — and with Ariadne Two, in all probability, as another.

That is, unless he introduced some twist of his own into the script. And one of Simon Templar’s special forms of mischief was refusing to go too far along with the most studiously prepared scenario, and introducing disconcerting variations of his own.

In this case, it was an impulsive decision that somewhere along the line he had to pick someone who was not a fraud but a dupe, lay some cards on the table, and make an ally. On what could only have been a psychic hunch, based at best on somewhat longer acquaintance, he decided that the time had come to bet on Ariadne Two.

Perhaps it was a reckless gamble; but if the Saint had never taken a chance he would never have taken anything.

He took another fortifying pull at his martini, as some stalwart soul on the bank of a frozen lake might brace himself for the shock, and took the plunge.

“Ariadne,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that your boss could be a fake?”

She looked at him blankly.

“What?”

“Your boss has employed me to winkle out an impostor who looks exactly like him and who’s been taking his place here, there, and everywhere. But I’ve reason to believe that he’s the impostor himself.”

Simon waited while his words sank in; and the girl, as he had expected, looked at him as if at a lunatic child who had just asserted that the moon was made entirely of peanut butter.

“I expect you know the ancient Greek legend of the Minotaur,” he went on soothingly. “This was a monster, half man and half bull, who lived in a maze of caves in Crete, and lived by gobbling up human sacrifices who were sent in to feed him. One of these was eventually a bloke named Theseus, who just happened to have made it with the daughter of the king. When his turn came, she gave him a spool of thread to reel out behind him. Theseus killed the Minotaur, and found his way out of the labyrinth by following the thread back. You were named after her — Ariadne. Now, you could help me find my way out of this crazy maze.”

“But that’s quite ridiculous!” she exclaimed as soon as she had found her voice. “Mr Patroclos — an impostor? Do you think I don’t know him after five years?”

“Believe me, this is no ordinary impostor.” The Saint’s cool voice sounded so reasonable that she was compelled almost against her will to give it a hearing. “This, even though I doubted the proposition myself, is what might justifiably be called the perfect impostor. The copy and the original are very nearly impossible to tell apart. And I know,” he added. “I’ve seen them both.”

“But it’s unbelievable. How could—”

The girl’s next words were masked by a ferocious bull-like bellow from the library, and they heard Patroclos Two screaming down the telephone.

“Impossible! Quite impossible! I tell you, I sent no such message!”

Simon followed Ariadne into the library. Patroclos Two was in an almost uncontrollable rage, thumping a fist on the desk in time with his words.

“I don’t care! Check again... Then double check, you fool!.. Of course I’ll countermand it. Just as soon as I can make out a coded message. Do it then. Ring me back — and hurry!”

Patroclos Two’s eyes blazed and he slammed down the phone.

“Ariadne — upstairs, the safe. Get my codebook.”

He threw her the bunch of keys from his pocket, and she hurried off. Patroclos Two paced back and forth with a ferociously indignant expression on his face.

“Why? Why?”

“What’s happened?” asked the Saint calmly.

“Six cargo ships — on their way to Singapore. In mid-ocean, suddenly they change course, for an unknown destination. Unknown to me. Who ordered it? The Communications Office say I did — from Athens. Me! But I am here!”

The Saint went very still.

“Then it’s obvious, isn’t it,” he said quietly, “that the other you is there.”

Patroclos Two stared at him.

“No, no... Even he...” he seemed to consider for a moment. “Without my personal code—”

“What are these ships carrying?” the Saint interrupted, ignoring Patroclos Two’s mention of the codebook.

“Who cares what they are carrying?”

“It seems he does.”

“Oh — agricultural machinery... a little paint, fertilisers...

Ariadne burst in, breathless.

“The codebook — it isn’t there, sir.”

“Of course it’s there,” said Patroclos impatiently. “You returned it to the safe yourself only yesterday.”

Ariadne looked almost guilty.

“But it’s not there now. I checked thoroughly.”

He stared at her, eyes blazing again, then grabbed the keys from her hand and strode from the room. Simon shook his head, chuckling. “Tremendous act your boss puts on. You should try and persuade him to go on the stage. Put it to him that he owes it to the world. As it is, he’s denying the theatre public so much fabulous talent.”

“But this is serious! If the codebook is missing — and I did put it back—”

She rushed out in Patroclos Two’s wake still almost visible, and the Saint followed. They found him in the bedroom raking all the papers out of the safe and on to the floor of the wardrobe. He glared around as they came into the room; and then he turned on the Saint, and there were little red specks of anger burning in the cores of his eyes.

“You!” he shouted, stabbing a sudden accusing finger. “You took the codebook! That cable from Athens—”

The Saint clapped politely.

“Bravo. Beautiful lines, beautifully delivered.”

“You’re working for the other side!”

Ariadne looked helplessly from one man to the other: from the squat powerful figure of Diogenes Patroclos (or was it his double?) with his musketball eyes and livid expression, to Simon Templar, calm and smiling and insolent. And the Saint’s voice floated coolly across the room with a challenge that was dazzlingly simple and which he knew Patroclos Two would be unable to refuse with credibility.

“Whether I’m working for him or not”, he pointed out, “it seems clear that the other Patroclos is in Athens. Why aren’t we there, knocking hell out of him?”

And in the pause that followed, he could almost hear the whirring of gears in Patroclos Two’s brain, as the mogul considered the implications of that logical proposal. For perhaps a minute he stood silent, with his head tilted slightly to one side as if to give him a new perspective on the Saint; and then he nodded thoughtfully,

“Of course, Templar. As I should have expected, you are absolutely right.” He turned briskly to Ariadne. “How soon can my plane be ready?”

“It was having an engine overhaul, you remember. It was supposed to be finished tomorrow.”

“Well contact the pilot at once. They will have to work overtime and finish tonight. We will face this confounded impostor first thing tomorrow. Pack your bags. And cancel all my appointments. Nothing is as important as this!”

10

Patroclos’ private plane was faster than the aircraft in commercial service, and it landed in Athens, after a refuelling stop in Milan, only eight hours after leaving London. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning there.

“Our arrival at the office must be a complete surprise.” said Patroclos Two as he hailed a taxi outside the airport. “Obviously we cannot afford to alert the impostor and give him a chance to escape.”

Simon Templar raised an eyebrow.

“And what do you propose to do if by some chance he isn’t there?”

“We must follow!” Patroclos Two’s tone was vehement. “Wherever he goes, we will follow. Now that we have begun, now that we are on his trail, this man must be finally tracked down and confronted!”

“And of course,” added the Saint wearily, “you’ll be wanting to get your codebook back before you arrange to have this double of yours chucked into the sea. If he has it, that is.”

Patroclos Two’s face was expressionless.

“And you, Templar. If I find that my suspicions are justified — that you have been working for him as well as me... well, I will have to decide what to do when the time comes. But you should know that Diogenes Patroclos is never double-crossed with impunity!”

Ariadne Two seemed totally confused by recent events, and had said practically nothing during the flight. The Saint supposed that she was doing some hard thinking of her own. She appeared to have been genuinely surprised when he had told her about the Patroclos double; and he had little doubt that before long she would receive several further jolts to her system.

When they reached the headquarters office building, Patroclos Two strode straight through the entrance and along the corridor to his own office suite, with the Saint and the girl following close behind.

As they burst into the outer office, Ariadne One looked up from her desk with a startled expression. Ariadne Two gasped at the sight of the girl who was almost her double — although the resemblance, when Simon saw them together, was not nearly so uncannily identical as that of Patroclos One and Two.

The Saint nudged her.

“See what I mean? Two Ariadnes.”

And Ariadne One looked equally bemused.

“Mr Patroclos—” she began.

“Who the hell are you?” he snapped, and flung open the big double doors to the inner office.

The room was empty; and Patroclos Two turned in a fury as savage as the one that had gripped him in London.

“Where is he? This man who looks like me?”

“Who, Mr Patroclos?” Ariadne One seemed uncomprehending. “Did you... forget something?”

“Remember me, Ariadne?” said the Saint; and the girl looked relieved and grateful for the intervention.

“Mr. Templar. Yes, of course.”

“Well, this is the other Patroclos.”

“You are supposed to be Ariadne?” queried Patroclos Two.

“But of course I am Ariadne,” said the girl slowly, looking in amazement first at Patroclos Two and then at her own double.

“Don’t try to work it out,” advised the Saint. “Just tell us where he is.”

“But you... I mean he... well, you just left, Mr Patroclos.

“How long ago?” asked Simon quickly.

“Just two minutes.”

“Where’s he going?”

“He didn’t say. He got a phone call.”

“Where from?” barked Patroclos Two.

The girl looked uncomfortable under the double-barrelled cross-examination.

“From the airport. He collected his briefcase — and rushed out.”

“How come we didn’t pass him on our way in here?” asked the Saint.

“He went out the back way to the car.”

Simon crossed swiftly to one of the windows; and then he uttered sotto voce a fluent string of extremely unsaintly observations as he saw the purple Rolls disappearing from the parking lot behind the building.

“Come on!” called the Saint, rushing for the door. “Let’s get after him. The airport’s a safe bet. Ariadne One” — and he pointed at the girl to leave her in no doubt as to which of them was meant—” get us a car at the front — gregora!”

Patroclos Two told the driver, in Greek, to go like the wind; and the resulting ride lived even in the Saint’s memory for years afterwards. But when they arrived at the airport Patroclos’ plane in which they had recently flown from London was just taking off, and the purple Rolls was being driven back off the runway.

Patroclos Two shook his fist in impotent rage at the dwindling aircraft.

“Now you believe who is real?” he demanded, stabbing the air with his finger. “I arrive — he runs!”

“You do seem to be ahead on points,” Simon admitted. “But it’s still anybody’s game.”

Suddenly Patroclos flicked his fingers.

“Of course. The police. They must warn Interpol. Wherever he lands he must be caught!”

“We needn’t trouble Interpol,” said the Saint.

Patroclos Two looked impatient.

“So? What is your suggestion?”

“That plane was practically out of gas when we got here. It’s hardly had time to refuel.”

Patroclos Two’s eyes widened with realisation.

“You mean — he cannot be going far?”

“It should be easy to check on whatever other airports there are within range,” said the Saint. “Probably he would have to land somewhere in Greece — or else he crashes!”

11

“Look,” expostulated Ariadne One, “for the fourth time, all I know is that I work for Diogenes Patroclos — the Patroclos. He must be genuine.”

“She’s lying” said Ariadne Two tersely.

“I’m not!” Ariadne One protested indignantly.

“Then why pretend to be me?”

“Why should I pretend to be you?”

“What’s your full name?”

“Ariadne Kyriakides.”

“I’m Ariadne Kyriakides.”

“You’re lying!”

“Girls, girls!” the Saint interrupted. “Now, Ariadne One — that’s you — how long have you been working for the man you know as Patroclos?”

“Five years.”

“Ariadne Two?”

“Five years.”

“Well, the fake can’t have been going that long,” said the Saint slowly. “So one of you must be lying. Can either of you prove you’ve been working for him that long?”

Ariadne One replied at once.

“Yes. You can check with the Bannerman Bureau in London.”

“But I was employed through Bannermans!” put in Ariadne Two indignantly.

The Saint sighed.

“So unless Bannermans carry photos of the girls they find work for — which they won’t — we’re up against a brick wall.”

The telephone in Patroclos’ outer office, where the three were talking, rang at that moment, and Ariadne One answered it.

“Yes... This is Mr Patroclos’ personal secretary... Yes.” As she listened, her eyes widened with horror. “Yes, I will tell him.”

She put down the phone and turned.

“The plane crashed. Into the sea, near Andros.”

She was on her way to the inner office, where Patroclos Two had been rooting through papers left by his other half, but he met her at the door.

“I heard that,” he said. “Did anyone survive?”

“The plane was smashed to pieces and sank at once. They say that no one could have been alive,”

“And they may never even find a body,” Patroclos said. “It would have been interesting to see this man who looked so much like me. That telephone call just before he left — he must have had an accomplice at the airport who warned him when we arrived.”

Patroclos had a grim expression which boded ill for the traitor when he was discovered. He looked at the Saint.

“So... it is over.”

Ariadne One gave a sudden choking cry and slumped down at the desk, burying her face in her arms. After a while she looked up, red-eyed.

“I had to go on pretending,” she said with unsteady quiet in her voice, “while there was still hope.”

“Then he was the fake?” said Ariadne Two.

“Yes.” She nodded sadly. “I didn’t know at first. I... I’ve only been with him a year, but he had been playing the part for some while before that. Then he offered me a lot of money to play along... and he persuaded me to change my name.”

“And do you realise,” snapped Patroclos, “what trouble you have caused me?”

“I... I’m sorry, Mr Patroclos. But you see, he was my boss. He was the man who employed me, and my loyalty was to him. And when he took me on, I thought he was you...”

Patroclos looked at the Saint.

“Satisfied, Templar?”

“Hm, well, there are still a couple of things I don’t understand.”

“Then we’ll discuss them later. Also your own position — even your fee. Yes, Templar, I think I understand the position in which you found yourself. You were working for him first, yes? You believed that he was the real Patroclos. And then I employed you. So, it was difficult for you. Whom to trust? But you have done what I asked. You have played your part in ridding me of this nuisance. So we will talk later. For the moment, this young lady and I” — he indicated Ariadne One — “are going to the police!” Ariadne One flinched.

“Oh no, please.”

Patroclos spread his hands reassuringly.

“Your position too was difficult. I will not make any charges. But you must give a full statement of all this. I must dissociate myself from the damage this man has done.”

“You don’t waste a second, do you?” said the Saint. “You’re the real Patroclos all right.”

Patroclos smiled.

“We will see you presently,” he said, taking Ariadne One by the arm and steering her out.

Ariadne Two — who after all was the real Ariadne — still looking bemused, watched them go.

“Well, that’s that.”

“Is it?” asked the Saint, with that bantering lift to the eyebrows that she had come to know.

“Well...” The girl hesitated. “Well, isn’t it?”

“End of story? Everything neatly wrapped up and explained? Not in my book, sweetheart. Not by a long shot.” Simon had begun searching through the desk drawers, tossing papers out and carelessly stuffing them back. “What about the pilot?”

“He was killed with the impostor.”

“But he must have known that the plane was low on fuel. After all, he’d just flown it here from London. So why did he take off?”

“Maybe he was forced to?”

The Saint shook his head.

“Fly a plane at gunpoint — to almost certain death? No, I don’t think so. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

Simon slid a filing cabinet drawer shut with a thud.

“The codebook. It never left London.”

“It never left? But I don’t understand. We couldn’t find it when we looked.” Ariadne stared at him.

“Oh, I took it out of the safe all right,” the Saint explained. “I got it as far as the airport. Your Patroclos picked it up.”

She followed him as he moved to the inner office.

“So if the codebook didn’t reach Athens, the ships—”

“Couldn’t have been diverted from here,” supplied the Saint. “Right. Your Patroclos must have done the diverting from London. He had the book all the time. You see, it just doesn’t fit. And it’s too pat — plane crashes, impostor killed, case solved. And,” the Saint added softly, “Templar forgiven.”

The girl digested the implications in silence for a few minutes, watching him systematically rifle Patroclos’ big mahogany desk.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Cargo manifests, showing what’s on those ships.”

Ariadne opened a filing cabinet and started to shuffle through papers; and she didn’t see the Saint’s brows angle together in interest at what he had found in the bottom drawer of the desk. A Dictaphone fitted snugly into the drawer — loaded, with a record ready to play.

There was an earphone lying in the drawer; Simon plugged it in, held it loosely up to one ear, and switched the machine on. He listened thoughtfully to the harsh voice of Diogenes Patroclos.

It said: “Templar — lam told you have seen the impostor. Why are you wasting time telephoning instead of watching him?... I am here in Athens. If you have seen the impostor, it should make your job easier. Please do not waste my time telling me that I am being impersonated. That I already know. Goodbye.”

Simon reversed the machine, re-started it, and held out the earphone to Ariadne. She listened with a blank expression.

“Does Dio always record his own telephone conversations?” he asked.

“I never knew about it. Perhaps he wanted a record sometimes, for his own protection, or something.”

“Or something,” agreed the Saint.

Ariadne continued going through the files, and suddenly pulled out a folder.

“Here, will this help? Papers on a ship called the Macedonian Queen. She was supposed to sail for Singapore with the other five but she was held up with steering trouble... There’s a repair bill. But she’s still here.”

“In Athens?” The Saint could hardly believe his luck.

“In Piraeus, the port. But she sails at midnight.”

“Ariadne,” said the Saint. “I love you. Call me Theseus.”

12

The Macedonian Queen was not hard to find among the few freighters berthed in Piraeus at the time. Simon Templar and the girl simply wandered along the wharf to which she guided him until they came to the smart-looking but unexceptional freighter painted in the blue and gold Patroclos colours. The gangplank was unguarded, and only one seaman was visible on deck, a Greek in a grubby dark-blue sweat-shirt and dungarees who was leaning over the rail at the bow, with his back to them. It seemed quite probable that he represented the entire watch left on board, while the rest of the crew were enjoying their last hours ashore.

Patroclos had still not returned to the office by one o’clock, when the Saint had insisted on taking Ariadne out for an ouzo, leaving a note for him, and then to lunch.

“There’s nothing in my contract that says I have to go without regular meals,” he maintained, “and I’m sure there isn’t in yours either.”

They had eaten dolmades and moussaka, but he had declined to be tempted by retsina, the traditional resin-flavoured wine which is said to have been invented by the Greeks to discourage hostile invaders from swilling or swiping it. Simon found it just as unpalatable as the earlier barbarians, and ordered a bottle of Cypriot Othello instead.

He had sensed that while Ariadne might not yet be a full ally, she would not be an enemy, and decided at the end of the meal to tell her his plan.

“I want to have a look around the Macedonian Queen. I think I might find the answers to some of the questions that are still nagging me. But I’m not going to tell Dio.”

“But he’ll expect you to be in the office if he wants you,” she objected.

“The impostor has crashed. Technically, my job is finished. I’m free to slope off and go sightseeing if I feel like it. How do I get to Piraeus?”

She pondered for only a few seconds.

“I’ll take you.”

“But you’ve still got a job to keep.”

“And I’ve got more questions, too. I shall telephone the office and leave a message that everything this morning has given me such a terrible headache that I have to go home and go to bed, and I will be back tomorrow.”

That was how they came to be lurking behind a pile of crates near the untended gangway in the gathering dusk, unnoticed by the bored seaman on so-called “watch” on the foredeck. The Saint gripped the girl’s arm gently.

“This is where I go aboard, and it could develop into a rough party if they catch me. Stay out of sight and keep your fingers crossed.”

“I’m going with you,” said Ariadne in a determined voice, “since I brought you as far as this.”

The Saint smiled at her and stood up.

The glided unobserved up the narrow gangplank on to the deck, and then down a ladder through a hatchway into the after cargo hold. The lighting was dim, but they could see to move among the mountains of crates, in several shapes and sizes, that were stacked there. Simon peered at random at the export labels, bringing his pencil flashlight to bear on them, and spoke in a whisper.

“As you’d expect. All Singapore. That’s where the ships were officially headed.”

“This label says Paint. Why don’t we have a look inside?” suggested the girl in an equally low voice.

Lying on one of the crates was a pair of metal-shears and a crowbar. There was a sharp twang as Simon used the shears to sever the steel customs bond on the crate, and for a minute or more they both froze in silence, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. Then gingerly, and with one ear still cocked, the Saint prised up the lid a few inches and peered into the crate.

“What’s inside?” asked the girl.

“Paint,” said Simon pressing the lid back on. “Let’s try this long one marked Agricultural Implements.”

He repeated the breath-bating procedure with the shears and crowbar. The lid lifted more easily, and inside they saw dozens of gleaming hoes. But the Saint, carelessly for him, rammed the lid back on with unnecessary force and more than the unavoidable minimum of noise, and a hinged side of the crate dropped down. Inside, in a compartment beneath the hoes, were revealed at least a score of carbines.

The Saint gave a low whistle.

“A few hoes on top, and a rich harvest of guns underneath! And they’re the very latest thing. And American! But the interesting question is, Where are they going?”

The girl reached into one end of the gun compartment and took out a folded piece of paper.

“Look. Some kind of instruction leaflet. With diagrams. But it’s printed in Chinese.”

Simon took the paper from her and studied it, frowning.

“Not Chinese... My knowledge of oriental scripts isn’t all it might be,” he confessed. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something like this before. It’s like ancient Sanskrit characters, only there’s a difference in the way they’re arranged on the page.” He spread out the paper on a crate in front of her. “Look — if you turn it so that the diagrams are the right way up, you can see which way the text goes. See — it’s in vertical lines — like Chinese. Sanskrit characters, Chinese arrangement. And the only script I know of like that is Korean! So that’s the game!”

“The guns are going to Korea?”

“North Korea,” said the Saint quietly. “American weapons, being exported for use against the Americans themselves in the war. And, of course, against the South Koreans.”

“Couldn’t they be going to the South?” He shook his head.

“There’d be no reason to hide them if they were. No, this little lot’s bound for North Korea all right, you could bet your life on that. And so are those other five ships, no doubt. Mystery solved.” He paused thoughtfully and then added: “But not the immediate problem.”

“What is that?”

“How to stop this shipment.”

“We will tell Mr Patroclos, and he will tell the police.”

“There’s no law against exporting arms. And the crew would swear that they knew nothing about it, anyhow — whether they did or not. Besides, there are the five ships that’ve already sailed. They’ve got to be stopped.”

“Mr Patroclos could radio them and order them to turn back.”

“Could — but would he?” Simon’s expression was sardonic. “Dio may not be as unscrupulous as some people say he is, but I never heard of him having a reputation as a great philanthropist. Having those ships turned back and unloaded now, and maybe tied up for months in some official investigation, would cost him a small fortune in overheads and lost time and freights. No, I’m afraid that with his impostor disposed of he’d be liable to think it more practical to just let this operation take its course.”

Ariadne looked troubled and uncertain. “Those other five ships have got to be intercepted, by force if necessary.” The Saint was frowning as he virtually went on thinking aloud. “But that’s a major naval operation, and nobody’s going to launch it just on our say-so. Someone pretty big has got to verify what we’ve seen here. Like, someone from the American Embassy.” He gripped the girl suddenly by the shoulders.

“Ariadne, will you help me?”

“How?”

“Go and phone the Ambassador. Say it’s a red-alert United Nations emergency. Give my name. It may not shine like a bishop’s, but I think it’s got enough clout to make him listen. Have him send someone responsible down here, preferably his naval attaché, at flank speed. You meet him, and bring him aboard.”

She stared up at him searchingly, hesitating, and finally nodded.

“Yes, I will do it. But what about you?”

He smiled a reckless smile, and the blue eyes danced.

“I’ll stay here and make sure, somehow, that they don’t sail before he gets here. Also, my curiosity’s killing me, and I want to see what other little surprises they’ve got stashed away in these boxes.”

He climbed to the top of the hatchway stepladder, peered cautiously over the coaming and around the deck, and was back almost instantly, dropping lightly to the floor.

“All clear,” he whispered; and then he gripped her shoulders lightly again and kissed her on the cheek. “Good luck, Ariadne.”

“And you... Simon. And when Mr Patroclos finds out what I have done, I hope you can find me another job.”

Then she was gone.

And the Saint soon became so absorbed in his discoveries that he failed altogether to notice that a pair of dark eyes had begun to watch him from the hatchway above.

It was only when three burly Greek seamen had already begun to descend the stepladder that the slight scuffing sound of their bare feet alerted him, and he whirled around just in time to see the first one launching himself off the ladder towards him.

In the circumstances it was a reasonably promising move on the seaman’s part, since any ordinary man would have reacted too slowly to avoid the approximately two hundred pounds of foot-first Greek that hurtled towards Simon Templar’s head. But the Saint was no ordinary man; which was unfortunate for the Greek seaman, who like many before him could never afterwards fully fathom how it was that when he reached the area of space occupied by his target, there was nothing but emptiness where Simon Templar ought by all ordinary laws to have been. The sailor’s heels hit the side of one crate, splitting it open and shunting it a couple of feet along the floor of the hold; and the crate that was stacked on top of it lost just enough of its support to topple over on to the man’s prone body before he could move. There was a sharp painful omph as the breath was knocked out of him, and what sounded like the cracking of a few ribs.

Simon ducked behind a taller pile of crates, and waited with every nerve fibre taut like piano wire as the other two seamen dropped off the ladder and began cautiously circling towards him from opposite directions. One of them shouted loudly in Greek, presumably to summon reinforcements; and then suddenly he began a rush. But the Saint toppled a crate over in his path, and then whirled to face the other man’s charge. He took a heavy but clumsy blow to the chest, and countered with a long hard straight left which he planted with immediately visible effect square in the centre of the seaman’s already bulbous nose. The man sat down hard on his tail-bone, clutching his injured proboscis with tender fingers through which a stream of blood instantly began to flow.

Meanwhile his shipmate had scrambled around the obstructing crate, and threw himself on to Simon’s back. But to Simon’s judo training this was about as effective as a novice equestrian leaping on to the back of a skittish bronco, and the man found himself sailing through the air on to the top of a crate.

“Stop, you fools! It’s Templar!” Suddenly the voice of Diogenes Patroclos cut raspingly across the hold. “He works for me. Stop it!”

The crewmen pulled themselves awkwardly together and backed sullenly off as Patroclos and another man in the uniform of a snip’s captain descended the ladder.

“Well, if it isn’t good old Dio Two — or is it One?” murmured the Saint. “Do you realise that you’re breaking up the best workout I’ve had for about four days?”

“Templar, I’m sorry. Those idiots didn’t realise—”

“They realised, all right. Just look around.”

Simon indicated the open crates, then casually reached inside one, took out a rifle, and threw it down with a clatter at Patroclos’ feet. Patroclos seemed utterly astonished. He picked up the rifle and examined it, peered into the open cases, and then turned to the ship’s captain.

“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped.

The captain shrugged sullenly and said nothing. Simon rested one foot on a crate, folded his arms, and slowly shook his head in wonderment. And he laughed.

“I’ll be happy to explain on the Captain’s behalf, Dio” he began. “Singapore was just a paper destination — to satisfy the authorities. All that nonsense about the ships being diverted! They weren’t diverted at all. From the outset they were bound for North Korea.”

Patroclos swore fluently in Greek.

“American arms for North Korea?... If this is true, then it must be that impostor who—”

“There is no impostor,” said the Saint coolly. “And there never has been. You manufactured him. It was you all the time.”

13

In the ensuing silence all the muscles of Patroclos’ face and neck seemed to be working; the black musketball eyes burned with anger; and for the first time, the shadow of something like fear flitted across the strong swarthy face. Patroclos flicked a nervous tongue over his lips, which had suddenly turned pale. At last he found his voice.

“Then why would I hire you?” he demanded harshly.

“You needed an impartial witness to prove that this other man — this scapegoat-to-be — existed.”

“Which you are.”

“I might have been,” Simon conceded. “I’ll admit you had me flummoxed at first. Your planning was tremendous — and your psychology was pretty good too... The girl at the airport... The heavies at the hotel to warn me off — you knew that was the one sure way to get me on the hook... The quick dash to London — in your private plane, you were probably there before I was... The slightly altered appearance and voice... The briefing of your staff at this end... The invented detail—”

“And how did I make you come to Athens in the first place?” Patroclos scoffed.

“You didn’t. That was sheer opportunism. Oh, you’d planned to set someone up before long, of course — I just happened along at the ideal time. I haven’t always been an upright citizen, but I do have a reputation, though I say so myself, for being nobody’s patsy, and I daresay the challenge appealed to your vanity. If you could fool me — and you very nearly did — you could fool anybody. Anyhow, you seized the chance when you saw my name on a passenger list. And then you exploited it for all it was worth.”

“You are beginning to sound like some kind of lunatic.”

“You played me like a fish on a line. For a long time, I had an uneasy feeling I was being manipulated, but I couldn’t quite see how. But that’s your forte — manipulation. Dio, there’s no doubt the plan was brilliant. There was just one serious flaw...”

Diogenes Patroclos stared at him impassively.

“Which was...?”

“The whole basic premise,” continued the Saint. “As I said right at the start, the idea of a perfect impersonation is a lot of baloney.”

“And yet that impostor has still deceived you.” Patroclos persisted. “You saw with your own eyes—”

“—just what you meant me to see,” Simon completed with inexorable calm. “You did it so well you almost had me believing in this darned impersonator — and to begin with I was about as sceptical as anyone could be. Appearance, voice, mannerisms, knowledge, habits — a human being’s just too complicated a thing to be mimicked that closely. My whole instinct was against it. But I’ll admit you played your hand cleverly enough to get me seriously wondering if I could have been wrong after all. Starting when I saw you and the other Ariadne in London.”

“But I suppose I was sure that you would see us?” Patroclos argued sarcastically.

“You’d given me the address as a starting point. You knew I’d go there and watch the house — and before long I’d be bound to see you. And you guessed that as soon as I did, the first thing I’d do would be to check by phoning Athens and asking to speak to you there. You even had something pretty good worked out for that. A simple trick, but good enough.”

“What was that?”

“A dictaphone recording for your Ariadne here to turn on, with the kind of answer that would be sure to fit in well enough with the kind of thing I could be expected to say.”

“You should be writing detective stories,” Patroclos said, but his confidence was beginning to have a hollow ring.

“My friend Charteris has often said the same thing,” Simon agreed good-humouredly. “I must have a go at it one day. But when I do, I’ll have to give you credit for some beautiful touches, like for instance pretending some time back to have forgotten about some startling shirts you’d ordered before your last trip away. You figured I’d be sure to find an opportunity to question Bainter — as I did.”

Diogenes Patroclos was no quitter. His innumerable worst enemies had never said that of him, and it would have been a ludicrous assertion in any case. A man who gives up before the ultimate sanction simply does not get into the millionaire bracket. Even now, Simon felt, in allowing the argument to go on to the almost absurd lengths of the time-honoured detective-story cliché in which the stereotype sleuth spends endless minutes of the last act explaining with clairvoyant precision just what everybody else was plotting and pretending, Patroclos was in fact treating himself to a complete preview of the case against himself, probing it for any weak points, and assessing every possibility of brazening out his own defence.

“If you had been clever enough to catch that impostor,” Patroclos said, “his confession would have proved what nonsense you are talking. But now I think you are only making these absurd accusations to cover up your own failure.”

“Yes, that was a grand finale,” mused the Saint. “The dash after your Rolls with no one in it but the driver — and the plane with no one but the pilot. I suppose he did parachute out while the plane was still over land, after setting the automatic pilot to make it crash in the sea? Or was there a time bomb in the briefcase that went on board?... Anyhow, conveniently complete end of impersonator, leaving it theoretically impossible to prove that he never existed. Except that you’re still stuck with at least one accomplice too many.”

“Who?”

“That chauffeur, who knows that no double of yours got on the plane. And whatever you’re paying him, or unless you’ve already disposed of him, I bet he’ll talk under pressure. And the pressure will certainly be applied when I tell my story, and back it up with that dictaphone record which you so carelessly didn’t erase.”

The Saint’s remorseless prosecution came to this conclusion with such relaxed assurance that he might have commanded three times the muscle of Patroclos’ minions, instead of being in a lonely minority of one. And the shipping Midas, almost physically impaled on the Saint’s sapphire gaze, could only have known that the last hope of bluff and bluster was gone.

“You can’t win ’em all,” Simon told him, with hypnotic softness. “Give up, Dio.”

Patroclos scowled at him for a long moment.

“So,” he said finally. “So much work for nothing... But if you will not be a witness for me” — he spat out the words — “you will never be one against me!”

He turned to the Captain, who obviously spoke little if any English, and who had been listening uncomprehendingly to this lengthy dialogue while his crew men waited for a lead for him.

“Kill him!” he commanded, in Greek. “Skotoseton!”

And the Captain pulled a revolver from his hip pocket, showing only relief at receiving such a simple order.

But the Saint had long foreseen how desperate his situation might become, and had resolved that if he was destined to end his career down in that cargo hold, trapped like a rat behind a pile of boxes, it would only be after he had given the ungodly a show for their money; after he had gathered up in himself and released every last milligram of furious fighting energy that was to be found in his body. And when the testing moment came, his sinew did not fail him.

Every tight-strung dyne of pent-up alertness and determination went into gauging the arrival of that moment and responding to it with almost supernatural speed so as to avoid the deadly lump of lead that would hurtle out of the gun barrel that was swinging up towards him in the Captain’s hand. And in the fraction of a second before the Captain completed his pressure on the trigger, the Saint dived sideways; and the bullet sang past his left ear and thudded into a crate.

Overlaid on the loud reverberations he heard Patroclos shout: “Fool! Be careful! The ammunition!”

And then in what seemed like a mere fluent continuation of that dive, the Saint swept up the metal-shears he had been using with his right hand and hurled them at the Captain. They smashed point first into the Captain’s right arm, and he dropped the gun with a yelp, and then before any of the seamen could reach him the Saint had snatched up a grenade from one of the broken crates.

He held it aloft in both hands, and there was cold steel in his voice as he spoke.

“If anyone makes a move, I’ll pull out the pin and throw this pineapple without the slightest hesitation. You may succeed in getting me, but this whole lot’ll go up with a bang — and all of you with it.”

Patroclos and the Captain and crew froze. The Saint began to edge towards the ladder.

“Don’t look so worried, Dio,” he mocked. “I’m sure you can buy enough sympathy from the Greek authorities to stay out of serious trouble. Of course, you’ll never be persona grata in America again, but there are still other continents for you to operate in. Any of them must be better than being scattered around Piraeus in small pieces.”

“Wait!” Patroclos said hoarsely. “Let us not be hasty. Why can we not come to an arrangement?”

The Saint shook his head.

“No dice,” he said. “You may find it hard to believe, but I’ve still got a few silly old-fashioned principles propping up my halo. I’m just not on the side of the Commies, even when they call themselves North Koreans, and nothing you can offer would persuade me to help them to anything deadlier than a peashooter.”

He had almost reached the foot of the ladder, his glance constantly shifting from one man to another, alert for the slightest hint of a hostile move. If he had to, he was prepared in the last resort to use the grenade as he had threatened... But only if it positively was the very last resort.

Out of the corner of an eye he saw Patroclos crawling on all fours between two crates towards the Captain’s revolver where it had fallen. Simon leapt across the intervening space and got one foot on the gun just as the mogul, his face a mask of vengeful fury, snatched at it. Then the Saint scooped a steel-fingered hand down to grasp the butt, and jerked it savagely. Patroclos kept his grip, and the gun came up off the floor; somehow in the struggle, the gun went off, and Diogenes Patroclos crumpled and rolled slackly over with a bright red stain slowly spreading across his white linen shirt-front.

Simon straightened up, with the revolver now reinforcing the menace of the grenade he still held in his other hand.

“Anyone else want to try his luck?” he inquired grimly, and saw no takers.

14

Simon Templar refilled Ariadne’s glass and his own from the ouzo bottle, and put his feet on the desk.

“It was about the nearest thing you could have to a perfect impersonation. An amazing idea, if you think about it — a man impersonating himself. What a show! And I was the leading player — in the audience!”

The Patroclos empire was in disarray and confusion; with the consent of the Greek government the American Navy, acting for the United Nations, had intercepted the other five ships and seized all the cargoes. Simon was resigned to staying around for a few days longer in Athens to make further statements to the police; Ariadne was similarly resigned to helping to sort out the loose ends in the office; and both had made up their minds to enjoy the enforced stay.

“That poor girl,” mused Ariadne. “He was her boss, and she stayed loyal to him. I feel sorry for her.”

“So do I,” agreed the Saint. “He exploited her as he exploited everyone else. She played her part magnificently, right down to the tears when the news of the plane crash came in.”

The girl toyed with her glass reflectively. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that they had shared a need to recapitulate and review some of the complications of the extraordinary conspiracy which the late Diogenes Patroclos had developed without sharing any of its threads completely with anyone.

“I’m still puzzled about the codebook,” she said. “I don’t see why he pretended not to know you’d taken it.”

Simon lounged back in his chair.

“The codebook was a very interesting, not to say a crucial part of the whole set-up. And of course, it was partly the codebook, in the end, that gave the game away. Remember that what he had in mind when he first briefed me was to get me into contact with his supposed impersonator for just long enough to convince me that there was a double. My main job was to get the codebook back. That gave me a specific goal — and it gave him the perfect pretext for hauling me off the job before I got too nosey. Once I’d delivered it, he could tell me to quit—”

“Of course,” broke in the girl. “And that’s why he faked the telegram from Athens — or I suppose he had my namesake send it — and made sure you saw it.”

Simon nodded.

“Exactly.”

“But why did he commission you anyway — I mean the second time, in London — and then insist you stayed in the house?”

“That was an absolute master-stroke. It was a plausible enough move anyway, ‘in the interests of security’ as he put it, but his real reason was simply to make it easy for me to pinch the codebook. And he knew I’d bite.”

“So where did he go wrong?”

“Apart from the weak basic premise, and my scepticism, there was something else. His own vanity — and a kind of melodramatic cloak-and-dagger streak. He did keep just one copy of the codebook as I figure it—”

“Yes, as far as I know. He always took it with him when he went away or out of the house for more than a few hours.”

“Well,” Simon continued, “When I stole it from his safe, he wanted me to think I’d succeeded in getting it to Athens. But he also wanted it there in London — because he was stuck without it. He could have had it sent back, of course, but he preferred to play games by following me at a distance and bringing it back the same night. But I spotted the car behind, and that was when I really started putting the picture together.”

“But what about the photos? A lucky accident, you said?”

He nodded.

“That was one piece of circumstantial evidence he didn’t manufacture himself. There were two photos — press photos, remember? — with the dates stamped on the back. Both the tenth of June. Dio, presenting a yachting trophy in the Bahamas — that was late afternoon — and Dio at a party in Lisbon that same night, maybe six or eight hours later. Or at least, I assumed it was that same night. And with the time difference, he’d have had to travel almost instantaneously to get there. And it’s three thousand miles.”

“So how can the photos be explained?” she asked.

“By the fact that the Lisbon one was taken first. I saw the photos at the Daily Express office, and as the agency names were stamped on the backs along with the dates, I was able to phone diem and check. As I’d suspected, the Lisbon agency always date their prints the day they’re processed. Normally that’s almost at once. But a picture taken during the night — say, at a party — is pretty certain to carry the next day’s date.”

“I think I’m beginning to see. He went to the party in Lisbon on the night of the ninth—”

“Or you might say, the night of the ninth-tenth. So let’s suppose the picture was taken at midnight. He might easily have left for the Bahamas at, say, three in the morning, on the tenth. By my reckoning, he could have got there in eighteen or twenty hours without much sweat. Let’s say he landed at twenty-two hundred hours. But remember the time-zone change. In Nassau it wasn’t ten o’clock at night — it was only four in the afternoon. So he was in time to wave to the out-island yachtsmen.”

The Saint stood up and looked at his watch.

“And now I think it’s time for that lunch I promised you.”

“Just one last question,” Ariadne said. “What are you getting out of this?”

He looked at her with imps of mischief dancing in his clear blue eyes. “The excitement of the chase — the satisfaction of a day’s work well done—”

“I mean, you were supposed to be paid, weren’t you?”

“And what makes you think I haven’t been?” he asked with as straight a face as he could muster. “I’ll let you into a secret. There are occasions, I’m sorry to say, when I steal more than codebooks. Though it was from the codebook that I copied down an interesting-looking series of figures.” He turned his most innocent gaze on her and added, “And do you know what those figures turned out to be?”

Ariadne shook her head, and Simon grinned.

“The combination to a safe — the one right behind you, in fact.”

He patted his breast pocket meaningly, and the girl’s eyes widened.

“You helped yourself?”

“Shamelessly,” replied the Saint. “To forty thousand pounds in conveniently large-denomination Swiss franc notes.”

“Forty thousand! But... you said your fee was to be twenty thousand!”

Simon Templar looked aggrieved.

“But I was commissioned for that sum twice,” he pointed out. “Twenty thousand from Patroclos One, twenty thousand from Patroclos Two. Wasn’t it lucky that they turned out to share a safe?”

And he smiled his incorrigible mocking smile.

“Come on — let’s go and get that lunch,” said the Saint.