The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

1

The peace-loving, law-abiding residents of Upper Berkeley Mews had long ago become inured to the presence of their celebrated neighbour, though whether his decision to be domiciled amongst them was to be welcomed they had never quite decided. True, he added a certain glamour to that otherwise staid and soporific backwater, but on the other hand there was the ever present threat that he might one day bring his work home with him, so causing the tranquillity to be disturbed by undignified skylarking. Being British, and from that stratum of society which considers it bad form to discuss anything more private than the weather with anyone who has not been formally introduced, they compromised. They affected to ignore him, hoping he would reciprocate. At the same time they avidly read of his activities and kept a weather eye on his comings and goings to provide them with a ceaseless supply of gossip guaranteed to keep the conversation flowing over cocktails or coffee.

Their attitude was understandable. When the man next door is a criminal, a certain sense of insecurity is predictable; when he is the most notorious and successful outlaw of his age, it is inevitable.

For his part, Simon Templar was aware of their feelings and welcomed their reserve, for they saw only what he wanted them to see, and their reluctance to bother him in even the little of his private life that they did witness enabled him to go about his business unhampered by trivial interferences.

Any of his neighbours who saw him return home at ten o’clock one blustery September night in 1950 would have found nothing strange about either his actions or his appearance as he slotted his key into the lock.

They would have observed a tall athletic man with the permanently light tan of the seasoned traveller. If there was a certain piratical cast to the features and a subtly dangerous quality to the way he moved, these were only to be expected. They would have noticed that he was wearing a dark blue suit that hung with the millimetric precision that only the very best tailors achieve, with a silk shirt of such virginal whiteness that it might have been newly bought that morning. But being accustomed to seeing him so dressed, they would simply have concluded that he had enjoyed an early dinner, probably at one of the better hostelries, where he had doubtless selected the best food and the finest wines with the ease of the accomplished gourmet. And they would have been right.

Any of them still keeping an eye on his home ten minutes later would have seen the front door open and watched him emerge once again into the mews. They would have noted that he now wore a dark leather casual jacket, dark grey trousers, and a navy-blue rollneck sweater, and that the thin leather shoes had been replaced by a pair of workmanlike brogues. The rapid transformation might have caused an eyebrow to be raised and created a suspicion that he was up to no good. But he carried, of all inoffensive burdens, a plain black and somewhat shabby violin case. It suggested at once a minor musician on his way to work at some night club.

Simon Templar did not know whether he was under surveillance and he did not care. He walked briskly out of the mews and through the quiet Mayfair side streets until he reached Piccadilly, where he turned left. He considered hailing a taxi but decided against the idea. The traffic was crawling along even on that broad thoroughfare, and as his destination lay beyond a maze of narrow streets which at that time of night would be clotted with parked cars he realised it would be almost as quick to walk.

A few hundred yards later he arrived in Piccadilly Circus.

The Circus is the hub of London and the centre of what the guidebook writers are wont to call the “Bright Lights,” though any New Yorker would be surprised at the economy of syncopated neon employed to justify the description. To the tourist it is a sight to see, one more landmark ticked off the holiday itinerary. To the Londoner it is a symbol, even if he would find it hard to explain exactly what it symbolises. The attraction of the handful of major roads and minor side streets which tie themselves into a knot around the foot of the statue of Eros is not something that can be seen; it has to be felt.

Whenever there is an excuse for national celebration it is to Piccadilly Circus that the crowds flock, as if drawn by some giant invisible magnet. It is on the pavements of Piccadilly that the starry-eyed provincial in search of adventure and fame in the big city is most likely to first put down his — or more usually her — suitcase. Soldiers have sung their goodbyes to it, and Eros has become as national a symbol as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, or the onion domes of the Kremlin.

Perhaps part of its appeal is that it brings together four of the most famous districts of the capital: the shops of Regent Street with the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue; Mayfair, which has become a byword for all that is English, elegant, and aristocratic; and Soho, which has become synonymous with the cosmopolitan, the tawdry, and the criminal.

Simon Templar turned to skirt the central island of the Circus and flicked up his jacket collar in token resistance to the drizzle that had just started to drain from an overcast sky. Anyone seeing him there might have thought it an appropriate place. Half an hour before, he had been relaxing in the sophisticated surroundings of a Mayfair restaurant. In another thirty minutes he would be equally at home attending to his business in the shabby streets of Soho.

It is part of the folklore of London that if you stand in Piccadilly Circus long enough you will eventually meet everyone you ever knew. At ten-forty that night the claim was almost believable. Cinemas and theatres disgorged their audiences onto the streets, and some were hurrying in search of supper while the early evening revellers were leaving the pubs and clubs in search of home. Swelling the jostling crowds were end-of-season tourists and that miscellaneous collection of unpigeonholeable characters who are to be found loitering at any time of the day, and most hours of the night, in every great meeting place in every great city of the world. The flotsam and jetsam of society, constantly changing faces that always look the same.

The public read about the Saint’s exploits and marvelled at his audacity. To them it must have appeared that he suddenly materialised in the right place at the right time as if by divine guidance. The usual fact, however, was that the events they digested with their bacon and eggs were the culmination of careful preparation, a major factor of which is attention to the minutiae of the task in hand. It was therefore no whim that had decided the time for his foray. For the next half hour the area would be at its busiest and he understood the value of the anonymity of crowds.

He dodged nimbly between the fenders of the cars inching into and out of Regent Street, crossed Glasshouse Street, and cut across the corner of the Regent Palace Hotel to turn up Sherwood Street. Within a dozen paces the lights and some of the exhaust fumes were left behind, and the shadows swallowed him. He turned right on Brewer Street; it was not the shortest way to his destination, but it was less congested, and he was able to maintain a brisker pace until he reached the junction with Wardour Street.

One of the delights of London is that the sprawling metropolis shown on the map is in reality just a collection of villages that the highways of the capital have threaded together without destroying their separate identities. Nowhere can this be more plainly seen than in the square mile lying between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road. In some ways Soho is not only a village within a city, it is almost a state within a country, and its boundaries are as tangible to those who live and work within them as the more conventional frontiers of mountains and rivers. Its people are drawn from every corner of Europe, many of them refugees from tyranny or poverty who have settled there and made it their own.

Soho is a place of restaurants where in one street the aromas of paella, bouillabaisse, goulash, and lasagne ride the air along with the music of half a dozen different tongues. Most of all it is a place of people who provide proof that different creeds and complexions can exist peacefully side by side.

But there is also a darker, more dangerous undercurrent. Before the first immigrants arrived, Soho was already established as the red light district of London. The houses of pleasure which Victorian gentlemen patronised had long since disappeared and been replaced by streetwalkers and their more discreet sisters who plied their trade via carefully worded advertisements in news agents’ windows. The vice trade has spawned every type of crime and breed of criminal, from those selling pictures that would make a Port Said pedlar blush to those who deal in the death that comes from a syringe. Violence and danger lie very close to the surface and invest Soho with an excitement that is found nowhere else in London.

East of Wardour Street, the Saint zigzagged through smaller lanes in the direction of Soho Square, and as he did so drew a pair of thin black leather gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. On another side street, he stopped and appeared to consider the menu displayed in the window of an Italian restaurant that stood on the corner of a cobbled alley. And then he was gone.

The shadows cast by the walls of the buildings each side of the narrow entrance enveloped him immediately. The operation was carried out so slickly that anyone only a few steps behind would have missed it in the time it took them to blink. Had any of his neighbours who earlier might have wondered at his change of clothes been following, the reason for the switch now became obvious. It is very rarely completely dark in a city in the way it often is in the country. Even if the night is starless the light from windows and the glow of street lamps keeps the blackness at bay and replaces it with an ever shifting variety of deep blues and purples and a hundred shades of grey. In such a situation a man dressed in black can stand out almost as distinctly as one in white, but the combination of subdued colours the Saint had chosen blended perfectly with his surroundings.

The alley led into a small courtyard where the squares of light from the windows of the buildings that formed its perimeter laid an irregular checkerboard of yellow and black across the flagstones. Simon kept close to the walls and moved slowly and cautiously until he reached the building immediately opposite the entrance.

He stopped there to take from his pocket a length of string already knotted to form a circle. Looped through the handle of the violin case, over his head and under one arm, it became a sling which suspended the case behind his shoulders and left his hands free.

He was at the rear of a four-storey house, and beside it, so close that a man could not have walked between them, was a square tower topped by a spire and what remained of one wall of the church it had once dominated. A donation from the Luftwaffe had put a permanent end to its services. The roof was gone, and the windows in the tower and wall had been boarded up. Two giant props rose from the interior to support the tower, one side of which seemed to consist more of boards and tarpaulin sheets than of stone.

Simon placed both hands around the drainpipe on the tower end of the house, braced his feet against the brickwork, and began to climb. As he scaled the wall he paid a silent tribute to the Victorian builder’s love of exterior plumbing and wide window ledges that enabled him, despite the slipperiness of the wet metal and smooth stone, to reach his goal as quickly and easily as if he had brought a ladder.

The only difficulty arose when he reached the top-floor window and had to hold onto the pipe with one hand while he took a roll of sticky tape from his pocket and crisscrossed it on the glass. That operation completed, he leaned outward and brought the flat of his forearm against the pane. It shuddered arid cracked with the first blow, and the second shattered it and sent it into the room without the noise of cascading glass.

He swung himself onto the window ledge, grabbed the top half of the sash window, and used it as a support as he slid into the room. Only after he had drawn the heavy curtains and paused to listen for any indication that his entrance had been heard did he take a small flashlight from his pocket. Silver foil had been stuck over the glass so that just a needle-thin stream of light escaped but it was enough to show him the general layout of the room and pinpoint the safe in the corner.

He crossed and knelt before the safe, unhitching the violin case and putting it down. From inside his jacket he took a soft leather roll, untied it, and spread it out on the floor beside him. The Saint was very proud of that roll: it contained a collection of precision instruments, many made to his own design, that would have earned instant promotion for any policeman fortunate enough to find them on him. He inspected the lock of the safe and then extracted the tool required. With the torch between his teeth so that its light was focused steadily on the lock, he went to work.

The lock was complex and included a triple lever mechanism that made it a problem even for someone of his experience. He concentrated intently on the delicate probing and turning of the instrument gripped tightly between his thumb and forefinger, his ears straining to pick up the whisper of a click that would tell him the first stage was over. When it came he allowed himself the luxury of a brief pause while he took a deep steadying breath. He returned to work but had barely begun when a noise on the landing outside made him stop.

It was followed by the sound every burglar dreads. The handle rattled, a key grated in the lock, and the door behind him started to open.

2

He spun around, every nerve and sinew taut, ready to attack or defend on the instant.

The door swung fully open to reveal a lone figure on the threshold. Simon stayed motionless and waited. The man stepped into the study and raised his hand to the light switch.

Simon blinked at the sudden brilliance as the man walked casually to within a few feet and stood looking down at him. Delving deep into the pocket of his robe, the man produced a key and held it out to him.

“Puedo ayudarte?”

Simon sat back on his haunches and waited for the adrenalin to dissolve and his muscles to relax before replying.

When he did speak, it was in an urgent whisper:

“Father Bernardo, for heaven’s sake! I’m supposed to be robbing you!”

The priest smiled.

“For heaven’s sake? No. For pity’s sake? Yes,” he said in a gentle voice which bore only the faintest trace of an accent.

The Saint sighed in exasperation as he stood up.

“For whosever sake it is, especially for my sake, let me get on with the burglary.”

“I am sorry, I did not think you would come so soon.”

“Next time I’ll hang a notice outside and you can charge admission. If you’re going to stay, don’t interrupt.”

“Dispénsame, I will not bother you again,” the priest promised, in such a contrite tone that the Saint could not help smiling.

He had robbed many people in the course of his criminal career, but never had he dealt with such a helpful and willing victim. He switched off the now superfluous torch and returned his attention to the intricacies of the lock. The priest sat quietly and calmly on the far side of the room and watched.

Father Bernardo looked older and frailer than his sixty years. The voluminous folds of his cassock highlighted his thinness, and his sparse white hair added to the overall effect of making him seem smaller and weaker than he was. Despite the gauntness of a face that had once been more than passably handsome, the eyes still sparkled with kindness and good humour, and there were the lines of many smiles at the corners of his mouth. But Simon knew that the image of a genial, fragile old man was deceptive and that the priest possessed reserves of strength and stamina that a man twenty years his junior might have envied.

They had first met during the tail-end days of the Spanish Civil War when Franco’s soldiers and agents were rounding up all those who had opposed him. Father Bernardo had been the pastor of a small town in Aragon and from the start had defied the official line of his church and preached in favour of the Republicans. By the time the Falangists marched into the region to mop up the last of the resistance he was already a marked man.

As the Fascists drew nearer, the townspeople begged him to flee but he refused. Only when they implored him to take the children and the treasures of their church to the safety of a nearby monastery did he relent. By the time his mission was completed the town had been occupied and there was no going back. And so he had set out on the long journey into exile.

It was on that road that he had met the Saint and in the few days they had spent together a mutual respect and liking had flowered. Simon Templar’s activities in the madness that was to prove merely a dress rehearsal for a much greater insanity have yet to be chronicled; but for now it must be enough to say that they had shared more than one adventure before Father Bernardo eventually crossed the Pyrenees. But the megalomania of Franco’s principal sponsor had made his stay in France a comparatively short one, and he became a refugee for the second time. In the blitzed wreckage of St. Jude’s he at last found another home.

His first action was to open the crypt as a sanctuary for fellow outcasts. At first they had come from many lands submerged in the world turmoil, but by now most of them had been gradually replaced by the destitute and the rejected of his adopted country.

He refused no one help or shelter, but quickly found that those who were the first to applaud his charity were usually the last to dig into their pockets for the cash to make it possible. One by one the church valuables he had brought with him were sold in order to keep St. Jude’s open. Now only one remained. Which was why Simon Templar was picking the safe lock and Father Bernardo was watching him.

Simon had renewed their acquaintance as soon as he heard that Bernardo had arrived in London, but the nature of his vocation and his constant travelling had resulted in long gaps between meetings. A call at the church the previous day had been the first for nearly a year. His reception had been as warm as always, but it was not long before he had detected the strain beneath the priest’s smile.

The Saint gave a final twist to an instrument resembling an old-fashioned buttonhook and with a triumphant smile turned the handle and opened the door of the safe. Inside, on the single shelf, wrapped in a black velvet cloth, rested the object he sought. He took it out and placed it on the desk before removing the cloth.

It was an intricately engraved silver chalice about ten inches high. Carved in relief around the cup were the Stations of the Cross, while on the cover was depicted the Last Supper. Around the base were set evenly spaced rows of semi-precious stones, and the handles were formed by ornately sculptured golden crucifixes.

“It’s very beautiful,” Simon observed softly.

Father Bernardo sighed.

“Yes, it is beautiful. But beauty will not buy bread or pay for clothes or purchase coal. My people are not concerned with beauty but with survival.”

They had reverted to Spanish, which to the Saint had once been almost another native language.

The old priest’s words were an echo of the conversation that had passed between them the day before and which had led to that night’s activity. Father Bernardo had needed little prompting to tell the Saint his troubles. St. Jude’s had always existed on the borderline between solvency and bankruptcy, but rising costs and a fall in donations had finally combined to push the sanctuary over the edge. Simon’s first reaction to the news had been to reach for his cheque book, but before he could make his offer Father Bernardo had shown him the chalice. He had been unusually bitter.

“Look at it,” he had invited his guest with an impatient, almost angry sweep of his arm. “It is worth a small fortune, a fraction of its value would save St. Jude’s. It is useless to me, yet I cannot sell it.”

In answer to the Saint’s question he had explained that the chalice had been the most prized possession of his church, the richest and most valuable thing in the entire town. It had been given three hundred years ago in gratitude for some service, long since forgotten, that the villagers had rendered to a member of the royal family. But there had been a condition; it must never leave the custody of the priest.

“And so it stayed, beautiful but rarely used, while the villagers lived in poverty. There was never any suggestion that it should be sold, such a thing was unthinkable and still is forbidden,” the priest had complained, and his voice had trembled with suppressed frustration.

“What you might almost call treasure in heaven,” said the Saint.

“It is a very common story. Far too common. Go into any cathedral in almost any Latin country and you will marvel at how magnificent it is, the sculptures and the carvings and the paintings and all the other priceless things. And then go outside and walk a little way and you will marvel again, but this time at the slums and the squalor, at the tenements and the children in ragged clothes and the despair on the faces of those whom poverty has made old before their time. The Church cares for its treasures and it cares if it can for the needy, but rarely is the one used for the other. That is not the way it should be, not the way it was meant to be. The true treasures of the Church are the poor, but the Church holds onto what it has and the poor can only dream of what they have not.”

“And yet you wouldn’t sell the chalice to save St. Jude’s?” Simon had asked, wondering that Father Bernardo would be bound by something which was against his deep convictions.

The priest shook his head sadly.

“I could not, Simon. My people entrusted the chalice and the other church valuables to me when we knew that the Falangists were coming. I feel I have already betrayed them by selling the other things, even for the best of purposes, but they were not actually consecrated. The chalice is in my care under the most sacred vows, until I can take it back.”

The Saint had considered the situation for a while and his immediate solution to the problem was one that the good pastor would not have thought of.

“Supposing,” the Saint had asked conversationally, “supposing it was stolen. Would you keep the insurance money or send it to the people of your town?”

“It is not likely to happen.”

“But if it did,” Simon had persisted.

“Then I expect I would keep the money and use it to maintain St. Jude’s. I should consider it a loan in a good cause, which my people might well approve. And I would pray that one day it might be repaid. But it will never happen.”

Simon had smiled as he watched Father Bernardo rewrap the chalice and put it back in the safe.

“One certain thing in life is that you never know what is going to happen next,” he said.

“I can be sure that what you have suggested will never happen,” said the priest. “You see, the chalice is not insured. I could never afford the premiums.”

For a moment the Saint had been stumped. But only for a moment.

“What then would you do if it was stolen and the thief had a sudden change of heart and sent you the money he got for it?” he asked.

The priest was silent for a long while as he considered the question.

“If such a road to Damascus occurred in the life of a criminal, I should be pleased and I would pray that he might be forgiven for his crime,” was the eventual reply.

“And you would use the money to save St. Jude’s?”

“Yes. But what is the good of thinking about such things? It would be a miracle.”

Simon had put a reassuring arm around his shoulders.

“I believe in miracles,” he confided.

And then he had taken his leave and returned home to plan the details of what he had decided to do. Now that it had been accomplished there still remained the problem of whether Father Bernardo would agree to it.

He replaced the cloth over the chalice so that it was no longer either a distraction or a temptation.

“You guessed I might do this, Bernardo?” he asked.

“It was not hard. I know you too well, Simon, and the kind of solutions you find. Did you think I could not read what was in your mind?”

“No,” Simon admitted. “But I hoped that you might prefer not to. I can still put the chalice back if that is what you want.”

“What I want is to save St. Jude’s. What you do with the chalice must now be your decision.”

“And if I decide to take it?”

“I cannot stop you.”

“But what will you say to the police?”

“I shall tell them that it has been stolen.”

“Nothing more?”

Father Bernardo looked round the room, as if seeking an answer, and when he looked at the Saint again the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth indicated that he had found one.

“My church is a ruin and this room is the nearest place I have to a confessional. People tell me many things here that I would never repeat. I can treat you no differently.”

The Saint laughed. He opened the violin case and put the chalice inside.

“Then I think it’s time to take my leave.”

He slung the case over his shoulder as he had carried it before, crossed to the window, and swung himself onto the ledge.

The priest raised his hands and parted them in blessing.

“Pax vobiscum, my son.”

“Hasta luego, Papa Bernardo,” said the Saint, and disappeared into the darkness.

He shinned down the drainpipe as nimbly as any sailor down the rigging of a becalmed galleon. He stepped backwards onto the ground, and in that same instant he felt a kind of dull shock in the back of his head and everything went black.

3

Actually his awareness of the impact was retrospective, when he woke up. It had been as neat a demonstration of the sandbagger’s art as Simon Templar had ever had the misfortune to experience. The cushioned blow had done its job without even breaking the skin, let alone the skull. Its legacy would be little more than a tender bump and a hangover-style headache. He had been despatched out of the world for perhaps thirty seconds. But it was enough. The first sense to break clear of the fog numbing his brain was hearing: the sound of running feet growing rapidly fainter as the attacker fled. Sight returned reluctantly: the blurred outlines of the grill of the drain that he was slumped beside. He screwed his eyes tight closed and then blinked them wide open, repeating the process until his vision cleared. Gripping the drainpipe with both hands, he groggily hoisted himself upright.

Leaning with his back against the wall, he sucked the cool night air into his lungs and looked around. The court was deserted. His gaze travelled upwards to the few squares of light in the surrounding buildings but he saw no one. He had hardly expected to. Even if the attack had been witnessed, Soho is an area where the residents’ discretion makes the three wise monkeys appear congenital gossips when it comes to seeing, hearing, or speaking of the evil they may come across. Neither was he surprised to find that the violin case had gone, as well as his wallet.

The Saint uttered certain expletives of Anglo-Saxon origin fluently and forcefully during the few seconds he spent casting about for some clue to his attacker, but the man had left no trace. If indeed it was a man, Simon told himself ruefully: for all he knew it could have been a dowager duchess in full ermine regalia.

The light was still burning in Father Bernardo’s study above him, and for a moment he considered returning via the front door and explaining the situation. But what could he say? “I’ve been robbed” perhaps, or “You’ll never guess what just happened to me.” No, he decided, it would be better to leave him in happy ignorance while there was still a chance of getting the chalice back.

The thief had left enough small change in his trouser pocket for a taxi fare, but the Saint felt that a walk would help to clear his head and provide time to think.

He began to retrace the route he had taken an hour before. Then his mission had been as straightforward as any he had ever undertaken. Now, in less than a minute, everything had been turned upside down and confusion had replaced simplicity.

He turned right into Shaftesbury Avenue towards Piccadilly Circus. The throbbing at the base of his skull subsided as he walked and allowed his brain to grapple methodically with the problems he now faced.

There was no profit in damning the vagaries of fate, no point in looking back. He had to concentrate on questions that might be answered productively.

Had the sandbag artist been waiting for him? Unlikely. Not even Father Bernardo had known precisely when the Saint would come. Therefore, had the attack been spontaneous? Most possibly; although the court was little used and so not the most likely place for a footpad to lurk. But could the mugger have been planning a break-in on his own, and been happy to watch the Saint do it for him and hijack the proceeds? If so, was he after the chalice or just anything that might come his way? Square one again.

It might seem to be a detail of stupendous unimportance, whether he had been robbed of the chalice with intent or purely by bad luck. If it was by accident, as soon as the thief discovered what he had stolen, it would be quickly funnelled into one of the normal markets for stolen goods: if it was with intent, the problem could be infinitely more complicated.

The irony of the situation was not lost on the Saint. Despite his anger, he could acknowledge it with a rueful smile. The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the newspapers had dubbed him, and he had more than lived up to the title, robbing the ungodly rich and giving the loot to the poor — minus a respectable percentage to cover his expenses. Much of his career had been spent thieving from thieves and now the tables had been turned. It might be poetic, Simon reflected as he arrived back at Upper Berkeley Mews, but on this particular occasion it was certainly not justice.

His only immediate solution, as it had been with many another riddle, was to sleep on it. But in this case the prescription failed to work. Sleep removed the physical pain but did nothing to soothe the hurt to his pride, nor did he awake with the inspiration he had hoped for. The problems of the dark were just as unanswerable in the light.

But if he thought they were difficult enough, he did not have to wait long to be shown their true proportionate triviality.

He had dealt with a late breakfast, showered, and dressed when the doorbell rang. He recognised his visitor with a smile of pleasure and appreciation, and held the door wide for her to enter.

“Buenos dias, Mila!” he said.

Mila is short for Milagrosa, which in Spanish means miraculous, and so is an apt choice of name for the niece of a priest. The last time Simon had seen her she had been a skinny schoolgirl scarcely out of pigtails, but two years can see many changes at that age.

Now, although she could still have been barely old enough to vote, she had a refined beauty that Goya would have paid to paint. The sheen of the long black hair which swirled across her face when she turned her head, the pout of her lips, the mystery and promise of dark flashing eyes, and a figure that curved in exactly the right places and proportions were as much as any man, artist or not, could have asked for. Perhaps one day the smooth skin would wrinkle and the taut figure would spread, but that would not be for a long time to come.

Simon closed the door and turned.

“Well, well!” His eyes flicked unashamedly over the girl and widened with approval. “I won’t say ‘Haven’t you grown’ — just tell me what happened to the pimply little girl who used to put itching powder in the cassocks.”

Mila smiled.

“I left her behind at the convent.”

“Those poor sisters,” he murmured. “Bernardo told me you were helping at the mission now. I’d hoped to see you but you were out running a soup kitchen or something.”

“Collecting jumble, actually. He told me you’d called.”

Her voice was strained. She stood awkwardly in the centre of the room, nervously fingering her handbag. Simon read the signs and nodded towards a chair.

“Sit down and tell me what’s on your mind. You haven’t dropped in just to chat.”

Mila shook her head. She perched on the edge of the cushion while the Saint lowered himself at a more comfortable angle into the neighbouring chair. She did not speak at once and he allowed her time to collect her thoughts. He could guess that at least part of her reason for visiting him was a result of the previous night’s skylarking, and her first words confirmed his prescience.

“We’ve been robbed. Last night someone broke in and stole a chalice...”

“The one the villagers gave to your uncle for safekeeping?” he enquired innocently.

“Yes, it’s very valuable. Uncle is terribly upset about it.”

“I can imagine.”

The Saint suppressed a smile. He hoped the priest wasn’t hamming it up too much.

“I shouldn’t get too alarmed,” he continued soothingly. “The police are really far cleverer than those writer blokes would have you believe. I’m sure they’ll get it back, though I don’t hold out much hope of them catching the man who took it.”

“But that’s just it,” said Mila despairingly, her eyes shining with tears. “They already have.”

4

It is a testimonial to Simon Templar’s self-control that not even the faintest flicker of reaction crossed his face. His features maintained the same interested but detached expression. But behind the façade it was as if floodgates had opened to release a fresh torrent of questions and problems that threatened temporarily to submerge the ones he was already wrestling with.

“You mean,” he asked in a voice empty of any emotion, “that the police caught the thief who stole the chalice?”

“Yes, I mean no, I mean...” Mila paused, took a breath, and began again. “What I really mean is that they’ve arrested who they think did it. But he didn’t. He couldn’t have done. They’ve got the wrong person.”

Simon regarded her steadily.

“I have a feeling that this conversation is about to get complicated, so before we get entangled in it I think some lubrication is called for.”

He crossed to the drinks cabinet, looked from the array of bottles to the girl, and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

“Coffee?”

She nodded.

“Thank you.”

He handed her a cup.

“What makes you think the constabulary have fingered the wrong collar?” he asked.

“They’ve arrested Taffy, Taffy Owen. But he didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done,” Mila replied, her voice rising in protest.

“So you’ve already said,” Simon remarked calmly. “Let’s get down to basics. First question: who is this Taffy Owen, besides being a son of the valleys?”

“He helps out at the mission. He’s been there just over a year. He got into some trouble at home — Cardiff — and came to London. Uncle found him sleeping rough and brought him back to the mission for the night, and he’s stayed ever since. He was a bit wild at first, it’s true, but he’s settled down now.”

“So Taffy’s a sheep returned to the fold,” the Saint said, and hoped it didn’t sound too cynical. “Question two: how do you know he didn’t do it?”

The query was innocent enough on the surface but there was a dual reason behind it. He already knew the answer, but he needed to know whether Mila did as well. Had Bernardo told her? Her reply was open enough to convince him that her uncle had kept silent.

“It’s just not in his nature,” she explained. “Once, perhaps, but not now. He thinks far too much of Uncle Bernardo, and...” She paused and mumbled the final few words of the sentence: “... and of me.”

Simon’s eyebrows rose only enough to make his point.

“And you of him?”

A blush highlighted her smooth olive cheeks. She continued to avoid his eyes.

“I like him, if that’s what you mean,” she answered at length.

The Saint’s smile lingered thoughtfully.

“It wasn’t all I meant, but we’ll let it pass. So the police have Taffy. Do they also have the chalice?”

The Saint was aware of a slight quickening of his pulse as he waited for her reply, and wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed or relieved when he was told that the chalice had not yet been found.

“I came to you because Uncle Bernardo said you would know what to do,” Mila went on. “He has great trust in you. He said that if anyone could prove Taffy’s innocence you could.”

“You don’t say? I’m touched by his faith in me,” Simon said drily. “Then I mustn’t let him down. Where did they take Taffy?”

“To Vine Street police station.”

“And do you know who’s in charge of the case?”

“An Inspector Peake.”

“Then I’d better go and make him see the error of his ways,” he said with a lightness he was far from feeling. “Tell your uncle I will do everything I can.”

He walked her to Bruton Street and kept the conversation superficial until he could put her in a cab despatched towards St. Jude’s, while he began the short stroll to Vine Street.

“This is the last time I do anyone a favour by robbing them,” he vowed to himself as he contemplated the latest twist of events.

In a shade over twelve hours what had started out as a simple well-intentioned felony had turned into an imbroglio of bedlamic dimensions. Besides having lost the chalice and facing the job of retrieving it, he was now presented with the problem of absolving a third party from having stolen it, without incriminating either himself or Father Bernardo. He could imagine the old priest’s quite unholy glee as he blandly suggested to his niece that she should ask the Saint to help. It was easily the most magnificently brazen piece of buck-passing that could ever have been performed.

Simon wished, not for the first time, that he had opted for the easy solution and just written a cheque he could easily afford and so saved St. Jude’s Mission and himself a lot of trouble.

But was this Taffy character as innocent as Mila and her uncle believed? Certainly he hadn’t taken the chalice from the safe, but it had been stolen twice and someone had to be guilty of the second theft, so why not he?

At Vine Street police station the desk sergeant told him:

“Inspector Peake is at lunch. Can anyone else help Simon shook his head.

“No, I could do with a drink myself.”

As expected, he found the man he wanted, together with some other non-uniformed members of C Division resting his elbows on the counter of the nearest hostelry. He had no difficulty recognising the detective. He regarded it as part of his professionalism to know by sight most of the West End’s officers above the rank of sergeant, but to date Peake had not crossed his path.

The Saint edged into an empty slot at the bar beside the detective and ordered a pint of Guinness. As it was being pulled he turned to his neighbour.

“Inspector Peake. I’d like a word.”

The detective ran a practised eye over the man who had interrupted his meditative midday drink. He took in the supple strength, the poise and the tanned features, and felt he should have known the name before he asked for it.

“And who are you?”

“Templar, Simon Templar. I’m interested in Taffy Owen. Can we talk?”

“The Saint?” Peake didn’t try to keep the surprise out of his voice or off his face.

“The same,” Simon replied with a smile. He paused while he paid for his order. “It’s important,” he added as he registered the detective’s hesitation.

Peake shrugged. “Okay.”

He knew his colleagues farther along the bar were taking an interest in the encounter and was equally aware that there could be some raised eyebrows among those who might have identified what the records described as a notorious criminal. But then he had long since given up worrying about appearances.

He nodded towards an empty table in the far corner of the saloon: “Over there.”

“Thanks,” said the Saint, and followed the detective through the crush of lunchtime drinkers.

Inspector Charlie Peake was one of the old school of police detectives. He had risen from a uniform through detective constable to detective sergeant and finally detective inspector. And there he would stay. Not because he lacked the ability or dedication to go higher, but because he did not fit into the training-college mould of smart young men currently favoured by the commissioners.

He wore a fawn trenchcoat that was in need of a visit to a dry cleaner’s over a shiny and creased suit of blue serge. He was just over six feet with the breadth of shoulders and solid muscle to match his height. The toll of his job had added extra lines to the usual ones of middle age that etched the contours of his face. But it was the eyes which had held the Saint’s attention. They were the heavy, permanently weary eyes of a man who has seen it all but who, despite everything, still cares.

They sat down, and the Saint declined the cigarette Peake offered. The detective lit one and spoke through the first cloud of smoke.

“So why is the famous Simon Templar interested in a small-time tea leaf like Owen?”

“I hear you’ve got him marked down for the robbery at St. Jude’s,” Simon said.

The detective’s look was searching and there was a slightly harder edge to his voice.

“And how did you hear that exactly?”

“Father Bernardo is an old friend. He thinks you’ve got the wrong man and asked me to have a look at how things stand. Mind telling me what you’ve got on him?”

Peake puffed on his cigarette as he calculated how much he should reveal. He had long had a grudging respect for the man opposite, but the mere fact that it was the Saint who was asking made him immediately cautious and suspicious.

“I don’t suppose it’s classified,” he admitted finally. “Owen has form, been in trouble since he was a kid. Minor stuff but consistent. Remand home, then Borstal, been clean since he came to London so far as we know anyway, but I suppose it was only a matter of time.”

“Your faith in human nature is touching,” Simon said cynically.

Peake shrugged.

“In my job I don’t get much chance to practise it.”

“But you’ve got to have a stronger case than just a criminal record.”

Peake drained his glass, stubbed out his cigarette, and lit another.

“The robbery was an inside job, had to be. And that means it was Owen.”

“Why?”

“Father Bernardo kept the chalice locked in a safe, a good one, and he never talked about it. Only he, his niece, and Owen knew it was there and so only one of them could have taken it. Oh, he tried to make it look like a break-in, even smashed a window from the outside, but he wasn’t clever enough.”

The Saint held back a smile and enquired with genuine interest: “Where did he go wrong?”

“The safe wasn’t blown and it wasn’t cut open, which means someone either used a key or picked the lock,” Peake explained with the air of a senior officer lecturing a backward cadet. “There aren’t more than half a dozen villains outside who could pick a lock like that, and they wouldn’t bother unless they knew what it contained. That means it was opened with a key, and Owen knew where the keys were kept.”

Simon mentally kicked himself for his professionalism, and knew as he did so that the criticism was undeserved because he had had no way of foreseeing what the sequel would be.

“Not only that,” Peake continued in the same flat patient tone, “but when we pulled him in he had nearly a hundred pounds on him. He didn’t get that kind of money helping Father Bernardo.”

“What was his story?”

“Said he was saving up to get married and that he’d had a bit of luck playing the horses. Then we asked him where he was last night and he says he went out to a movie and didn’t meet anyone he knew to back the story up.”

“It could just be true,” Simon pointed out.

Peake allowed himself the excess of a short hard laugh.

“And I could become Chief Commissioner, but it isn’t very likely, is it? If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard a story like that I wouldn’t be worrying about how I’m going to live on my pension.”

Simon had few doubts that a judge would be just as sceptical as the policeman.

“So you’ve charged him with stealing the chalice?”

Peake shook his head.

“Not yet. When we went to talk to him he tried to do a runner and bumped into a constable.”

The Saint smiled thinly.

“Assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty?”

“That’s right. Just a holding charge so we can keep him safe while we sew up the evidence for the robbery.”

The Saint considered the statement and his eyes brightened.

“Which is another way of saying that you haven’t yet got a case that will stand up in court.”

“We will have,” Peake said confidently.

“Like to bet on it?” Simon asked.

“No.” Peake pushed back his stool and stood up. He looked steadily down at the Saint. “And I don’t want any meddling from you.”

“Just offering to help the course of justice,” said the Saint apologetically, as he too rose.

“Justice can get along without your help,” Peake said, and made it sound like a warning.

Simon Templar’s smile was never more enigmatic. “Too bad you’re not a betting man,” he mourned.

5

Simon Templar was by nature an optimist; it was simply not in character for him to remain downcast for long. Consequently the aura of despondency that had been eclipsing his halo during the morning was already thinning when he went in search of Charlie Peake. By the time he had left the pub, boarded a passing taxi, and directed the driver, it had almost completely evaporated.

So it was with a renewed sense of confidence that he relaxed in the back of the cab and appraised the situation.

Peake had said he could think of only six men outside prison capable of picklocking the safe. By the same standards, the number of fences equipped to handle the chalice was equally limited. There were many prepared to receive the everyday boodle of the everyday burglar, but only a handful possessed the specialist knowledge to value and dispose of such a distinctive work of art.

There was always the danger that the thief had passed it on to some back-street merchant to melt down for the scrap value of the metal and stones, but the Saint’s renewed optimism refused to let him dwell for long on that possibility. One thing was certain: the mugger would try to get rid of the chalice as soon as he discovered that the violin case did not contain an easily pawnable violin.

The taxi stopped in one of the sheltered courts of Gray’s Inn. Simon paid off the driver and strolled through a brick-domed passageway into a small quadrangle. Although only a writ’s throw away from some of the busiest of London’s thoroughfares, the complex of age-mellowed buildings retained an air of more peaceful and leisurely days. Perhaps they lacked something of the quaintness of the Temple, where some of the last gas lamps in London still-flickered, but they also embodied the feeling that the law, and lawyers, are not to be hurried.

He entered a building directly opposite the passageway and located the office he sought within the labyrinth of winding corridors. Robin Nash greeted his visitor with a ready smile and a firm handshake as soon as his secretary ushered the Saint into the room.

“Simon! Good to see you, it’s been a long time,” Nash said warmly, at last releasing the Saint’s hand from his grip and indicating a chair. “I was beginning to think you’d taken a dislike to lawyers.”

“Not to lawyers, just to the law,” Simon said with a grin.

Robin Nash looked steadily at him, automatically estimating what was not apparent on the surface.

“Is this a social or a professional visit?” he asked after the brief scrutiny. “Are you in trouble again?”

“Professional. But I’m not in trouble.”

“I’ll believe the first answer and reserve my judgement on the second.”

Simon laughed.

“There speaks the legal mind. But what can I expect from the best solicitor in London?”

“Flattery won’t get you everything but it will win you a cup of tea.”

He flicked a switch on the intercom and relayed the order to his secretary. Simon, who had tasted the lawyer’s own blend of Earl Grey before, was pleased.

Robin Nash sat back in his chair. He was a tall man in his early forties, hair receding at the temples and with a spreading waistline threatening to become a paunch. In sombre three-piece suit he looked what he was, one of the more successful solicitors in the capital. But there was also a certain strength to the shoulders and hands and an indefinably irreverent light behind the eyes which indicated that he had not spent all his life poring over dusty statute books. He had known the Saint well for more years than any legal practitioner conscious of the Bar’s disciplinary council should freely admit.

Simon came to the point of his visit as soon as the tea was dispensed and the secretary had withdrawn.

“Tomorrow morning at Bow Street a kid called Taffy Owen comes up before the beak. The police are hanging a holding charge on him of assaulting a police officer. In fact they believe he stole a valuable antique chalice, but they haven’t yet got all the evidence they need for a committal. I want you to represent him and get bail.”

Nash considered the request for a time and then nodded.

“Okay. But why? What’s your interest?”

“For the moment I can’t tell you,” Simon said. “Just leave it that I’m trying to prevent a miscarriage of justice.”

Nash showed his scepticism at the reason with a dry smile.

“Sounds very noble. What about sureties?”

“I’ll put up the money. Father Bernardo of St. Jude’s Mission in Soho will promise the magistrates to keep an eye on him.”

“The trouble is, Simon,” the lawyer pointed out, “the magistrates may not consider you a very good risk. Your reputation would hardly commend you to them as a fit person to guarantee anybody’s good behaviour.”

“I don’t want my name mentioned in court anyway. Tell them the money is being put up by Father Bernardo. And don’t tell Taffy who really sprung him until he’s outside. Then tell him if he wants real help to come and see me.”

Nash considered the commission for a while in silence. Finally he shrugged.

“There’s nothing in the rule book which says you have to tell me your motives. I’ll consider myself hired.”

Simon stood up.

“Thanks. Keep in touch.”

Nash saw him to the door.

“You keep in touch. One of these days you may need a good attorney.”

“Perhaps, when I write my will,” said the Saint cheerfully.

As the office door closed behind him he looked at his watch. It showed a quarter past four.

At six o’clock J.J. Grondheim entered the lobby of the Savoy Hotel trailed by a porter carrying a large suitcase. The case, like its owner, was clearly well travelled. The labels plastered across it bore the names of many exotic destinations, while the scuffed leather along the sides showed that baggage handlers are the same the world over.

J.J. Grondheim wore no badge, but the reception clerk’s experienced eye marked the new guest down as American before he had written a Los Angeles address in the register and listed his occupation as art dealer. Neither was Mr. Grondheim scuffed, being dressed in a precision-tailored lightweight grey suit only slightly creased by the long transatlantic flight. But there was a worldliness in his manner which suggested that he had seen the inside of more hotel rooms than the average chambermaid. He was comfortably over six feet, but the slight stoop of his broad shoulders made him appear shorter. His eyes were shielded by square horn-rimmed tinted glasses, and the black hair was heavily flecked with grey.

Once in his suite, he unpacked and arranged his clothes in wardrobe and chest and his toilet gear in the bathroom, indicating that he would be staying for at least a few days. That done, he went down to the bar and sank an old-fashioned at a corner table away from the main mob of customers before sauntering through to the Grill.

Again he chose a table apart from immediate neighbours and lingered over a Dover sole and a bottle of Muscadet. Returning at last to his room, he carefully rumpled the bedclothes so that the bed appeared to have been slept in and then, pocketing his key, made his way down by the stairs and left the hotel via the less frequented Embankment exit.

J. J. Grondheim stood for a moment looking across at the reflection of the lights in the dark waters of the Thames, and took off his tinted glasses to reveal to no one a pair of wickedly clear blue eyes that could only have belonged to Simon Templar.

6

Vic Reefly was indexed in the Saint’s mental data bank of villains under the umbrella heading “Racketeer.” By the tax collector and the law-abiding populace generally he was believed to earn his comfortable living quite legally as owner of the Montparnasse Club in Frith Street.

Although it did not come within a champagne cork’s flight of those select late night pleasure domes in the quieter environs of Mayfair and Knightsbridge, the Montparnasse was still a rung above most of its competitors in Soho. The nightly takings kept his bank manager smiling, while the Vic Reefly Pension Fund was taken care of by a miscellany of extracurricular activities, most of which centred around detaching mugs from their money. None had so far been sufficiently poisonous to warrant the Saint’s intervention, but Reefly was ambitious and the Saint maintained a watching brief.

It was Vic Reefly’s boast that a rat couldn’t sneeze between Piccadilly Circus and Tottenham Court Road without him hearing it.

Looking fresher and more elegant than anyone has a right to look in a night club at eleven-thirty in the morning, Simon Templar entered the Montparnasse with the sole intent of testing the claim. He descended the stairs from the front door into the reception lobby, where during business hours members were welcomed by a doorman whose physique was discreetly concealed by the cut of his dinner jacket. The experienced eye would also have noted that some of the waiters also appeared to have had more strenuous jobs in their time.

But at that hour the lobby was deserted and in the main room beyond there was only an elderly gent pushing a broom across the dance floor. Having long since learned that the key to good health lies in minding one’s own business, he studiously attended to his sweeping and Simon was able to thread a path between the tables and enter unchallenged through a door beside the bar marked “Private.”

Vic Reefly had been accused of many things but never of being beautiful. Unless (beauty being something in the beholder’s eye) one was attracted to thickset men of average height with greased-down hair curling at the collar, who have more gold than enamel behind thin lips and a nose that appears to have once been remodelled by a heavy roller. Nor were the defects of his physiognomy redeemed by a sense of the sartorial. The yellow check suit, the black patent boots, and the wallpaper-patterned tie would not have won an award from the Tailors’ Guild.

The Saint stood in the doorway, his gaze flitting around the cramped office and finally coming to rest on the ledger Reefly was scanning.

“Morning, Vic, cooking the books for breakfast?”

Vic Reefly looked up sharply and his eyes narrowed as they identified his visitor.

“Templar!” Surprise was quickly overtaken by suspicion. “What do you want?”

Simon closed the door and perched himself comfortably on the edge of the desk. He spent a moment attending to the crease of his trousers before replying.

“What I want, Victor, my little virus, is a word. Several, in fact.”

Some of the tenseness eased out of the racketeer. He closed the ledger and sat back in his chair, but his eyes never left the Saint.

“What about?” he asked cautiously.

The Saint was not there to waste time, but he knew there would be no bonuses for seeming pressed for it.

“Oh, this and that,” he answered with an airy wave of his hand. “A bit more this than that.”

Once again his eyes roamed the room before returning to Reefly. And there was a light of dangerous devilment in them that made the racketeer’s palms moisten.

“You know, Vic, there was a time when I might have paid you a less sociable visit,” he said almost wistfully. “Especially after that little brannigan in Gerrard Street the other night.”

The “little brannigan” had in fact been a sizeable melee in the course of which an illegal gambling club had been wrecked and its owner persuaded to part with the contents of his safe to pay the arrears on his “insurance.”

“I hear the guy was breaking the law,” Reefly said, with a faint twitch of his lips that might just have been meant for a smile.

“Whose law, Vic? Yours or the gentlemen’s in blue?”

“Both,” Reefly said curtly. “Now, Templar, if you ain’t dropped in to pass the time of day, what can I do for you?”

Simon appeared to consider the question.

“It’s more a question of what I can do for you,” he said at last. “There was a breakin at St. Jude’s the other night. A certain article was stolen. I’m interested in it.”

Reefly nodded thoughtfully.

“I heard about it,” he said guardedly. “What’s your interest?”

“That’s my business,” the Saint answered briskly. “Let’s just say that if you put me in touch with the right party you wouldn’t lose on the deal — and neither would they.”

The racketeer pondered the request for a while and seemed to find something amusing in it. When the Saint entered he had expected trouble, now it looked as if Simon Templar would owe him a favour, and he knew just how valuable an asset that could be.

He grinned, displaying his expensively gilded teeth.

“It might be arranged,” he conceded warily. “I’ll see what can be done.”

“You do that, Vic,” said the Saint, and stood up.

He stopped as he reached the door.

“And do it soon.” He smiled, but Reefly found nothing reassuring in the sight. “I’d hate to have to pay a less friendly visit.”

He left the club with a vague feeling of annoyance. He disliked Reefly and his kind on principle and was not happy with the possibility of becoming indebted to him. But that was a price about which he might not be able to haggle.

At the same time as he was climbing into a taxi and directing the driver to Upper Berkeley Mews, Taffy Owen was stepping from the dock at Bow Street. The unexpected appearance of Robin Nash had turned what the police solicitor had expected to be a straightforward remand in custody into a legal wrangle in which he was soon floundering. The magistrates were impressed by such a prominent advocate and his arguments, and Father Bernardo’s character reference together with a hefty financial deposit had combined to win Owen the bail the Saint wanted.

Simon was finishing a light lunch of smoked salmon, brown bread, and a bottle of Muscadet when his doorbell sounded.

He opened the door to admit Mila and a youth whom she introduced as Taffy, bade them welcome, sat them down, and dispensed coffee while listening to Mila’s account of the hearing.

He waved aside her thanks as he deposited himself in a chair facing Owen, whom he regarded with dispassionate appraisal.

“Okay, son,” he invited softly. “Tell Uncle Simon the story of your life.”

Taffy Owen could not have been much older than twenty, and although he was almost as tall as the Saint he was slim to the point of thinness. His curly black hair had not come in contact with a brush that day, and he appeared not to have shaved for twice as long. His jacket and trousers had been new a long time before he acquired them, and the cheap open-necked shirt looked as if it had been slept in.

He nervously avoided looking directly at Simon. He glanced around the room like an animal searching for an escape route, but the elegant and expensive furnishings he saw only served to increase his discomfort. Eventually he contented himself with staring at the pattern on the carpet.

Simon waited patiently for the boy to begin his story, but when at last he spoke it hardly amounted to a speech.

“I didn’t do it,” he mumbled.

The Saint sighed.

“Okay, just for a moment we’ll take that as read. But remember, I’m the guy who’s keeping you out of the slammer, and if I’m to continue to do that I’ll need some answers. Where were you while the chalice was being stolen?”

“I went for a walk,” Taffy said wearily. “I’ve already told it all to the police.”

“So tell me too,” said the Saint. “What did you do? And how come you had so much money on you?”

Taffy sat back in his chair and for the first time looked straight at the Saint. He spoke as if reciting a lesson learned by rote.

“About ten I left the mission and went for a walk. I had a drink in a pub near Trafalgar Square but the barman doesn’t remember me. Then I walked up through Green Park to Piccadilly and from there to St. Jude’s. I got back around midnight and went straight to bed. I just wanted some fresh air. I can’t prove it but it’s true.” Owen spread his hands in a gesture of despair. “Look, if I really had taken the chalice, don’t you think I’d have a better alibi than that?”

“Depends whether you are very stupid or very clever,” Simon said. “Go on.”

Taffy shrugged.

“That’s it. I was having breakfast when they came and pulled me in.”

“And how did you come by that hundred quid?”

“That was his savings,” said Mila quickly. “We’re planning to get married.”

“So you knew he had the money?”

Mila looked uncertainly from Taffy to the Saint.

“Well, no, I didn’t know he had so much,” she admitted. “But I knew Taffy had been doing odd jobs to get some.”

“I wanted to buy an engagement ring,” Owen said. “It was going to be a surprise.”

Mila slipped her arm through his and squeezed it affectionately. The look in her eyes said more about her feelings for Taffy than her words could ever have done.

Simon considered the story objectively. As he had pointed out to Peake, it could all be true but, even hearing it from Taffy personally, he could not dissociate himself from the detective’s scepticism. It could not be proved but neither could it be disproved, and the measure of doubt might give Owen an edge with a judge and jury. The Saint wanted it to be true for Mila’s sake. But for just that reason he had to be certain. He realised that trying to break such a non-alibi was futile, and questioning about the lad’s trouble in the past would only create a barrier of hostility.

He changed tack.

“So, Taffy, if you didn’t steal the chalice who did?”

It was a loaded question, for whoever had stolen it the second time might know that it was the Saint himself who had lifted it first. He searched the other’s face for any hint that the shot had scored, but he might just as well have studied a wooden mask — or the rehearsed expression of a good actor.

Taffy rebounded the question in a flat, tired tone without giving a clue to whether the reply was also double-edged.

“You’re the famous detective. You tell me.”

Simon smiled thoughtfully.

“Well, that’s what we have to find out,” he said blandly.

“What’s puzzling me,” said Mila, unaware of the verbal fencing match she was interrupting, “is how the thief thinks he’s ever going to be able to sell the chalice. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you can just go into a pawnshop and put on the counter.”

“There are ways,” Simon said briefly; and then, realising a new avenue was opening before him, went on: “My guess is he passed it on to a fence, probably taking a deposit, with the balance to come when the receiver has placed it.”

“But surely the fence would still have trouble getting rid of it,” Taffy said.

The Saint continued to watch him closely while he explained.

“There are specialist dealers around who work for very rich and very unscrupulous collectors, people who keep their treasures in vaults and gloat over them in private. I happen to know that there’s one of those operators in London right now. A character named Grondheim, staying at the Savoy and in the market for anything that’s not on general sale.”

The Saint’s tone was deliberately casual. A professional outlining tricks of the trade to the uninitiated. But the words were carefully chosen. They formed the trip wire of the trap he had begun to build the previous evening. Now all that remained was to wait and see who walked into it.

7

Vic Reefly did not believe in wasting time, and he started doing what he had been asked to do even before Simon Templar closed the front door of the Montparnasse Club behind him. But he was not a miracle worker, as he pointed out forcefully when the Saint telephoned later the same afternoon.

“I know you don’t perform miracles, Vic,” Simon agreed soothingly. “If you did, those bottles of water behind the bar might turn into alcohol. I just wondered how you were getting on.”

“None the quicker for you asking,” Reefly answered sourly. “I’ve put out some feelers and I think we’ll get something pretty soon. How do I contact you?”

“I’m staying at the Savoy while my place is redecorated. Ask for Mr. Tombs. Got that?”

“Sure I’ve got it,” said Reefly testily. “Tombs, eh? What’s your game, Saint?”

“I’ll teach it to you someday, Vic,” Simon replied with a laugh. “But the rules are a bit complicated.”

He dropped the receiver into its cradle and lay back on the bed, gazing at the white plaster ceiling of the hotel room and resigning himself to a period of patient waiting.

Mila and Taffy had left Upper Berkeley Mews a short while after he had told them about J.J. Grondheim. Had they loitered outside for half an hour, they would have been surprised to see that same American gentleman emerge from the premises and take a cab to the hotel. Had Vic Reefly been in the lobby of the Savoy when the said Mr. Grondheim returned, he might have been equally surprised to hear him tell the receptionist that any calls for a Mr. Sebastian Tombs, an English business colleague, were to be put through to his suite.

With the hook well and truly baited there was nothing left to do but sit at the other end of the line and wait for a bite. He could not leave the hotel in case a call came, and so he whiled away the evening with a. long and very expensive dinner followed by a sojourn in the bar where he discussed the rising crime rate in New York with a Manhattan advertising executive who was surprised by the breadth of his comprehensive knowledge of the subject.

At breakfast the following morning he was supplied with all the daily papers to help him pass the time. He had consigned three to the wastepaper basket before his telephone rang. The operator informed him that a gentleman named Dankin was asking to see him. The Saint told her to send him up.

Mr. Jonathan Dankin aptly fitted the description “gentleman.” He was slightly built, with a dapper taste in suits and a penchant for brightly coloured shirts. He carried himself with an assurance and spoke with an accent that identified him as a product of one of the better public schools. Anyone meeting him for the first time would not have been surprised to discover that he ran an antique shop in the Fulham Road, though they might have thought that Bond Street would have seemed a more fitting location.

Mr. Dankin would have agreed with them, but the firm of auctioneers in that particular thoroughfare for whom he had once worked would most certainly not have done so. They had dispensed with his services upon discovering that the works of art he declared copies, and so worth a fraction of their apparent value when under the hammer, were really originals. How many had been bought by Dankin’s accomplice at a knockdown price and later sold for considerably more had never been sorted out. His distinguished employers had not wanted to undergo the scandal of a formal investigation. Jonathan Dankin had left quietly to set up in business on his own.

The word was put round the antiques trade that he was not to be trusted. But what is a bad reputation in one quarter can amount to a testimonial in another. His specialist knowledge brought him many lucrative commissions, and as he knocked on the door of the Saint’s room he had few doubts that his present errand would be any exception.

Simon Templar had heard of Dankin though they had never met. In the circles in which the Saint moved, the fence was referred to not by his baptismal name but by the title conferred by those who visited his premises only at night: “the Professor” — commonly abbreviated to “the Prof.”

As soon as Simon opened the door the Prof produced a visiting card from his waistcoat pocket and handed it over. It stated simply his name and occupation, and carried a phone number without an address.

“I understand that you are in the same business, Mr. Grondheim,” Dankin said.

The Saint looked from the card to the dealer. His face was expressionless.

“Maybe,” he agreed warily. “Come in and we’ll talk about it.”

“Do you come to London often?” Dankin enquired as the Saint led the way into the sitting room.

“Sometimes,” Simon said, motioning Dankin to a chair. “But I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“Well, better late than never.”

The Saint sat opposite, conscious that he was being examined but confident that his cover would pass any test Dankin could impose.

“How did you know about me?” Simon asked.

“One hears these things, you know,” Dankin said. “One makes it one’s business to, you understand. Contacts in the trade, and with the staff in hotels such as this, for instance. Word gets around.”

“Really,” drawled the Saint. “And what did the word tell you, Mr. Dankin?”

“That you may be in the market for certain merchandise not, shall we say, on public display.”

“Is that so?” said the Saint slowly. “You’ll appreciate, Mr. Dankin, that as I don’t know you I should like some sort of reference. Don’t get me wrong, but I’m sure you’ll understand if I’d like to check with the person who sent you.”

The Professor looked at him without speaking for several seconds. He had been in such situations before and knew how to deal with them. He allowed the Saint to know he was being scrutinised and then leisurely rose to his feet.

“It appears, Mr. Grondheim, that I may have been misinformed.” His tone was brisk, almost curt. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

The Saint never moved from his chair. He knew that Dankin had little intention of leaving, but the card had been skilfully played and deserved to take the trick if not the game.

“Sit down, Mr. Dankin,” he said with a brief smile. “A man in my position has to be careful.”

The Prof returned the smile as he resumed his seat.

“We all have to be careful, Mr. Grondheim,” he agreed. “Now perhaps we can talk business.”

“Sure. What are you offering?”

“There are a number of items available to someone like yourself at the moment, Mr. Grondheim, but none, I think, which quite matches this.”

Dankin took a small black and white photograph from the inside pocket of his coat and held it out.

“If you are interested I could of course arrange an actual examination,” he continued, but the Saint barely heard him.

What he did hear as he gazed at the snapshot of the chalice was the whirring of imaginary gears as the wire was tripped and the trap began to close.

8

Simon appeared to study the photograph closely for half a minute before speaking.

“Middle eighteenth century... Evidence of Florentine influence, but the detail appears somewhat crude and heavy. Could be Portuguese but more probably Spanish,” he pronounced, and handed back the picture.

The Prof nodded approvingly.

“I see you know your antiques, Mr. Grondheim.”

“I know my job,” Simon responded, allowing a new curtness into his voice.

In its own way it was the truest statement he had made that morning. During a lifetime of wide-ranging piracy he had been obliged to learn to evaluate many exotic forms of plunder.

“You would like to view?” enquired the Prof, as he slipped the photograph back into his pocket.

“I would like to view,” the Saint said, and paused momentarily before adding:

“When would you like to bring it here?”

Mr. Dankin seemed slightly shocked by the suggestion. “To the hotel? Come now, Mr. Grondheim, I’m surprised you should even ask such a question.”

The Saint’s sigh carried just the right pitch of professional resignation.

“It’s only that I’m a little tired of midnight meetings in back rooms.”

He had not expected Dankin to agree, but it had been worth asking on the off chance. He knew the formalities that had to be observed on such occasions. The pattern dictated that they would haggle over the price; that a price would be agreed; that he would be taken to see the chalice, and that he would hand over the cash. Thus ran the conventional scenario. But the Saint had never considered himself bound by any scenario, and he had his own notion of the way in which the rules of the game might eventually be interpreted. For the present, however, there was nothing he could do but tag along with whatever arrangements the Prof felt like making.

“Your price?” Simon asked.

The Prof thought for a few seconds.

“Let us say thirty thousand pounds,” he suggested, with the air of a man anxious to be helpful even at cost to himself.

The Saint smiled thinly.

“Let’s say fifteen.”

The Prof appeared startled, as if he had been suddenly and unexpectedly insulted.

The bartering continued along well-worn grooves until they compromised on twenty-four thousand pounds, a figure both men knew to be about the chalice’s actual value on a high-class thieves’ market.

“Do you want pounds, dollars, or Swiss francs?” Simon asked when the figure had been agreed on.

“Sterling will be quite acceptable, thank you,” said the Prof primly, and stood up. “I will telephone this afternoon, when you will have had time to obtain the cash. I’m sure we can get our business concluded well before midnight.”

The Saint returned the smile with a grin equally lacking in warmth.

“Yes,” he agreed softly as he heard the outer door of the suite close behind the fence. “Yes, I’m sure we can.”

After a boringly lazy day spent mostly within the confines of the hotel he received the promised call shortly after five. The instructions were simple and direct. If Mr. Grondheim was in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, on the east side, with the money, at ten, he would be taken to see the chalice.

The choice of location showed a professionalism that Simon Templar appreciated. Cars do not normally park on bridges, therefore any that were would immediately arouse the suspicions of whoever arrived to collect him. Therefore the chances of his arranging to be followed were greatly reduced.

He was duly on the said bridge at the appointed time, with a briefcase in hand, and when a car pulled into the kerb beside him he spared it only one searching glance before climbing in beside the driver.

It was a black production-line saloon, indistinguishable from a thousand others traversing the streets of London that night, except that the acceleration of their departure showed that the engine had been made capable of a degree of performance far beyond the advertised claims of the manufacturer.

To the uninitiated the action of Mr. Grondheim in getting into a strange car in a strange city while carrying a considerable amount of instantly spendable currency might have appeared more than a little foolhardy. But then the uninitiated, by definition, do not know the protocol of such transactions. That Mr. Grondheim might easily have been forced to part with his money without ever getting a glimpse of the object it was to be spent on is true, but it is equally certain that had that happened the Prof would never have sold another stolen artifact, because a leper would have been treated as an honoured guest compared to the reception he would have received among his peers. It was also probable that some very large men would have been knocking at his door very shortly afterwards.

By the same token, Mr. Grondheim might have relieved the Prof of the chalice and refused to hand over the money. But Mr. Grondheim would be aware that his chances of leaving the country, or even London, with his money, the chalice, and himself intact would have been equal to the survival rating of a three-legged mouse in a cattery.

It was not honour among thieves. It was simply an understanding based on a mutual instinct for survival.

The only danger lay in the unlikely event of Mr. Grondheim not really being an accepted member of the brotherhood, which was why the Saint got into the car with only a tiny tremor of unease.

The driver was the only other occupant of the car. Simon’s chatty “Where to?” as they shot away received no reply, and other efforts to enliven the conversation during the drive were equally unsuccessful.

The man was in his mid-thirties and powerfully proportioned, but with a degree of intelligence in his features which indicated that he was not solely employed for his physical prowess. In the lexicon of the underworld, he was a “minder” — a cross between a bodyguard, a chauffeur, and an aide-de-camp.

Had the Saint really been a visiting American and not a native of the city with a knowledge of its byways that would have shamed a taxi driver, he would most certainly have been lost within the first half mile.

They headed south and toured the back streets around the Elephant and Castle before recrossing the river via Victoria Bridge. A meander through Belgravia followed until they hit Kensington, and the driver, finally convinced that they were not being shadowed, swung the car through the gates of Hyde Park. Their journey ended in the car park behind the restaurant near the Serpentine. The tarmac expanse was bare except for a Rolls-Royce in the far corner. They parked a few yards from it.

The driver half turned in his seat and jerked his head to indicate that his passenger should alight. As the Saint swung himself onto the ground the driver also got out and came around the car. He kept one hand in his coat pocket as his other patted the Saint’s clothes. Satisfied as to the absence of artillery, he nodded towards the Rolls and fell into step, a pace to the rear, as the Saint walked towards it.

Mr. Jonathan Dankin was sitting in the corner of the back seat. He switched on the interior light as the Saint climbed in and settled himself in the other corner. The driver remained outside, but so close that his frame blocked the window. Simon looked from the minder to Dankin.

“I see you don’t believe in taking chances,” he observed approvingly, and the Prof again gave his impression of a smile.

“In our business, Mr. Grondheim, one can’t afford to. Do you have the money?”

“Naturally.”

Simon opened the briefcase, on his knees, and permitted the Prof a glimpse of the neatly packed bundles of currency it contained.

His own gaze rested on the violin case which lay on the seat between them. Understanding the meaning of his look, the Prof flicked up the catches and took out the chalice, handing it across as casually as if he had been offering his guest a cigarette.

The Saint held the chalice in both hands and smiled. He inspected it for a few seconds, just to make sure that it was the genuine article and not a hastily manufactured substitute, and then faced Dankin squarely. “Just what I’ve been looking for,” he stated with absolute honesty.

The Prof smiled.

“Then it’s a deal?”

The Saint slowly shook his head, and when he spoke again there was no longer any trace of his former accent.

“I’m afraid, Prof, my little parasite, that you have been had, well and truly, one hundred per cent taken for the proverbial ride,” he explained softly. “You see, this chalice means a lot to a very dear friend of mine and I’m committed to returning it to him, and I’ve already gone to considerable expense to locate it.”

Dankin stared at his client while the words registered their meaning and then he opened his mouth to shout. The Saint did nothing to stop him. While he was speaking he had released the door catch and at the same time carefully placed the sole of his left shoe flat against the panel halfway between window and floor.

The Prof shouted and the minder outside turned and the Saint straightened his leg. The heavy door flew open and its edge caught the bodyguard flush in the centre of his chest and sent him reeling back. Before he could completely regain his balance the Saint was out of the car.

It is doubtful if the minder ever understood the precise sequence of the events which followed. One instant he felt himself stumbling backwards, his arms flailing as he attempted to remain vertical. Then he stopped retreating as two clamps appeared to fasten themselves on his collar and belt, and then he was flying back towards the car. Very soon afterwards his head made contact with the ground on the far side of the Rolls, and then he slept.

The Prof was still gaping out of the opposite window at his slumbering employee when the Saint leaned in and retrieved his briefcase and the violin case from the seat beside him. Dankin jerked round, instinctively cowering at the movement, but making only a feeble attempt to prevent it.

“You’ll never get away with this,” he said furiously.

The Saint laughed.

“I wish I had a tenner for every time someone has said that to me,” he remarked, and then his tone became serious. “One last thing, Prof, and I’ll be on my way. Who sold you the chalice?”

Simon waited for an answer but Dankin only goggled at him. It was a brace of seconds before the Saint realised that the fence was not looking at him but past him. In that same moment he heard the rustle of grass and spun round just in time to meet the first of the trio of men who had sprung from the bushes beside the kerb.

9

The pundit who proclaimed that when history repeats itself the first time it is tragedy and the second farce was commenting on weightier matters than an attempt at grievous bodily harm, but that does not make the pronouncement any less applicable.

This adventure had opened with the robber robbed, and the clear intention of the three heavies now bearing down on the Saint was to top it in exactly the same manner. The first occasion had threatened tragedy for Father Bernardo, the mission in general, and Taffy Owen in particular. The second might turn out to be farce but, Simon decided, it would be he who did the laughing.

This time too there was a difference. The Saint saw the attack coming and after the frustrations of the preceding days he would have happily taken on double the opposition purely for the pleasure of the exercise.

They came in a ragged line, the man in the centre a pace ahead of his companions. He wore a precision-tailored dinner jacket and spotless patents, his face was freshly scrubbed, and not one slicked-down hair was out of place. He looked as if he belonged on a dance floor rather than on a battleground, and he could hardly have presented a greater contrast to his companions.

The one to his right was thin-faced, a head shorter, and his rattish features were a day overdue for a shave. The third member of the party towered over them all, with a head like a boulder perched on shoulders like cliffs. They were known to their peers by the handles of Dandy, Slasher, and Bull.

The Saint recognised them; and their presence answered a question that had been bothering him since the previous morning. Now, untroubled, there was nothing else to do but enjoy the fun.

Dandy was within striking distance a fraction of a second after Simon completed his turn, and the two feet of lead pipe he carried was already swishing the air in the direction of the Saint’s cranium. That it dented the roof of the Rolls and not its target was solely due to a co-ordinated flow of reflex actions which sent the Saint earthwards as fast as if a trap door had opened beneath him. When he had descended as far as he could he came up again with the velocity of a howitzer shell.

Having missed at the first attempt, the speed of the Saint’s counter allowed him no margin for a second. The top of the Saint’s forehead exploded beneath his chin, and as Simon continued upwards his attacker began to go down. And that, simply and undramatically, was that.

Bull and Slasher now closed in from either side, but the Saint did not wait to receive them. Instead he went forward, jumping nimbly over the still crumpling Dandy and turning in the air as he went. Confused, both men halted and hesitated; the Saint did not. He sidestepped to his right, so placing the now prone figure of Dandy between himself and Bull. The move gave him invaluable seconds in which to concentrate on the smallest member of the committee.

As a straight opponent, the little man would have been an outside bet if the Saint had had his leg in plaster. But the cutthroat razor which glinted in his hand lowered the odds considerably.

Simon had no desire for what is termed in that locality a “Soho facial,” and there was an experienced air about the way the razor was held which inferred that Slasher was quite accustomed to providing such cosmetic surgery.

With Bull beginning to lumber forward to his left and the razor merchant beginning to advance behind his blade directly ahead, the Saint moved to his right. It was a situation the Marquis of Queensberry had not legislated for, and in such circumstances the Saint considered that the belt should be worn around the knees.

His foot travelled upwards and his leg straightened as his toe thudded into the little man’s groin. Slasher screamed, and the razor slipped from his fingers as he doubled over. The Saint stepped in swiftly and his fist slammed up into the thug’s face with a force that sent him sprawling backwards to land in a writhing heap at Bull’s feet.

Bull carried no weapon simply because he had always found that his physique made them unnecessary. He charged into the attack in a worthy imitation of his namesake. Any of his flailing punches would have ended the fight immediately had it connected, but the Saint was careful to ensure that they did not connect. He was giving away two inches in height and roughly eighty pounds in weight, and if he did not respect the man’s skill as a boxer he respected the physical differences.

Simon met Bull’s first attack with a barrage of straight jabs to the head that stopped him in his tracks. The tough replied by lashing out with his foot, but the Saint swayed to one side and took advantage of his opponent’s momentary loss of balance to drive home a combination of blows to the ribs that made Bull wince and reel away. The man was so large, and his technique so rudimentary, that for a trained fighter he was an almost impossible target to miss.

The Saint advanced behind a left hand that licked out and stung quicker than a snake’s tongue. Bull’s counters, such as they were, were absorbed by the bunched muscles of the Saint’s arms and shoulders, whose continual ducking and weaving meant that those that did get through were mainly glancing blows with little power left in them.

A final crunching left hook cracked home high on the side of the bruiser’s battered face and he stopped backtracking. His arms sagged and his eyes glazed, and he began to rock unsteadily. It is unlikely that he ever saw the uppercut that finally dropped him in front of the Rolls.

The whole affair was over in far less than the time taken to read about it. The Prof had watched from the safety of the Rolls, as transfixed as a rabbit in the beam of a searchlight. Only when Bull disappeared from his view did he suddenly realise his own danger, and by then it was too late.

The Saint’s hand descended on him before he had covered a dozen yards, and their conversation was resumed.

“I swear, I didn’t know they were there. Honest, you have to believe me,” Dankin blubbered as he was pushed roughly back against the side of the car.

“I’m sure you swear and I’m absolutely certain you’re not honest,” Simon replied. “But I do believe you.”

Relief showed itself by adding a faint tint to the fence’s ashen face, and then he looked into the clear cold blue of the Saint’s eyes and the colour faded again.

“You and your playmates have put me to a great deal of trouble,” said the Saint, and the dispassionate evenness of his voice was more menacing than any threats could have been.

He was about to elaborate on the theme, but the sounds emanating from the razor merchant indicated that the nausea which had rendered him useless was passing, and a low moan from the far side of the car showed that an earlier victim was also returning to an awareness of his surroundings.

The Saint smiled.

“Now you can help me. Open the door.”

The Prof obediently opened the rear door of the Rolls, and the Saint placed one hand on Slasher’s collar and the other on the seat of his pants and tossed him through the opening.

Around the other side, Dankin’s minder was just pulling himself upright but was too groggy to object as the Saint repeated the performance on his person. With the Prof’s help, Simon bundled first Dandy and then Bull into the car. The impact of the two unconscious thugs on top of the two already struggling to untangle their respective arms and legs was sufficiently deadening and confusing to allow the Saint the amount of time he required.

He removed the keys from the ignition and opened the rear compartment. He beckoned to the Prof.

“In.”

Dankin looked from the dark cavern to the Saint.

“But...”

“In,” Simon repeated, and the Prof, because there was nothing else he could do, obeyed.

Simon banged the lid shut and strode quickly to the car that had brought him. Its equipment did not contain the tow rope he had hoped for, but there was a very comprehensive tool kit. He selected a heavy hammer and returned to the Rolls. He opened the near-side rear door, pushed the catch to lock, and then brought the hammer down with the full strength of his arm behind it. The metal sheered off, and the Saint slammed the door and tested that it was secure before repeating the operation on the other three exits.

He stood back and surveyed his handiwork. It was not the most secure of prisons but, as two of its occupants would be sleeping for some time, and as the freedom of movement of the other pair was further restricted by the thick glass which partitioned the front seats from the rear, he judged it would hold long enough.

As he walked back to the other car his foot struck against something metal which on examination proved to be a .38 automatic. It must have fallen from Dankin’s bodyguard’s pocket during his flight, and with a faint smile the Saint thoughtfully slipped it into his own before swinging himself behind the wheel and gunning the engine into life. He swung the saloon in an arc and headed back onto the main road around the park that would bring him out near Marble Arch.

At a call box in Oxford Street he dialled the number of C Division and requested to speak to Detective Inspector Peake. He looked at his watch while he waited to be put through. It needed a few minutes to eleven. Fortunately the detective was still at his desk. He did not, however, sound particularly pleased when his caller identified himself.

“What do you want, Templar?” he demanded gruffly.

“I’m doing my law-abiding citizen act,” Simon told him. “It’s very popular — packs ’em in at the Palladium and the Chipping Gooseberry police ball. Death-defying feats of honesty, breathtaking bouts of truthfulness, dazzling displays of decency. You must catch my next spectacular, all profits to the fund for research into putting brains under policemen’s helmets.”

Peake was unimpressed.

“Very amusing if you happen to like listening to drivel at this time of night. I don’t, so say what you called to say.”

“You have no sense of the absurd, Inspector,” Simon remonstrated sadly. “Me, now, I have got a sense of the absurd, and I find it highly amusing that at this moment four of Vic Reefly’s heavy mob are locked in a Rolls-Royce behind the restaurant in Hyde Park and that their luggage in the back consists of a fence you’ve wanted to nail for years. Are you laughing yet?”

“No, but I’m interested.”

“Well, I advise you to toddle over fairly rapidly before they commit criminal damage to the interior of the said Rolls in trying to get out. Also I’m not sure how much air the poor old Prof has to spare. Personally, I don’t fancy giving him the kiss of life, but if the idea turns you on...”

“I’m on my way,” Peake cut in. “You will be there?”

“’Fraid not, Charlie. You can have the tiddlers. I’ve got a bigger fish to fry.”

“Listen, Saint, if you...”

But the Saint was not listening. He dropped the receiver into its bracket, got back into the car, which was now loaded with the violin case and his own attaché case, and pointed the radiator towards Soho.

10

Vic Reefly was not of a nervous disposition at any time, and in his office, with a quick escape route to the shop above via a trap door in the ceiling and a bevy of muscular employees outside, he felt at his most secure. So much so that he did not even bother to see what the fuss was about when the crash of glass and the thud of toppling tables reached him. At that time of night there were often fights and, far from objecting, the patrons welcomed them as part of the floor show. The noise subsided, and when the door opened he expected to hear only a brief report of the damage.

What he heard that night was a mocking drawling voice that seemed to lower the temperature of his blood by about sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

“What cheer, Victor. I was just passing so I thought I’d drop in. Unfortunately I seem to have landed on some of your staff.”

Reefly froze. He was kneeling beside the safe in the corner of the room with his back to the door when the Saint entered, and for several seconds seemed incapable of movement. When he did stir it was to send his hand darting towards the back of the safe.

“Don’t be silly, Vic,” cautioned the Saint.

Simultaneously Reefly recognised both the click of a safety catch being flicked and the sense of the Saint’s words. He withdrew his hand. Slowly he stood up and turned. The Saint was sitting on the edge of the table opposite the desk just as he had the previous morning, except that this time he was holding a .38 automatic.

“Sit down, chum, and let words pass between us,” Simon instructed, and Reefly did as he was told. “I’m afraid I’ve done some damage to your furniture and even more to two of your waiters who seemed to think you didn’t want to be disturbed. I didn’t expect it to be quite so easy, but then your regiment was under strength, what with your doorman, your barman, and your pet gorilla being otherwise engaged.”

“What have you done with them?”

The Saint smiled briefly as if he found a passing memory amusing.

“Not as much as I would have liked to do. But it was fun while it lasted.”

Reefly said nothing because there was nothing he could say. He had been in the game long enough to know when to throw in his hand. His best tactic now was just to keep silent and improvise when the chance came.

Simon Templar was happy to accept the stage. His tone was conversational, but the business end of the .38 never wavered from its target between the third and fourth buttons of Reefly’s flowery waistcoat.

“I suppose it wasn’t a bad idea from your point of view,” he conceded. “You tell the Prof about a possible buyer, you find out where the meet is going to be and arrange for a reception committee. That way you not only get to keep the chalice and the money but you get rid of me. Not permanently, of course, that would have caused too much fuss, but you figured that even I would have difficulty exacting my revenge with both legs in traction. And while I was out of action you could get on with those ambitious little schemes I warned you about yesterday. Correct?”

Reefly stage-managed a shrug.

“You’re the one who’s doing the talking.”

He tried to sound offhand but his mouth was too dry and his throat too tight to achieve the proper insouciant inflection.

Simon beamed across at Reefly.

“Don’t I sound interesting? It would have been a great scheme if it had worked — but unfortunately for you it didn’t.”

“So what are you going to do about it? You can’t use that popgun of yours in here.”

“What am I going to do about it?” echoed the Saint, as if considering the question for the first time. “Well, let’s consider the options. They’re building a new flyover at Kew and you could always help prop it up. No, I’ve done something similar to that before, and I do try not to repeat myself.”

He paused for a moment and in the silence Reefly seemed to hear his own heart beating.

“I could feed you to the jackals at the London Zoo, but I hear they’re a bit particular about the quality of their diet,” Simon said at last. “Then again there’s always the traditional cement booties and a swim down to Greenwich, but I hear they’re trying to clean the pollution from the Thames and I’d hate to add to their problems.” He sighed. “So I suppose it’s just going to have to be prison. Not very original and even less personally satisfying, but I’m getting so damned respectable these days.”

Reefly stared as if he could not believe his ears. And then he laughed.

“The police?” he demanded incredulously. “You’re going to go to the law and tell them I tried to nick a stolen chalice from you? They’d run you in as fast as me.”

The Saint shook his head, and that simple movement drained Reefly of all his suddenly found confidence.

“I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong, Vic. Right now, Inspector Peake is picking up what’s left of your enforcement squad, plus the Prof. And Brother Dankin at least is sure to sing, even if the others don’t. He’ll tell them that you sold him the chalice. So you’re going to admit you stole it.”

“Like hell I am,” said Reefly from between clenched teeth.

“Oh yes, you are, dear heart,” Simon corrected. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to give Peake a complete rundown on all the little gems of information I’ve collected about you over the years. Admit you stole the chalice and you’ll go down for five years and be out in three with remission. Refuse, and by the time I’m finished they’ll be throwing away the keys.”

Silence ensued while Reefly considered his options and made the choice the Saint had known he would have to make. Finally he nodded.

“I thought you’d see it my way,” said the Saint. “Two more things. First, who really brought you the chalice?”

The answer was the one Simon had expected but he felt no pleasure in having been proved right. He stood up and crossed the room.

“Second, this has been a rather expensive business so I’m sure you won’t mind contributing to my expenses.”

Reefly watched sullenly as the Saint knelt by the safe and extracted the wads of banknotes he had placed inside it a few minutes earlier. Simon stuffed the money into his jacket pockets. At a rough guess he put the total at around three thousand pounds. He wiped the door clean of his fingerprints, closed it on Reefly’s gun, and spun the dial.

“Bye, Vic. I’ll think of you every time I have porridge for breakfast.” He stopped at the door and turned. “You may think about trying to double-cross me. Try it and I guarantee you’ll never think about anything again.”

11

The chalice stood in the centre of Father Bernardo’s desk. Even minus its ornate lid, which the Saint had left in the Rolls beside the Prof to support the story he had built, it looked imposing, but to the Saint somehow less beautiful than when he had first seen it in that same room such a short while before.

He had just recounted the full story to the pastor and his niece — or almost the full story. Father Bernardo looked steadily at the chalice and said wearily: “I am happy it has been returned, even if now we again have the problem of keeping St. Jude’s open.”

Simon produced the banknotes he had lifted from Vic Reefly’s safe not very long before.

“A donation,” he said.

“From you?” asked Mila. “But we couldn’t—“

The Saint shook his head and smiled.

“No, not from me, from Vic Reefly. He experienced his own road to Damascus — or should it be Dartmoor?”

“There is one thing you have not told us,” said Father Bernardo. “Who really stole the chalice?”

It was the question Simon had been dreading, but fate decided that he would not have to answer it.

At that moment the study door opened and Taffy Owen stepped into the room. He saw the chalice and stopped, hesitated for a moment as he looked into the three faces turned towards him, and then turned and ran.

They listened in silence as his steps thudded on the un-carpeted stairs. The Saint made no attempt to follow him. Presently the front door slammed.

Simon looked at Mila and understood the effort she was making to hold back her tears. Father Bernardo studied his hands.

“He must have heard us discussing stealing the chalice. It was easy for him to slip out, hide, and cosh me as I climbed down the drainpipe. He took it straight to Reefly, and that’s how he came by the hundred pounds the police found. I’m sorry, Mila.”

The girl said nothing but rose shakily to her feet and walked out of the room.

Father Bernardo looked at the Saint.

“So what do we do now?” he asked wearily.

“We do nothing,” Simon said. “If we tell the police that Taffy stole the chalice, then he’s going to point the finger at me because I stole it in the first place, and if that happens you’re going to be dragged in as an accomplice. Anyway, it would only mean prolonging the misery for Mila.”

“Then Taffy gets away with it,” said Father Bernardo. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s not,” Simon admitted. “But that kid hasn’t got the brains to stay out of trouble for long, and next time he won’t be so lucky. At least you won’t be seeing him around here any more.”

“You know, I really thought he had changed,” said Father Bernardo. “I thought that I — we had changed him.”

“Like the man said, you can’t win ’em all,” said the Saint. “What is important is that you don’t stop trying.”

“You are right of course,” Father Bernardo said. And then he smiled. “But then, as a priest, how could I disagree with a Saint?”