06 Alias the Saint

And then he would have told how, on the following Saturday evening, the posters of the Daily Record caught his eye, and something made him buy a copy of the paper; and he went home to tell Patricia that Miles Hallin had crashed again at Brooklands, and Miles Hallin had escaped again with hardly a scratch, but his passenger, Teddy Everest, had been burned to death before the whole crowd.

3

You see," Nigel Perry explained simply, "Moyna's people are frightfully poor."

"Yeah," said the Saint

"And Miles is such a damned good chap."

"Yeah," said the Saint.

"It makes it awfully difficult."

"Yeah," said the Saint.

They lay stretched out in armchairs, masked by clouds of cigarette smoke, in the bed-sitting-room which was Nigel Perry's only home. And Perry, bronzed and clear-eyed from ten days' tramping in Spain, was unburdening himself of his problem.

"You haven't seen Moyna yet, have you?" said the Saint.

"Well, hang it, I've only been back a few hours! But she'll be in later--she's got to have dinner with an aunt, or something, and she'll get away as soon as she can."

"What d'you think of your chances?"

Perry ran brown fingers through his hair.

"I'm blowed if I know, Templar," he said ruefully. "I--I've tried to keep clear of the subject lately. There's such a lot to think about. If only I'd got some real money--"

"D'you think a girl like Moyna cares a hoot about that?"

"Oh, I know! But that's all very fine. Any sensible girl is going to care about money sooner or later. She's got every right to. And if she's nice enough to think money doesn't matter--well, a chap can't take advantage of that, . . . You know, that's where Miles has been so white. That money he paid over to me as my brother's share in the mine--he's really done his best to help me to make it grow. 'If it's a matter of Ł s. d.,' he said, 'I'd like you to start all square.' "

"Did he?" said the Saint.

Perry nodded.

"I believe he worked like a Trojan. Pestered all his friends to try and find me a cast-iron investment paying about two hundred percent. And he found one, too--at least, we thought so. Funnily enough, it was another gold mine--only this time it was in South Africa--"

"Hell!" said the Saint.

"What d'you mean?"

"Hell," said the Saint. "When was this--last week?"

The youngster looked at him puzzledly.

"Oh, no. That was over a year ago. . . . But the shares didn't jump as they were supposed to. They've just gone slowly down. Not very much, but they've gone down. I held on, though. Miles was absolutely certain his information couldn't be wrong. And now he's just heard that it was wrong---there was a letter waiting for me--"

"He's offered to buy the shares off you, and make up your loss."

Perry stared.

"How did you know?"

"I know everything," said the Saint.

He sprang to his feet suddenly. There was an ecstatic expression on his face that made Perry wonder if perhaps the beer ...

Perry rose slowly; and the Saint's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Moyna's coming to-night, isn't she?"

"I told you--"

"I'll tell you more. You're going to propose, my lad."

"What?"

"Propose," drawled the Saint. "If you've never done it before, I'll give you a rapid lesson now. You take her little hand in yours, and you say, huskily, you say: 'Moyna, d'you think we could do it?' 'Do what?' she says. 'Get fixed,' says you. 'Fixed?' she says. "How?' 'Keep the party clean,' says you. 'Moyna,' you say, crrrushing her to your booosom-- that's a shade north of your cummerbund-- 'Moyna, I laaaaaaave you!' . . . That will be two guineas. You can post me a check in the morning-- as the actress used to say. She was a perfect lady. ... So long!"

And the Saint snatched up his hat. He was halfway to the door when Perry caught him.

"What's the idea. Templar?"

Simon turned, smiling.

"Well, you don't want me on the scene while you shoot your speech, do you?"

"You don't have to go yet."

"Oh, yes, I do."

"Where?" .

"I'm going to find Miles!"

"But you've never met him."

"I haven't. But I'm going tot"

Perry blocked the doorway,

"Look here. Templar," he said, "you can't get away with this. There's a lot of things I want to know first. Hang it--if I didn't know you pretty well, I'd say you'd gone clean off your rocker."

"Would you?" said the Saint gently.

He had been looking at Perry all the time, and he had been smiling all the time, but all at once the younger man saw something leap into the Saint's gaze that had not been there before--something like a flash of naked steel.

"Then," said the Saint very gently, "what would you say if I told you I was going to kill Miles Hallin?"

Perry fell back a pace.

"You're crazy!" he whispered.

"Sure," said the Saint. "But not so crazy as Miles Hallin must have been when he killed a friend of ', mine the other day."

"Miles killed a friend of yours? What in God's name d'you mean?"

"Oh, for the love of Pete!'