11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"What you mean is he's a kind of hijacker, is he? Hard-boiled, huh? I didn't know you'd got any racket like that over here. And he figures I ought to pay him for 'protection.' That's funny!" Max Kemmler was grimly amused. "Well, I'd like to see him try it."

"He's tried a lot of things like that and got away with them, Mr. Kemmler," said the croupier awkwardly.

Max turned down one corner of his mouth.

"Yeah? So have I. I guess I'm pretty tough myself, what I mean."

He had a reminder of the conversation the next morning, when a plump and sleepy-looking man called and introduced himself as Chief Inspector Teal.

"I hear you've had a warning from the Saint, Kemmler-one of our men heard you talking about it last night."

Max had done some thinking overnight. He was not expect­ing to -be interviewed by Mr. Teal, but he had his own ideas on the subject that the detective raised.

"What of it?"

"We want to get the Saint, Kemmler. You might be able to help us. Why not tell me some more about it?"

Max Kemmler grinned.

"Sure. Then you know just why the Saint's interested in me, and I can take the rap with him. That dick at the next table ought to have listened some more-then he could have told you I was warned about that one. No, thanks, Teal! The Saint and me are just buddies together, and he called me to ask me to a party. I'm not saying he mightn't get out of line sometime, but I can look after that. He might kind of meet with an acci­dent."

It was not the first time that Teal had been met with a similar lack of enthusiasm, and he knew the meaning of the word "no" when it was pushed up to him in a certain way. He departed heavily; and Simon Templar, who was sipping a Dry Sack within view of the vestibule, watched him go.

"You might think Claud Eustace really wanted to arrest me," he remarked, as the detective's broad back passed through the doors.

His companion, a young man with the air of a gentlemanly prize-fighter, smiled sympathetically. His position was privi­leged, for it was not many weeks since the Saint's cheerful dis­regard for the ordinances of the law had lifted him out of a singularly embarrassing situation with a slickness that savoured of sorcery. After all, when you have been youthfully and fool­ishly guilty of embezzling a large sum of money from your employers in order to try and recoup the losses of an equally youthful and foolish speculation, and a cheque for the missing amount is slipped into your hands by a perfect stranger, you are naturally inclined to see that stranger's indiscretions in an unusual light.

"I wish I had your life," said the young man-his name was Peter Quentin, and he was still very young.

"Brother," said the Saint good-humouredly, "if you had my life you'd have to have my death, which will probably be a sticky one without wreaths. Max Kemmler is a tough egg all right, and you never know."

Peter Quentin stretched out his legs with a wry grimace.

"I don't know that it isn't worth it. Here am I, an A1 prop­osition to any insurance company, simply wasting everything I've got with no prospect of ever doing anything else. You saved me from getting pushed in the clink, but of course there was no hope of my keeping any job. They were very nice and friendly when I confessed and paid in your cheque, but they gave me the air all the same. You can't help seeing their point of view. Once I'd done a thing like that I was a risk to the company, and next time they mightn't have been so lucky. The result is that I'm one of the great unemployed, and no dole either. If I ever manage to get another job, I shall have to consider myself well off if I'm allowed to sit at an office desk for two hundred and seventy days out of the year, while I get fat and pasty and dream about the pension that'll be no use to me when I'm sixty."

"Instead of which you want to go on a bread-and-water diet for a ten-years' sentence," said the Saint. "I'm a bad example to you, Peter. You ought to meet a girl who'll put all that out of your head."

He really meant what he said. If he refused even to consider his own advice, it was because the perilous charms of the life that he had long ago chosen for his own had woven a spell about him that nothing could break. They were his meat and drink, the wine that made unromantic days worth living, his salute to buccaneers who had had better worlds to conquer. He knew no other life.