11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"And so," said Sir Ambrose, patting the Saint's knee impres­sively with his flabby hand, "when I heard that the path of the new by-pass road cut straight through the middle of that old widow's property, what did I do? Did I go to her and say, 'Madam, in another week or two you'll be able to put your own price on this house, and any bank or building society would be glad to lend you enough to pay off this instalment of the mortgage'? Why, if I'd done anything like that I should have been a fool, sir-a sentimental old fool. Of course I didn't. It was the old geezer's own fault if she was too stupid and doddering to know what was going on around her. I simply fore­closed at once; and in three weeks I'd sold her house, for fifteen times as much as I gave her for it. That's business." Sir Am­brose chortled wheezily over the recollection. "By gad, if words could break bones I should be wheeling myself about in an invalid chair still. But that kind of thing doesn't worry me! . . . Have another drink."

"Have one with me," suggested the Saint half-heartedly; but Sir Ambrose waved the invitation aside.

"No, sir. I never allow a young man to pay for my drinks. Have a good time with me. The same again?"

Simon nodded, and lighted a cigarette while Sir Ambrose toddled over to the bar. He was a pompous and rather tubby little man, with a waxed moustache that matched his silver-grey spats, and a well-wined complexion that matched the carnation in his button-hole; and the Saint did not like him. In fact, running over a lengthy list of gentlemen of whom he had gravely disapproved, Simon Templar found it difficult to name anyone whom he had felt less inclined to take into his bosom with vows of eternal brotherhood.

He disliked Sir Ambrose no less heartily because he had known him less than a couple of hours. With an idle evening to spend by himself, the Saint had sailed out into the West End of London to pass it as entertainingly as he could. He had no plans whatever, but his faith in the beneficence of the gods was sublime. Thus he had gone in search of adventure before, and he had rarely been disappointed. To him, the teeming thousands of assorted souls who jostled through the sky-sign area on a Saturday night were so many oysters who might be opened by a man with the clairvoyant eye and delicate touch which the Saint claimed for his genius. It was a business of drifting where the whim guided him, following an impulse and hoping that it might lead to an interest, taking a chance and not caring if it failed.

In just that spirit of careless optimism he had wandered into a small hotel in a quiet street behind the Strand and dis­covered an almost deserted bar where he could imbibe a glass of ale while seeking inspiration for his next move. And it was there that a casual remark about the weather had floated him into the acquaintance of Sir Ambrose, who, having presented his card, pulled out the opening chord of his theme song and said: "Have a drink?"

Simon had a drink. Even before the state of the weather arose as an introduction, he had felt a professional curiosity to know whether anybody could be quite as unsavoury a bore as Sir Ambrose looked. And he had not been disappointed. Within five minutes Sir Ambrose had him sitting in a corner listening to the details of an ingenious trick he had invented as a boy at school for swindling his contemporaries out of their weekly ration of toffee. Within ten minutes Sir Ambrose was leading on to a description of the smart deals on a larger scale which had built up his comfortable fortune. He seemed to have had several drinks on his own before he started intoning his chorus to the Saint. The effects of them had not added to his charm. And the more cordially Simon learned to detest him, the more intently Simon listened-for it had dawned on the Saint that perhaps his evening was being well spent.

Sir Ambrose returned with steps that could have been steadier, and slopped over some of the whisky as he deposited their glasses on the table. He sat down again and leaned back with a sigh of large-waisted well-being. "Yes, sir," he resumed tirelessly. "Sentiment is no good. My uncle was sentimental, and what did it do for him?"

Not having known Sir Ambrose's uncle, Simon found the question unanswerable.

"It made him a pest to his heirs," said Sir Ambrose, solving the riddle. "That's what it did. Not that he left much for us to inherit-a beggarly ten thousand odd was all that he managed to keep out of the hands of the parasites who traded on his soft heart. But what did he do with it?"

Once again the Saint was nonplussed. Sir Ambrose, however, did not really require assistance.

"Look at this," he said.