11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"I hope Ambrose and James G. are having lots of fun looking for your black pearls, Peter," drawled the Saint piously, as he stood at the counter of Thomas Cook and watched American bills translating themselves into English bank notes with a fluency that was all the heart could desire.

The Perfect Crime

"THE defendants," said Mr. Justice Goldie, with evident dis­taste, "have been unable to prove that the agreement between the plantiff and the late Alfred Green constituted a money-lending transaction within the limits of the Act; and I am therefore obliged to give judgment for the plantiff. I will con­sider the question of costs tomorrow."

The Saint tapped Peter Quentin on the shoulder as the court rose, and they slipped out ahead of the scanty assembly of spectators, bored reporters, dawdling solicitors, and tradi­tionally learned counsel. Simon Templar had sat in that stuffy little room for two hours, bruising his marrowbones on an astonishingly hard wooden bench and yearning for a cigarette; but there were times when he could endure many discomforts in a good cause.

Outside, he caught Peter's arm.

"Mind if I take another look at our plantiff?" he said. "Just over here-stand in front of me. I want to see what a snurge like that really looks like."

They stood in a gloomy corner near the door of the court, and Simon sheltered behind Peter Quentin's hefty frame and watched James Deever come out with his solicitor.

It is possible that Mr. Deever's mother loved him. Perhaps, holding him on her knee, she saw in his childish face the fulfilment of all those precious hopes and shy incommunicable dreams which (if we can believe the Little Mothers' Weekly) are the joy and comfort of the prospective parent. History does not tell us that. But we do know that since her death, thirty years ago, no other bosom had ever opened to him with any­thing like that sublime mingling of pride and affection.

He was a long cadaverous man with a face like a vulture and shaggy white eyebrows over closely-set greenish eyes. His thin nose swooped low down over a thin gash of a mouth, and his chin was pointed and protruding. In no respect whatsoever was it the kind of countenance to which children take an instinc­tive shine. Grown men and women, who knew him, liked him even less.

His home and business address were in Manchester; but the City Corporation had never been heard to boast about it. Si­mon Templar watched him walk slowly past, discussing some point in the case he had just won with the air of a parson con­ferring with a churchwarden after matins, and the reeking hypocrisy of the performance filled him with an almost irre­sistible desire to catch Mr. Deever's frock-coated stern with the toe of his shoe and start him on one sudden magnificent flight to the foot of the stairs. The Manchester City Corporation, Simon considered, could probably have kept their ends up without Mr. Deever's name on the roll of ratepayers. But the Saint restrained himself, and went on peaceably with Peter Quentin five minutes afterwards.

"Let us drink some Old Curio," said the Saint.

They entered a convenient tavern, lighting cigarettes as they went, and found a secluded corner in the saloon bar. The court had sat on late, and the hour had struck at which it is lawful for Englishmen to consume the refreshment which can only be bought at any time of the day in uncivilised foreign countries.

And for a few minutes there was silence . . .

"It's wonderful what you can do with the full sanction of the law," Peter Quentin said presently, in a rather sourly reflective tone; and the Saint smiled at him wryly. He knew that Peter was not thinking about the more obvious inanities of the English licensing laws.

"I rather wanted to get a good close-up of James, and watch him in action," he said. "I guess all the stories are true."

There were several stories about James Deever; but none of them ever found their way into print-for libel actions mean heavy damages, and Mr. Deever sailed very comfortably within the law. His business was plainly and publicly that of a money­lender, and as a money-lender he was duly and legally reg­istered according to the Act which had done so much to bring the profession of usury within certain humane restrictions.

And as a plain and registered money-lender Mr. Deever retained his offices in Manchester, superintending every detail of his business in person, trusting nobody, sending out beauti­fully-worded circulars in which he proclaimed his readiness to lend anybody any sum from Ł10 to Ł50,000 on note of hand alone, and growing many times richer than the Saint thought anyone but himself had any right to be. Nevertheless, Mr. Deever's business would probably have escaped the Saint's attentions if those few facts had covered the whole general principle of it.