11 The Brighter Buccaneer

They didn't. Mr. Deever, who, in spite of the tenor of his artistically-printed circulars, was not in the money-lending business on account of any urge to go down to mythology as the little fairy godmother of Manchester, had devised half a dozen ingenious and strictly legal methods of evading the lim­itations placed on him by the Act. The prospective borrower who came to him, full of faith and hope, for the loan of Ł10 to Ł50,000 was frequently accommodated-not, one must admit, on his note of hand alone, but eventually on the basis of some very sound security. And if the loan were promptly repaid, there the matter ended-at the statutory rate of interest for such transactions. It was only when the borrower found him­self in further difficulties that Mr. Deever's ingenious schemes came into operation. It was then that the victim found himself straying little by little into a maze of complicated mortgages, discounted checks, "nominal" promissory notes, mysterious "conversions," and technically-worded transfers-straying into that labyrinth so gradually at first that it all seemed quite harmless, slipping deeper into it over an easy path of documents and signatures, floundering about in it at last and losing his bearings more and more hopelessly in his struggles to climb back-finally awakening to the haggard realisation that by some incomprehensible jugglery of papers and figures he owed Mr. Deever five or six times as much money as Mr. Deever had given him in cash, and having it proved to him over his own signature that there was no question of the statutory rate of interest having been exceeded at any time.

Exactly thus had it been proved to the widow of a certain victim in the case that they had listened to that afternoon; and there were other similar cases that had come to the Saint's receptive knowledge.

"There were days," remarked the Saint, rather wistfully, "when some lads of the village and I would have carved Brother Deever into small pieces and baited lobster-pots with him from the North Foreland to the Lizard."

"And what now?" queried Peter Quentin.

"Now," said the Saint, regretfully, "we can only call on him for a large involuntary contribution to our Pension Fund for Deserving Outlaws."

Peter lowered the first quarter of his second highball.

"It'll have to be something pretty smart to catch that bird," he said. "If you asked me, I should say you couldn't take any story to him that wouldn't have to pass under a microscope."

"For which reason," murmured Simon Templar, with the utmost gravity, "I shall go to him with a story that is abso­lutely true. I shall approach him with a hook and line that the cleverest detective on earth couldn't criticise. You're right, Peter-there probably isn't a swindle in the encyclopedia that would get a yard past Brother James.

"It's a good thing we aren't criminals, Pete-we might get our fingers burned. No, laddie. Full of righteousness and good Scotch, we shall draw nigh to Brother James with our haloes fairly glistening. It was just for a man like him that I was sav­ing up my Perfect Crime."

If the Saint's halo was not actually visibly luminous when he called at Mr. Deever's offices the next morning, he at least looked remarkably harmless. A white flower ("for purity," said the Saint) started in his button-hole and flowed in all direc­tions over his coat lapel; a monocle was screwed into his right eye; his hat sat precariously on the back of his head; and his face was relaxed into an expression of such amiably aristo­cratic idiocy that Mr. Deever's chief clerk-a man hardly less sour-visaged than Mr. Deever himself-was even more ob­sequious than usual.

Simon said he wanted a hundred pounds, and would cheer­fully give a jolly old note of hand for it if some Johnnie would explain to him what a jolly old note of hand was. The clerk explained, oleaginously, that a jolly old note of hand was a somewhat peculiar sort of thing that sounded nice in adver­tisements, but wasn't really used with important clients. Had Mr.-er-Smith? had Mr. Smith any other kind of security?

"I've got some jolly old premium bonds," said the Saint; and the clerk nodded his head in a perfect sea of oil.

"If you can wait a moment, sir, perhaps Mr. Deever will see you himself."

The Saint had no doubt that Mr. Deever would see him. He waited around patiently for a few minutes, and was ushered into Mr. Deever's private sanctum.

"You see, I lost a bally packet at Derby yesterday-every blinkin' horse fell down dead when I backed it. I work a sys­tem, but of course you can't back a winner every day. I know I'll get it back, though-the chappie who sold me the system said it never let him down."

Mr. Deever's eyes gleamed. If there was anything that satisfied every one of his requirements for a successful loan, it was an asinine young man with a monocle who believed in racing systems.