11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"It's rather difficult to say exactly what is the matter with Bellingford Smart. He seems to be one of these sneaking swine who gets pleasure out of taking advantage of their position in petty ways. As far as his tenants are concerned, he keeps to the letter of his leases and makes himself as nasty as possible within those limits. There are lots of ways a landlord can make life unbearable for you if he wants to, as you probably know. The people he likes to get into his flats are lonely widows and elderly spinisters-they're easy meat for him."

"But I don't see what good that does him," said the Saint puzzledly. "He's only getting himself a bad name --"

"I had one of his late tenants in here the other day-she told me that she'd just paid him five hundred pounds to release her. She couldn't stand it any longer, and she couldn't get out any other way. If he does that often, I suppose it must pay him."

"But he's making it more and more difficult to let his flats, isn't he?"

The exquisite young man shrugged.

"All the agencies know him-we refuse to handle his stuff at all, and we aren't the only ones. But there are plenty of pro­spective tenants who've never heard of him. He advertises his flats and lets them himself whenever he can, and then the ten­ants don't find out their mistake till it's too late. It must seem amazing to you that anything like that can go on in this neigh­bourhood; but his petty persecutions are all quite legal, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it."

"I see," said the Saint softly.

The solution of the mystery, now that he knew it, struck him as being one of the most original, and at the same time one of the meanest and most contemptible, forms of blackmail that he had ever heard of; and the fact that it skulked along under the cover of the law made it twice as sickening. He had no doubt that it was all true-even the worthiest of estate agents are not in the habit of turning down commissions without the strongest possible grounds, and Major Bellingford Smart's nastiness appeared to be common knowledge in the profession. There were some forms of unpleasantness that filled the Saint with an utter loathing, and the meanness of Major Bellingford Smart was one of them. Simon had an en­tirely immoral respect for the wholehearted criminal who gam­bled his liberty on the success of his enterprises, but a livelihood that was gained principally by bullying and swindling fat-headed old women turned his stomach.

"He has quite a lot of property around here," the exquisite young man was informing him. "He buys up houses and con­verts them into flats. You'll see what sort of a man he is when I tell you that while his conversions are being carried out it's his habit to hire a room in the neighbourhood from which he can overlook the site, and he prowls around there at odd times with a pair of field-glasses to see if he can catch his workmen slacking. Once he saw a couple of men having a cup of tea in the afternoon, and went around and fired them on the spot."

"Isn't there anything he doesn't sink to?" asked the Saint.

"I can't think of it," said the exquisite young man slan­derously. "A few months ago he had a porter at 17, David Square who'd stayed with him eleven years-I can't think why. The porter's wife acted as a sort of housekeeper, and their daughter was employed in the Major's own flat as a maid. You can imagine what a man like that must be like to work for, and this daughter soon found she couldn't stick it. She tried to give notice, and Smart told her that if she left him her father and mother would be fired out into the street-the porter was an old man of well over sixty. The girl tried to stay on, but at last she had to run away. The first the porter and his wife knew about it was when Smart sent for them and gave them a month's notice. And at the end of the month they duly were fired out, with Smart still owing them three weeks' wages which they tried for weeks to get out of him until the son of one of the tenants went round and saw Smart and damned well made him pay up under the threat of putting his own solicitors on the job. The porter died shortly afterwards. I expect it all sounds incredible, but it's quite true."

Simon departed with a sheaf of Orders to View which he destroyed as soon as he got outside, and walked round very thoughtfully in the direction of David Square. And the more he thought of it, the more poisonous and utterly septic the personality of Major Bellingford Smart loomed in his con­sciousness. It occurred to the Saint, with a certain honest re­gret, that the calls of his own breezy buccaneering had lately taken his thoughts too far from that unlawful justice which had once made his name a terror more salutary than the Law to those who sinned secretly in tortuous ways that the Law could not touch. And it was very pleasant to think that the old life was still open to him . . .