11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"By post. Mr. Tillson-Broads is coming in tomorrow to see it off and enclose a letter, and a man from the insurance company is coming down as well-that seems an awful lot of formality, but I suppose they have to be careful. Now what do you think will happen? Will Broads pull out a gun and hold us all up?"

"I doubt it," murmured the Saint mildly. "Broads isn't a violent man. Besides, if there was anything like that in the air he'd have done it yesterday. Let me think."

He leaned back and scowled thoughtfully into space. More than once he had truthfully admitted that the solving of ancient mysteries wasn't in his line; but the imaginative con­struction of forthcoming ones was another matter. The Saint's immoral mind worked best and most rapidly along these lines . . . And then, as he scowled into space, a headline in the evening paper that was being read by a fat gent at an adjoining table percolated into his abstracted vision; and he sat up with a start that made the fat gent turn round and glare at him.

"I've got it!" he cried. "Whoops-and what a beauty!"

She caught at his sleeve.

"Tell me, Simon."

"No, darling. That I can't do-not till afterwards. But you shall hear it, if you like to meet me again on Saturday. What time is this posting party?"

"Eleven o'clock. But listen-I must tell Mr. Emberton --"

"You must do nothing of the sort." The Saint shook his head at her sadly. "What do you want to do, Ruth-ruin the only bit of business the poor man's done this week? He's got his money, hasn't he? The rest of the show is purely private."

When she continued to try and question him he returned idiotic answers that made her want to smack him; and she went home, provoked and disappointed, and not entirely con­soled by his repeated promise to tell her the whole story after it was over.

But her sense of excitement returned when Mr. Tillson presented himself at the office next morning. Looking at that rather pathetically horse-faced gentleman in his faintly clerical garb, it was difficult to believe that he could possibly be the man that the Saint had described. He was punctual to the minute; and the insurance company's representative came in soon afterwards.

She showed them into the inner office, and found it easy to stay around herself while the package was being prepared and sealed. She watched the entire proceedings with what she would always believe was well-simulated unconcern, but which actually would have seemed like a hypnotic stare to anyone who had noticed her; and yet, when it was all over and the various parties had shaken hands and departed, she could not recall the slightest incident that had deviated from the matter-of-fact formality which should have been expected of the affair.

She even began to wonder, with a feeling that her doubt was almost sacrilegious, whether the Saint could have been mis­taken. . . .

Mr. Alfred Tillson was not so reassured. He was perspiring a little when he met Happy Fred Jorman on the street corner.

"Yes, I effected the substitution," he said shortly, in answer to his partner's questions. "I trust I have aroused no suspicion. There was a kind of girl amanuensis in the room all the time, and she stared at me from the minute I arrived until the minute I left. I expected her to make some comment at any moment but she took her eyes off me for a second when I knocked my hat off the desk. Let's get back to my hotel."

They took a taxi to the hotel in Bloomsbury where Mr. Tillson had taken a modest suite-Broads Tillson had luxu­rious tastes which had never helped him to save money, and he had insisted that this setting was necessary for the character he had to play. Happy Fred Jorman, whose liberty was not in jeopardy, was elated.

"That was just your imagination, Broads," he said as they let themselves in. "She was probably wishing she had a friend who sent her thousand-pound bracelets. It's just the newness of it that's upset you-you'll get used to it after you've done it a few times. I was saying to myself all the time you were practising. 'Fred,' I was saying. 'Broads Tilson rings the changes better than anyone else you've ever met in your life. You've picked the best partner --' "

Mr. Tillson poured himself out a whisky-and-soda and sank into a chair. From his breast pocket he drew a packet with one seal on it-it was the exact replica of the packet that had been mailed to Paris, as it had appeared after the first seal had been placed on it in Mr. Emberton's office.

"You'll have to fence the article, Fred," said Mr. Tillson. "I've never had anything to do with such things."