11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"If you ever read a story-book, Pat, in which anyone dis­guises himself as someone else so perfectly that the imper­sonated bloke's own friends and secretaries and servants are taken in, you'll know there's an author who's cheating on you. On the stage it might be done up to a point; but in real life, where everything you put on has got to get by in broad daylight and close-ups, it's impossible. I," said the Saint un­blushingly, "am the greatest character actor that never went on the stage, and I know. But when it comes to inventing a new character of your own that mustn't be recognised again-then you can do things."

He turned around suddenly, and she gasped. He was perfect. His shoulders were rounded and stooping; his head was bent slightly forward, as if set in that position by years of poring over ledgers. And he gazed at her with the dumb passionless expression of his part-an under-nourished, under-exercised, middle-aged man without hopes or ambitions, permanently worried, crushed out of pleasure by the wanton taxation which goes to see that the paladins of Whitehall are never deprived of an afternoon's golf, utterly resigned to the sombre purpose­lessness of his existence, scraping and pinching through fifty weeks in the year in order to let himself be stodgily swindled at the seaside for a fortnight in August, solemnly discussing the antics of politicians as if they really mattered and honestly believing that their cow-like utterances might do something to alleviate his burdens, holding a crumbling country together with his own dour stoicism and the stoicism of millions of his own kind . . .

"Will I do?" he asked.

From Benny Lucek's point of view he could scarcely have done better. Benny's keen eyes absorbed the whole atmosphere of him in one calculating glance that took in every detail from the grey hair that was running a little thin on top down to the strenuously polished shoes.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Tombs. Come along and have a cocktail-I expect you could do with one."

He led his guest into the sumptuous lounge, and Mr. Tombs sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair. It is impossible to refer to that man of the Saint's creation as anything but "Mr. Tombs"-the Simon Templar whom Patricia knew might never have existed inside that stoical stoop-shouldered frame.

"Er-a glass of sherry, perhaps," he said.

Benny ordered Dry Sack, and knew that the only sherry Mr. Tombs had ever tasted before came from the nearest grocer. But he was an expert at putting strangers at their ease, and the Simon Templar who stood invisibly behind Mr. Tombs's chair had to admire his technique. He chattered away with a disarm­ing lack of condescension that presently had Mr. Tombs lean­ing back and chuckling with him, and ordering a return round of Dry Sack with the feeling that he had at last met a success­ful man who really understood and appreciated him. They went in to lunch with Benny roaring with infectious laughter over a vintage Stock Exchange story which Mr. Tombs had dug out of his memory.

"Smoked salmon, Mr. Tombs? Or a spot of caviare? . . . Then we might have oeufs en cocotte Rossini-done in cream with foie gras and truffles. And roast pigeons with mushrooms and red currant jelly. I like a light meal in the middle of the day-it doesn't make you sleepy all the afternoon. And a bottle of Liebfraumilch off the ice to go with it?"

He ran through menu and wine list with an engaging ex­pertness which somehow made Mr. Tombs an equal partner in the exercise of gastronomic virtuosity. And Mr. Tombs, whose imagination had rarely soared above roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and a bottle of Australian burgundy, thawed still further and recalled another story that had provoked howls of laughter in Threadneedle Street when he was in his twenties.

Benny did his work so well that the sordid business aspect of their meeting never had a chance to obtrude itself during the meal; and yet he managed to find out everything he wanted to know about his guest's private life and opinions. Liquefying helplessly in the genial warmth of Benny's hospitality, Mr. Tombs became almost human. And Benny drew him on with unhurried mastery.

"I've always thought that insurance must be an interesting profession, Mr. Tombs. You've got to be pretty wide awake for it, too-I expect you always have clients who expect to take more out of you than they put in?"

Mr. Tombs, who had never found his job interesting, and who would never have detected an attempted fraud unless another department had pointed it out to him, smiled non­committally.