11 The Brighter Buccaneer

"I'd do anything you asked me to," said the inventor.

"Then never forget," said Simon deliberately, "that I was with you the whole of this morning-from half past ten till one o'clock. That might be rather important." Simon lighted a cigarette ajid stretched himself luxuriously in his chair. "And when you've got that thoroughly settled into your memory, let us try to imagine what Augustus Parnock is doing right now."

It was at that precise moment, as a matter of history, that Mr. Augustus Parnock and his friend who understood those things were staring at a brass ashtray on which no vestige of plating was visible.

"What's the joke, Gus?" demanded Mr. Parnock's friend at length.

"I tell you it isn't a joke!" yelped Mr. Parnock. "That ashtray was perfectly plated all over when I put it in my pocket at lunchtime. The fellow gave me his formula and everything. Look-here it is!"

The friend who understood those things, studied the scrap of paper, and dabbed a stained forefinger on the various items.

"Cu is copper," he said. "Hg is mercury and HNO3, is nitric acid. What it means is that you dissolve a little mercury in some weak nitric acid; and when you put it on copper the nitric acid eats a little of the copper, and the mercury forms an amalgam. CuHgNO3 is the amalgam-it'd have a silvery look which might make you think the thing had been plated. The other constituents resolve themselves in H2O, which is water, and NO2, which is a gas. Of course, the nitric acid goes on eating, and after a time it destroys the amalgam and the thing looks like copper again. That's all there is to it."

"But what about the St?" asked Mr. Parnock querulously. His friend shrugged.

"I can't make that out at all-it isn't any chemical symbol," he said; but it dawned on Mr. Parnock later.

The Unusual Ending

SIMON TEMPLAR buttered a thin slice of toast and crunched happily.

"I have been going into our accounts," he said, "and the results of the investigation will amaze you."

It was half past eleven; and he had just finished breakfast. Breakfast with him was always a sober meal, to be eaten with a proper respect for the gastronomic virtues of grilled bacon and whatever delicacy was mated with it. On this morning it had been mushrooms, a dish that had its own unapproachable place in the Saint's ideal of a day's beginning; and he had dealt with them slowly and lusciously, as they deserved, with golden wafers of brown toast on their port side and an open newspaper propped up against the coffee-pot for scanning to starboard. All that had been done with the solemnity of a pleasant rite. And now the last slice of toast was buttered and marmaladed, the last cup of coffee poured out and sugared, the first cigarette lighted and the first deep cloud of fragrant smoke inhaled; and the time had come when Simon Templar was wont to touch on weighty matters in a mood of profound contentment.

"What is the result?" asked Patricia.

"Our running expenses have been pretty heavy," said the Saint, "and we haven't denied ourselves much in the way of good things. On the other hand, last year we had a couple of the breaks that only come once in a lifetime, which just helps to show how brilliant we are. Perrigo's illicit diamonds and dear old Rudolf's crown jewels." 1 The Saint smiled reminis­cently. "And this current year's sport and dalliance hasn't been run at a total loss. In fact, old darling, at this very moment we're worth three hundred thousand quid clear of all over­head; and if that isn't something like a record for a life of crime I'll eat my second-best hat. I'm referring, of course," said the Saint fastidiously, "to a life of honest crime. Company promoters and international financiers we don't profess to compete with." 1 See Saint's Getaway (Doubleday) Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, on the same day, reviewed the same subject with less contentment, which was only natural. Besides, he had the Assistant Commissioner's pecul­iarly sarcastic and irritating sniff as an obbligato.

I gather," said the Assistant Commissioner, in his precise and acidulated way, "that we are to wait until this man Tem­plar has made himself a millionaire, when presumably he will have no further incentive to be dishonest."

"I wish I could believe that," said Teal funereally.