13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

But this Mr. Oscar Newdick did not know. To him, the arrival of such a person was like an answer to prayer. Monty Hayward's guess at Mr. Newdick's activities since collecting five thousand pounds from him was fairly accurate, but only fairly. Mr. Newdick had not caught several other mugs, but only three; and one of them had only been induced to invest a paltry three hundred pounds. The helicopter racket had been failing in its dividends, and the past year had not shown a single pennyworth of profit. Mr. Newdick did not believe in accumulating pennies: when he made a touch, it had to be a big one, and he was prepared to wait for it—the paltry three hundred pound investor had been an error of judgment, a young man who had grossly misled him with fabulous ac­counts of wealthy uncles, which when the time came to make the touch had been discovered to be the purest fiction—but recently the periods of waiting had exceeded all reasonable limits. Mr. Newdick had travelled literally thousands of miles on the more prosperous suburban lines in search of victims— the fellow-passenger technique really was his own invention, and he practised it to perfection—but many moons had passed since he brought a prospective investor home from his many voyages.

When Simon Templar arrived, in fact, Mr. Newdick was gazing mournfully over the litter of spars and fabric and ma­chinery in one of his corrugated-iron sheds, endeavouring to estimate its value in the junk market. The time had come, he was beginning to feel, when that particular stock-in-trade had paid the last percentage that could be squeezed out of it; it had rewarded him handsomely for his initial investment, but now it was obsolete. The best solution appeared to be to turn it in and concentrate his varied talents on some other subject. A fat insurance policy, of course, followed by a well-orga­nized fire, would have been more profitable; but a recent sensational arson trial and the consequent publicity given to such schemes made him wary of taking that way out. And he was engrossed in these uninspiring meditations when the bell in his "office" rang and manna fell from Heaven.

Mr. Oscar Newdick, it must be acknowledged, did not instantly recognise it as manna. At first he thought it could only be the rate collector, or another summons for his unpaid electric light bill. He tiptoed to a grimy window which looked out on the road, with intent to escape rapidly across the ad­jacent fields if his surmise proved correct; and it was thus that he saw the imposing automobile which stood outside.

Mr. Newdick, a man of the world, was jerry to the fact that rate collectors and servers of summonses rarely arrive to their grim work in five-thousand-pound Hirondels; and it was with an easy conscience, if not yet admixed with undue optimism, that he went to open the door.

"Hullo, old bean," said the Saint.

"Er—hullo," said Mr. Newdick.

"I blew in to see if you could tell me anything about your jolly old company," said the Saint.

"Er—yes," said Mr. Newdick. "Er—why don't you come inside?"

His hesitation was not due to any bashfulness or even to offended dignity. Mr. Newdick did not mind being called an old bean. He had no instinctive desire to snub wealthy-looking young men with five-thousand-pound Hirondels who added jollity to his old company. The fact was that he was just beginning to recognise the manna for what it was, and his soul was suffering the same emotions as those which had afflicted ,the Israelites in their time when they contemplated the miracle. The Saint came in. Mr. Newdick's "office" was a small roughly-fashioned cubicle about the size of a telephone booth, containing a small table littered with papers and over­laid with a thin film of dust—it scarcely seemed in keeping with the neatly engraved brass plate on the door which pro­claimed it to be the registered offices of the Newdick Helicopter Company, Limited, but his visitor did not seem dis­tressed by it.

"What did you want to know?" asked Mr. Newdick.

Simon observed him to be a middle-aged man of only vaguely military appearance, with sharp eyes that looked at him unwaveringly. That characteristic alone might have de­ceived most men; but Simon Templar had moved in disreput­able circles long enough to know that the ability to look an­other man squarely in the eye is one of the most fallacious indices of honesty.

"Well," said the Saint amiably, tendering a platinum ciga­rette-case, "the fact is that I'm interested in helicopters. I happen to have noticed your little place several times recently when I've been passing, and I got the idea that it was quite a small show, and I wondered if there might by any chance be room for another partner in it."

"You mean," repeated Mr. Newdick, checking back on the incredible evidence of his ears, "that you wanted to take an interest in the firm?"

Simon nodded.