13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

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G. TANFOLD & CO., Gaul St., Birmingham.

It was an advertisement which regularly brought in a re­markable amount of business, considering that it left so much to the imagination; but certain imaginations are like that.

The imagination of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, however, soared far above the ordinary financial possibilities of this common­place catering to pornography. If ever there was a man who did not believe in Art for Art's sake this man walked the earth with his ankles enveloped in the spats of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold. Where any other man trading in these artistic lines would have been content with the generous profit from the sale of his "exceptional rarities," Mr. Tanfold had made them merely stepping-stones to bigger things; which was one of the reasons for his tempting zerquetschenreiflichkeit aforesaid.

Every letter which came to his cheap two-roomed office in Birmingham was examined with an interest that would have astonished the unsuspecting writer. Those which, by inferior notepaper, cheaply printed letterheads, and/or clumsy hand­writing, branded their authors as persons of no great sub­stance, merely had their orders filled by return, as specified; and that, so far as Mr. Tanfold was concerned, was the end of them. But those letters which, by expensive paper, die-stamped letterheads, and/or an educated hand, hinted at a client who really had no business to be collecting rude pictures or "curiosities," came under the close scrutiny of Mr. Tanfold himself; and their orders were merely the beginning of many other things.

Mr. Tombs wrote on the notepaper of the Palace Royal Ho­tel, London, which was so expensive that only millionaires, film stars, and buccaneers could afford to live there; and it is a curious fact that Mr. Tanfold entirely forgot that third category of possible guests when he saw the letter. It must be admitted, in extenuation, that Simon Templar misled him. For as his profession (which all customers were asked to state with their order) he gave "Business man (Australian)."

Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, like others of his ilk, had a sound working knowledge of the peculiar psychology of wealthy Colonials at large in London—of that open-hearted, almost pathetically guileless eagerness to be good fellows which leads them to buy gold bricks in the Strand, or to hand thou­sands of pounds in small notes to two perfect strangers as evi­dence of their good faith—and he was so impressed with the potentialities of Mr. Tombs that he ordered the very choicest pictures in his stock to be included in the filling of the order, and made a personal trip to London the next day to find out more about his Heaven-sent bird from the bush.

The problem of making stealthy inquiries about a guest in a place like the Palace Royal Hotel might have troubled anyone less experienced in the art of investigating prospective victims; but to Mr. Tanfold it was little more than a matter of routine, a case of Method C4 (g). He knew that lonely men in a big city will always talk to a barman, and simply followed the same procedure himself. To a man as practised as he was in the technique of drawing gossip out of unwitting inform­ants, results came quickly. Yes, the barman at the Palace Royal knew Mr. Tombs.

"A tall dark gentleman with glasses—is that him?"

"That's him," agreed Mr. Tanfold glibly; and learned, as he had hoped, that Mr. Tombs was a regular and solitary patron of the bar.

It did not take him much longer to discover that Mr. Tombs's father was an exceedingly rich and exceedingly pious citizen of Melbourne, a loud noise in the Chamber of Com­merce, an only slightly smaller noise in the local government, and an indefatigable guardian of public morality. He also gathered that Mr. Tombs, besides carrying on his father's busi­ness, was expected to carry on his moralising activities also, and that this latter inheritance was much less acceptable to Mr. Tombs Jr. than it should have been to a thoroughly well-brought-up young man. The soul of Sebastian Tombs II, it ap­peared, yearned for naughtier things: the panting of the psalmist's hart after the water-brooks, seemingly, was posi­tively as no pant at all compared with the panting of the heart of, Tombs fils after those spicy improprieties on which it was the devoted hobby of Tombs père to bring down all the weight of public indignation. The barman knew this be­cause the younger Tombs had sought his advice on the sub­ject of wild-oat sowing in London, and had confessed himself sadly disappointed with the limited range of fields avail­able to the casual sower. He was, in fact, living only for the day when the business which had brought him to England would be over, and he would be free to continue his search for sin in Paris.