13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

"Lucky!" repeated Mr Fallon, with all the pained disgust of a hypochondriac who has been accused of looking well. "Why, I'm the sort of fellow if I saw a five-pound note lying in the street and tried to pick it up, I'd fall down and break my neck!"

It was becoming clear to Simon Templar that Mr. Fallon felt that he was unlucky.

"There are people like that," he said, reminiscently. "I remembered an aunt of mine——"

"Lucky?" reiterated Mr. Fallon, who did not appear to be interested in anyone else's aunt. "Why, right at this moment I'm the unluckiest man in London. Look here"—he clasped the Saint by the arm with the pathetically appealing movement of a drowning man clutching at a straw—"do you think you could help me? If you haven't got anything particular to do?

I feel sort of—well—you look the sort of fellow who might have some ideas. Have you got time for a drink?"

Simon Templar could never have been called a toper, but on such occasions as this he invariably had time for a drink. "I don't mind if I do," he said obligingly.

As a matter of fact, they were standing outside a mirac­ulously convenient hostel at that moment—Louie Fallon had always believed in bringing the mellowing influence of alcohol to bear as soon as he had scraped his acquaintance, and he staged his encounters with that idea in view.

With practised dexterity he steered the Saint towards the door of the saloon bar, cutting short the protest which Simon Templar had no intention whatsoever of making. In hardly any more time than it takes to record, he had got the Saint inside the bar, parked him at a table, invited him to name his poison, procured a double ration of the said poison from the barmaid, and settled himself in the adjoining chair to improve the shining hour. To the discerning critic it might seem that he rushed at the process rather like an unleashed investor plunging after an absconding company promoter; but Louie Fallen's conception of improving shining hours had never in­cluded any unnecessary waste of time, and he had learnt by experience that the willingness of the species Mug to listen is usually limited only by the ability of the flatcatcher to talk.

"Yes," said Mr. Fallon, reverting to his subject. "I am the unluckiest man you are ever likely to meet. Did you see that diamond I dropped just now?"

"Well," admitted the Saint truthfully, "I couldn't help seeing it."

Mr. Fallon nodded. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, brought out the jewel again, and laid it on the table.

"I made that myself," he said.

Simon eyed the stone and Mr. Fallon with the puzzled ex­pression which was expected of him.

"What do you mean—you made it?"

"I made it myself," said Mr. Fallon. "It's what you would call synthetic. It took about half an hour, and it cost me ex­actly threepence. But there isn't a diamond merchant in Lon­don who could prove that it wasn't dug up out of the ground in South Africa. Take it to anyone you like, and see if he does swear that it's a perfectly genuine stone."

"You mean it's a fake?" said the Saint.

"Fake my eye!" said Mr. Fallon, with emphatic if inelegant expressiveness. "It's a perfectly genuine diamond, the same as any other stone you'll ever seen. The only difference is that I made it. You know how diamonds are made?"

The Saint had as good an idea of how diamonds are made as Louie Fallon was ever likely to have; but it seemed as if Louie liked talking, and in such circumstances as that Simon Templar was the last man on earth to interfere with anyone's enjoyment. He shook his head blankly.

"I thought they sort of grew," he said vaguely.

"I don't know that I should put it exactly like that," said Louie. "I'll tell you how diamonds happen. Diamonds are just carbon—like coal, or soot, or—or——"•

"Paper?" suggested the Saint helpfully.

Louie frowned.

"They're carbon," he said, "which is crystallised under pressure. When the earth was all sort of hot, like you read about in your history books—before it sort of cooled down and people started to live in it and things grew on it—there was a lot of carbon. Being hot, it burnt things, and when you burn things you usually get carbon. Well, after a time, when the earth started to cool down, it sort of shrunk, like—like——"

"A shirt when it goes to the wash?"  said the Saint.

"Anyway, it shrunk," said Louie, yielding the point and passing on. "And what happened then?"

"It got smaller," hazarded the Saint.

"It caused terrific pressure," said Mr. Fallen firmly. "Just imagine it. Thousands of millions of tons of rock—and—"

"And rock."

"And rock, cooling down, and shrinking up, and getting hard. Well, naturally, any bits of carbon that were floating around in the rock got squeezed. So what happened?" de­manded Louie, triumphantly reaching the climax of his lucid description.

He paused dramatically, and the Saint wondered whether he was expected to offer any serious solution to the riddle; but before he had really made up his mind, Mr. Fallon was solving the problem for him.