13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

The Saint thought he could remember. He tried it again, while Louie watched him with his eyes almost popping out of his head, and his mouth hungrily half open. He himself fished in the cooling tank as soon as the steam had dispersed, and he found two more diamonds embedded in the clinker at the bottom.

Louie Fallon had nothing to say for a long time. He paced up and down the small room, scratching his head, in the throes of the fastest thinking he had ever done in his life. Somehow or other, heaven alone knew how, the young sap who was gloating inanely over his prowess had stumbled accidentally upon the formula which Mr. Fallon had sought for half his life in vain. And the young sap had just paid over two thousand pounds, and received in return his portion of the signed contract which entitled him to a half-share in all the proceeds of the invention. By fair means or foul— preferably more or less fair, for Mr. Fallon was not by nature a violent man—that contract had to be recovered. There was only one way to recover it that Mr. Fallon could see; it was a painful way, but with so much at stake Louie Fallon was no piker.

Finally he stopped his pacing,  and turned round.

"Look here," he said. "This is a tremendous business." The wave of his hand embraced unutterably gigantic issues. "I won't try to explain it all to you, because you're not a scientist and you wouldn't understand. But it's—tremendous. It means——"

He waved his hand again. It might have meant anything, from William Randolph Hearst advocating a cancellation of war debts to a telephone subscriber getting the right number every time.

"At any rate it makes a lot of difference to me. I—I don't know whether I will go away after all. A thing like that's got to be investigated. You see, I'm a scientist. If I didn't get to the bottom of it all, it'd be on my conscience. I'd have it preying on my mind."

The pathetic resignation on Mr. Fallon's countenance spoke of a mute and glorious martyrdom to the cause of science that was almost holy. He was throwing himself heart and soul into the job, acting as if his very life depended on it— which, in his estimation, it practically did.

"Look here," he burst out, taking the bull by the horns, "will you go on being a sport? Will you tear up that agreement we've just signed, and let me engage you as—as— as manager?"

It was here that the sportiness of Simon Templar fell into considerable disrepute. He was quite unreasonably reluctant to surrender his share in a fortune for the sake of science. He failed to see what all the fuss was about. What, he wanted to know, was there to prevent Mr. Fallon con­tinuing his scientific researches under the existing arrangement? Louie, with the sweat streaming down inside his shirt, ran through a catalogue of excuses that would have made the fortune of a politician.

The Saint became mercenary. This was a language which Louie Fallon could talk, much as he disliked it. He offered to return the money which Simon had invested. He did, in fact, actually return the money; and the Saint wavered. Louie be­came reckless. He was not quite as broke as he had tried to tell Mr. Solomon.

"I could give you five hundred pounds," he said. "That's a quick profit for you, isn't it? And you would still have your salary as manager."

"Five hundred pounds isn't a lot of money," said the Saint callously.

Louie winced, but he held on. After some further argu­ment, in which he played a tragically unsuccessful part, a bonus of fifteen hundred pounds was agreed on.

"I'll go round to the bank and get it for you right away," he said.

He did not go round to the bank, because he had no bank account; but he went to see Mr. Solomon, who on such oc­casions served an almost equally useful purpose. Louie's credit was good, and he was able to secure a loan to make up the deficiencies in his own purse at a purely nominal fifty per cent interest. He hurried back to the flat where he had left Simon Templar and stuck the notes into his hand—it was the only time Mr. Fallon had ever parted gladly with any sum of money.

"Now I shall have to get to work," said Mr. Fallon, in­dicating that he wished to be alone.

"What about my contract as manager?" murmured the Saint.

"I'll ring up my solicitor and ask him to fix it right away," Louie promised him. "Come round and see me again tomorrow, and I'll have it waiting for you."

Five minutes after Simon Templar had left him, he was tearing back to Mr. Solomon in a taxi, with the paraphernalia from his washstand stacked up on the seat, and his suitcases beside him.

"I've made my fortune, Sol," he declared somewhat hys­terically. "All this thing needs is some proper financing. Watch me, and I'll show you what I can do."

He set out to demonstrate what he could do; but something seemed to have gone wrong with the formula. He tried again, with equally unsatisfactory results. He tried three and four times more, but he produced no diamonds. Something in­side him turned colder every time he failed.