Simon raised his eyebrows.
"But good God!" he objected. "How on earth can you be unhappy if you can turn out a two-hundred-pound diamond every half-hour?"
Louie shook his head.
"Because I haven't a chance to spend the money," he replied.
He led the way back dejectedly into the living-room and threw himself into a chair, thoughtfully refilling his glass before he did so.
"You see," he said, when Simon Templar had taken the chair opposite him with his glass also refilled. "A thing like this has got to be handled properly. It's no good my just making diamonds and trying to sell them. I might get away with one or two, but if I brought a sackful of them into a shop and tried to sell 'em the buyer would start to wonder whether I was trying to get rid of some illicit stuff. He'd want to ask all sorts of questions about where I got 'em, and as likely as not he'd call in the police. And what does that mean? It means that either I've got to say nothing and probably get taken for a crook and put in prison——" Louie's features registered profound horror at this frightful possibility. "Or else I've got to give away my secret. And if I said that I made the diamonds myself, they'd want me to prove it; and if I proved it, everybody would know it could be done, and the bottom would fall out of the diamond market. If people knew that anybody could make diamonds for threepence a time, diamonds just wouldn't be worth anything any more."
Simon nodded. The argument was logical and provided a very intriguing impasse. He waited for Mr. Fallon to point the way out.
"What this thing needs," said Louie, duly coming up to expectations, "is someone to run it in a businesslike way. It's got to be scientific, just like the way the diamonds are made." Mr. Fallon had worked all this out for himself in his daydreams, and the recital was mechanically easy. "Someone would have to go off somewhere—not to South Africa, because that's too much controlled, but to South America maybe —and do some prospectin'. After a while he'd report that he'd found diamonds, and set up a mine. We'd set up a company and sell shares to the public, and after a bit the diamonds'd start comin' home and they could all be sold in the regular market quite legitimate."
"Why don't you do that?" inquired the Saint perplexedly.
"I've got no heart for it," said Louie with a sigh. "I'm not so young as I was; and besides, I never had any kind of head for these things. And I don't want to do it. I don't want to get myself tied up in a lot of business worries and office work. I've had that all my life. I want to enjoy myself— travel around and meet some girls and have a good time. Between you and I," said Mr. Fallon with a catch in his voice and tears glistening in his eyes, "the doctors tell me that I haven't long to live. I've had a hard life, and I want to make the best of what I have got left. Now, if I had a young fellow like yourself to help me . . ."
He leaned further back in his chair, with his eyes half dosed, and went on as if talking to himself: "It'd have to be a chap who could keep his mouth shut, a sport who wouldn't mind doing a bit of hard work for a lot of money —someone that I could just leave to manage everything while I went off and had a good time. He'd have to have a bit of money of his own to invest in the company, just to make everything square and aboveboard and legal, and in a year or so he'd be a bloomin' millionaire ridin' around in a Rolls Royce with chauffeurs and everything. You'd think it'd be easy to find a fellow like that, but it isn't. There aren't many chaps that I take a likin' to—not chaps that I feel I could trust with anything as big as this. That's why when I took a fancy to you, I wondered . . ." Mr. Fallon sighed again, a sigh of heart-rending self-pity. "But I suppose it's no use. Here am I with the greatest discovery in modern science, and I can't do anything with it. I suppose I was just born unlucky, like I told you."
The Saint was sublimely sure that Louie Fallon was unlucky, but he did not dream of saying so. He allowed his face to become illumined with a light of breathless cupidity which was everything that Mr. Fallon had desired.
"Well," he said hesitantly, "if you've really taken a fancy to me and I can do anything to help you——"
Louie stared at him for a moment incredulously, as if he had never dared to hope that such a miracle could happen.
"No," he said at length, covering his eyes wearily, "it couldn't be true. My luck can't have changed. You wouldn't do a thing like that for a perfect stranger."
During the conversation that followed, however, it appeared that Louie's luck had indeed changed. His new-found friend, it seemed, was quite prepared to do such a service for a perfect stranger. They talked for another hour, discussing ways and means, and occasionally referring in a gentlemanly way to terms of business; then they went out to lunch in an aura of mutual admiration and regard, and discussed the fortunes which they would assist each other to make; and when they finally separated, the Saint had agreed to meet Mr. Fallon again the following day, bringing with him (in cash) the sum of two thousand pounds which he was to invest in the new industry, on an equal partership basis, as a guarantee of his good faith.
Simon went off with Louie Fallon's diamond in his pocket. As a purely formal precaution, he took it round to a diamond merchant of his acquaintance who pronounced it to be unquestionably genuine; and then he proceeded somewhat light-headedly to make some curious purchases.
The clouds of ill-starred melancholy seemed to have dispersed themselves from Mr. Fallon's sky overnight; for when he opened the door to Simon Templar the next day he was beaming. The flat, Simon noticed, was in some disorder, and there were three freshly labelled suitcases standing in the hall.
"I hope I'm not late," said the Saint anxiously.
"Only a minute or two," said Louie heartily. "It's my own fault that it seems longer. I was just nervous. I guess I couldn't believe that my luck had really changed until I saw you on the step. You see, I've got my tickets and everything —I'm ready to go as soon as everything's fixed up."
The Saint believed him. As soon as everything had been fixed up in the way Louie intended, Mr. Fallon would be likely to go as fast and far as the conveniences of modern travel would take him. Simon made vague noises of sympathy and encouragement, and followed his benefactor into the living-room.
"There's the contract, all drawn up ready," said Louie, producing a large and impressive-looking document with fat red seals attached to it. "All you've got to do is to sign on the dotted line and put in your capital, and you're in charge of the whole business. After that, if you send me two or three hundred pounds a week out of the profits, I'll be quite happy, and I don't much care what you do with the rest."
With all the eagerness that was expected of him, Simon sat down at the table, glanced over the document, and signed his name over the dotted line as requested. Then he took out his wallet and counted out a sheaf of crisp new banknotes; and Louie picked them up and counted them again with slightly unsteady fingers.
"Well, now," said the Saint, "if that's all settled, hadn't you better show me your process?"
"I've written it all out for you——"
"Oh, yes, I'd want that. But couldn't we try it over now just to make sure that I understand it properly?"
"Certainly, my dear chap—certainly." Mr. Fallon pushed up his sleeve to look at his watch, and appeared to make a calculation. "I don't know whether I'll have time to see the experiment right through to the end, but once you've got it started you can't possibly go wrong. It's absolutely foolproof. Come along."
They went into the bathroom and Simon poured out magnesium and iron filings into the crucible exactly as he had seen Louie doing the previous day. The composition of the powder from which the diamonds were actually made gave him more trouble—it was apparently made up of the contents of various other unlabelled bottles, mixed up in certain complicated proportions. It was at this stage in the proceedings that the Saint appeared to become unexpectedly stupid and clumsy. He poured out too much from one bottle and spilt most of the contents of another on to the floor.
"You'll have to be more careful than t
hat," said Louie, pursing his lips, "but I can see you've got the idea. Well, now, if I'm goin' to catch my train——"
"I'd like to finish the job," said the Saint, "even if the mixture has gone wrong. After all, I may as well know if there are any other mistakes I'm likely to make." He put a match to his mixture and stepped back while it flared up. Louie watched this studiously.
"I don't expect you'll get any results," he said, "but it can't do any harm for you to get some practice. Now as soon as the thing's properly white hot——"
He supervised the tipping of the contents of the crucible into the cooler indulgently. He had no cause for alarm. The proportions of the mixture were admittedly wrong, which was a perfectly sound reason to give for the inevitable failure of the experiment. He puffed at his cigar complacently, while the Saint went down on his knees and groped around in the cooling tank.
Then something seemed to go wrong with the mechanism of Mr. Fallon's heart, and for a full five seconds he was unable to breathe. His eyes bulged, and the smug tolerance froze out of his face as if it had been nipped in the bud by the same antarctic zephyr that was playing weird tricks up and down his spine. For the Saint had straightened up again with an exclamation of delight; and in the palm of his hand he displayed three little round grey pebbles.
The chill wind that was playing tricks with Louie Fallon's backbone whistled up into his head and brought out beads of cold perspiration on his brow. For a space of time that seemed to him like three or four years, he experienced all the sensations of a man who has sold somebody a pup and seen it turn out into a pedigree prizewinner. The memory of all the hours of time, all the pounds of hard-earned money, and all the tormenting day-dreams, which he had spent on his own futile experiments, flooded back into his mind in an interval of exquisite anguish that made him feel faintly sick. If he had never believed any of the stories he told about his hard luck before, he believed them all now, and more also. The smile of happy vindication on the Saint's face was in itself an insult that made Louie's blood ferment in his veins. He felt exactly as if he had been run over by a steam roller and then invited to admire his own remarkable flatness.
"Here, wait a minute," he said hoarsely. "That isn't possible!"
"Anyway, it's happened," answered the Saint with irrefutable logic.
Louie swallowed, and picked up one of the stones which the Saint was holding. He knew enough about such things to realise that it was indubitably an uncut diamond—not quite so big as the one which he himself claimed to have made, but easily worth a hundred pounds in the ordinary market nevertheless.
"Try it again," he said huskily. "Can you remember exactly what you did last time?"
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.
"I tell you, I saw him do it, Sol," he babbled frantically. "He mixed the things up himself, and somehow he hit on the proportions that I've been lookin' for all these years."
"Maybe he has der diamonds palmed in his hand ven he puts it in der tin, Louie," suggested Mr. Solomon cynically.
Louie sat with his head in his hands. The quest for synthetic wealth faded beside another ambition which was starting to monopolise his whole horizon. The only thing he asked of life at that moment was a
chance to meet the Saint again—preferably down a dark alley beside the river, with a blunt instrument ready to his hand. But London was full of men who cherished that ambition. It always would be.
WATCH FOR THE SIGN
OF THE SAINT
HE WILL BE BACK
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13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle) Page 22
