“And he still is betting?” Simon asked.
“Oh, yes. And he brought in some more winnings last week.”
“Then why is he still living in that broken-down shanty?”
“He says it wouldn’t be right for him to use the money that’s been invested for anything else than it was given him for. And he wants to have all his own winnings till he can pay everyone back and have his own capital to work with.”
“Penelope,” said the Saint, “in spite of your unscrupulous methods, you’ve got me fascinated. But this has angles that need a bit of thinking about.”
She refrained from pressing him until they were at the table and the steak-and-kidney pie had been served. The first taste told him that it amply fulfilled her promise, and gratitude alone would have obliged him to give attention to her problem even if it had been less provocative than it was.
“Do you know what I call the Ponzi Routine?” he said. “It’s one of the classical sucker-traps. You offer investors a fantastic return on their money, and for a while you actually pay it—long enough for them to spread the good word and get more and more suckers enrolled. Of course, the ‘dividends’ are coming out of their own capital, but you can afford to pay out as long as enough new money is pouring in. It’s been worked in all sorts of variations, but I call it the Ponzi in honor of the guy who may have been its most successful operator, who racked up several million dollars with it in America before I was around.”
“But Mr Gull is winning more than enough money to pay the dividends.”
“That’s one of the angles I was talking about that doesn’t fit. And wanting to stop the investments rolling in is another. And so is this business of not living it up himself, with all that dough in the bank. And even talking about paying it back.”
“So you don’t think I’m a complete idiot not to have gone to the police?”
“I can see why it might be a bit difficult. Your gardener hasn’t done anything criminal yet. It isn’t a crime to ask people to invest in any wildcat scheme, unless they can prove false pretenses. But under English law a man is innocent until he’s proved guilty, and until Gull stops banking winnings or stops paying dividends, you’d have a job to prove false pretenses. Maybe you’re doing the poor bastard a horrible injustice. Maybe he really has discovered an infallible system. But that’s an awful lot to swallow.”
“Is it impossible?”
Simon shrugged.
“I never heard of one yet. But lots of things are impossible until somebody does them. Like television, or rocket ships to Mars. I believe that some great scientists once proved that it was mathematically impossible for a helicopter to get off the ground. You can’t convict a man of fraud because he claims to have discovered a trick that nobody could do before. Everything about Gull is still legitimate—until he falls on his face. And if and when that happens, he might be in South America—and you could have a tough time proving that you weren’t an active confederate.”
“That’s why I thought it might be such a help if I could talk to you,” she said.
The Saint scowled over his food, which was most unfair to it.
“One of Ponzi’s best ploys,” he said, “was when the first rumor got around that his golden-egg factory was goosey, and a few hundred stockholders panicked and came yelling for their money back. Ponzi produced sacks of bullion and cheerfully paid them off. The scare fizzled out, and in a few days more mugs than ever were begging him to accept their deposits.”
“But nobody’s asked Mr Gull for their money back, yet.”
“Exactly. And so far he’s only talking about this voluntary pay-off. If it goes beyond talking, it’ll be something else to get quietly hysterical about. Meanwhile, I promise to lose some sleep over the contradictions you’ve given me already. I wish I could give you the answers right now, all gift-wrapped and tied up with ribbons, but the reports of my supernatural powers are slightly exaggerated. I’m only a human genius.”
For the rest of the day he was nothing but human, but he repeated his promise before he left. And it was not for lack of mental effort that a solution to the mystery of Mr Gull continued to elude him. Some factor seemed to be missing which left all the equations open-ended, but he could not put his finger on it.
Then, on the following Thursday, Penelope Lynch phoned him.
“Well,” she said, “it’s happened.”
His heart sank momentarily.
“What has? He’s skipped?”
“No. He’s going to start giving the money back. He came in this morning and told me to write letters to the first five people who invested, saying that he’s decided to close down his business, thanking them for their help and confidence, and enclosed please find their original hundred pounds. He says he’s planning to pay off at least that many people every week from now on.”
“This I have got to see more of,” said the Saint. “I’ll be down this afternoon.”
He thoughtfully packed a bag and put it in his car, and drove to Maidenhead immediately after lunch.
The office was above a tobacconist and newsagent on a turning off the High Street. It was minimally furnished with a filing cabinet, a bookcase which contained only boxes of stationery, and two desks, on one of which was a typewriter, behind which sat Penelope.
She showed him one of the letters which she had finished, but he was less interested in it than in the five envelopes she had prepared. He copied the addresses on a sheet of paper, and then asked to see the card index, but he could find nothing significant in the bare data on when their investments had been received and what dividends had been paid.
“Mr Gull left his own book here this morning,” she mentioned, and Simon recalled what she had said about the cryptic marks that Mr Gull made on his own records.
He went carefully through the lists under each initial. Opposite some of the typewritten names had been pencilled an “O,” and opposite some others appeared an “X.” There were very few Xs—in fact, when he checked back, the total was only seven. He wrote those down also, but neither the names nor the addresses thus distinguished seemed to have any characteristic in common, at least on the surface. Only one of them happened to be among the five to whom the first refunds were going.
“You’re not making out checks for these, either?” he asked.
“No. But they’re to be registered, as you see.”
“That’s about all I can see,” he said wryly. “If something doesn’t click pretty soon, you’re going to wonder how I ever got my reputation. And so am I…Now I’m going to beat it before he comes back, but I’ll expect you for dinner at Skindle’s. Will seven o’clock give you time to run home and change?”
When she arrived, and they had ordered cocktails in the bar, she told him that Gull had come in at five, laden with more money, and had approved and signed the refund letters.
“Then he said I could go home, and he’d make up the refund packages and mail them himself, like he always did the dividends. He had time to do it and get to the post office before it closed.”
“You didn’t happen to hang around outside and see whether he made it?”
“I thought of it, but I got cold feet. I was afraid he might see me, and it might spoil something for you.”
“Well, assuming that he did catch the mail, the letters should be delivered tomorrow morning. And I just think I’ll check on that.”
She was beginning to seem a little troubled.
“Perhaps there is nothing wrong after all, and I’m wasting your time like an old maid who thinks every man on the street at night is Jack the Ripper. If that’s how it turns out, I’ll want to shoot myself.”
“Somehow, I’m sure you’ll never turn out to be an old maid,” he said, cheerfully.
“But if Mr Gull really has a system—you said it was always possible—”
“It could still be just as dangerous. Perhaps I haven’t been careful enough how I phrased some of the things I’ve said. There are theoretically infalli
ble systems—but in practice they eventually blow up. For instance, it’s a fact that about two out of five favorites win. So in theory, you only have to double your stake after each loser, and fairly soon you must hit a winner and show a net profit. According to you, Uncle Tom is a rather simple soul, and he may have figured this out in his little head and thought he’d discovered something like atomic energy. But the snag is that the average two-out-of-five is the end result of a lot of very erratic winning and losing runs. There are plenty of days when no favorites win at all. Now, suppose you started with a bet of ten pounds; doubling up, you bet twenty, forty, eighty, a hundred and sixty, then three hundred and twenty on the sixth race. The next day, you have to start off betting six hundred and forty, twelve hundred and eighty, twenty-five hundred and sixty, five thousand one hundred and twenty—and if that one wins at even money, you net exactly ten pounds. If it goes down, your next bet would be more than ten thousand—and where would you find the bookies to take it?”
“And I suppose there have been two days in a row without a winning favorite?”
There have. Perhaps not often, but now and again they happen. I don’t say that that’s Uncle Tom’s system, but it could be something along those lines. If so, he may have been lucky so far, but one day it’s going to blow up with an almighty bang, as sure as there’ll be a frost before summer.”
“Then I only hope it lasts long enough for him to give everyone their money back.”
“That’ll take about ten months, on the present schedule,” he said. “I don’t think I can hold my breath that long.”
It was hard enough for him to wait until after breakfast the next day and an hour at which the morning mail could be safely assumed to have been delivered and opened.
The one subscriber of the five earmarked for the first refunds who was also marked with an “X” on Mr Gull’s private list had an address in North London and a telephone number in the directory.
“This is The Sportsman’s Guide,” said the Saint, to the cantankerous elderly voice that answered. “We understand that you were a client of one of our advertisers, Mr Tom Gull.”
“That is correct.”
“Mr Gull tells us that he is going out of business and is refunding all investments. Has he notified you of that?”
“I received a letter to that effect this morning, enclosing my money.”
Simon took a deep breath.
“Until then, did you receive your dividends regularly?”
“I did. It was a most satisfactory service. In fact, I think it’s most inconsiderate of him to discontinue it so arbitrarily. But there you are. Nothing seems to have any stability these days.”
“That’s what comes of keeping horses in them,” said the Saint sympathetically, and hung up.
Another of the five was also in the London directory, but the number did not answer.
The other three addresses were in Beaconsfield, Windsor, and Staines. It took some time to find out and connect with the next number through the hotel switchboard—he had taken a room at Skindle’s to remain closer to the subject of his investigation—but when he introduced himself with the same formula, the response was startlingly different.
“I never heard of him.”
“You are Mr Eric Botolphome?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“But you haven’t had any dealings with Mr Gull.”
“I have not. And I never heard of your publication, either.”
“I’m sorry, Mr Botolphome,” said the Saint slowly. “We must have been misinformed.”
“The name,” said his respondent plaintively, “is pronounced ‘Boffam’.”
“Congratulations,” Simon said, and carefully cradled the hand-set again.
Scanning his lists, he realized that the process of having telephone numbers in a wide range of different towns researched and requested through the hotel switchboard and assorted exchanges would put a strain on the hotel operator and the lines at her disposal which would test her patience as much as his own. On the other hand, Windsor and Staines could both be reached in a single twelve-mile drive which might not take any more time and which would give a physical vent to his impatience—besides satisfying a foaming curiosity about the types who might or might not make up Mr Gull’s strange inventory of contributors.
He threw on a coat and ran downstairs and began driving.
The address in Windsor turned out to be a weathered brick villa on Vansittart Road built on stark Edwardian lines that harmonized excellently with the complexion and corseted contours of the beldam who finally opened the door.
“Tom Gull?” she croaked. “What does he do?”
“He runs a kind of betting service.”
She cupped a hand to her ear.
“Eh?”
“A kind of betting service.”
“I don’t need a vet. Haven’t had any animals around since my last cat died.”
“No, betting,” Simon said, with increased projection. “You invest money with him, and he backs horses with it and sends you the profits.”
“Young man,” said the matriarch crustily, “if I had my way, I’d see all the bookmakers hanged, like they used to hang people for sheep-stealing. All this betting and bingo, it’s no wonder we can’t stop the Russians occupying the moon. And people like you, trying to get customers for them, you’re no better than they are.”
She slammed the door in his face.
The nominee in Staines, a few miles further on, proved to be the proprietor of a small grocery store on the road out towards Laleham. In a more genial way, he was no less definite.
“Who, me? Not bloody likely. The Guide’s all right, but some o’ those advertisements make me laugh. I like to have a little bet sometimes, but I want to know what I’m puttin’ my half-crown on. Anyone who’d send someone a hundred quid to play with, like that, must be a proper Charley, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”
Simon went back to his car and studied his second list—the names which had been singled out with an “X” in Mr Gull’s personal register. Of the remaining six, one lived in Croydon, but the others were in Bournemouth, Worthing, Sevenoaks, Torquay, and Scarborough—a variety of respectable distances in too many different directions for it to be practicable to continue the investigation by personal visits.
He drove back to Skindle’s, stopping on the way to buy a large and expensive box of chocolates, and hoping that the telephone operator had a sweet tooth and a sympathetic disposition.
Already he had an inkling of a pattern, but it was not until that evening that he had finally succeeded in contacting all the names and proving it beyond peradventure.
“The ones with the crosses are all satisfied customers,” he told Penelope. “The others are real live people too—or at least the four I’d jotted down—but every one of them denies having had anything to do with Brother Gull.”
Her eyes were big and wide.
“Why would they do that?”
“It could be because they’re all ashamed to admit that they’re secret gamblers. But I doubt it. I want to have another look at the original card index.”
They went to the office after dinner, and he went through the cards one by one, confirming an impression which he had suddenly recalled that afternoon, during one of the waits between calls.
“Had you noticed that apart from the London addresses, which come up regularly, the earliest replies all came from the south and west, and not too far away? Later on they get more varied—here’s St Albans, Cambridge, Clacton, Folkestone…But there isn’t one of the “O” names with an address as far away as Torquay or Scarborough.”
“No, I hadn’t,” she said, “Would it be because people living a long way from London aren’t so interested in racing?”
“Not that I ever heard. Who do you think goes to all those tracks in the North—and even in Scotland?”
“Yes, that was silly. But then, what is the answer?”
“I think we ma
y have stumbled on a Communist conspiracy to ruin the capitalist countries by debasing their currency. Tom Gull is a mad scientist who has invented a molecular multiplier which makes three or four fivers out of one. The advertisement is a code which tells all the cell captains to send in as much cash as they can; after a while they get it back, but the Central Committee has built up a store of perfect duplicates ready to flood the international exchanges. The “O” names, of course, are the egg-heads who are secretly cooperating in the scheme. The “X” is a shorthand form of the hammer and sickle, and indicates the élite of the organization. Tom Gull’s cabin is actually a camouflaged rocket pad—”
“And he’s got the fuel buried in all the flower-beds he digs up. I know. There’s somebody who writes books like that.”
The Saint’s smile was a silent laugh.
“Is Gull going racing again tomorrow?” he asked.
“He said he was going to Ascot again. He was there today.”
“Good. Then it should be safe to have a closer look at that shack of his in the afternoon.”
“Do you have a theory, really?”
“It’s such a wild one that I wouldn’t dare tell you until I’ve proved it,” he said. “Then if I’m wrong, you won’t classify me with that writer. But invite me for cocktails tomorrow, and I may dazzle you with my brilliance.”
He had one more call to make in the morning, to David Lewin of The Mail, and before lunch he had the answer to a question which gave him considerably more confidence when he set out for Cookham.
He enjoyed a couple of pasties and a pint of bitter at the Crown, and left his car parked there when he left soon after two o’clock to retrace the riverside footpath to the railroad track.
He stood hidden at the edge of the thicket for a while, studying the hut. This time there was no smoke coming from the chimney and no other sign of occupancy, but the only way to make finally sure of that was to go close enough to expose himself. He took a diagonal course that would lead him past it by at least fifteen yards, and studiously avoided any appearance of interest in it. Then when he was near enough he flashed a sidelong glance at the door without turning his head, and saw that there was a padlock in place which could not possibly have been fixed from inside.
The Saint in the Sun (The Saint Series) Page 8
