Brighter Buccaneer by Leslie Charteris Page A

satisfied beyond all possible doubt that the sale was a genuine one. And he made his bank the executors, damn him! If you’ve ever tried to put anything over on a bank you’ll know what a hope we’ve got of doing anything like that. No-the best thing we can ever hope to do is to find some genuine stranger and sell it to him while he’s drunk.”
    Simon picked up the image and examined it closely. It was unexpectedly heavy, and he guessed that the brass casting must have been filled with lead. On the base there was a line of Chinese characters cut into the metal and filled with red.
    “Funny language,” observed Sir Ambrose, leaning over to point to the characters. “I’ve often wanted to meet a Chink who could tell me what they write on things like this. Look at that thing there like a tadpole with wings. I’ll bet that’s a particularly dirty swear-it’s twice the size of the other words. Have a drink.”
    The Saint looked at his watch.
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting home,” he observed.
    “Come and see me one evening,” said Sir Ambrose. “You’ve got my address on my card, and I like your company. Come along one night next week, and I’ll invite some girls.”
    Simon reached his flat in time to see Peter Quentin and Patricia Holm climbing out of a taxi. They were in evening dress, and the Saint surveyed them rudely.
    “Well,” he said, “have you mugs finished pretending to be numbers one and two of the Upper Ten?”
    “He’s jealous,” said Patricia, on Peter Quentin’s arm. “His own tails have been in pawn so long that the moths have done them in.”
    A misguided friend had presented the Saint with tickets for the Opera. Simon Templar, in one of his fits of perversity, had stated in no uncertain terms that it was too hot to put on a starched shirt and listen to perspiring tenors dying in C flat for four hours, and Peter Quentin had volunteered to be Patricia’s escort.
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    “We thought of some bacon and eggs,” Peter said, “and we wondered if you’d like to treat us.”
    “I thought you might treat me,” murmured the Saint. “As an inducement for me to be seen out with a girl whose clothes have all slipped down below her waist, and a pie-faced tough disguised as a waiter, it’s the least you can offer.”
    Back in the taxi, they asked him how he had spent the evening.
    “I’ve been drinking with one of the most septic specimens in London,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And if I can’t make him wish he hadn’t told me so much about himself I won’t have another bath for six years.”
    The problem of securing an adequate contribution towards his old-age pension from Sir Ambrose Grange occupied the Saint’s mind considerably for the next twenty-four hours. Sir Ambrose had gratuitously introduced himself as such a perfect example of the type of man whom the Saint prayed to meet that Simon felt that his reputation was at stake. Unless something suitably unpleasant happened to Sir Ambrose in a very short space of time, the Saint would sink down to somewhere near zero in his own estimation of himself-a possibility that was altogether too dreadful to contemplate.
    He devoted most of the Sabbath to revolving various schemes in his mind, all of which were far less holy than the day; but he had not finally decided on any of them when the solution literally fell into his arms by a coincidence that seemed too good to be true.
    This happened on the Monday afternoon.
    He sallied out of his flat into Piccadilly in the hope of finding a paper with the winner of the Eclipse Stakes, and as he stepped on to the pavement a middle-aged man in hornrimmed spectacles and a Panama who was hurrying past suddenly staggered in his direction and would have fallen if the Saint had not caught him. Several passers-by turned and watched curiously; and Simon Templar, whose ideas of grandstanding heroism were not of that type, was tempted to deposit the middle-aged gent tenderly on the pavement and