“What are you looking stupid about?” inquired Larry Phelan after five minutes.
“About the vacation I was going to have until you tripped into my life,” said Simon wryly. “However,” he added thoughtfully, “if Comrade Rochborne has forty-five G’s of Mama’s, he might have several of someone else’s Gs, too. Do you know anything else about him?”
“He has an address — an insurance office — where he picks up his mail. The people there know nothing about him. On a hunch I checked the city business-license records. It seems he was licensed as an assayer from 1930 to 1939. That fits into your picture.”
“I’ll keep thinking about it,” said the Saint.
He did exactly that, although for two days there was nothing to show for his thinking. But to the Saint a hiatus like that meant nothing. He knew better than anyone that those coups of his which seemed most spontaneous and effortless were usually the ones into which the hardest work had gone; that the machinery of his best buccaneering raids was labored and polished as devotedly as any master playwright’s plot structure. Even then there had to be an initial spark of inspiration to start the wheels turning, and in this instance the requisite spark eluded him tantalizingly for a full forty-eight hours.
When it came, it was nothing that he had even vaguely expected. It took the form of a chunky oblong package, crudely wrapped, which a bellboy delivered to his room. Simon scanned the label and found a postmark, and had a rather saddening premonition.
There was a note enclosed, printed in sprawling capitals on a sheet of blue-lined note paper.
Dere Mr. Templar, Ole Jimmy Mc Dill Had One To Meny Double Wiskeys An Cash In His Chips Las Nite His Last Rekest Was Send You Ths Here Dingus Account Of You Are A Reel Good Feller An He Like You A Lot Same Is Inclose. Yrs Truly The Boys Bonanza City
The Saint lifted the glass in his right hand.
“Jimmy McDill,” he said softly, “may there be double bourbons and unlimited credit wherever you are.”