“I’m — oh, blast it to hell and goddam. The guy you’re looking at is Big Bill Holbrook. But he’s only something I dreamed up. I’m really Andrew Faulks, and I’m asleep in Glendale, California.”
“And I am the queen of Rumania.”
“Sure, I know. You don’t believe it. Who would? But since you’ve got me out of a tight spot for the time being, I’d like to tell you what I’ve never told anybody. But who am I telling?”
“I’m Simon Templar,” said the Saint, and waited for a reaction.
“No!” Holbrook-Faulks breathed. “The Saint! What beautiful, wonderful luck. And isn’t it just like a bank clerk to work the Saint into his dream?” He paused for breath. “The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the devil with dames, the headache of cops and crooks alike. What a sixteen-cylinder dream this is.”
“Your alliterative encomia,” the Saint murmured, “leave me as awed as your inference. Don’t you think you’d better give out with this — er — bedtime story? Before that unholy pair return with gun-lined question marks?”
The strange man rubbed his eyes in a dazed helpless way.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said conventionally.
But after a while, haltingly, he tried.
Andrew Faulks, in the normal course of events, weathered the slingshots and arrows of outrageous playmates and grew up to be a man.