"I believe this is the very thing I've been looking for," he said; and Major Bellingford Smart lathered his hands with invisible soap.
"I'm sure Mrs. Bourne would be very comfortable here," he said greasily. "I do everything I can to make my tenants feel thoroughly at home. I'm on the premises myself all day, and if she wanted any help I'd always be delighted to give it. The rent is as moderate as I can make it — only three hundred and fifty per annum."
Simon nodded.
"That seems quite reasonable," he said. "I'll tell my mother about it and see what she says."
"I'll show her round myself at any time she likes to call," said Bellingford Smart cordially. "I don't want to hurry you in any way," he added, as they were going down in the lift, "but for your own sake I ought to mention that I've already shown another lady the flat today, and I'm expecting to hear her decision in a day or two."
At any other time that hoary old bait would have evoked nothing more than one of the Saint's most silent raspberries; but that morning he felt very polite. His face assumed the correct expression of thinly veiled alarm which attacks the veteran house-hunter's features when he visualizes his prize being snatched away from under his nose.
"I'll let you know definitely some time this evening," he said.
The Saint's patience and caution could be infinite when he felt that way; but there were other times when he felt that to pass over the iron whilst it was hot was a crime that would lie heavily on his conscience, and this was one of them. His sense of the poetry of buccaneering demanded that the retribution which he had devised for Major Bellingford Smart should strike swiftly; and he spent that afternoon on a tour of various shipping offices with no other idea in his mind. The Countess of Albury's diamonds crawled in second by several lengths. It meant taking risks of which in a less indignant mood he would never have been guilty; for Simon Templar had made it a rule in life never to attack without knowing every inch of the ground and the precise density of every tuft of grass behind which he might want to take cover; but the strafing of Major Bellingford Smart was a duty that could not be delayed for that.
Nevertheless, he did take certain elementary precautions, as a result of which three well-dressed and subtly dependable-looking men gathered in the apartment of one of their number and slaked their thirsts with beer which the Saint had provided. This was at six o'clock.
The apartment was rented by Peter Quentin; and the other two were Roger Conway and Monty Hayward, who had been summoned by urgent telephone calls by a man whom they had not seen for many months.