"Haven't got the money, nothing!" said Happy Fred scornfully. "Of course you've got the money — I tell you I'm putting up a thousand quid for this job. No jeweller would be taken in with that old trick you're thinking of these days — he'd send for the police as soon as you suggested it. You pay cash for this bit of jewellery you buy, and it's all square and above-board. Now listen to what I've got to say."
Mr. Alfred Tillson listened, and was impressed. Happy Fred's variation on an old theme appeared to have many of the qualities that were claimed for it by its proud inventor; and although it did not exactly come within Mr. Tillson's self-chosen province, it was true that the seasonal falling-off in transatlantic steamship travel had left him particularly receptive to ideas that opened up new possibilities of income.
The new swindle is a thing that every confidence man dreams of creating; it is the brain wave that sweeps through the trade once in a generation, and produces a golden harvest for its pioneers before the officious publicity of the press sends the soaring market slumping back again. Life is like that for chevaliers d'industrie like Happy Fred Jorman: the criminological trend of the Sunday newspaper reduces the ranks of the suckers every Sabbath, and the movies they see during the week haven't helped either. But this new swindle looked as if it might enjoy a fair run of success before it went the way of all other brilliant inventions.
Possibly it was because both partners in the new alliance were so pleased with the potentialities of their own brilliance that they temporarily forgot their common ambition to meet Simon Templar again — with a convenient canal and a length of lead pipe thrown in.
Simon himself was not thinking about them, for he had his own views on the kind of acquaintance which he was anxious to renew. Ruth Eden was a very different proposition. The fact that he had been privileged to rescue her in romantic circumstances from the attentions of the unspeakable Mr. Julian Lamantia, and that subsequently Mr. Lamantia had been one of three men who found themselves unexpectedly poorer for that meeting, included her among the register of people whom Simon Templar would have been pleased to meet again at any time.
He had managed to get her a job with another acquaintance of his, who was such an exclusive jeweller that he had an office instead of a shop, and produced his treasures out of a vast safe instead of leaving them about in glass-topped counters; but after that he had heard nothing of her for some while.
She rang him up one day about this time, and he was delighted to hear her voice. From the date of their first meeting she had exhibited commendable symptoms of hero-worship, and Simon Templar had no modesty in his composition.
"Have you forgotten me altogether?" she demanded; and the Saint chuckled into the transmitter.
"To tell you the truth, I've been so busy murdering people that I've hardly had a minute to spare. I thought you must have got married or something. Come and have dinner and see my collection of skulls."
"I'd love to. When?"