"Who loses by it?" asked Benny, with gently persuasive rhetoric. "The Bank of England, eventually. I never learnt any economics, but I suppose they'll have to meet the bill. But are they going to be any the worse off for the few thousands you'll take out of them? Why, it won't mean any more to them than a penny does to you now. Think it over."
"I will," said Mr. Tombs, with a last lingering stare at the littered table.
"There's just one other thing," said Benny. "Not a word of what I've told you to any living soul — not even to your wife. I'm trusting you to treat it as confidentially as you'd treat anything in your insurance business. You can see why, can't you? A story like I've told you would spread like wildfire, and once it got to the Bank of England there'd be no more money in it. They'd change the design of their notes and call in all the old ones as quick as I can say it."
"I understand, Mr. Lucek," said Mr. Tombs.
He understood perfectly — so well that the rapturous tale he told to Patricia Holm when he returned was almost incoherent. He told her while he was removing his make-up and changing back into his ordinary clothes; and when he had finished he was as immaculate and debonair as she had ever seen him. And finally he smoothed out the notes that Benny had given him at parting, and stowed them carefully in his wallet. He looked at his watch.
"Let's go and see a show, darling," he said, "and then we'll buy a pailful of caviare between us and swill it down with a gallon of Bollinger. Brother Benjamin will pay!"
"But are you sure these notes are perfect?" she asked; and the Saint laughed.
"My sweetheart, every one of those notes was printed by the Bank of England itself. The green goods game is nothing like that; though I've often wondered why it hasn't been worked before in this — Gott in Himmel!"
Simon Templar suddenly leapt into the air with a yell; and the startled girl stared at him.
"What in the name of —"