Back in the taxi, they asked him how he had spent the evening.
"I've been drinking with one of the most septic specimens in London," said the Saint thoughtfully. "And if I can't make him wish he hadn't told me so much about himself I won't have another bath for six years."
The problem of securing an adequate contribution towards his old-age pension from Sir Ambrose Grange occupied the Saint's mind considerably for the next twenty-four hours. Sir Ambrose had gratuitously introduced himself as such a perfect example of the type of man whom the Saint prayed to meet that Simon felt that his reputation was at stake. Unless something suitably unpleasant happened to Sir Ambrose in a very short space of time, the Saint would sink down to somewhere near zero in his own estimation of himself — a possibility that was altogether too dreadful to contemplate.
He devoted most of the Sabbath to revolving various schemes in his mind, all of which were far less holy than the day; but he had not finally decided on any of them when the solution literally fell into his arms by a coincidence that seemed too good to be true.
This happened on the Monday afternoon.
He sallied out of his flat into Piccadilly in the hope of finding a paper with the winner of the Eclipse Stakes, and as he stepped on to the pavement a middle-aged man in horn-rimmed spectacles and a Panama who was hurrying past suddenly staggered in his direction and would have fallen if the Saint had not caught him. Several passers-by turned and watched curiously; and Simon Templar, whose ideas of grandstanding heroism were not of that type, was tempted to deposit the middle-aged gent tenderly on the pavement and let him do his dying gladiator act alone. The man in the Panama was no human hairpin, and his legs seemed to have turned to rubber.
Then Simon saw that the man's eyes were open. He grinned at the Saint crookedly.
"Sorry, friend," he said, in the broadest Yankee. "I'll be okay in a minute. Been trying to do too much after my operation, I guess — the doc told me I'd crack up if I didn't take it easy… Gosh, look at the rubbernecks waitin' to see me die! Say, do you live in there? Is there a foyer I can sit down in? I don't wanna be stared at like I was the Nelson Monument."
Simon helped the man inside and sat him on a settee beside the lift. The American tipped off his Panama and wiped his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief.
"Just four days outa the hospital and tearin' about like a fool for two of 'em. And missed my lunch today. That's what's done it. Say, is there a public telephone here? I promised to meet my wife an hour ago, and she must think I had myself a street accident."