He took the bundle of bonds out of his pocket and studied one of them again more closely. And then he was wrapped in stillness for so long that the others felt as if they were gripped in the same trance, without knowing why.
At last he spoke.
"They look genuine," he said softly. "Engraving, ink, paper, everything. They look all right. You couldn't say they were fakes without some special tests. And yet they might be… "But there's only been one man in our time who could do a forgery like this — if it is a forgery."
"Who was that?" said Patricia.
The Saint met her gaze with blue eyes glinting with lights that held the essence of the mystery which he himself had just been trying to fathom.
"He was a Pole called Ladek Urivetzky — and I read in the paper that he was executed by a firing squad in Oviedo about a month ago."
V
And an elegant bowl of soup it made when you got it all stirred up, Simon reflected that evening as he was being trundled down the dim baronial corridors of Cornwall House. But of all the extraneous characters who had been spilled by some coincidence or other into the pot, he was the only one who could make that reflection with the same ecstatic confidence.
"It doesn't seem to make sense," Patricia had said helplessly when he contributed the last item of certain knowledge that he had.
"It sings songs to me," said the Saint.