Investors were accordingly implored, in their own interests, to gather together at least ₤30 and purchase with it a Brazilian Timber Bond — which could be arranged, if necessary, by installments. On buying this bond, they would become the virtual owners of an acre of ground in this territory, and the seeds of trees would be planted in it without further charge. It was asserted that twenty-five trees could easily grow on this acre, which when cut down at maturity would provide 100 cords of wood. Taking the price of wood at ₤3 a cord, it was therefore obvious that in about 10 years' time this acre would be worth ₤300 — "truly," said the prospectus, "a golden return on such a modest investment." The theme was developed at great length with no little literary skill, even going so far as to suggest that on the figures quoted, the investor who bought one ₤30 bond every year for 10 years would in the 11th year commence to draw an annuity of ₤300 per annum for ever, since as soon as the trees had been felled in the first acre it could be planted out again.
"Well, have you bought your Brazilian Timber Bond?" asked Monty Hayward a day or two later.
Simon grinned and looked out of the window — he was down at the country house in Surrey which he had recently bought for a week-end retreat.
"I've got two acres here," he murmured. "We might look around for somebody to give us sixty quid to plant some more trees in it."
"The really brilliant part of it," said Monty, filling his pipe, "is that this bloke proposes to pay out all the profit in a lump in ten years' time; but until then he doesn't undertake to pay anything. So if he's been working this stunt for four years now, as it says in the book, he's still got another five years clear to go on selling his bonds before any of the bondholders has a right to come round and say: 'Oi, what about my three hundred quid?' Unless some nosey parker makes a special trip into the middle of Brazil and comes back and says there aren't any pine trees growing in those parts, or he's seen the concession and it's just a large swamp with a few blades of grass and a lot of mosquitoes buzzing about, I don't see how he can help getting away with a fortune if he finds enough mugs."
The Saint lighted a cigarette.
"There's nothing to stop him taking it in," he remarked gently, "but he's still got to get away with it."
Mr. Sumner Journ would have seen nothing novel in the qualification. Since the first day when he began those practical surveys of the sucker birth-rate, the problem of finally getting away with it, accompanied by his moustache and his plunder, had never been entirely absent from his thoughts, although he had taken considerable pains to steer a course which would keep him outside the reach of the Law. But the collapse of South American Mineralogical Investments, Ltd., had brought him within unpleasantly close range of danger, and about the ultimate fate of Brazilian Timber Bonds he had no illusions.
Simon Templar would have found nothing psychologically contradictory in the fact that a man who, cultivating the world's most original moustache with microscopic perfection of detail, had overlooked the fundamental point that a moustache should be visible, should, when creating a Timber Company, have overlooked the prime essential that the one thing which a Timber Company must possess, its sine qua non, so to speak, is timber. Mr. Journ had compiled his inducements with unlimited care from encyclopedias and the information supplied by genuine timber-producing firms, calculating the investors' potential profits according to a mathematical system of his own; the only thing he had omitted to do was to provide himself with the requisite land for afforestation. He had selected his site from an atlas, and had immediately forgotten all the other necessary steps towards securing a title to it.
In the circumstances, it was only natural that Mr. Sumner Journ, telling tall stories about timber, should remember that the day was coming when he himself would have to set out, metaphorically at least, in the direction of the tall timber which is the fugitive's traditional refuge; but he reckoned that the profit would be worth it.