It was a little toy aeroplane; and tied to it was a tag label on which was written:
With the compliments of the Saint.
XII
The Art Photographer
"It becomes increasingly obvious," said the Saint, "that the time has arrived when we shall have to squash Mr. Gilbert Tanfold."
He did not utter this prophecy within the hearing of Mr. Tanfold, for that would have been a gesture of a kind in which Simon Templar indulged more rarely now than he had once been wont to do. If the time had arrived when the squashing of Mr. Tanfold became a public service which no altruistic freebooter could refuse to perform, the time had also passed when the squashing could be carried out with full theatrical honours, with a haloed drawing on a plain card left pinned to the resultant blob of grease to tell the world that Simon Templar had been there. There was too much interest in his activities at Scotland Yard for anything like that to be entered upon without an elaborate preparation of alibis, which was rather more trouble than he thought Mr. Tanfold was worth. But the ripeness for squashing, the zerquetschenreiftichkeit, if we may borrow a word which the English language so unhappily lacks, of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, even if it could not be made a public ceremony, could not be overlooked altogether for any such trivial reason.
The advertisements of Mr. Tanfold appeared in the black pages of several appropriate journals, and were distinguished by their prodigality of exclamation marks and their unusual vagueness of content. The specimen which was answered by a certain Mr. Tombs was fairly typical.