Monty Hayward, who was also present, took out a tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe.
"I had some capital once," he said reminiscently, "but it didn't do me much good."
"How much can you lend me?" asked the Saint hopefully.
Monty brushed stray ends of tobacco from his lap and tested the draught through his handiwork cautiously.
"I haven't got it any more, but I don't think I'd lend it to you if I had," he said kindly. "Anyway, the point doesn't arise, because a fellow called Oscar Newdick has got it. Didn't I ever tell you about that?"
The Saint moved his head negatively, and settled deeper into his chair.
"It doesn't sound like you, Monty. D'you mean to say you were hornswoggled?"
Monty nodded.
"I suppose you might call it that. It happened about six years ago, when I was a bit younger and not quite so wise. It wasn't a bad swindle on the whole, though." He struck a match and puffed meditatively. "This fellow Newdick was a bloke I met on the train coming down from the office. He used to get into the same compartment with me three or four times a week, and naturally we took to passing the time of day — you know the way one does. He was an aeronautical engineer and a bit of an inventor, apparently. He was experimenting with autogiros, and he had a little one-horse factory near Walton where he was building them. He used to talk a lot of technical stuff about them to me, and I talked technical stuff about make-up and dummies to him — I don't suppose either of us understood half of what the other was talking about, so we got on famously."
With his pipe drawing satisfactorily, Monty possessed himself of the beer-opener and executed a neat flanking movement towards the source of supply.