"Well, one day this fellow Newdick asked me if I'd like to drop over and have a look at his autogiros, so the following Saturday afternoon I hadn't anything particular to do and I took a run out to his aerodrome to see how he was getting along. All he had there was a couple of corrugated-iron sheds and a small field which he used to take off from and land at, but he really had got a helicopter effect which he said he'd made himself. He told me all about it and how it worked, which was all double-Dutch to me; and then he asked me if I'd like to go up in it. So I said 'Thank you very much, I should simply hate to go up in it.' You know what these things look like — an ordinary aeroplane with the wings taken off and just a sort of large fan business to hold you up in the air — I never thought they looked particularly safe even when they're properly made, and I certainly didn't feel like risking my neck in this home-made version that he'd rigged up out of old bits of wood and angle iron. However, he was so insistent about it and seemed so upset when I refused that eventually I thought I'd better gratify the old boy and just keep on praying that the damn thing wouldn't fall to pieces before we got down again."
The Saint sighed.
"So that's what happened to your face," he remarked, in a tone of profound relief. "If you only knew how that had been bothering me—"
"My mother did that," said Monty proudly. "No — we didn't crash. In fact, I had a really interesting flight. Either it must have been a very good machine, or he was a very good flier, because he made it do almost everything except answer questions. I don't know if you've ever been up in one of these autogiros — I've never been up in any other make, but this one was certainly everything that he claimed for it. It went up exactly like going up in a lift, and came down the same way. I never have known anything about the mechanics of these things, but after having had a ride in this bus of his I couldn't help feeling that the Air Age had arrived — I mean, anyone with a reasonable sized lawn could have kept one of 'em and gone tootling off for week-ends in it."
"And therefore," said the Saint reproachfully, "when he asked you if you'd like to invest some money in a company he was forming to turn out these machines and sell them at about twenty pounds a time, you hauled out your cheque-book and asked him how much he wanted."
Monty chuckled good-humouredly.
"That's about it. The details don't really matter, but the fact is that about three weeks later I'd bought above five thousand quids' worth of shares."
"What was the catch?" Simon asked; and Monty shrugged.
"Well, the catch was simply that this helicopter wasn't his invention at all. He had really built it himself, apparently, but it was copied line for line from one of the existing makes. There wasn't a thing in it that he'd invented. Therefore the design wasn't his, and he hadn't any right at all to manufacture it. So the company couldn't function. Of course, he didn't put it exactly like that. He told me that he'd 'discovered' that his designs 'overlapped' the existing patents — he swore that it was absolutely a coincidence, and nearly wept all over my office because his heart was broken because he'd found out that all his research work had already been done before. I told him I didn't believe a word of it, but that wasn't any help towards getting my money back. I hadn't any evidence against him that I could have brought into a court of law. Of course he'd told me that his design was patented and protected in every way, but he hadn't put any of that in writing, and when he came and told me the whole thing was smashed he denied it. He said he'd told me he was getting the design patented. I did see a solicitor about it afterwards, but he told me I hadn't a chance of proving a deliberate fraud. Newdick would probably have been ticked off in court for taking money without reasonable precautions, but that wouldn't have brought any of it back."
"It was a private company, I suppose," said the Saint.