" 'The Saint'," he read, " 'always seemed to derive a peculiar malicious pleasure from robbing and swindling those who could least afford to lose. To my dying day, I shall be haunted by the memory of the fiendish glee which distorted his face when he told me that he had stolen five pounds from a woman with seven children, who had scraped and saved for months to get the money together. He accepted the money from her as a fee for trying to trace the grave of her father, who had been reported "missing" in 1917. Of course he never made any attempt to carry out his share of the bargain. He played this cruel trick on several occasions, and always with the same sadistic pleasure, which I believe meant jar more to him than the actual cash which he derived from it.' "
"Is that id the book too?" asked Parstone hoarsely.
"Naturally," said the Saint. "That's what I'm reading it from. And there are lots more interesting things. Look here. 'The bogus companies floated by Templar, in which thousands upon thousands of widows and orphans were deprived— ' "
"Wait!" interrupted Parstone tremblingly. "This is terrible — a terrible coidcideds. The book will be withdrawd at wuds. Hardly eddywud will have had tibe to read it. Ad if eddy sball cobbensation I cad give—"
Simon closed his book with a smile and laid it on Mr. Parstone's desk.
"Shall we say fifty thousand pounds?" he suggested affably.
Mr. Parstone's face reddened to the verge of an apoplectic stroke, and he brought up his handkerchief with shaking hands.
"How buch?" he whispered.
"Fifty thousand pounds," repeated the Saint. "After all, that's a very small amount of damages to ask for a libel like this. If the case has to go to court, I think it will be admitted that never in the whole history of modern law has such a colossal libel been put on paper. If there is any crime under the sun of which I'm not accused in that book, I'll sit down right now and eat it. And there are three hundred and twenty pages of it — eighty thousand words of continuous and unbridled insult. For a thing like that, Herbert, I think fifty thousand pounds is pretty cheap."
"You could'n get it," said Parstone harshly. "It's the author's liability—"