Charles, in top-hat and Jaeger drawers,
Clung like a limpet to his Cause,
Believing, in a kind of trance,
That one day he would have his Chance."
He laid the sheet down reverently.
"A mere pastime for me, but I believe Milton used to sweat blood over it," he remarked complacently. "Soda or water, Harry?"
"Neat, please, Mr. Templar."
Simon brought over the glass of Highland cream, and Long Harry sipped it, and crossed and uncrossed his legs awkwardly.
"I hope you don't mind my coming to see you, sir," he ventured at last.
"Not at all," responded the Saint heartily. "Always glad to see any Eton boys here. What's the trouble?"
Long Harry fidgeted, twiddling his fingers and corrugating his brow. He was the typical "old lag," or habitual criminal, which is to say that outside of business hours he was a perfectly ordinary man of slightly less than average intelligence and rather more than average cunning. On this occasion he was plainly and ordinarily ill at ease, and the Saint surmised that he had only begun to solve his worries when he mustered up the courage to give that single, brief, and symptomatic ring at the front door bell.
Simon lighted a cigarette and waited impassively, and presently his patience reaped its harvest.
"I wondered—I thought maybe I could tell you something that might interest you, Mr. Templar."
"Sure." The Saint allowed a thin jet of smoke to trickle through his lips, and continued to wait.
"It's about . . . it's about the Scorpion, Mr. Templar."
Instantaneously the Saint's eyes narrowed, the merest fraction of a millimetre, and the inhalation that he drew from his cigarette was long and deep and slow. And then the stare that he swivelled round in the direction of Long Harry was wide blue innocence itself.——'
"What Scorpion?" he inquired blandly.
Long Harry frowned.
"I thought you'd 've known about the Scorpion, of course,Mr. Templar, you being——"
"Yeah?"
Simon drawled out the prompting diphthong in a honeyed slither up a gently persuasive G-string; and Long Harry shuffled his feet uncomfortably.
"Well, you remember what you used to be, Mr. Templar. There wasn't much you didn't know in those days."
"Oh, yes—once upon a time. But now—"
"Last time we met, sir——"
The Saint's features relaxed, and he smiled.
"Forget it, Harold," he advised quietly. "I'm now a respectable citizen. I was a respectable citizen the last time we met, and I haven't changed. You may tell me anything you like, Harry—as one respectable citizen to another—but I'd recommend you to forget the interview as you step over the front door mat. I shall do the same—it's safer."
Long Harry nodded.
"If you forget it, sir, it'll be safer for me," he said seriously.
"I have a hopeless memory," said the Saint carefully. "I've already forgotten your name. In another minute, I shan't be sure that you're here at all. Now shoot the dope, son."
"You've got nothing against me, sir?"
"Nothing. You're a professional burglar, housebreaker, and petty larcenist, but that's no concern of mine. Teal can attend to your little mistakes."
"And you'll forget what I'm going to say—soon as ever I've said it?"
"You heard me."
"Well, Mr. Templar——" Long Harry cleared his throat, took another pull at his drink, and blinked nervously for some seconds. "I've worked for the Scorpion, Mr. Templar," he said suddenly.
Simon Templar never moved a muscle.
"Yes?"
"Only once, sir—so far." Once having left the diving-board, Long Harry floundered on recklessly. "And there won't be a second time—not if I can help it. He's dangerous. You ain't never safe with him. I know. Sent me a message he did, through the post. Knew where I was staying, though I'd only been there two days, an' everything about me. There was five one-pound notes in the letter, and he said if I met a car that'd be waiting at the second milestone north of Hatfield at nine o'clock last Thursday night there'd be another fifty for me to earn."
"What sort of car was it?"
"I never had a chance to notice it properly, Mr. Templar. It was a big, dark car, I think. It hadn't any lights. I was going to tell you—I was a bit suspicious at first, I thought it must be a plant, but it was that talk of fifty quid that tempted me. The car was waiting for me when I got there. I went up and looked in the window, and there was a man there at the wheel. Don't ask me what he looked like—he kept his head down, and I never saw more than the top of his hat. 'Those are your instructions,' he says, pushing an envelope at me, he says, 'and there's half your money. I'll meet you here at the same time tomorrow.' And then he drove off. I struck a match, and found he'd given me the top halves of fifty pound notes."
"And then?"
"Then—I went an' did the job, Mr. Templar."
"What job?"
"I was to go to a house at St. Albans and get some papers. There was a map, an' a plan, an' all about the locks an' everything. I had my tools—I forgot to tell you the first letter said I was to bring them—and it was as easy as the orders said it would be. Friday night, I met the car as arranged, and handed over the papers, and he gave me the other halves of the notes."
Simon extended a lean brown hand.
"The orders?" he inquired briefly.
He took the cheap yellow envelope, and glanced through the contents. There was, as Long Harry had said, a neatly-drawn map and plan; and the other information, in a studiously characterless copperplate writing, covered two more closely written sheets.
"You've no idea whose house it was you entered?"
"None at all, sir."
"Did you look at these papers?"
"Yes." Long Harry raised his eyes and looked at the Saint sombrely. "That's the one reason why I came to you, sir."
"What were they?"
"They were love-letters, sir. There was an address—64 Half Moon Street. And they were signed —'Mark'."
Simon passed a hand over his sleekly perfect hair.
"Oh yes?" he murmured.
"You saw the Sunday papers, sir?"
"I did."
Long Harry emptied his glass, and put it down with clumsy fingers.
"Sir Mark Deverest shot 'imself at 64 'Alf Moon Street, on Saturday night," he said huskily.
When he was agitated, he occasionally lost an aspirate, and it was an index of his perturbation that he actually dropped two in that one sentence.
"That's the Scorpion's graft, Mr. Templar—blackmail. I never touched black in my life, but I'd heard that was his game. An' when he sent for me, I forgot it. Even when I was looking through those letters, it never seemed to come into my head why he wanted them. But I see it all now. He wanted 'em to put the black on Deverest, an' Deverest shot himself instead of paying up. And—I 'elped to murder 'im, Mr. Templar.Murder, that's what it was. Nothing less. An' I 'elped!" Long Harry's voice fell to a throaty whisper, and his dull eyes shifted over the clear-etched contours of the Saint's tanned face in a kind of panic of anxiety. "I never knew what I was doing, Mr. Templar, sir—strike me dead if I did——"
Simon reached forward and crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray.
"Is that all you came to tell me?" he asked dispassionately; and Long Harry gulped.
"I thought you'd be laying for the Scorpion, sir, knowing you always used to be ——"
"Yeah?"
Again that mellifluous dissyllable, in a voice that you could have carved up with a wafer of butter.
"Well, sir, what I mean is, if you were the Saint, sir, and if you hadn't forgotten that you might ever have been him, you might——"
"Be hunting scorpions?"
"That's the way I thought it out, sir."
"And?"
"I was hanging around last night, Mr. Templar, trying to make up my mind to come and see you, and I saw the shooting."
"And?"
"That car—it was just like the car that met me out beyond Hatfield, sir."