Saint Intervenes (9 page)

“I
didn’t say anything,” said Mr. Newdick.

“All
right. What about it, old bean?”

Mr. Newdick
scratched his chin. The notion of manna had passed into his cosmogony. It fell
from Heaven. It was real.
Miracles happened. The world was a brighter,
rosier place.

“One of your remarks, of
course,” he said, “is somewhat
uninformed.
As a matter of fact, we are doing quite a lot of
business. We have orders, negotiations, tenders, con
tracts.
…”
The eloquent movement of one
hand, temporarily
released from massaging
his chin, indicated a whole field of
industry
of which the uninitiated were in ignorance. “How
ever,” he said, “if your proposition were
attractive enough, it would be worth hearing.”

Simon
nodded.

“Well,
old bean, who do I put it to?”

“You
may put it to me, if you like,” said Mr. Newdick.
“I am Oscar
Newdick.”

“I
see. But what about the other partners, Oscar, old
sprout?”

Mr. Newdick
waved his hand.

“They
are largely figureheads,” he explained. “A few
friends,
with very small interests—just enough to meet the
technical requirements
of a limited company. The concern really belongs to me.”

Simon
beamed.

“Splendid!”
he said. “Jolly good! Well, well, well, dear
old Newdick, what
d’you think it’s worth ?”

“There
is a nominal share value of twenty-five thousands
pounds,” said
Mr. Newdick seriously. “But, of course, they are worth far more than that.
Far more.
…
I very much doubt,” he said,
“whether fifty thousand would be an ade
quate price. My
patents alone are worth more than fifty
thousand pounds.
Sixty thousands pounds would scarcely
tempt me. Seventy thousand would be a
poor price. Eighty
thousand——
”

“Is
quite a lot of money,” said the Saint, interrupting Mr.
Newdick’s
private auction.

Mr. Newdick
nodded.

“But
you haven’t seen the place yet—or the machine we
turn out. You ought
to have a look round, even if we can’t
do business.”

Mr. Newdick
suffered a twinge of horror at the thought
even while he uttered
it.

He led the
Saint out of his “office” to the junk shed. No
one who
had witnessed his sad survey of that collection of
lumber a few minutes
before would have believed that it was
the same man who now
gazed on it with such enthusiasm and
affection.

“This,”
said Mr. Newdick, “is our workshop. Here you
can see the parts of
our machines in course of construction and assembly. Those lengths of wood are
our special lon
gerons. Over there are stay and braces.
…”

“By
Jove!” said the Saint in awe. “I’d no idea helicopters
went in for
all those things. They must be quite dressed up
when you’ve finished
with them, what? By the way, talking
of longerons, a girl friend of mine
has the neatest pattern of step-ins
…”

Mr.
Newdick listened patiently.

Presently
they passed on to the other shed. Mr. Newdick
opened the door as
reverently as if he had been unveiling a
memorial.

“And
this,” he said, “is the Newdick helicopter.”

Simon
glanced over it vacuously, and looked about him.

“Where
are all your workmen today?” he asked.

“They
are on holiday,” said Mr. Newdick, making a mental note to engage some
picturesque mechanics the next day. “An
old custom of the
firm. I always give them a full day’s holiday
on the anniversary of
my dear mother’s death.” He wiped
away a tear and
changed the subject. “How would you like to take a flight?”

“Jolly
good idea,” agreed the Saint.

The
helicopter was wheeled out, and while it was warm
ing up, Simon
revealed that he also was a flier and possessed a license for helicopters. Mr.
Newdick complimented him
gravely. They made a ten-minute flight, and
when they had landed again the Saint remained in his seat.

“D’you
mind if I try her out myself?” he said. “I won’t
ask you to
take the flight with me.”

The machine
was not fitted with dual control, but it was
well insured. Mr.
Newdick only hesitated a moment. He was
very anxious to
please.

“Certainly,”
he said. “Give her a thorough test yourself,
and you’ll see that
she’s a good bus.”

Simon took
the ship off and climbed towards the north.
When Mr. Newdick’s tiny aerodrome was out
of sight he put the helicopter through every test he could think of, and the
results amazed him even while they only confirmed
the re
markable impression he had
gained while Mr. Newdick was
flying
it.

When he saw
the London Air Park below him he shut
off
the engine and came down in
a perfect vertical descent
which set him down outside the Cierva hangars.
Simon
climbed out and button-holed one of the company’s test
pilots.

“Would
you like to come on a short hop with me?” he
asked. “I want to show you
something.”

As they walked back towards the
Newdick helicopter the
pilot studied it with
a puzzled frown.

“Is
that one of our machines?” he said.

“More or less,” Simon
told him.

“It
looks as if it had been put together wrong,” said the
pilot
worriedly. “Have you been having trouble with it?”

The Saint
shook his head.

“I
think you’ll find,” he answered, “that it’s been put together
right.”

He
demonstrated what he meant, and when they returned
the test pilot took
the machine up again himself and tried it
a second time. Other test pilots tried it.
Engineers scratched
their heads over it and
tried it. Telephone calls were made to London. A whole two hours passed before
Simon Templar
dropped the machine
beside Mr. Newdick’s sheds and re
lieved
the inventor of the agonies of anxiety which had been
racking him.

“I was
afraid you’d killed yourself,” said Mr. Newdick
with emotion; and indeed the thought that
his miraculous
benefactor might have passed
away before being separated
from his
money had brought Mr. Newdick out in several cold
sweats.

The Saint grinned.

“I
just buzzed over to Reading to look up a friend,” he
said
untruthfully.
“I like your helicopter. Let us go
inside
and talk
business.”

When he
returned to Patricia, much later that day, he was
jubilant but
mysterious. He spent most of the next day with
Mr. Newdick, and half
of the Saturday which came after,
but he refused to tell her what he was
doing. It was not until
that evening, when he was pouring beer once
more for
Monty Hayward, that he mentioned Mr. Newdick again; and
then his
announcement took her breath away.

“I’ve
bought that helicopter company,” he said casually.

“You’ve
what?”
spluttered Monty.

“I’ve
bought that helicopter company and everything it
owns,” said the
Saint, “for forty thousand pounds.”

They gaped
at him for a while in silence, while he calmly
continued with the
essential task of opening bottles.

“The
man’s mad,” said Patricia finally. “I always thought
so.”

“When
did you do this?” asked Monty.

“We
fixed up the last details of the deal today,” said the
Saint.
“Oscar is due here at any minute to sign the papers.”

Monty
swallowed beer feverishly.

“I
suppose you wouldn’t care to buy my shares as well?”
he
suggested.

“Sure,
I’ll buy them,” said the Saint affably. “Name your
price.
Oscar’s contribution gives me a controlling interest, but
I can
always handle a bit more. As ordered by Patricia, I’m going into business. The
machine is to be rechristened the
Templar helicopter. I shall go down to
history as the man
who put England in the air. Bevies of English beauty,
wear
ing their Templar longerons—stays, braces, and everything
complete——
”

The
ringing of his door-bell interrupted the word-picture
and took him from the
room before any of the questions that were howling through their bewildered
minds could be asked.

Mr.
Newdick was on the mat, beaming like a delighted
fox. Simon took his
hat and umbrella, took Mr. Newdick by
the arm, and led him through into the
living-room.

“Boys
and girls,” he said cheerfully, “this is our fairy godmother, Mr.
Oscar Newdick. This is Miss Holm, Oscar,
old toadstool; and I
think you know Mr. Hayward——
”

The
inventor’s arm had stiffened under his hand, and his
smile had vanished.
His face was turning pale and nasty.

“What’s
the game?” he demanded hoarsely.
“No game at all, dear old
garlic-blossom,” said the Saint
innocently. “Just a coincidence.
Mr. Hayward is going to sell m
e his shares too. Now, all the papers are
here, and if you’ll
just sign on the dotted line ——
”

“I
refuse!” babbled Newdick wildly. “It’s a trap!”

Simon
stepped back and regarded him blandly.
“A
 
trap,
 
Oscar?
 
What on earth are you
talking about?
You’ve got a jolly good helicopter, and you’ve nothing to
be ashamed of. Come, now, be brave. Harden the Newdick
heart.
 
There may be a wrench at parting with your
brain
child, but you can cry afterwards. Just a signature or two on
the dotted
line, and it’s all over. And there’s a cheque for
forty thousand pounds
waiting for you… .”

He thrust a
fountain-pen into the inventor’s hand; and,
half-hypnotised, Mr.
Newdick signed. The Saint blotted the
signatures carefully and put the
agreements away in a drawer,
which he locked. Then he handed Mr. Newdick a
cheque.
The inventor grasped it weakly and stared at the writing and
figures on
it as if he expected them to fade away under his
eyes. He had the
quite natural conviction that his brain had
given way.

“Th-thank
you very much,” he said shakily, and was con
scious of little more
than an overpowering desire to remove
himself from those parts—to camp out on
the doorstep of a
bank and wait there with his head in his hands until morn
ing, when
he could pass the cheque over the counter and see
crisp banknotes
clicking back to him in return to prove that
his sanity was not
entirely gone. “Weil, I must be going,” he
gulped out; but the
Saint stopped him.

“Not
a bit of it,
 
Oscar,”
 
he murmured.
 
“You don’t in
trude. In fact, you ought to be the guest of
honour. Your
class as an inventor really is A 1. When I showed the
Cierva
people what you’d done, they nearly collapsed.”

Mr. Newdick
blinked at him in a painful daze.
“What do you mean?” he
stammered.

“Why,
the way you managed to build an autogiro that
would go straight up and
down. None of the ordinary ones
will, of course—the torque of the vanes would
make it spin
round like a top if it didn’t have a certain amount of
forward
movement to hold it straight. I can only think that when you
got hold
of some Cierva parts and drawings and built it up
yourself, you found
out that it didn’t go straight up and down
as you’d expected and
thought you must have done something
wrong. So you set about trying to put
it right—and somehow
or other you brought it off. It’s a pity you
were in such a
hurry to tell Mr. Hayward that everything in your
invention
had been patented before, Oscar, because if you’d made a
few
more inquiries you’d have found that it hadn’t.” Simon
Templar
grinned, and patted the stunned man kindly on the shoulder. “But everything
happens for the best, dear old bird;
and when I tell you that the Cierva
people have already made
me an offer of a hundred thousand quid for the
invention
you’ve just sold me, I’m sure you’ll stay and join us in
a
celebratory bottle of beer.”