The Saint and the Happy Highwayman by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page A

be getting blamed for having admitted the thief; there was a representative of Ingerbeck’s, whose temper appeared to be fraying rapidly under the flood of wild accusations which Oppenheim was flinging at him; there was a very suave and imperturbable official of the insurance company which had covered the jewels; and there was Mr Oppenheim himself, a short fat yellow-faced man, dancing about like an agitated marionette, shaking his fists in an ecstasy of rage, screaming at the top of his voice, and accusing everybody in sight of crimes and perversions which would have been worth at least five hundred years in Sing Sing if they could have been proved. Fernack and Corrio had to listen while he unburdened his soul again from the beginning.
    “And now vat you think?” he wound up. “These dirty crooks, this insurance company vat takes all my money, they say they don’t pay anything. They say they repudiate the policy. Just because I tried to keep the emeralds vere they couldn’t be found, instead of leaving them in a safe vat anyone can open.”
    “The thing is,” explained the official of the insurance company, with his own professional brand of unruffled unctuousness, “that Mr Oppenheim has failed to observe the conditions of the policy. It was issued on the express understanding that if the emeralds were to be kept in the house, they were to be kept in this safe and guarded by a detective from some recognized agency. Neither of these stipulations have been complied with, and in the circumstances–-“
    “It’s a dirty svindle!” shrieked Oppenheim. “Vat do I care about your insurance company? I vill cancel all my policies. I buy up your insurance company and throw you out in the street to starve. I offer my own reward for the emeralds. I vill pay half a mil—I mean a hundred thousand dollars to the man who brings back my jewels!”
    “Have you put that in writing yet?” asked Lieutenant Corrio quickly.
    “No. But I do so at vonce. Bah! I vill show these dirty double-crossing crooks …”
    He whipped out his fountain pen and scurried over to the desk.
    “Here, wait a minute,” said Fernack, but Oppenheim paid no attention to him. Fernack turned to Corrio. “I suppose you’ve gotta be sure of the reward before you start showin’ us how clever you are,” he said nastily.
    “No sir. But we have to consider the theory tha’t the robbery might have been committed with that in mind. Emeralds like those would be difficult to dispose of profitably—I can only think of one fence in the East who’d handle a package of stuff like that.”
    “Then why don’t you pull him in?” snapped Fernack’ unanswerably.
    “Because I’ve never had enough evidence. But I’ll take up that angle this afternoon.”
    He took no further part in the routine examinations and questionings which Fernack conducted with dogged efficiency, but on the way back to Centre Street he pressed his theory again with unusual humility.
    “After all, sir,” he said, “we’ve all known for a long time that there’s one big fence in the East who’ll handle anything that’s brought him, however big it is. I’ve been working on him quietly for a long time, and I’m pretty certain who it is, though I’ve never been able to get anything on him. I even know where he can be found and where he does most of his buying, and I don’t mind telling you that it’s helped me a lot in tracing the loot from other jobs. Even if this isn’t one of the Saint’s jobs, whoever did it, there are only four things they can do with the emeralds. They can hold them for the reward, they can cut them up and sell them as small stuff, they can try to smuggle them out of the country or they can just get rid of them in one shot to this guy I’ve got in mind. Of course they may be planning any of the first three things, but they may just as well be planning the fourth, and we aren’t justified in overlooking it. And if we’re going to do anything about it,