The Saint Around the World Read Free

them in Dickensian costumes, tossing bags of candy from a seemingly inexhaustible supply to all the children who turned out to stare.
    “All it took was money,” he told the reporters. “And I’ve a lot of that.”
    He liked making corny jokes of that kind about his improbably cognomen. “I’ve a lot of living to do yet,” was another. But the nickname that stuck, with his enthusiastic endorsement, was “Jolly Roger”. His acceptance was made official by the huge skull-and-crossbones flag which draped his box at the Arts Ball on New Year’s Eve, where he and his whole party appeared in some version of a pirate costume, even though some of the female members had startingly little material to work with between their top boots and cocked hats. He even tried to adopt the same pattern for his racing colors, to put on a horse he bought which was entered in the Grand National; but here the stewards of the Jockey Club drew the line. Within six months of his debut, he had become practically an institution; and when he announced that he was leaving to have a fling in Paris and continue from there on a trip around the world, a noticeable gloom overspread the bistros.
    “But I’ll be back again in the autumn,” he told his friends consolingly.
    He had always paid cash for everything, even for his biggest parties, so that there had never been an occasion for anyone to inquire into his credit or bank references; but he claimed to be the British Empire’s first uranium millionaire. According to him, he had foreseen the coming boom before the dust had settled on Hiroshima, and had invested in a skillfully selected list of mining enterprises in Africa and Australia. While he was shrewdly secretive about the precise location of his holdings, the soundness of his judgment appeared to be adequately evidenced by the amount of money he had to spend.
    It was in answer to the obvious question of how even a uranium millionaire’s income could survive modern taxation with so little visible injury, that he had explained that he made his legal home in Bermuda, where there was no income tax.
    True to his promise, he had returned in November, and the pattern of his first season had been more or less repeated, with the difference that this time he was already a well-known character with a large if not exactly elite circle of friends. Before the advent of another spring, only the most strong-minded comedians could get through a monologue of any length without hanging some gag on Jolly Roger Ivalot.
    This year, however, Mr. Ivalot’s departure was not signalized by a mammoth 36-hour farewell party, as it had been the previous time. In fact, it was first confirmed, after several days of unwonted quiescence, by a solicitor who had been trying to serve him with a summons to appear and defend himself in court. Mr. Ivalot, it transpired, had got wind of this project and had strategically taken himself out of jurisdiction, without saying goodbye to anyone.
    “And how many people were discovered holding the bag?” Simon asked, with anticipative relish.
    “Only one that we know of,” Londa Dayne said. “He’d just had one of the usual slip-ups with his Jolly Rogering. One of his girls was going to have a baby—twins, as a matter of fact.”
    “Ah,” said the Saint. “A bag holding people.”
    She let that wilt in an interregnum of withering silence.
    “He didn’t owe anybody—I told you he always paid cash,” she said after the pause. “He hadn’t sold any shares or promoted anything. His furnished flat was paid up to the end of the month. He’d just packed up and gone.”
    The expectant mother, a nominal actress whose gifts sounded more thoracic than thespian, alleged that Mr. Ivalot had been promising to marry her for more than a year. But although she had found herself pregnant almost immediately after his return, he had persistently evaded or postponed setting a wedding date; and when he finally proposed a cash settlement of some