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minds,
dimly, that one day we were bound to get our big show. I say that this
is the cue. It might have come in any one of a dozen different ways; but it
just happens to have chosen this one. I’ll sum marise… .”
    He lighted a fresh cigarette and hitched
himself further on to the table, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees and the fine, rake-hell, fighting face that they all, knew and loved made
almost supernaturally beautiful with such a light of debonair
daredevilry as they had never seen before.
    “You’ve read the story,” he said.
“I grant you it reads like a dime novelette; but there it is,
staring you in the face, just the same. All at once, in both England and
America, there’s some funny business going on in the oil and steel and chem ical
trades. The amount of money locked up in those three combines must be
nearly enough to swamp the capitals of any other bunch of
industries you could name. We don’t know exactly what’s happening, but we do
know that the big men, the secret moguls of Wall Street and the
London Stock Ex change, the birds with the fat cigars and the names in -heim and -stein, who juggle the finances of this cockeyed world, are moving on
some definite plan. And then look at the goods they’re on the road with. Iron
and oil and chemicals. If you know any other three interests that’d scoop a
bigger pool out of
a really first-class war, I’d like to hear of them… . Add on Barney Malone’s spy story. Haven’t you realised
how touchy nations are, and how easy
it really would be to stir up dis trust?
And distrust, sooner or later, means war. The most benevolent and peaceful nation, if it’s
continually finding someone else’s
spies snooping round its preserves, is going to make a certain song and dance about it. Nobody before this has thought of doing that sort of thing on a
large scale— trying to set two
European Powers at each other’s throats with a carefully wangled
quarrel—and yet the whole idea is so glo riously
simple. And now it’s happened—or happening… . And behind it all is the one man in the world with
the neces sary brain to conceive a
plot like that, and the influence and qualifications
to carry it through. You know who I mean. The man they call the Mystery Millionaire. The man who’s sup posed to have arranged half a dozen wars before, on
a minor scale, in the interests of
high finance. You’ve seen his name marked
in red in those newspapers every time it crops up. It fits into the scheme in a darn sight too many
ways—you can’t laugh that off. Dr.
Rayt Marius. …”
    Norman Kent suddenly spun his cigarette into
the fireplace.
    “Then Golter might fit in—— ”
    Conway said: “But the Crown Prince is
Marius’s own Crown Prince !”
    “Would that mean anything to a man like
Marius?” asked the Saint gently. “Wouldn’t that just make things
easier for him? Suppose …”
    The Saint caught his breath; and then he took
up his words again in a queerly soft and dreamy voice.
    “Suppose Marius tempted the Crown
Prince’s vanity? The King is old; and there have been rumours that
a young nation is calling for a young leader. And the Prince is ambitious. Suppose
Marius were able to say: ‘I can give you a weapon with which you can conquer
the world. The only price I make is that you should use it… .’ “
    They sat spellbound, bewildered, fascinated.
They wanted to laugh that vision away, to crush and pulverise and
annihilate it with great flailing sledge-hammers of rational
incredulity. And they could find nothing to say at all.
    The clock ticked leaden seconds away into
eternity.
    Patricia said breathlessly: “But he
couldn’t—— ”
    “But he could!”
    Simon Templar had leapt to his feet, his right
arm flung out in a wild gesture.
    “It’s the key!” he cried. “It’s
the answer to the riddle! It mayn’t be difficult to nurse up an
international distrust by artificial means, but a tension like that
can’t be as fierce as