Simon spoke very gently and evenly.
"I imagine he had every reason for locking it," he replied. "When a man goes to stay in a house full of his bitterest enemies, people whom he's fighting with all the resources at his command, people to whom wholesale slaughter is merely a matter of business, he's a fool if he doesn't lock his door. But it hasn't been proved that he did lock it. I simply said that his door was locked; and I might add that the key was not in it."
"Beg pardon, sir." The captain of the fire brigade stood up at the far end of the room. "I found a door key among the daybree in the libry."
There was a hushed pause.
"Exactly," said the coroner, with sarcastic emphasis. "Kennet locked his door and took out the key. I fail to see any sinister implications in that—in fact, I have frequently done it myself."
"And have you frequently held inquests without bringing any evidence to establish the cause of death?" retorted the Saint recklessly.
For an instant he thought that even he had gone too far. When he thought about it afterwards, in cold blood, the consequences that he had invited with it brought him out in a dank sweat. But at that moment he was too furious to care.
The coroner had gone white around the nostrils.
"Mr Templar, you will withdraw that remark at once."
"I apologize," said the Saint immediately. It was the only thing to do. "Of course I withdraw it."
"I have seen the body myself," said the coroner tightly. "And in a straightforward case like this, where there is absolutely no evidence to justify a suspicion of foul play, it is not thought necessary to add to the suffering of the relatives of the deceased by ordering an autopsy."
He moved his hands over his blotter, looking down at them; and then he brought his eyes back to the Saint with grim decisiveness.
"I do not wish to repeat my previous remarks. But I cannot too strongly express the grave view which I take of such wild and unfounded accusations as you have made. I have only refrained from committing you for contempt of court because I prefer not to give you the publicity which you are doubtless seeking. But you had better go back to your seat at once, before I change my mind."
Simon hesitated. Every instinct he had revolted against obedience. But he knew that there was nothing else he could do. He was as helpless as a fly caught in the meshes of a remorseless machine.
He bowed stiffly and walked down from the dais into the midst of a silence in which the fall of a feather would have sounded deafening.
None of the party from Whiteways even looked at him. But he noticed, with one lonely tingle of hope, that Lady Valerie's eyes were narrowed in an expression of intense concentrated thought. She seemed to be considering astounding possibilities.
The coroner consulted inaudibly with the police sergeant, and then he cleared his throat again as he had done when the court opened. His well-scoured face wore a more tranquil expression.
"I don't think that we need to call any more witnesses," he said.
He went on to give his summing up to the jury. He pointed out that fires usually started by accident, and usually from the most trivial and unsuspected causes. He drew their attention to the fact that a number of fortuitous circumstances, for none of which Mr Fairweather or his guests were to blame, such as the heavily timbered construction of the house, and the pardonably forgotten open windows, had contributed to make the fire far more serious than it might otherwise have been. He reminded them that it was by no means unusual for some people to be such sound sleepers that even an earthquake would not waken them, and that in the haste and stress of an emergency a verbal misunderstanding was even less extraordinary than it was in everyday life. And he urged them to dismiss from their minds altogether the fantastic accusations with which the issue had been confused, and to consider the case solely on the very simple and coherent evidence which had been placed before them.
In twenty minutes the seven jurors, including the black-bearded little man, who looked vaguely disappointed, brought back a verdict of death by misadventure.
2
A hungry pack of reporters fell on the Saint as he left the building. They formed a close circle round him.
"Come on, Saint; give us the story!"
"What's the use?" Simon asked grittily. "You couldn't print it."
"Never mind that—tell us about it."
"Well, what do you think?"
One of them pushed his hat on to the back of his head.
"It looks easy enough. Maybe Kennet was dead drunk, but they'd want to keep that dark for the sake of the old man. It doesn't make much difference. It's pretty obvious that the whole lot of them lost their heads and just ran like hares and left him behind; but with a crowd like that it's bound to be hushed up. You couldn't do anything about it. What was the use of asking for trouble?"
For a moment there was sheer homicide in the Saint's eyes. So that was the net result of his desperate fight to block the whitewashing performance that had been put over not only under the very nose of justice but with its vigorous co-operation. That was the entire product of the risks he had taken and the humiliation to which he had exposed himself—so that even a sensation-loving press was inclined to regard him as having for once exhibited a somewhat egregious and unsophisticated stupidity.
And then he realized that that must not only be the press, but the general opinion. Whitewashing was understandable, something to whisper and wink knowingly about; but the truth that Simon Templar was convinced of was too much for them to swallow. Retired generals, great financiers and ex-cabinet ministers couldn't conspire to cover up murder: it was one of those things which simply did not happen.
His flash of rage died into a hopeless weariness.
"Maybe I like trouble," he rasped, and pushed his way out of the group.
He had seen Peter and Patricia coming out. He took their arms, one on each side of him, and led them silently across the road into the pub opposite.
They took their drinks at the bar and carried them over to a quiet corner by the window. The room was deserted, and for a while nobody broke the silence. Patricia's face was struggling between thunder and tears.
"You were magnificent, boy," she said at last. "I could have murdered that coroner."
"But what good could you do?" Peter asked helplessly.
Simon took out a cigarette and lighted it with tense, deliberate fingers. The bitterness had sunk deeper into him, condensing and coalescing into one white-hot drop of searing energy from which the savage power of its combustion was driving with transmuted fierceness through every inch of his being. Perhaps he had failed disastrously in the first round; but he was still on his feet, and the marrow of his bones had turned to iron. His first pull of smoke came back between lips that had settled into a relentless fighting line.
"None," he said curtly. "No good at all. But it had to be tried. And that lets us out. The rest of the argument is a free-for-all with no holds barred."
"What did you tell the reporters?" asked Peter.
"Nothing. They didn't want telling. They told me. As far as they're concerned, it was all just a routine set up to gloss over the fact that the Whiteways gang were all too busy saving their own skins to worry about anybody else. It was instructive, too, now I come to think about it. I was wondering how they'd managed to fix that coroner—dumb as he was. I think I can see it now. They let him think he was doing just what the reporters thought he was doing, and of course he was obviously the type who could be counted on to stand by the old school. Not that it matters now, anyway. They got their verdict, and the case is officially closed."
"The fireman said that he found the key," Peter observed.
Simon nodded.
"That was the worst mistake I've made so far—I told Luker the key wasn't in the door when I was trying to get a reaction out of him on the night of the fire. If he'd overlooked that, he'd 've had plenty of chances to sling it in through a window afterwards. But I don't think even that really made m
uch difference."
Peter raised his tankard again and drank moodily.
Patricia emptied her glass.
She said presently: "I saw you get hold of your girl friend, but I didn't see you take my clothes off her."
"It was rather a public place," said the Saint. "But she's a nice girl and never goes out with the same man twice unless he's a millionaire. Or unless a millionaire asks her to. Which is why she was running around with young Kennet. Fairweather was the philanthropist who wanted him led back into the fold, and he was ready to buy a thousand-guinea fur coat to see it done. And Fairweather was the guy who arranged for him to come down for the week end. I got that much—and more."
The first taut-strung intensity of his manner was passing off, giving way before the slow return of the old exhilarant zest of battle which the other two knew so well. What was past was past; but the fight went on. And he was still in it. He began to feel the familiar tingle of impetuous vitality creeping again along his nerves; and the smoke came again through the first tentative glimmer of a Saintly smile.
"We were right, boys and girls," he said. "Our old friends the arms racketeers are on the warpath again: Luker, Fairweather and Sangore, just as we sorted them out, with Luker pulling the strings and Fairweather and Sangore playing ball. The Sons of France are in it, too, though I don't know how. But there's something big blowing up; and you can bet that whatever it is the arms manufacturers are going to end up in the money, even if a few million suckers do get killed in the process. Kennet had a bee about the arms racket; he'd been scratching around after them, and somehow or other he'd got on to something."
"What was it?" asked Patricia.
"I wish I knew. But we'll find out. It was something to do with papers and photographs. Lady Valerie didn't remember. She never paid any attention. The whole thing bored her. But it provides the one thing we didn't have before—the motive. Whatever it was, it was dynamite. It was big enough to mean that Kennet was too dangerous to be allowed to go on living. And he just wasn't smart enough or tough enough. They got him."
"Somehow," said Peter, "I can't see Fairweather doing a job like that."
"Maybe he didn't. Maybe Sangore didn't, either. But Kennet died—very conveniently. They knew about it. Probably Luker did it himself. I can just see him telling them— 'Leave it to me.' "
"He was taking a big risk."
"What risk? It would have been a cinch; except for the pure fluke that I happened to come along. You saw how the inquest went. There were a dozen ways he could have done it. Kennet could have been poisoned, or strangled, or had his throat cut or his skull cracked: almost anything short of chopping him up would have left damned little evidence on a body that had been through a fire like that. He could even have been just knocked out and locked in his room and left there for the fire to do the rest. We'll never know exactly how it was done, and we'll never be able to prove anything now; but I know that they murdered him. And I'm going to carry on from where Kennet left off. You can take your own choice, but I'm in this now—up to the neck."
They sat looking at him, and in their ears echoed the faint trumpets of the forlorn ventures in which they had followed him without question so many times before.
Patricia smiled.
"All right, boy," she said; "I'm with you."
"If he's made up his mind to get murdered, I suppose you can't stop him," Peter said resignedly. "Anyway, if they put him in another fire we shan't have to pay for a cremation. But what does he think he's going to do ?"
Simon stood up and looked at the clock on the wall.
"I'm going to London," he said. "I found out from the girl friend that Kennet lived with another Bolshevik named Windlay, who was in on the party with him. So I'm going to try and get hold of him before anyone else has the same idea. And I've wasted enough time already. If you two want to be useful, you can try and keep tabs on the Whiteways outfit while I'm away. Be good, and I'll call you later."
He waved to them and was gone, in a sudden irresistible urge of action, and the room seemed curiously drab and lifeless after he had gone. They had one more glimpse of him, at the wheel of the Hirondel, as the great car snaked past the window with a spluttering roar of power; and then there was only the fading thunder of his departure.
The Saint drove quickly. When he was in a hurry, speed limits were merely a trivial technicality to him; and he was in a hurry now. He did not like to dwell too much on the thought of how desperate his hurry might really be. His effortless touch threaded the car through winding roads and obstructing traffic with the deftness of an engraver etching an intricate pattern; the rush of the wind beating at his face and shoulders assuaged some of his hunger for primitive violence; the deep-throated drone of the exhaust was an elemental music that matched his mood. The clean-cut activity of driving, the concentration of judgment and the ceaseless play of fine nerve responses absorbed the forefront of mechanical consciousness, so that another part of his mind seemed to be set free, untrammelled by dimension, outside of time, to roam over the situation as he knew it and to try to probe into the future where it was leading. It was ninety-five miles from Anford to Notting Hill, and the clock on the dashboard told him that he made the distance in one hour and twenty-five minutes; but the ground that his mind covered in the same time would have taken much longer to account for.
The arrival in Notting Hill brought him back to reality. He stopped beside a postman who directed him to Balaclava Mansions, and when he caught sight of the building he was obliged to admit to himself that he might have been unduly harsh with Lady Valerie. It actually did look like an Awful Place, being one of those gloomy and architecturally arid concoctions of sooty stucco to which the London landlord is so congenially prone to attach the title of "Mansions," presumably in the hope of persuading the miserable tenant that luxury is being poured into his humble lap. Just inside the front door a number of grubby and almost indecipherable scraps of paper pinned and pasted to the peeling wall gave instructions for locating those of the inhabitants who were still sufficiently optimistic to believe that anyone might have any interest in finding them. From one of those pathetically neglected emblems of stubborn survival Simon ascertained that John Kennet and Ralph Windlay had been the joint occupants of the rear ground-floor flat on the right.
He went through the cheerless dilapidated hall and raised his hand to knock on the indicated door. And in that position he stopped, with his knuckles poised, for the door was already ajar.
The Saint scarcely paused before he pushed it open with his foot and went in.
"Hullo there," he called; but there was no answer. It did not take him any time to discover why. He had come through into the one all-purpose room of which the habitable part of the flat was composed; and when he saw what was in it he knew that his fear had been justified, that he had indeed wasted too much time. Ralph Windlay was already dead.
3
A bullet fired at close range had helped to shorten his life, and had done it without making a great deal of mess. He lay flat on his back hardly a yard inside the doorway, with his arms spread wide and his mouth stupidly open. Lady Valerie's description of him was quite recognizable. He still wore his glasses. He couldn't have been much more than twenty-five, and his pale thin face looked as if it might once have been intellectual. The only mark on it was a black-rimmed hole between the eyes; but his head lay in the middle of a sticky dark red mess on the threadbare carpet, and Simon knew that the back of his skull would not be nice for a squeamish person to look at.
The room had been ransacked. The two divans had been ripped to pieces and the upholstery of the chairs had been cut open. Cupboards were open and drawers had been pulled out and left where they fell. A shabby old rolltop desk in one corner looked as if a crowbar had been used on it. The table and the floor were strewn with papers.
Simon saw that much; and then there was a sound of tramping footsteps in the hall. Automatically he pushed the door to behind him, subco
nsciously thinking that it would only be some other occupants of the building passing through; his brain was too busy with what he was looking at to think very hard. Before he realized his mistake the footsteps were right behind him and he was seized roughly from behind.
He whirled round with his muscles instantly awake and one fist driving out instinctively as he turned. And then, with some superhuman effort, he checked the blow in mid-flight.
In that delirious instant his brain reversed itself with such fantastic speed that everything else seemed to have a nightmare slowness by comparison. He watched the trajectory of his hand as if from a vast distance; and it was exactly like sitting in a car with catastrophe leaping up ahead, with the brakes already jammed on to the limit and nothing left to do but to hold on and hope that they would do their work in time. And with a kind of hysterical relief he saw his zooming fist slow up and stop a bare inch from the round red face of the man who had grabbed him. For another split second he simply stood blankly staring; and then suddenly he went weak with laughter.
"You shouldn't give me these shocks, Claud," he said. "My nerves aren't what they used to be."
The man on the other side of his fist went on gaping at him, with his baby-blue eyes dilating with a ferment of emotions which whole volumes might be written to describe. And a tinge of royal purple crept into his plump, cherubic visage.
The reasons for that regal hue were only distantly connected with the onrush of that pile‑driving fist which had been so miraculously held back from its mark. To Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, a man who had never set any exaggerated value on his beauty, a punch on the nose would only have been a more or less unpleasant incident to be endured with fortitude in the execution of his duty, and in that stoical spirit he had in his younger days suffered more drastic forms of assault and battery than that. A punch on the nose, indeed, would have been almost a joyous and desirable experience compared with the spasm of unmitigated woe that speared through Mr Teal's cosmogony when he saw the face of the Saint. It was a pang that summed up, in one poignant instant, all the years through which Chief Inspector Teal had fought his hopelessly losing battle with that elusive buccaneer, all the disappointments and disasters and infuriating bafflements, all the wrath and sarcasm that his efforts had brought down upon him from his superiors, all the impudent mockeries of the Saint himself, the Saint's disrespectful forefinger prodding the rotundity of his stomach and the assistant commissioner's acidulated sniff. It was a sharp stab of memory that brought back all the occasions when Mr Teal had seen triumph dangling in front of his nose only to have it jerked away by invisible strings at the very moment when he thought his hands were closing round it; and with it came a revival of the barren desolation that had followed so many of those episodes, when Mr Teal had felt that he was merely the dumb quarry of an unjust destiny, doomed to be harried through eternity with the stars themselves conspiring against him. And at the same time it was pervaded with the realization that the identical story was starting all over again.
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