by Otto Penzler
“And you never spoke to her about it?”
“I couldn’t—later. After all that, I couldn’t sort of come out and confess that I’d read it. Oh, I know I was a damn fool. But I was scared. It seemed as if she must know something dreadful that my father was involved in. I didn’t know anything about his affairs. But I loved him. If he was doing something crooked, whatever it was, I’d have been hurt to death; but still I wanted to try and protect him. I couldn’t talk about it to anybody but Jim. We decided the only thing was to find out what it was all about. That’s why we followed Nora to the Bell, and then followed you to the boathouse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She shrugged hopelessly.
“Because I was afraid to. You remember I asked you about how much you hated crooks? I was afraid that if my father was mixed up in— anything wrong—you’d be even more merciless than the police. I wanted to save him. But I didn’t think—all this would happen. It was hard enough not to say anything when we found Nora dead. Now that Jim’s been killed, I can’t go on with it any more.”
The Saint was silent for a moment, weighing her with his eyes; and then he said: “What do you know about this guy Quintus?”
IX
“Hardly anything,” she said. “He happened to be living close to where the accident happened, and Father was taken to his house. Father took such a fancy to him that when they brought him home he insisted on bringing Doctor Quintus along to look after him—at least, that’s what I was told. I know what you’re thinking.” She looked at him steadily. “You think there’s something funny about him.”
“ ‘Phony’ is the way I pronounce it,” answered the Saint bluntly.
She nodded.
“I wondered about him too—after I read that letter. But how could I say anything?”
“Can you think of anything that might have given him a hold over your father?”
She moved her hands desperately.
“How could I know? Father never talked business at home. I never heard anything—discreditable about him. But how could I know?”
“You’ve seen your father since he was brought home?”
“Of course. Lots of times.”
“Did he seem to have anything on his mind?”
“I can’t tell—”
“Did he seem to be worried or frightened?”
“It’s so hard,” she said. “I don’t know what I really saw and what I’m making myself imagine. He was badly hurt, you know, and he was still trying to keep some of his business affairs going, so that took a lot out of him, and Doctor Quintus never let me stay with him very long at a time. And then he didn’t feel like talking much. Of course he seemed shaky, and not a bit like himself; but after an accident like that you wouldn’t expect anything else…. I don’t know what to think about anything. I thought he always liked Jim, and now— Oh, God, what a mess I’ve made!”
The Saint smoothed the end of his cigarette in an ash tray, and there was an odd kind of final contentment in his eyes. All the threads were in his hands now, all the questions answered— except for the one answer that would cover all the others. Being as he was, he could understand Rosemary Chase’s story, forgetting the way it had ended. Others might have found it harder to forgive; but to him it was just the old tale of amateur adventuring leading to tragic disaster. And even though his own amateur adventures had never led there, they were still close enough for him to realise the hairbreadth margin by which they had escaped it…. And the story she told him gathered up many loose ends.
He sat down beside her and put his hand on her arm.
“Don’t blame yourself too much about Jim,” he said steadyingly. “He made some of the mess himself. If he hadn’t thrown me off the track by the way he behaved, things might have been a lot different. Why the hell did he have to do that?”
“He’d made up his mind that you’d only come into this for what you could get out of it— that if you found out what Nora knew, you’d use it to blackmail Father, or something like that. He wasn’t terribly clever. I suppose he thought you’d killed her to keep the information to yourself—”
The Saint shrugged wryly.
“And I thought one of you had killed her to keep her mouth shut. None of us has been very clever—yet.”
“What are we going to do?” she said.
Simon thought. And he may have been about to answer when his ears caught a sound that stopped him. His fingers tightened on the girl’s wrist for an instant, while his eyes rested on her like bright steel; and then he got up.
“Give me another chance,” he said in a soft voice that could not even have been heard across the room.
And then he was walking across to greet the doctor as the footsteps that had stopped him arrived at the door and Quintus came in.
“Doctor Quintus!” The Saint’s air was sympathetic, his face full of concern. He took the doctor’s arm. “You shouldn’t have come down alone. I was just coming back for you, but there’ve been so many other things—”
“I know. And they were probably more valuable than anything you could have done for me.”
The blurry resonance of the other’s voice was nearly normal again. He moved firmly over to the table on which the tray of drinks stood.
“I’m going to prescribe myself a whiskey and soda,” he said.
Simon fixed it for him. Quintus took the glass and sat down gratefully on the edge of a chair. He rubbed a hand over his dishevelled head as though trying to clear away the lingering remnants of fog. He had washed his face and hands, but the darkening patches of red stain on his clothing were still gruesome reminders of the man who had not come down.
“I’m sorry I was so useless, Mr. Templar,” he said heavily. “Did you find anything?”
“Not a thing.” The Saint’s straightforwardness sounded completely ingenuous. “Mr. Chase must have been taken out of the window—I climbed down from there myself, and it was quite easy. I walked most of the way round the house, and nothing happened. I didn’t hear a sound, and it was too dark to see anything.”
Quintus looked across at the girl.
“There isn’t anything I can say, Miss Chase. I can only tell you that I would have given my own right hand to prevent this.”
“But why?” she said brokenly. “Why are all these things happening? What is it all about? First Nora, and then—Jim…. And now my father. What’s happened to him? What have they done with him?”
The doctor’s lips tightened.
“Kidnapped, I suppose,” he said wretchedly. “I suppose everything has been leading up to that. You father’s a rich man. They’d expect him to be worth a large ransom—large enough to run any risks for. Jim’s death was—well, just a tragic accident. He happened to run into one of them in the corridor, so he was murdered. If that hadn’t confused them, they’d probably have murdered me.”
“They?” interposed the Saint quickly. “You saw them, then.”
“Only one man, the one who hit me. He was rather small, and he had a handkerchief tied over his face. I didn’t have a chance to notice much. I’m saying ‘they’ because I don’t see how one man alone could have organized and done all this…. It must be kidnapping. Possibly they were trying to force or bribe Nora to help them from the inside, and she was murdered because she threatened to give them away.”
“And they tried to kill me in case she had told me about the plot.”
“Exactly.”
Simon put down the stub of his cigarette and searched for a fresh one.
“Why do you think they should think she might have told me anything?” he inquired.
Quintus hesitated expressionlessly. He drank slowly from his glass and brought his cavernous black eyes back to the Saint’s face.
“With your reputation—if you will forgive me—finding you on the scene … I’m only theorising, of course—”
Simon nodded good-humouredly.
“Don’t apologize,” he murmured.
“My reputation is a great asset. It’s made plenty of clever crooks lose their heads before this.”
“It must be kidnapping,” Quintus repeated, turning to the girl. “If they’d wanted to harm your father, they could easily have done it in his bedroom when they had him at their mercy. They wouldn’t have needed to take him away. You must be brave and think about that. The very fact that they took him away proves that they must want him alive.”
The Saint finished chain-lighting the fresh cigarette and strolled over to the fireplace to flick away the butt of the old one. He stood there for a moment, and then turned thoughtfully back to the room.
“Talking of this taking away,” he said, “I did notice something screwy about it. I didn’t waste much time getting upstairs after I heard the commotion. And starting from the same commotion, our kidnapping guy or guys had to dash into the bedroom, grab Mr. Chase, shove him out of the window and lower him to the ground. All of which must have taken a certain amount of time.” He looked at the doctor. “Well, I wasted a certain amount of time myself in the corridor, finding out whether you were hurt, and so forth. So those times begin to cancel out. Then, when I got in the bedroom, I saw at once that the bed was empty. I looked in the cupboard and the bathroom, just making sure the old boy was really gone; but that can’t have taken more than a few seconds. Then I went straight to the window. And then, almost immediately, I climbed out of it and climbed down to the ground to see if I could see anything, because I knew Marvin Chase could only have gone out that way. Now you remember what I told you? I didn’t hear a sound. Not so much as the dropping of a pin.”
“What do you mean?” asked the girl.
“I mean this,” said the Saint. “Figure out our timetable for yourselves—the kidnappers’ and mine. They can’t have been more than a few seconds ahead of me. And from below the window they had to get your father to a car, shove him in and take him away—if they took him away. But I told you! I walked all round the house, slowly, listening, and I didn’t hear anything. When did they start making those completely noiseless cars?”
Quintus half rose from his chair.
“You mean—they might still be in the grounds? Then we’re sure to catch them! As soon as the police get here—you’ve sent for them, of course?”
Simon shook his head.
“Not yet. And that’s something else that makes me think I’m right. I haven’t called the police yet because I can’t. I can’t call them because the telephone wires have been cut. And they were cut after all this had happened—after I’d walked round the house and come back in and told Rosemary what had happened!”
The girl’s lips were parted, her wide eyes fastened on him with a mixture of fear and eagerness. She began to say: “But they might—”
The crash stopped her.
Her eyes switched to the left, and Simon saw blank horror leap into her face as he whirled toward the sound. It had come from one of the windows, and it sounded like smashing glass…. It was the glass. He saw the stir of the curtains and the gloved hand that came between them under a shining gun barrel, and flung himself fiercely backwards.
X
He catapulted himself at the main electric-light switches beside the door—without conscious decision, but knowing that his instinct must be right. More slowly, while he was moving, his mind reasoned it out: the unknown man who had broken the window had already beaten him to the draw, and in an open gun battle with the lights on the unknown had a three-to-one edge in choice of targets…. Then the Saint’s shoulder hit the wall, and his hand sliced up over the switches just as the invader’s revolver spoke once, deafeningly.
Blam!
Simon heard the spang of the bullet some distance from him, and more glass shattered. Quintus gasped deeply. The Saint’s ears sang with the concussion, but through the buzzing he was trying to determine whether the gunman had come in.
He moved sideways, noiselessly, crouching, his Luger out in his hand. Nothing else seemed to move. His brain was working again in a cold fever of precision. Unless the pot-shot artist had hoped to settle everything with the first bullet, he would expect the Saint to rush the window. Therefore the Saint would not rush the window…. The utter silence in the room was battering his brain with warnings.
His fingers touched the knob of the door, closed on it and turned it without a rattle until the latch disengaged. Gathering his muscles, he whipped it suddenly open, leapt through it out into the hall and slammed it behind him. In the one red-hot instant when he was clearly outlined against the lights of the hall, a second shot blasted out of the dark behind him and splintered the woodwork close to his shoulder; but his exposure was too swift and unexpected for the sniper’s marksmanship. Without even looking back, Simon dived across the hall and let himself out the front door.
He raced around the side of the house and dropped to a crouch again as he reached the corner that would bring him in sight of the terrace outside the drawing-room windows. He slid an eye round the corner, prepared to yank it back on an instant’s notice, and then left it there with the brow over it lowering in a frown.
It was dark on the terrace, but not too dark for him to see that there was no one standing there.
He scanned the darkness on his right, away from the house; but he could find nothing in it that resembled a lurking human shadow. And over the whole garden brooded the same eerie stillness, the same incredible absence of any hint of movement, that had sent feathery fingers creeping up his spine when he was out there before….
The Saint eased himself along the terrace, flat against the wall of the house, his forefinger tight on the trigger and his eyes probing the blackness of the grounds. No more shots came at him. He reached the french windows with the broken pane, and stretched out a hand to test the handle. They wouldn’t open. They were still fastened on the inside—as he had fastened them.
He spoke close to the broken pane.
“All clear, souls. Don’t put the lights on yet, but let me in.”
Presently the window swung back. There were shutters outside, and he folded them across the opening and bolted them as he stepped in. Their hinges were stiff from long disuse. He did the same at the other window before he groped his way back to the door and relit the lights.
“We’ll have this place looking like a fortress before we’re through,” he remarked cheerfully; and then the girl ran to him and caught his sleeve.
“Didn’t you see anyone?”
He shook his head.
“Not a soul. The guy didn’t even open the window—just stuck his gun through the broken glass and sighted from outside. I have an idea he was expecting me to charge through the window after him, and then he’d ‘ve had me cold. But I fooled him. I guess he heard me coming round the house, and took his feet off the ground.” He smiled at her reassuringly. “Excuse me a minute while I peep at Hoppy—he might be worried.”
He should have known better than to succumb to that delusion. In the kitchen a trio of white-faced women and one man who was not much more sanguine jumped round with panicky squeals and goggling eyes as he entered; but Mr. Uniatz removed the bottle which he was holding to his lips with dawdling reluctance.
“Hi, boss,” said Mr. Uniatz with as much phlegmatic cordiality as could be expected of a man who had been interrupted in the middle of some important business; and the Saint regarded him with new respect.
“Doesn’t anything ever worry you, Hoppy?” he inquired mildly.
Mr. Uniatz waved his bottle with liberal nonchalance.
“Sure, boss, I hear de firewoiks,” he said. “But I figure if anyone is getting’ hoit it’s some udder guy. How are t’ings?”
“T’ings will be swell, so long as I know you’re on the job,” said the Saint reverently, and withdrew again.
He went back to the drawing room with his hands in his pockets, not hurrying; and in spite of what had happened he felt more composed than he had been all the evening. It was as if he sensed that the crescendo was coming to
a climax beyond which it could go no further, while all the time his own unravellings were simplifying the tangled undercurrents toward one final resolving chord that would bind them all together. And the two must coincide and blend. All he wanted was a few more minutes, a few more answers…. His smile was almost indecently carefree when he faced the girl again.
“All is well,” he reported, “and I’m afraid Hoppy is ruining your cellar.”
She came up to him, her eyes searching him anxiously.
“That shot when you ran out,” she said. “You aren’t hurt?”
“Not a bit. But it’s depressing to feel so unpopular.”
“What makes you think you’re the only one who’s unpopular?” asked the doctor dryly.
He was still sitting in the chair where Simon had left him, and Simon followed his glance as he screwed his neck round indicatively. Just over his left shoulder a picture on the wall had a dark-edged hole drilled in it, and the few scraps of glass that still clung to the frame formed a jagged circle around it.
The Saint gazed at the bullet scar, and for a number of seconds he said nothing. He had heard the impact, of course, and heard the tinkle of glass; but since the shot had missed him he hadn’t given it another thought. Now that its direction was pointed out to him, the whole sequence of riddles seemed to fall into focus.
The chain of alibis was complete.
Anyone might have murdered Nora Pres-cott—even Rosemary Chase and Forrest. Rosemary Chase herself could have fired the shot at the boathouse, an instant before Forrest switched on his torch, and then rejoined him. But Forrest wasn’t likely to have cut his own throat; and even if he had done that, he couldn’t have abducted Marvin Chase afterwards. And when Forrest was killed, the Saint himself was Rosemary Chase’s alibi. The butler might have done all these things; but after that he had been shut in the kitchen with Hoppy Uniatz to watch over him, so that the Saint’s own precaution acquitted him of having fired those last two shots a few minutes ago. Dr. Quintus might have done everything else, might never have been hit on the head upstairs at all; but he certainly couldn’t have fired those two shots either—and one of them had actually been aimed at him. Simon went back to his original position by the fireplace to make sure of it. The result didn’t permit the faintest shadow of doubt. Even allowing for his dash to the doorway, if the first shot had been aimed at the Saint and had just missed Quintus instead, it must have been fired by someone who couldn’t get within ten feet of the bull’s-eye at ten yards range—an explanation that wasn’t even worth considering.