V
H
E LISTENED
with
tingling detachment while Rosemary
Chase talked and answered questions.
The dead girl’s
father was a man who had known and helped Marvin Chase
when they
were both young, but who had long ago been
left far behind by
Marvin Chase’s sensational rise in the
financial world. When
Prescott’s own business was failing, Chase had willingly lent him large sums of
money, but the
failure had still not been averted. Illness had finally
brought
Prescott’s misfortunes to the point where he was not even
able to
meet the interest on the loan, and when he refused further charity Chase had
sent him to Switzerland to act as an entirely superfluous ‘representative’ in
Zurich and had
given
Nora Prescott a job himself. She had lived more as one of the family than as an
employee. No, she had given no hint
of having
any private troubles or being afraid of anyone.
Only she had not seemed to be quite herself since Marvin
Chase’s motor accident… .
The bare
supplementary facts clicked into place in the
framework that was
already there, as if into accurately fitted
sockets, filling in
sections of the outline without making
much of it more recognizable. They filed
themselves away in
the Saint’s memory with
mechanical precision; and yet the closeness which he felt to the mystery that
hid behind them was more intuitive than methodical, a weird sensitivity that
sent electric shivers coursing up his spine.
A
grey-haired ruddy-cheeked doctor arrived and made his
matter-of-fact
examination and report.
“Three
stab wounds in the chest—I’ll be able to tell you
more about them after
I’ve made the post-mortem, but I
should think any one of them might have been
fatal. Slight
contusions on the throat. She hasn’t been dead much more
than an
hour.”
He stood
glancing curiously over the other faces.
“Where’s
that ambulance?” said the sergeant grumpily.
“They’ve
probably gone to the house,” said the girl. “I’ll
send them
down if I see them—you don’t want us getting in
your way any more, do you ?”
“No,
miss. This isn’t very pleasant for you, I suppose. If I
want any
more information I’ll come up and see you in the morning. Will Mr Forrest be
there if we want to see him ?”
Forrest
took a half step forward.
“Wait
a minute,” he blurted. “You haven’t——
”
“They
aren’t suspicious of you, Jim,” said the girl, with a quiet firmness.
“They might just want to ask some more
questions.”
“But
you haven’t said anything about Templar’s——
”
“Of
course.” The girl’s interruption was even firmer. Her voice was still
quiet and natural, but the undercurrent of
determined warning in it was as plain as a
siren to the Saint’s
ears. “I know we
owe Mr Templar an apology, but we don’t
have to waste Sergeant Jesser’s time with it. Perhaps he’d
like to come up to the house with us and have a
drink—that
is, if you don’t need him
any more, Sergeant.”
Her glance
only released the young man’s eye after it had
pinned him to
perplexed and scowling silence. And once again Simon felt that premonitory
crisping of his nerves.
“All
this excitement certainly does dry out the tonsils,”
he remarked
easily. “But if Sergeant Jesser wants me to
stay——
”
“No,
sir.” The reply was calm and ponderous. “I’ve made
a note of your address, and I
don’t think you could run away.
Are you
going home tonight ?”
“You
might try the Bell first, in case we decide to stop
over.”
Simon
buttoned his coat and strolled towards the door
with the others; but
as they reached it he stopped and turned
back.
“By
the way,” he said blandly, “do you mind if we take our
lawful
artillery?”
The
sergeant gazed at him, and dug the guns slowly out
of his pocket. Simon
handed one of them to Mr Uniatz, and
leisurely fitted his own automatic
back into the spring holster
under his arm. His smile was very slight.
“Since
there still seems to be a murderer at large in the
neighbourhood,”
he said, “I’d like to be ready for him.”
As he
followed Rosemary Chase and Jim Forrest up a
narrow footpath away
from the river, with Hoppy Uniatz
beside him and the butler bringing up
the rear, he grinned
inwardly over that delicately pointed line,
and wondered whether it had gone home where he intended it to go. Since his
back had been turned to the real audience, he had been unable to observe their
reaction; and now their backs were turned to him in an equally uninformative
reversal. Neither
of them said a word on the way, and Simon placidly left
the silence to get tired of itself. But his thoughts were very busy
as he
sauntered after them along the winding path and saw
the lighted windows of
a house looming up through the
thinning trees that had hidden it from the
river bank. This,
he realized with a jolt, must be the New Manor, and
therefore
the boathouse where Nora Prescott had been murdered was
presumably a part of Marvin Chase’s property. It made no
difference to the facts, but
the web of riddles seemed to draw
tighter
around him. , . .
They
crossed a lawn and mounted some steps to a flagged
terrace. Rosemary
Chase led them through open french
windows into an inoffensively
furnished drawing-room, and
the butler closed the windows behind him as he
followed. Forrest threw himself sulkily into an armchair, but the girl had
regained a composure that was just a fraction too de
tailed to be natural.
“What
kind of drinks would you like ?” she asked.
“Beer
for me,” said the Saint, with the same studied
urbanity.
“Scotch for Hoppy. I’m afraid I should have
warned you about
him—he tikes to have his own bottle.
We’re trying to wean him, but it isn’t
going very well.”
The butler
bowed and oozed out.
The girl
took a cigarette from an antique lacquer box, and
Simon stepped forward
politely with his lighter. He had an absurd feeling of unreality about this new
atmosphere that made it a little difficult to hide his sense of humour, but all
his senses were vigilant. She was even lovelier than he had
thought at
first sight, he admitted to himself as he watched
her face over the
flame—it was hard to believe that she might
be an accomplice to
wilful and messy and apparently mercen
ary murder. But she
and Forrest had certainly chosen a very
dramatic moment to
arrive… .
“It’s
nice of you to have us here,” he murmured, “after the
way we’ve
behaved.”
“My
father told me to bring you up,” she said. “He seems
to be quite an admirer of
yours, and he was sure you couldn’t
have had
anything to do with—with the murder.”
“I noticed—down in the
boathouse—you knew my name,”
said the
Saint thoughtfully.
“Yes—the
sergeant used it.”
Simon
looked at the ceiling.
“Bright
lads, these policemen, aren’t they? I wonder how
h
e
knew?”
“From—your
gun licence, I suppose.”
Simon
nodded.
“Oh,
yes. But before that. I mean, I suppose he must have told your father who I
was. Nobody else could have done it,
could they?”
The girl
reddened and lost her voice; but Forrest found
his. He jerked himself angrily out of his
chair.
“What’s
the use of all this beating about the bush, Rose
mary?” he
demanded impatiently. “Why don’t you tell him
we know all about that
letter that Nora wrote him?”
The door
opened, and the butler came back with a tray of
bottles and glasses
and toured the room with them. There
was a strained silence until he had
gone again. Hoppy
Uniatz stared at the newly opened bottle of whisky which
had
been put down in front of him, with a rapt and menacing
expression
which indicated that his grey matter was in the
throes of another
paroxysm of Thought.
Simon
raised his glass and gazed appreciatively at the
sparkling brown
clearness within it.
“All right,” he said.
“If you want it that way. So you knew Nora Prescott had written to me. You
came to the Bell to see what happened. Probably you watched through the windows
first; then when she went out, you came in to watch me. You
followed one of us to the boathouse——
”
“And
we ought to have told the police——
”
“Of
course.” The Saint’s voice was mild and friendly.
“You ought to have
told them about the letter. I’m sure you
could have quoted
what was in it. Something about how she
was being forced to
help in putting over a gigantic fraud, and
how she wanted me to
help her. Sergeant Jesser would have
been wild with excitement about that.
Naturally, he’d ‘ve
seen at once that that provided an obvious motive for me
to
murder her, and none at all for the guy whose fraud was
going to
be given away. It really was pretty noble of you both to take so much trouble
to keep me out of suspicion,
and I appreciate it a lot. And now that
we’re all pals together,
and there aren’t any policemen in the
audience, why don’t
you
save me a lot of headaches and tell me what the swindle
is?”
The girl
stared at him.
“Do
you know what you’re saying ?”
“I
usually have a rough idea,” said the Saint coolly and
deliberately. “I’ll make
it even plainer, if that’s too subtle for
you.
Your father’s a millionaire, they tell me. And when there are any gigantic
frauds in the wind, I never expect to find the
big shot sitting in a garret toasting kippers over a candle.”
Forrest
started towards him.
“Look
here, Templar, we’ve stood about enough from
you——
”
“And
I’ve stood plenty from you,” said the Saint, without moving. “Let’s
call it quits. We were both misunderstanding
each other at the
beginning, but we don’t have to go on doing
it. I can’t do
anything for you if you don’t put your cards on
the table. Let’s
straighten it out now. Which of you two cooled off Nora Prescott?”
He didn’t seem to change his
voice, but the question came
with a sharp
stinging clarity like the flick of a whip. Rose
mary Chase and the young man gaped at him frozenly, and
he waited for an answer without a shift of his
lazily negligent
eyes. But he didn’t
get it.
The rattle
of the doorhandle made everyone turn, almost
in relief at the
interruption. A tall cadaverous man, severely
dressed in a dark suit and high
old-fashioned collar, his chin
bordered with
a rim of black beard, pince-nez on a loop of
black ribbon in his hand, came into the room and paused
hesitantly.
Rosemary Chase came slowly out
of her trance.
“Oh,
Dr Quintus,” she said in a quiet forced voice. “This
is Mr
Templar and—er——
”
“Hoppy
Uniatz,” Simon supplied.
Dr Quintus
bowed; and his black sunken eyes clung for a
moment to the Saint’s
face.
“Delighted,”
he said in a deep burring bass; and turned
back to the girl. “Miss Chase, I’m
afraid the shock has upset
your father a
little. Nothing at all serious, I assure you, but I
think it would be unwise for him to have any more
excite
ment just yet. However, he asked me to invite Mr Templar to
stay for dinner. Perhaps later …”
Simon took
another sip at his beer, and his glance swung idly over to the girl with the
first glint of a frosty sparkle in
its depths.