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
“H
ARDLY 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 Dr 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.”
”
‘Phoney’ 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 busi
ness affairs going, so that took a lot
out of him, and Dr
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 smothered the end of
his cigarette in an ashtray,
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 realize the hair
breadth 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.
“Dr
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 whisky 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. Your 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 theorizing, 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 cor
ridor, finding out whether you were hurt, and so forth. So
those times begin to cancel out. Then, when I got in the bed
room, 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 time
tables 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 these com
pletely 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 Rose
mary 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 towards 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
H
E 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 un
known 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.