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. Gather
ing 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 inter
rupted 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
gettin’ 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 under
currents
towards 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 un
popular?” 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 direc
tion 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 Prescott—even Rose
mary 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’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 pre
caution
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.
And that
left only one person who had never had an alibi—
who had never been
asked for one because he had never
seemed to need one. The man around
whom all the commo
tion
was centred—and yet the one member of the cast, so far
as the Saint was concerned, who had never yet appeared on
the scene. Someone who, for all obvious purposes,
might just as well have been nonexistent.
But if
Marvin Chase himself bad done all the wild things that had
been done
that night, it would mean that the story of his injuries must
be
entirely fictitious. And it was hardly plausible that any man
would
fabricate and elaborate such a story at a time when there was
no
conceivable advantage to be gained from it.
Simon
thought about that, and everything in him seemed
to be standing still.
The girl
was saying: “These people wouldn’t be doing all
this if they just
wanted to kidnap my father. Unless they were
maniacs. They can’t get any ransom if they
kill off everyone
who’s ever had anything to
do with him, and that’s what
they
seem to be trying to do——
”
“Except
you,” said the Saint, almost inattentively. “You haven’t been hurt
yet.”
He was
thinking: “The accident happened a week ago—
days before Nora
Prescott wrote to me, before there was ever
any reason to expect
me on the scene. But all these things that a criminal might want an alibi for
have happened
since
I came into the picture, and probably on my account. Marvin
Chase might have been a swindler, and he might
have rubbed
out his secretary in a
phoney motor accident because he knew
too
much; but for all he could have known that would have
been the end of it. He didn’t need to pretend to
be injured
himself, and take the
extra risk of bringing in a phoney doc
tor
to build up the atmosphere. Therefore he didn’t invent
his injuries. Therefore his alibi is as good as
anyone else’s.
Therefore we’re right
back where we started.”
Or did it
mean that he was at the very end of the hunt ? In
a kind of trance, he
walked over to the broken window and
examined the edges of the smashed
pane. On the point of one
of the jags of glass clung a couple of kinky
white threads—
such as might have been ripped out of a gauze bandage.
Coming into the train of thought that his mind was follow
ing, the
realization of what they meant gave him hardly any sense of shock. He already
knew that he was never going to
meet Marvin Chase.
Dr Quintus
was getting to his feet.
“I’m
feeling better now,” he said. “I’ll go for the police.”
“Just
a minute,” said the Saint quietly. “I think I can have
someone
ready for them to arrest when they get here.”
XI
H
E TURNED
to the
girl and took her shoulders in his hands.
“I’m sorry,
Rosemary,” he said. “You’re going to be
hurt now.”
Then,
without stopping to face the bewildered fear that
came into her eyes, he went to the door
and raised his voice.
“Send
the butler along, Hoppy. See that the curtains are drawn where you are, and
keep an eye on the windows. If
anyone tries to rush you from any direction
give ‘em the heat first and ask questions afterwards.”
“Okay,
boss,” replied Mr Uniatz obediently.
The butler
came down the hall as if he were walking on
eggs. His impressively fleshy face was
pallid and apprehen
sive, but he stood
before the Saint with a certain ineradicable dignity.
“Yes,
sir?”
Simon
beckoned him to the front door; and this time the
Saint was very
careful. He turned out all the hall lights before
he opened the door, and then drew the
butler quickly outside
without fully closing
it behind them. They stood where the
shadow
of the porch covered them in solid blackness.
“Jeeves,”
he said, and in contrast with all that circum
spection his voice was
extraordinarily clear and carrying,
“I want you to go to the nearest
house and use their phone
to call the police station. Ask for Sergeant Jesser. I want you
to give him a special message.”