Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"It's Nora," she gasped. "She's—"

He saw her gather herself with an effort, force herself to go forward and kneel beside the body. Then he stopped watching her. His eyes went to the gun that was still wavering in the young man's hand—

"Jim," said the girl brokenly, "she's dead!"

The man took a half step towards the Saint.

"You swine!" he grunted. "You killed her—"

"Go on," said the Saint gently. "And then I took a pot at you. So you fired back in self-defence, and just happened to kill us. It'll make a swell story even if it isn't a very new one, and you'll find yourself quite a hero. But why all the playacting for our benefit? We know the gag."

There was complete blankness behind the anger in the other's eyes. And all at once the Saint's somersaulting cosmos stabilized itself with a jolt — upside down, but solid.

He was looking at the gun which was pointing at his chest, and realizing that it was his own Luger.

And the girl had got Hoppy's gun. And there was no other artillery in sight.

The arithmetic of it smacked him between the eyes and made him dizzy. Of course there was an excuse for him, in the shape of the first shot and the bullet that had gone snarling past his ear. But even with all that, for him out of all people in the world, at his time of life—

"Run up to the house and call the police, Rosemary," said the striped blazer in a brittle bark.

"Wait a minute," said the Saint.

His brain was not fogged any longer. It was turning over as swiftly and smoothly as a hair-balanced flywheel, registering every item with the mechanical infallibility of an adding machine. His nerves were tingling.

His glance whipped from side to side. He was standing again approximately where he had been when the shot cracked out, but facing the opposite way. On his right quarter was the window that had been broken, with the shards of glass scattered on the floor below it — he ought to have understood everything when he heard them hit the floor. Turning the other way, he saw that the line from the window to himself continued on through the open door.

He took a long drag on his cigarette.

"It kind of spoils the scene," he said quietly, "but I'm afraid we've both been making the same mistake. You thought I fired at you—"

"I don't have—"

"All right, you don't have to think. You heard the bullet whizz past your head. You said that before. You're certain I shot at you. Okay. Well, I was just as certain that you shot at me. But I know now I was wrong. You never had a gun until you got mine. It was that shot that let you bluff me. I'd heard the bullet go past my head, and so it never occurred to me that you were bluffing. But we were both wrong. The shot came through that window — it just missed me, went on out through the door, and just missed you. And somebody else fired it!"

The other's face was stupid with stubborn incredulity.

"Who fired it?"

"The murderer."

"That means you," retorted the young man flatly. "Hell, I don't want to listen to you. You see if you can make the police believe you. Go on and call them, Rosemary. I can take care of these two."

The girl hesitated.

"But, Jim—"

"Don't worry about me, darling. I'll be all right. It either of these two washouts tries to get funny, I'll give him plenty to think about."

The Saint's eyes were narrowing.

"You lace-pantie'd bladder of hot air," he said in a cold even voice that seared like vitriol. "It isn't your fault if God didn't give you a brain, but he did give you eyes. Why don't you use them? I say the shot was fired from outside, and you can see for yourself where the broken window-pane fell. Look at it. It's all on the floor in here. If you can tell me how I could shoot at you in the doorway and break a window behind me, and make the broken glass fall inwards, I'll pay for your next marcel wave. Look at it, nitwit —"

The young man looked.

He had been working closer to the Saint, with his free fist clenched and his face flushed with wrath, since the Saint's first sizzling insult smoked under his skin. But he looked. Somehow, he had to do that. He was less than five feet away when his eyes shifted. And it was then that Simon jumped him.

The Saint's lean body seemed to lengthen and swoop across the intervening space. His left hand grabbed the Luger, bent the wrist behind it agonizingly inwards, while the heel of his open right hand settled under the other's chin. The gun came free; and the Saint's right arm straightened jarringly and sent the young man staggering back.

Simon reversed the automatic with a deft flip and held it on him. Even while he was making his spring, out of the corner of his eye he had seen Hoppy Uniatz flash away from him with an electrifying acceleration that would have stunned anyone who had misguidedly judged Mr Uniatz on the speed of his intellectual reactions; now he glanced briefly aside and saw that Hoppy was holding his gun again and keeping the girl pinioned with one arm.

"Okay, Hoppy," he said. "Keep your Betsy and let her go. She's going to call the police for us."

Hoppy released her, but the girl did not move. She stood against the wall, rubbing slim wrists that had been bruised by Mr Uniatz's untempered energy, looking from Simon to the striped blazer, with scared desperate eyes.

"Go ahead," said the Saint impatiently. "I won't damage little Jimmy unless he makes trouble. If this was one of my murdering evenings, you don't think I'd bump him and let you get away, do you? Go on and fetch your policemen — and we'll see whether the boy friend can make them believe his story!"

They had to wait for some time…

After a minute, Simon turned the prisoner over to Hoppy and put his Luger away under his coat. He reached for his cigarette case again and thoughtfully helped himself to a smoke. With the cigarette curling blue drifts past his eyes, he traced again the course of the bullet that had so nearly stamped finale on all his adventures. There was no question that it had been fired from outside the window — and that also explained the peculiarly flat sound of the shot which had faintly puzzled him. The cleavage lines on the few scraps of glass remaining in the frame supplied the last detail of incontrovertible proof. He devoutly hoped that the shining lights of the local constabulary would have enough scientific knowledge to appreciate it.

Mr Uniatz, having brilliantly performed his share of physical activity, appeared to have been snared again in the unfathomable quagmires of the Mind. The tortured grimace that had cramped itself into his countenance indicated that some frightful eruption was taking place in the small core of grey matter which formed a sort of glutinous marrow inside his skull. He cleared his throat, producing a noise like a piece of sheet iron getting between the blades of a lawn mower, and gave the fruit of his travail to the world.

"Boss," he said, "I dunno how dese mugs t'ink dey can get away wit' it."

"How which mugs think they can get away with what?" asked the Saint somewhat vacantly.

"Dese mugs," said Mr Uniatz, "who are tryin' to take us for a ride, like ya tell me in de pub."

Simon had to stretch his memory backwards almost to breaking point to hook up again with Mr Uniatz's train of thought; and when he had finally done so he decided that it was wisest not to start any argument.

"Others have made the same mistake," he said casually, and hoped that would be the end of it.

Mr Uniatz nodded sagely.

"Well, dey all get what's comin' to dem," he said with philosophic complacency. "When do I give dis punk de woiks?"

"When do you — What?"

"Dis punk," said Mr Uniatz, waving his Betsy at the prisoner. "De mug who takes a shot at us."