Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"You don't," said the Saint shortly.

The equivalent of what on anybody else's face would have been a slight frown carved its fearsome corrugations into Hoppy's brow.

"Ya don't mean he gets away wit' it after all?"

"We'll see about that."

"Dijja hear what he calls us?"

"What was that?"

"He calls us washouts."

"That's too bad."

"Yeah, dat's too bad," Mr Uniatz glowered disparagingly at the captive. "Maybe I better go over him wit' a paddle foist. Just to make sure he don't go to sleep."

"Leave him alone," said the Saint soothingly. "He's young, but he'll grow up."

He was watching the striped blazer with more attention than a chance onlooker would have realized. The young man stood glaring at them defiantly — not without fear, but that was easy to explain if one wanted to. His knuckles tensed up involuntarily from time to time; but a perfectly understandable anger would account for that. Once or twice he glanced at the strangely unreal shape of the dead girl half hidden in the shadows, and it was at those moments that Simon was studying him most intently. He saw the almost conventionalized horror of death that takes the place of practical thinking with those who have seen little of it, and a bitter disgust that might have had an equally conventional basis. Beyond that, the sullen scowl which disfigured the other's face steadily refused him the betraying evidence that might have made everything so much simpler. Simon blew placid and meditative smoke rings to pass the time; but there was an irking bafflement behind the cool patience of his eyes.

It took fifteen minutes by his watch for the police to come, which was less than he had expected.

They arrived in the persons of a man with a waxed moustache, in plain clothes, and two constables in uniform. After them, breathless when she saw the striped blazer still inhabited by an apparently undamaged owner, came Rosemary Chase. In the background hovered a man who even without his costume could never have been mistaken for anything but a butler.

Simon turned with a smile.

"Glad to see you, Inspector," he said easily.

"Just 'Sergeant'," answered the plainclothes man, in a voice that sounded as if it should have been "sergeant-major."

He saw the automatic that Mr Uniatz was still holding, and stepped forward with a rather hollow but courageous belligerence.

"Give me that gun!" he said loudly.

Hoppy ignored him, and looked inquiringly at the only man whom he took orders from; but Simon nodded. He politely offered his own Luger as well. The Sergeant took the two guns, squinted at them sapiently, and stuffed them into his side pockets. He looked relieved, and rather clever.

"I suppose you've got licences for these firearms," he said temptingly.

"Of course," said the Saint, in a voice of saccharine virtue.

He produced certificate and permit to carry from his pocket. Hoppy did the same. The sergeant pored over the documents with surly suspicion for some time before he handed them to one of the constables to note down the particulars. He looked so much less clever that Simon had difficulty in keeping a straight face. It was as if the Official Mind, jumping firmly to a foregone conclusion, had spent the journey there developing an elegantly graduated approach to the obvious climax, and therefore found the entire structure staggering when the first step caved in under his feet.

A certain awkwardness crowded itself into the scene.

With a businesslike briskness that was only a trifle too elaborate, the sergeant went over to the body and brooded over it with portentous solemnity. He went down on his hands and knees to peer at the knife, without touching it. He borrowed a flashlight from one of the constables to examine the floor around it. He roamed about the boathouse and frowned into dark corners. At intervals, he cogitated. When he could think of nothing else to do, he came back and faced his audience with dogged valour.

"Well," he said, less aggressively, "while we're waiting for the doctor I'd better take your statements." He turned. "You're Mr Forrest, sir?"

The young man in the striped blazer nodded.

"Yes."

"I've already heard the young lady's story, but I'd like to hear your version."

Forrest glanced quickly at the girl, and almost hesitated. He said: "I was taking Miss Chase home, and we saw a light moving in here. We crept up to find out what it was, and one of these men fired a shot at us. I turned my torch on them and pretended I had a gun too, and they surrendered. We took their guns away; and then this man started arguing and trying to make out that somebody else had fired the shot, and he managed to distract my attention and get his gun back."

"Did you hear any noise as you were walking along? The sort of noise this — er — deceased might have made as she was being attacked?"

"No."

"I — did — not hear — the — noise — of — the — deceased — being — attacked," repeated one of the constables with a notebook and pencil, laboriously writing it down.

The sergeant waited for him to finish, and turned to the Saint.

"Now, Mr Templar," he said ominously. "Do you wish to make a statement? It is my duty to warn you—"

"Why?" asked the Saint blandly.

The sergeant did not seem to know the answer to that.

He said gruffly: "What statement do you wish to make?"

"Just what I told Comrade Forrest when we were arguing. Mr Uniatz and I were ambling around to work up a thirst, and we saw this door open. Being rather inquisitive and not having anything better to do, we just nosed in, and we saw the body. We were just taking it in when somebody fired at us; and then Comrade Forrest turned on the spotlight and yelled 'Hands up!' or words to that effect, so to be on the safe side we handed up, thinking he'd fired the first shot. Still, he looked kind of nervous when he had hold of my gun, so I took it away from him in case it went off. Then I told Miss Chase to go ahead and fetch you. Incidentally, as I tried to tell Comrade Forrest, I've discovered that we were both wrong about that shooting. Somebody else did it from outside the window. You can see for yourself if you take a look at the glass."

The Saint's voice and manner were masterpieces of matter-of-fact veracity. It is often easy to tell the plain truth and be disbelieved; but Simon's pleasant imperturbality left the sergeant visibly nonplussed. He went and inspected the broken glass at some length, and then he came back and scratched his head.

"Well," he admitted grudgingly, "there doesn't seem to be much doubt about that."

"If you want any more proof," said the Saint nonchalantly, "you can take our guns apart. Comrade Forrest will tell you that we haven't done anything to them. You'll find the magazines full and the barrels clean."

The sergeant adopted the suggestion with morbid eagerness, but he shrugged resignedly over the result.

"That seems to be right," he said with stoic finality. "It looks as if both you gentlemen were mistaken." He went on scrutinizing the Saint grimly. "But it still doesn't explain why you were in here with the deceased."

"Because I found her," answered the Saint reasonably. "Somebody had to."

The sergeant took another glum look around. He did not audibly acknowledge that all his castles in the air had settled soggily back to earth, but the morose admission was implicit in the majestic stolidity with which he tried to keep anything that might have been interpreted as a confession out of his face. He took refuge in an air of busy inscrutability, as if he had just a little more up his sleeve than he was prepared to share with anyone else for the time being; but there was at least one member of his audience who was not deceived, and who breathed a sigh of relief at the lifting of what might have been a dangerous suspicion.