Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"Accomplice?" repeated the doctor.

"Yes," said the Saint flatly. "And just to make sure we understand each other, I'm referring to a phoney medico who goes under the name of Quintus."

The doctor's face went white, and his hands whitened on the arms of his chair; but the Saint didn't stir.

"I wouldn't try it," he said. "I wouldn't try anything, brother, if I were you. Because if you do, I shall smash you into soup-meat."

Rosemary Chase stared from one to the other.

"But — you don't mean—"

"I mean that that motor accident of your father's was a lie from beginning to end." Simon's voice was gentle. "He needed a phoney doctor to back up the story of those injuries. He couldn't have kept it up with an honest one, and that would have wrecked everything. It took me a long time to see it, but that's because we're all ready to take too much for granted. You told me you'd seen your father since it happened, so I didn't ask any more questions. Naturally, you didn't feel you had to tell me that when you saw him he was smothered in bandages like a mummy, and his voice was only a hoarse croak; but he needed Quintus to keep him that way."

"You must be out of your mind!" Quintus roared hollowly.

The Saint smiled.

"No. But you're out of a job. And it was an easy one. I said we all take too much for granted. You're introduced as a doctor, and so everybody believes it. Now you're going to have another easy job — signing the confession I promised Sergeant Jesser. You'll do it to save your own skin. You'll tell how Forrest wasn't quite such a fool as he seemed — how he listened outside Marvin Chase's room, and heard you and your pal cooking up a scheme to have your pal bust this window here and take a shot at you, just for effect, and then kill me and Hoppy when we came dashing into the fight — how Forrest got caught there, and how he was murdered so he couldn't spill the beans—"

"And what else?" said a new voice.

Simon turned his eyes towards the doorway and the man who stood there — a man incongruously clad in dark wine-coloured silk pyjamas and bedroom slippers whose head was swathed in bandages so that only his eyes were visible, whose gloved right hand held a revolver aimed at the Saint's chest. The Saint heard Rosemary come to her feet with a stifled cry and answered to her rather than to anyone else.

"I told you you were going to be hurt, Rosemary," he said. "Your father was killed a week ago. But you'll remember his secretary. This is Mr Bertrand Tamblin."

"You're clever, aren't you?" Tamblin said viciously.

"Not very," said the Saint regretfully. "I ought to have tumbled to it long ago. But as I was saying, we all take too much for granted. Everyone spoke of you as Marvin Chase, and so I assumed that was who you were. I got thrown off the scent a bit further when Rosemary and Forrest crashed into the boathouse at an awkward moment when you got the wind up and scrammed. I didn't get anywhere near the mark until I began to think of you as the invisible millionaire — the guy that all the fuss was about and yet who couldn't be seen. Then it all straightened out. You killed Marvin Chase, burnt his body in a fake auto crash, and had yourself brought home by Quintus in his place. Nobody argued about it; you had Quintus to keep you covered; you knew enough about his affairs to keep your end up in any conversation — you could even fool his daughter on short interviews, with your face bandaged and talking in the sort of faint unrecognizable voice that a guy who'd been badly injured might talk in. And you were all set to get your hands on as much of Marvin Chase's dough as you could squeeze out of banks and bonds before anyone got suspicious."

"Yes?"

"Oh, yes… It was a grand idea until the accidents began to happen. Forrest was another accident. You got some of his blood on you — it's on you now — and you were afraid to jump back into bed when you heard me coming up the stairs. You lost your head again, and plunged into a phoney kidnapping. I don't believe that you skipped out of your window at all just then — you simply hopped into another room and hid there till the coast was clear. I wondered about that when I didn't hear any car driving off, and nobody took a shot at me when I walked round the house."

"Go on."

"Then you realized that someone would send for the police, and you had to delay that until you'd carried out your original plan of strengthening Quintus's alibi and killing Hoppy and me. You cut the phone wires. That was another error: an outside gang would have done that first and taken no chances, not run the risk of hanging around to do it after the job was pulled. Again, you didn't shoot at me when I went out of doors the second time, because you wanted to make it look as if Quintus was also being shot at first. Then when you chose your moment, I was lucky enough to be too fast for you. When you heard me chasing round the outside of the house, you pushed off into the night for another think. I'd 've had the hell of a time catching you out there in the dark, so I let you hear me talking to the butler because I knew it would fetch you in."

Tamblin nodded.

"You only made two mistakes," he said. "Forrest would have been killed anyway, only I should have chosen a better time for it. I heard Rosemary talking to him one night outside the front door, directly under my window, when he was leaving — that is how I found out that Nora had written to you and where she was going to meet you."

"And the other mistake?" Simon asked coolly.

"Was when you let your own cleverness run away with you. When you arranged your clever scheme to get me to walk in here to provide the climax for your dramatic revelations, and even left the front door ajar to make it easy for me. You conceited fool! You've got your confession; but did you think I'd let it do you any good? Your bluff only bothered me for a moment when I was afraid Quintus had ratted. As soon as I found he hadn't, I was laughing at you. The only difference you've made is that now I shall have to kill Rosemary as well. Quintus had ideas about her, and we could have used her to build up the story—"

"Bertrand," said the Saint gravely, "I'm afraid you are beginning to drivel."

The revolver that was trained on him did not waver.

"Tell me why," Tamblin said interestedly.

Simon trickled smoke languidly through his nostrils. He was still leaning back in his chair, imperturbably relaxed, in the attitude in which he had stayed even when Tamblin entered the room.

"Because it's your turn to be taking too much for granted. You thought my cleverness had run away with me, and so you stopped thinking. It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that since I expected you to come in, I may have expected just how sociable your ideas would be when you got here. You heard me give Jeeves a gun, and so you've jumped to the conclusion that I'm unarmed. Now will you take a look at my left hand? You notice that it's in my coat pocket. I've got you covered with another gun, Bertrand, and I'm ready to bet I can shoot faster than you. If you don't believe me, just start squeezing that trigger."

Tamblin stood gazing motionlessly at him for a moment; and then his head tilted back and a cackle of hideous laughter came through the slit in the bandages over his mouth.

"Oh, no, Mr Templar," he crowed. "You're the one who took too much for granted. You decided that Quintus was a phoney doctor, and so you didn't stop to think that he might be a genuine pickpocket. When he was holding on to you in the corridor upstairs — you remember? — he took the magazines out of both your guns. You've got one shot in the chamber of the gun you've got left, and Quintus has got you covered as well now. You can't get both of us with one bullet. You've been too clever for the last time—"