Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

He bowed stiffly and walked down from the dais into the midst of a silence in which the fall of a feather would have sounded deafening.

None of the party from Whiteways even looked at him. But he noticed, with one lonely tingle of hope, that Lady Valerie's eyes were narrowed in an expression of intense concentrated thought. She seemed to be considering astounding possibilities.

The coroner consulted inaudibly with the police sergeant, and then he cleared his throat again as he had done when the court opened. His well-scoured face wore a more tranquil expression.

"I don't think that we need to call any more witnesses," he said.

He went on to give his summing up to the jury. He pointed out that fires usually started by accident, and usually from the most trivial and unsuspected causes. He drew their attention to the fact that a number of fortuitous circumstances, for none of which Mr Fairweather or his guests were to blame, such as the heavily timbered construction of the house, and the pardonably forgotten open windows, had contributed to make the fire far more serious than it might otherwise have been. He reminded them that it was by no means unusual for some people to be such sound sleepers that even an earthquake would not waken them, and that in the haste and stress of an emergency a verbal misunderstanding was even less extraordinary than it was in everyday life. And he urged them to dismiss from their minds altogether the fantastic accusations with which the issue had been confused, and to consider the case solely on the very simple and coherent evidence which had been placed before them.

In twenty minutes the seven jurors, including the black-bearded little man, who looked vaguely disappointed, brought back a verdict of death by misadventure.

A hungry pack of reporters fell on the Saint as he left the building. They formed a close circle round him.

"Come on, Saint; give us the story!"

"What's the use?" Simon asked grittily. "You couldn't print it."

"Never mind that — tell us about it."

"Well, what do you think?"

One of them pushed his hat on to the back of his head.

"It looks easy enough. Maybe Kennet was dead drunk, but they'd want to keep that dark for the sake of the old man. It doesn't make much difference. It's pretty obvious that the whole lot of them lost their heads and just ran like hares and left him behind; but with a crowd like that it's bound to be hushed up. You couldn't do anything about it. What was the use of asking for trouble?"

For a moment there was sheer homicide in the Saint's eyes. So that was the net result of his desperate fight to block the whitewashing performance that had been put over not only under the very nose of justice but with its vigorous co-operation. That was the entire product of the risks he had taken and the humiliation to which he had exposed himself — so that even a sensation-loving press was inclined to regard him as having for once exhibited a somewhat egregious and unsophisticated stupidity.

And then he realized that that must not only be the press, but the general opinion. Whitewashing was understandable, something to whisper and wink knowingly about; but the truth that Simon Templar was convinced of was too much for them to swallow. Retired generals, great financiers and ex-cabinet ministers couldn't conspire to cover up murder: it was one of those things which simply did not happen.

His flash of rage died into a hopeless weariness.

"Maybe I like trouble," he rasped, and pushed his way out of the group.

He had seen Peter and Patricia coming out. He took their arms, one on each side of him, and led them silently across the road into the pub opposite.

They took their drinks at the bar and carried them over to a quiet corner by the window. The room was deserted, and for a while nobody broke the silence. Patricia's face was struggling between thunder and tears.

"You were magnificent, boy," she said at last. "I could have murdered that coroner."

"But what good could you do?" Peter asked helplessly.

Simon took out a cigarette and lighted it with tense, deliberate fingers. The bitterness had sunk deeper into him, condensing and coalescing into one white-hot drop of searing energy from which the savage power of its combustion was driving with transmuted fierceness through every inch of his being. Perhaps he had failed disastrously in the first round; but he was still on his feet, and the marrow of his bones had turned to iron. His first pull of smoke came back between lips that had settled into a relentless fighting line.

"None," he said curtly. "No good at all. But it had to be tried. And that lets us out. The rest of the argument is a free-for-all with no holds barred."

"What did you tell the reporters?" asked Peter.

"Nothing. They didn't want telling. They told me. As far as they're concerned, it was all just a routine set up to gloss over the fact that the Whiteways gang were all too busy saving their own skins to worry about anybody else. It was instructive, too, now I come to think about it. I was wondering how they'd managed to fix that coroner — dumb as he was. I think I can see it now. They let him think he was doing just what the reporters thought he was doing, and of course he was obviously the type who could be counted on to stand by the old school. Not that it matters now, anyway. They got their verdict, and the case is officially closed."

"The fireman said that he found the key," Peter observed.

Simon nodded.

"That was the worst mistake I've made so far — I told Luker the key wasn't in the door when I was trying to get a reaction out of him on the night of the fire. If he'd overlooked that, he'd 've had plenty of chances to sling it in through a window afterwards. But I don't think even that really made much difference."

Peter raised his tankard again and drank moodily.

Patricia emptied her glass.

She said presently: "I saw you get hold of your girl friend, but I didn't see you take my clothes off her."

"It was rather a public place," said the Saint. "But she's a nice girl and never goes out with the same man twice unless he's a millionaire. Or unless a millionaire asks her to. Which is why she was running around with young Kennet. Fairweather was the philanthropist who wanted him led back into the fold, and he was ready to buy a thousand-guinea fur coat to see it done. And Fairweather was the guy who arranged for him to come down for the week end. I got that much — and more."

The first taut-strung intensity of his manner was passing off, giving way before the slow return of the old exhilarant zest of battle which the other two knew so well. What was past was past; but the fight went on. And he was still in it. He began to feel the familiar tingle of impetuous vitality creeping again along his nerves; and the smoke came again through the first tentative glimmer of a Saintly smile.

"We were right, boys and girls," he said. "Our old friends the arms racketeers are on the warpath again: Luker, Fairweather and Sangore, just as we sorted them out, with Luker pulling the strings and Fairweather and Sangore playing ball. The Sons of France are in it, too, though I don't know how. But there's something big blowing up; and you can bet that whatever it is the arms manufacturers are going to end up in the money, even if a few million suckers do get killed in the process. Kennet had a bee about the arms racket; he'd been scratching around after them, and somehow or other he'd got on to something."

"What was it?" asked Patricia.

"I wish I knew. But we'll find out. It was something to do with papers and photographs. Lady Valerie didn't remember. She never paid any attention. The whole thing bored her. But it provides the one thing we didn't have before — the motive. Whatever it was, it was dynamite. It was big enough to mean that Kennet was too dangerous to be allowed to go on living. And he just wasn't smart enough or tough enough. They got him."