Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

"And it was you who went over to St. Mary's and informed Sergeant Hancock what had happened?"

"Yes."

"On your own initiative?"

"Entirely."

"I suggest that Templar said: 'Look here, Osman's dead, and there's no need for us to get into trouble. Let's go over to Sergeant Hancock and tell him that Stride did it.'"

"That is absurd."

"You remember the statement that Stride made to Sergeant Hancock when he was arrested?"

"Fairly well."

"You will recall, perhaps, that Stride described how he was attacked in his cabin on the Claudette by this man Templar, and that significant mention of a knife that was alleged to have been thrown into a door. Did you hear Sergeant Hancock give evidence that he examined the door in the saloon of the Claudette , and found the mark of a" knife having been driven deeply into it?"

"Yes."

"How would you account for that?"

"If you ask me, I should say that a man like Stride might well have foreseen the possibility of accidents, and he could easily have prepared that mark to substantiate his story in case of trouble."

It was on this point that the greatest weakness of the case for the prosecution seemed to rest. Simon Templar was recalled before the end, and his evidence reexamined.

"You have admitted that you went out to the Luxor on the night in question with the intention of assaulting Osman?"

"I've never denied it," said the Saint.

"Why, if you were so anxious to take the law into your own hands, did you confine your attentions to the deceased?"

"Because I'd heard of him, and I hadn't heard of Stride. Mr. Smithson Smith told me about Osman — that's already been given in evidence."

"And you," said counsel, with deliberate irony, "were immediately filled with such a passion for justice that you couldn't sleep until you had thrashed this monster that Osman was represented to you to be?"

"I thought it would be rather a rag," said the Saint, with a perfectly straight face.

"It has been suggested that you were the man who branded Osman five years ago — was that also intended to be rather a rag?"

"I never met the man before in my life."

"You have heard Galbraith Stride say that you told him that you had done that?"

"He must be dotty," said the Saint — a reply that earned him a three-minute lecture from the learned judge.

In his closing speech, the counsel for the Crown suggested that the difficulty might not be so great as it appeared.

"In this case," he said, "the only discrepancies which you need to take into consideration are those between the evidence given by Mr. Clements and Mr. Templar, and the story told by the prisoner. It is my submission to you that the defense has in no way succeeded in shaking the credibility of those two witnesses; and when you remember, in discarding the evidence of the prisoner that it is not supported by any other witness at any point, and that the only alternative to discarding it as the fantastic story of a man lying desperately to save his neck is to regard all the stories of all the other witnesses as nothing short of a deliberate conspiracy to send an innocent man to the gallows — then, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in my humble submission, there is only one conclusion at which any reasonable person can arrive."

The jury was away for three hours; but to the reporters in the crowded press seats it was a foregone conclusion. The fingerprints of Galbraith Stride had been found on the gun, and that seemed to clinch it.

So they found him guilty, as we know; and the warders had to hold him up when the judge put on the black cap.

THREE weeks later an early post brought Toby Halidom a letter.

He was awake to receive it; for during that night the story as it concerned him had dragged through its last intolerable lap. It was the end of three weeks of dreadful waiting — three weeks in which the lines of strain that had marked themselves on the face he loved had been etched in indelible lines of acid on his own memory. It was not that either of them bore any more affection for the man who had made his infamous bargain with Abdul Osman, and who was now awaiting the final irrevocable summons of the law; Galbraith Stride had placed himself beyond that; but they had known him personally, eaten at his table, seen him walking and talking as a human being of the same race as themselves instead of the impersonal deformed specimen in a glass case which the criminologists were already making of him, and they would not have been human themselves if that period of waiting for the relentless march of the law had not preyed on their waking and sleeping hours like an intermittent nightmare. And that night had been the last and worst of all.

At midnight Toby had seen Laura sent to bed by a kindly doctor with a draught which would send her the sleep that could not have come naturally; and he had gone back to his bachelor apartment to get what rest he could. All her sufferings had been his by sympathy: he had seen her stared at in the court by goggle-eyed vampires with no better use for their time than to regale themselves with the free entertainment provided for them by her ordeal — had read with a new-found disgust the sensational journalism that was inevitably splurged on the case, and seen press photographers descending on her like a pack of hounds every time she left the court. He had knocked down one who was too importunate, and it had given him some relief. But the rest of it had remained; and it had been made no easier by the sudden inaccessibility of the one man who might have been able to help him. Simon Templar had been as elusive as a phantom; a couple of days after the case, Chief Inspector Teal, who came down with a watching brief, told him that the Saint had gone abroad.

Toby had slept fitfully until six o'clock, and had woken up unrested. He got up and brewed himself a cup of tea, and paced restlessly up and down his tiny sitting room. The clatter of the postman's knock on his front door was a kind of relief: anything that would serve to distract his mind for a few minutes was welcome.

He went out and found that single letter. It bore a Spanish stamp, and was postmarked from Barcelona.

"MY DEAR TOBY:

I know you've been thinking some hard things about me since I became so obstinately impossible to lay hands on during the trial of Galbraith Stride. Will you understand that I only did what I thought was best, and what I think in the future you also will see was the best thing for you both?

You will remember that at our last meeting, after the police-court proceedings, you told me what was on your mind, and I could only give you the vaguest possible comfort. I didn't want to try you too highly then; because not all of us are born to be self-appointed judges and executioners, and what you didn't know you couldn't possibly be tempted to reveal. We agreed that it would be better if you knew nothing until it was all over; and that Laura must never know.

Well, that time has nearly come; and it has been brought much nearer by a cable I had this morning, which removes the last reason I might have had for keeping silent. Clements is dead.

And he, Toby, was the man who killed Abdul Osman.

I know all the things you've been thinking. That confession you made in the saloon, when you told me that you had done it, wasn't quite such a foolish thing as I tried to make you believe; and perhaps you never did wholly believe it. Perhaps even now there are moments when you wonder… You couldn't ask her, of course. Well, that's one shadow I can take away from your young lives.

"And then there were other times when you thought I'd done it myself. Toby, old lad, you may have gathered some idea of my views on the Englishman and Public School Man legend; but here's where I make an everlasting exception in your case. You rose to something much bigger then — something that makes me sorry you'll always have that Public School background behind you in your ordinary life, and go on to become a highly respected county magistrate, chairman of the golf club, and member of the Athenaeum. But even though it wasn't necessary, I think a hell of a lot of the loyalty that kept you from breathing a word of it when they were grilling you in the box.