Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

You figured to yourself that it was Galbraith Stride who sold Laura and I who saved her; and therefore even if I perjured myself to hell you had a debt to me that would never let you speak. And now, Toby, you've got to show yourself just as big a man to the memory of that poor devil who died the other day. This is exactly what happened. I arrived on the Claudette just as you and Laura were pushing off from the other side. I heard your boat buzzing away, and thought nothing of it at the time. I was after Galbraith Stride and Abdul Osman at the same time. You know all about me, and all the things I've done in the name of what I think is justice. I had decided that both Osman and Stride were far too foul to live any longer. I've killed men before, many of them — it didn't mean anything like the same thing to me as it would have to you. I meant to carry the pair of them off on the Puffin , rope them together with half a ton of lead for ballast, and drop them quietly into the sea away off beyond Round Island where there's forty fathoms of water and they could swing there on the tides till the lobsters had finished with them. There'd have been no bungling about it, no fuss; and I'd have had a peach of an alibi waiting back on St. Mary's for me if there hadn't been other things doing that night which upset all my plans.

I hauled Stride up onto the Luxor , and whizzed over the ship to locate the crew so I'd know where to expect trouble coming from if there was any. Then I headed for the saloon, lifted the skylight half an inch to look in, and saw all the jamboree going on. Toby, I simply had to stay watching. Call it morbid fascination or what you like, there were things going on down there that I had to know more about. I heard most of it — and remember that I could have butted in at any time things started looking too rough. I might have spared you some of the things that happened, but my professional curiosity had to see the scene through as far as I dared let it go.

Osman was telling the truth about Stride's bargain — I could tell that at once. You remember that the torn note they found in the saloon, the one Laura was sent over with, was just a blank sheet of paper? Wasn't that proof enough? You saw it later; but I was looking down right over Osman's shoulder, and I saw it the minute he opened it.

You know what happened up to the time you were taken out of the saloon. Then Abdul started trying his sheik stuff on Laura, as you've been told. The only other person there was Clements — the man Abdul forgot — the man everyone always forgot. And Clements, crazed with the need for the drug that Abdul had broken him in to — he had been kept without it all day, as he told me afterwards, just for one of those spiteful whims of torture that Abdul's pleasant imagination was always producing — Clements' only idea was to take advantage of the confusion and help himself from the cupboard where the stuff was kept. I could see him stumbling towards it like a madman; and it seemed that that was the cue for me to butt in at last.

I'd started out unarmed — recent notoriety has made me rather cautious about running the risk of letting anyone catch me within miles of a gun — but Stride had an automatic when I captured him, and I'd shoved it away in a hip pocket that wasn't designed for a quick draw, after considering for some moments whether I should pitch it into the sea. I wanted it badly then, and I was trying to get hold of it with one hand while I held the skylight propped up with the other, when Clements pulled his big scene.

He'd got his hands into the cupboard, and there was an automatic there.He touched it, actually picked it up — heaven knows why. And then he looked round. Laura had just fainted, and Abdul was clawing at her.

I told you that I was my own judge and jury; but there are some things which even I will not presume to judge. You may say that Clements had every reason to hate Osman, that even he might know that Osman's death, whatever it cost him, would mean the end of a slavery that was worse than any hangman. You may say that Osman's demonstration on him that night, before your eyes, fanned his hate to a furnace that even the fear of being deprived of his drug could not quell. Or perhaps, Toby, you may like to think that even in that broken wreck of a man that Osman had made of him there was a lingering spark of the man that Clements had been before, a spark that had been awakened into a faint flame of new courage by that last brutal humiliation which you saw, a spark that even in his hopeless soul could feel the shame of that final outrage which he had been left to witness. You will think what you like; and so shall I. I shall only tell you what I saw.

Clements turned round, with the gun. His face was under the light, and it had a look — I can't say of hate or rage — a look of sudden peace that was almost glorious. He stepped up to Abdul Osman and shot him through the heart, and stood quite still and watched him fall. And then he dropped the gun — it just happened to fall near Laura, that's all — and went back to the cupboard. And I should like to say that he didn't stagger back like a starving animal, as he had gone there at first: he went quite slowly, quite quietly, though I could see that every one of his nerves was a white-hot wire of agony with his hunger for that poison.

Well, it seemed as if the inquest was the next thing, and I didn't want it to be held on any of us at the same time, with that heathen crew roused by the shot. I dashed round and locked them up pronto, after heaving the skylight wide open and dumping Galbraith bodily in to get him out of the way — he was still sleeping peacefully from the clout I'd given him on the jaw, and wasn't likely to make any trouble for some time.

I took you and Laura down to your motorboat and left you — by the way, you must be a pretty hefty bird when you're roused, for the hinges of that door you'd busted open looked as if they'd been through an earthquake. I still had to go on thinking at a speed that nearly gave me brain fever, because when you've got to work out alibis that weren't prepared in advance in less than sixty seconds there isn't much time for writing poetry. I hashed up everything I told you in the boat straight out of my head, without coffee or ice compresses; and then I left you and went back to the saloon to try and stage it to look true.

Even on the spur of the moment, you see, I'd made up my mind that Clements wasn't going to swing for what he'd done if I could possibly avoid it. Abdul had asked for it, and Abdul had got what was coming to him anyhow. Clements had simply paid off a debt of ten years of living death; and, Toby, after all, it had been Clements who actually saved your girl. I'd seen that look on his face when he shot Osman, that look which I can't hope ever to describe to you, and which I'd rather leave out of this story and leave for you to see in your own heart if you can. There seemed to be a much more suitable victim ready to hand: Galbraith Stride, who had also had it coming to him that night The only question was whether Clements could be pulled together sufficiently to catch on.

he dope had taken effect when I got back to him, and he was more or less normal. Also he was very calm. He used practically your own words.

"They can hang me if they like," he said. "It doesn't matter much."

I took him by the shoulders; and believe it or not, he could look me in the eye.

"They're not hanging you," I said. "They're going to hang Galbraith Stride."

"I don't mind what happens," said Clements. "I'm not sorry to have killed Osman. Do you see me? I'm only one man that he's ruined. There were thousands of others. I've seen them. You haven't been through it, and you don't know what it means."

"Perhaps I do," I said. "But Galbraith Stride is only another like him."