13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

gravel.

'Did you notice that Vould was shot in the back ?' he said.

'You heard Yearleigh's explanation.'

'You can't always believe what a man says—can you?'

Suddenly the Saint reached out and took the dagger which Teal was still holding. He unwrapped the handkerchief from it; and Teal let out an exclamation. 'You damn fool!'

'Because I'm destroying your precious finger-prints?' mur­mured the Saint coolly. 'You immortal ass! If you can hold a knife in your handkerchief to keep from marking it, couldn't anybody else?'

The detective was silent. His stillness after that instinctive outburst was so impassive that he might have gone to sleep on his feet. But he was very much awake. And presently the  Saint went on, in that gentle, somewhat mocking voice which Teal was listening for.

'I wonder where you get the idea that a 'sportsman' is a sort of hero,' he said. 'It doesn't require courage to take a cold bath—it's simply a matter of whether your constitution likes it. It doesn't require courage to play cricket—haven't you ever heard the howls of protest that shake the British Empire if a batsman happens to get hit with a ball? Perhaps it requires a little more courage to watch a pack of hounds pull down a savage fox, or to loose off a shot- gun at a ferocious grouse, or to catch a great man-eating trout with a little rod and line. But there are certain things you've been brought up to believe, and your mind isn't capable of reason­ing them out for itself. You believe that a 'sportsman' is a kind of peculiarly god-like gladiator, without fear and without reproach. You believe that no gentleman would shoot a sitting partridge, and therefore you believe that he wouldn't shoot a sitting poet.'

A light wind blew through the shrubbery; and the detective felt queerly cold.

'You're only talking,' he said. 'You haven't any evi­dence.'

'I know I haven't,' said the Saint, with a sudden weariness. 'I've only got what I think. I think that Yearleigh planned this days ago—when Vould first asked for the interview, as Yearleigh mentioned. I think he guessed what it would be about. I think his only reason for putting it off was to give himself time to send those anonymous threats to himself—to build up the melodrama he had invented. I think you'll find that those anonymous threats started on the day when Vould asked for a talk with him, and that Yearleigh had no sound reason for going away except that of putting Vould off. I think that when they were in the study tonight, Yearleigh pointed to the window and made some excuse to get Vould to turn round, and then shot him in the back in cold blood, and put this paper-knife in his hand afterwards. I think that that is what Lady Yearleigh, who must have known Year­leigh so much better than any of us, was afraid of; and I think that when she said 'He's killed him,' she meant that Yearleigh had killed Vould, and not that Vould had killed Yearleigh.'

The Saint's lighter flared, like a bomb bursting in the dark; and Teal looked up and saw his lean brown face, grim and curiously bitter in the light of the flame as he put it to his cigarette. And then the light went out again, and there was only Simon Templar's quiet voice speaking out of the dark.

'I think that I killed Maurice Vould as surely as if I'd shot him myself, because I couldn't see all those things until now, when it's too late. If I had seen them, I might have saved him.'

'But in the back,' said Teal harshly. 'That's the part I can't swallow.'

The tip of the Saint's cigarette glowed and died.

'Yearleigh was afraid of him,' he said. 'He couldn't risk any mistake—any cry or struggle that might have spoilt his scheme. He was afraid of Vould because, in his heart, he knew that Vould was so much cleverer and more desirable, so much more right and honest than he would ever be. He was fighting the old hopeless battle of age against youth. He knew that Vould had seen through the iniquity of his bill. The bill could never touch Yearleigh. He was too old for the last war, when I seem to remember that he made a great reputation by organising cricket matches behind the lines. He would be too old for the next. He had no children. But it's part of the psychology of life, whether you like it or