13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

'You still haven't shown me a murder,' he stated.

'I had to find it myself,' said the Saint gently, 'You see, it was a kind of professional problem. Enstone was happily married, happy with his family, no more crooked than any other big-time financier, nothing on his conscience, rich and getting richer—how were they to make him commit suicide? If I'd been writing a story with him in it, for instance, how could I have made him commit suicide?'

'You'd have told him he had cancer,' said Teal caustically, 'and he'd have fallen for it.'

Simon shook his head.

'No. If I'd been a doctor—perhaps. But if Costello or Hammel had suggested it, he'd have wanted confirmation. And did he look like a man who'd just been told that he might have cancer?'

'It's your murder,' said Mr. Teal, with the beginnings of a drowsy tolerance that was transparently rooted in sheer resig­nation. 'I'll let you solve it.'

'There were lots of pieces missing at first,' said the Saint. 'I only had Enstone's character and weaknesses. And then it came out—Hammel was a psychologist. That was good, be­cause I'm a bit of a psychologist myself, and his mind would work something like mine. And then Costello could invent mechanical gadgets and make them himself. He shouldn't have fetched out that lighter, Claud—it gave me another of the missing pieces. And then there was the box.'

'Which box?'

'The cardboard box—on his table, with the brown paper. You know Fowler said that he thought either Hammel or Costello left it. Have you got it here?'

'I expect it's somewhere in the building.'

'Could we have it up?'

With the gesture of a blase hangman reaching for the noose, Teal took hold of the telephone on his desk.

'You can have the gun, too, if you like,' he said.

'Thanks,' said the Saint. 'I wanted the gun.'

Teal gave the order; and they sat and looked at each other in silence until the exhibits arrived. Teal's silence explained in fifty different ways that the Saint would be refused no facili­ties for nailing down his coffin in a manner that he would never be allowed to forget; but for some reason his facial regis­ter was not wholly convincing. When they were alone again, Simon went to the desk, picked up the gun, and put it in the box. It fitted very well.

'That's what happened, Claud,' he said with quiet triumph. 'They gave him the gun in the box.'

'And he shot himself without knowing what he was doing,' Teal said witheringly.

'That's just it,' said the Saint, with a blue devil of mockery in his gaze. 'He didn't know what he was doing.'

Mr. Teal's molars clamped down cruelly on the inoffensive merchandise of the Wrigley Corporation.

'Well, what did he think he was doing—sitting under a rug pretending to be a bear?'

Simon sighed.

'That's what I'm trying to work out.'

Teal's chair creaked as his full weight slumped back in it in hopeless exasperation.