The sergeant did not seem to know the answer to that.
He said gruffly: 'What statement do you wish to make?'
'Just what I told Comrade Forrest when we were arguing. Mr Uniatz and I were ambling around to work up a thirst, and we saw this door open. Being rather inquisitive and not having anything better to do, we just nosed in, and we saw the body. We were just taking it in when somebody fired at us; and then Comrade Forrest turned on the spotlight and yelled 'Hands up!' or words to that effect, so to be on the safe side we handed up, thinking he'd fired the first shot. Still, he looked kind of nervous when he had hold of my gun, so I took it away from him in case it went off. Then I told Miss Chase to go ahead and fetch you. Incidentally, as I tried to tell Comrade Forrest, I've discovered that we were both wrong about that shooting. Somebody else did it from outside the window. You can see for yourself if you take a look at the glass.'
The Saint's voice and manner were masterpieces of matter-of-fact veracity. It is often easy to tell the plain truth and be disbelieved; but Simon's pleasant imperturbality left the sergeant visibly nonplussed. He went and inspected the broken glass at some length, and then he came back and scratched his head.
'Well,' he admitted grudgingly, 'there doesn't seem to be much doubt about that.'
'If you want any more proof,' said the Saint nonchalantly, 'you can take our guns apart. Comrade Forrest will tell you that we haven't done anything to them. You'll find the magazines full and the barrels clean.'
The sergeant adopted the suggestion with morbid eagerness, but he shrugged resignedly over the result.
'That seems to be right,' he said with stoic finality. 'It looks as if both you gentlemen were mistaken.' He went on scrutinizing the Saint grimly. 'But it still doesn't explain why you were in here with the deceased.'
'Because I found her,' answered the Saint reasonably. 'Somebody had to.'
The sergeant took another glum look around. He did not audibly acknowledge that all his castles in the air had settled soggily back to earth, but the morose admission was implicit in the majestic stolidity with which he tried to keep anything that might have been interpreted as a confession out of his face. He took refuge in an air of busy inscrutability, as if he had just a little more up his sleeve than he was prepared to share with anyone else for the time being; but there was at least one member of his audience who was not deceived, and who breathed a sigh of relief at the lifting of what might have been a dangerous suspicion.
'Better take down some more details,' he said gruffly to the constable with the notebook, and turned to Rosemary Chase. 'The deceased's name is Nora Prescott—is that right miss ?'
'Yes.'
'You knew her quite well ?'
'Of course. She was one of my father's personal secretaries,' said the dark girl; and the Saint suddenly felt as if the last knot in the tangle had been untied.
V
HE LISTENED with tingling detachment while Rosemary Chase talked and answered questions. The dead girl's father was a man who had known and helped Marvin Chase when they were both young, but who had long ago been left far behind by Marvin Chase's sensational rise in the financial world. When Prescott's own business was failing, Chase had willingly lent him large sums of money, but the failure had still not been averted. Illness had finally brought Prescott's misfortunes to the point where he was not even able to meet the interest on the loan, and when he refused further charity Chase had sent him to Switzerland to act as an entirely superfluous 'representative' in Zurich and had given Nora Prescott a job himself. She had lived more as one of the family than as an employee. No, she had given no hint of having any private troubles or being afraid of anyone. Only she had not seemed to be quite herself since Marvin Chase's motor accident. . . .
The bare supplementary facts clicked into place in the framework that was already there, as if into accurately fitted sockets, filling in
