Follow the Saint

'I wondered about him too—after I read that letter. But how could I say anything?'

'Can you think of anything that might have given him a hold over your father?'

She moved her hands desperately.

'How could I know? Father never talked business at home. I never heard anything—discreditable about him. But how could I know ?'

'You've seen your father since he was brought home ?'

'Of course. Lots of times.'

'Did he seem to have anything on his mind ?'

'I can't tell——'

'Did he seem to be worried, or frightened ?'

'It's so hard' she said. 'I don't know what I really saw and what I'm making myself imagine. He was badly hurt, you know, and he was still trying to keep some of his busi­ness affairs going, so that took a lot out of him, and Dr Quintus never let me stay with him very long at a time. And then he didn't feel like talking much. Of course he seemed shaky, and not a bit like himself; but after an accident like that you wouldn't expect anything else. ... I don't know what to think about anything. I thought he always liked Jim, and now ... Oh, God, what a mess I've made!'

The Saint smothered the end of his cigarette in an ashtray, and there was an odd kind of final contentment in his eyes. All the threads were in his hands now, all the questions answered—except for the one answer that would cover all the others. Being as he was, he could understand Rosemary Chase's story, forgetting the way it had ended. Others might have found it harder to forgive; but to him it was just the old tale of amateur adventuring leading to tragic disaster. And even though his own amateur adventures had never led there, they were still close enough for him to realize the hair­breadth margin by which they had escaped it. ... And the story she told him gathered up many loose ends.

He sat down beside her and put his hand on her arm.

'Don't blame yourself too much about Jim,' he said steadyingly. 'He made some of the mess himself. If he hadn't thrown me off the track by the way he behaved, things might have been a lot different. Why the hell did he have to do that?'

'He'd made up his mind that you'd only come into this for what you could get out of it—that if you found out what Nora knew, you'd use it to blackmail father, or something like that. He wasn't terribly clever. I suppose he thought you'd killed her to keep the information to yourself——'

The Saint shrugged wryly.

'And I thought one of you had killed her to keep her mouth shut. None of us has been very clever—yet.'

'What are we going to do ?' she said.

Simon thought. And he may have been about to answer when his ears caught a sound that stopped him. His fingers tightened on the girl's wrist for an instant, while his eyes rested on her like bright steel; and then he got up.

'Give me another chance,' he said, in a soft voice that could not even have been heard across the room.

And then he was walking across to greet the doctor as the footsteps that had stopped him arrived at the door and Quintus came in.

'Dr Quintus!' The Saint's air was sympathetic, his face full of concern. He took the doctor's arm. 'You shouldn't have come down alone. I was just coming back for you, but there've been so many other things—'

'I