Follow the Saint

is well,' he reported, 'and I'm afraid Hoppy is ruining your cellar.'

She came up to him, her eyes searching him anxiously.

'That shot when you ran out,' she said. 'You aren't hurt?'

'Not a bit. But it's depressing to feel so unpopular.'

'What makes you think you're the only one who's un­popular?' asked the doctor dryly.

He was still sitting in the chair where Simon had left him, and Simon followed his glance as he screwed his neck round indicatively. Just over his left shoulder, a picture on the wall had a dark-edged hole drilled in it, and the few scraps of glass that still clung to the frame formed a jagged circle around it.

The Saint gazed at the bullet scar, and for a number of seconds he said nothing. He had heard the impact, of course, and heard the tinkle of glass; but since the shot had missed him he hadn't given it another thought. Now that its direc­tion was pointed out to him, the whole sequence of riddles seemed to fall into focus.

The chain of alibis was complete.

Anyone might have murdered Nora Prescott—even Rose­mary Chase and Forrest. Rosemary Chase herself could have fired the shot at the boathouse, an instant before Forrest switched on his torch, and then rejoined him. But Forrest wasn't likely to have cut his own throat; and even if he had done that, he couldn't have abducted Marvin Chase after­wards. And when Forrest was killed, the Saint himself was Rosemary's alibi. The butler might have done all these things; but after that he had been shut in the kitchen with Hoppy Uniatz to watch over him, so that the Saint's own pre­caution acquitted him of having fired those last two shots a few minutes ago. Dr Quintus might have done everything else, might never have been hit on the head upstairs at all; but he certainly couldn't have fired those two shots either— and one of them had actually been aimed at him. Simon went back to his original position by the fireplace to make sure of it. The result didn't permit the faintest shadow of doubt. Even allowing for his dash to the doorway, if the first shot had been aimed at the Saint and had just missed Quintus instead, it must have been fired by someone who couldn't get within ten feet of the bull's-eye at ten yards' range—an explanation that wasn't even worth considering.

And that left only one person who had never had an alibi— who had never been asked for one because he had never seemed to need one. The man around whom all the commo­tion was centred—and yet the one member of the cast, so far as the Saint was concerned, who had never yet appeared on the scene. Someone who, for all obvious purposes, might just as well have been nonexistent.

But if Marvin Chase himself bad done all the wild things that had been done that night, it would mean that the story of his injuries must be entirely fictitious. And it was hardly plausible that any man would fabricate and elaborate such a story at a time when there was no conceivable advantage to be gained from it.

Simon thought about that, and everything in him seemed to be standing still.

The girl was saying: 'These people wouldn't be doing all this if they just wanted to kidnap my father. Unless they were maniacs. They can't get any ransom if they kill off everyone who's ever had anything to do with him, and that's what they seem to be trying to do——'

'Except you,' said the Saint, almost inattentively. 'You haven't been hurt yet.'

He was thinking: 'The accident happened a week ago— days before Nora Prescott wrote to me, before there was ever any reason to expect me on the scene. But all these things that a criminal might want an alibi for have happened since I came into the picture, and probably on my account. Marvin Chase might have been a swindler, and he might have rubbed out his secretary in a phoney motor accident because he knew too much; but for all he could have known that would have been the end of it. He didn't need to pretend to be injured himself, and take the extra risk of bringing in a phoney doc­tor to build up the atmosphere. Therefore he didn't invent his injuries. Therefore his alibi is as good as anyone else's. Therefore we're right back where we started.'

Or did it mean that he was at the very end of the hunt ? In a kind of trance, he