into his hands. Only the accident happened; and one accident led to another.'
He took smoke from his cigarette, and returned it through musingly half smiling lips.
'The accident was when Nora Prescott wrote to me. She had to be in on the swindle, of course; but he thought he could keep her quiet with the threat that if she exposed him her father would lose the sinecure that was practically keeping him alive. It wasn't a very good threat, if she's been a little more sensible, but it scared her enough to keep her away from the police. It didn't scare her out of thinking that a guy like me might be able to wreck the scheme somehow and still save something out of it for her. So she wrote to me. Our villain found out about that, but wasn't able to stop the letter. So he followed her to the Bell tonight, planning to kill me as well, because he figured that once I'd received that letter I'd keep prying until I found something. When Nora led off to the boathouse, it looked to be in the bag. He followed her, killed her, and waited to add me to the collection. Only on account of another accident that happened then, he lost his nerve and quit.'
Again the Saint paused.
'Still, our villain knew he had to hang on to me until I could be disposed of,' he went on with the same leisured confidence. 'He arranged to bring me up here to be got rid of as soon as he knew how. He stalled along until after dinner, when he'd got a plan worked out. He'd just finished talking it over with his accomplice——'
'Accomplice?' repeated the doctor.
'Yes,' said the Saint flatly. 'And just to make sure we understand each other, I'm referring to a phoney medico who goes under the name of Quintus.'
The doctor's face went white, and his hands whitened on the arms of his chair; but the Saint didn't stir.
'I wouldn't try it,' he said. 'I wouldn't try anything, brother, if I were you. Because if you do, I shall smash you into soup-meat.'
Rosemary Chase stared from one to the other.
'But—you don't mean——'
'I mean that that motor accident of your father's was a lie from beginning to end.' Simon's voice was gentle. 'He needed a phoney doctor to back up the story of those injuries. He couldn't have kept it up with an honest one, and that would have wrecked everything. It took me a long time to see it, but that's because we're all ready to take too much for granted. You told me you'd seen your father since it happened, so I didn't ask any more questions. Naturally, you didn't feel you had to tell me that when you saw him he was smothered in bandages like a mummy, and his voice was only a hoarse croak; but he needed Quintus to keep him that way.'
'You must be out of your mind!' Quintus roared hollowly.
The Saint smiled.
'No. But you're out of a job. And it was an easy one. I said we all take too much for granted. You're introduced as a doctor, and so everybody believes it. Now you're going to have another easy job—signing the confession I promised Sergeant Jesser. You'll do it to save your own skin. You'll tell how Forrest wasn't quite such a fool as he seemed—how he listened outside Marvin Chase's room, and heard you and your pal cooking up a scheme to have your pal bust this window here and take a shot at you, just for effect, and then kill me and Hoppy when we came dashing into the fight—how Forrest got caught there, and how he was murdered so he couldn't spill the beans——'
'And what else ?' said a new voice.
Simon turned his eyes towards the doorway and the man who stood there—a man incongruously clad in dark wine-coloured silk pyjamas and bedroom slippers whose head was swathed in bandages so that only his eyes were visible, whose gloved right hand held a revolver aimed at the Saint's chest. The Saint heard Rosemary come to her feet with a stifled cry and answered to her rather than to anyone else.
'I told you you were going to be hurt, Rosemary,' he said. 'Your father was killed a week ago. But you'll remember his secretary. This is Mr Bertrand Tamblin.'
