the outer door, he realised that the sound of a door slamming could have been exactly the same, and he cursed his own unguardedness as he catapulted out on to the screened verandah.
One glance up and down was enough to show that there was no other person in sight, and he made that survey without even a check in his winged dash to Freddie's room.
His automatic was out in his hand when he flung the door open, to look across the room at Freddie Pellman, in black trousers and unbuttoned soft dress shirt, stretched out on the davenport, staring with a hideous grimace of terror at the rattlesnake that was coiled on his legs, its flat triangular head drawn back and poised to strike.
Behind him, the Saint heard Esther stifle a faint scream; and then the detonation of his gun blotted out every other sound.
As if it had been photographed in slow motion, Simon saw the snake's shattered head splatter away from its body, while the rest of it kicked and whipped away in series of reнflex convulsions that spilled it still writhing spasmodically on to the floor.
Freddie pulled himself shakily up to his feet.
'Good God,' he said, and repeated it. 'Good God-and it was real! Another second, and it'd have had me!'
'What happened?' Esther was asking shrilly.
'I don't know. I was starting to get dressed-you see?-I'd got my pants and shirt on, and I sat down and had a drink, and I must have fallen asleep. And then that thing landed on my lap!'
Simon dropped the gun back into his pocket.
'Landed?' he said.
'Yes-just as if somebody had thrown it. Somebody .must have thrown it. I felt it hit. That was what woke me up. I saw what it was, and of course I let out a yell, and then the door slammed, and I looked round too late to see who it was. But I didn't care who it was, then. All I could see was that God-damn snake leering at me. I almost thought I was seeing things again. But I knew I couldn't be. I wouldn't have felt it like that. I was just taking a nap, and somebody came in and threw it on top of me!'
'How long ago was this?'
'Just now! You don't think I lay there for an hour necking with a snake, do you? As soon as it fell on me I woke up, and as soon as I woke up I saw it, and of course I let out a yell at once. You heard me yell, didn't you, Esther? And right after that the door banged. Did you hear that?'
'Yes, I heard it,' said the Saint.
But he was thinking of something else. And for that once at least, even though she had admitted that she was not so bright, he knew that Esther was all the way there with him. He could feel her mind there with him, even without turnнing to find her eyes fastened on his face, even before she spoke.
'But that proves it, Simon! You must see that, don't you? I couldn't possibly have done it, could I?'
'Why, where were you?' Freddie demanded.
She drew herself up defiantly and faced him.
'I was in Simon's room.'
Freddie stood hunched and stiff and staring at them. And yet the Saint realised that it wasn't any positive crystallising of expression that made him look ugly. It was actually the reнverse. His puffy face was simply blank and relaxed. And on that sludgy foundation, the crinkles of unremitting feverish bonhomie, the lines and bunchings of laborious domineering enthusiasm, drained of their vital nervous activation, were left like a mass of soft sloppy scars in which the whole synopнsis of his life was hieroglyphed.
'What is it now?' Lissa's voice asked abruptly.
It was a voice that set out to be sharp and matter-of-fact, and failed by an infinitesimal quantity that only such ceaseнlessly critical ears as the Saint's would catch.
She stood in the doorway, with Ginny a little behind her.
Freddie looked up at her sidelong from under his lowered brows.
'Go away,' he said coldly. 'Get out.'
And then, almost without a pause or a transition, that short-lived quality in his voice was only an uncertain memory.
'Run along,' he said. 'Run along and finish dressing. Siнmon and I want to have a little talk. Nothing's the matter. We just had a little scare, but it's all taken care of. I'll tell you presently. Now be nice children and go away and don't make a fuss. You, too, Esther.'
Reluctantly, hesitantly, his harem melted away.
Simon strolled leisurely across to a side table and lighted himself a cigarette as Freddie closed the door. He genuinely wasn't perturbed, and he couldn't look as if he was.
'Well,' Freddie said finally, 'how does it look now?' His voice was surprisingly negative, and the Saint had to make a lightning adjustment to respond to it.
He said: 'It makes you look like quite a bad risk. So do you mind if I collect for today and tomorrow? Two Gs, Fredнdie. It'd be sort of comforting.'
Freddie went to the dressing-table, peeled a couple of bills out of a litter of green paper and small change, and came back with them. Simon glanced at them with satisfaction. They had the right number of zeros after the 1.
'I don't blame you,' said Freddie. 'If that snake had bitten me--'
'You wouldn't have died,' said the Saint calmly. 'Unless you've got a very bad heart, or something like that. That's the silly part of it. There are doctors within phone call, there's sure to be plenty of serum in town, and there's a guy like me on the premises who's bound to know the first aid. You'd have been rather sick, but you'd have lived through it. So why should the murderer go through an awkward routine with a snake when he had you cold and could've shot you or slit your throat and made sure of it? ... This whole plot has been full of silly things, and they're only just starting to add up and make sense.'
'They are?'
'Yes, I think so.'
'I wish I could see it.'
Simon sat on the arm of a chair and thought for a minute, blowing smoke-rings.
'Maybe I can make you see it,' he said.
'Go ahead.'
'Our suspects were limited to six people the first night, when we proved it was someone in the house. Now, through various events, every one of them has an alibi. That would make you think of a partnership. But none of the servants could have poisoned your drink this afternoon, and it wasn't done by the waiter or the bartender-they've both been at the club for years, and you could bet your shirt on them, Therefore somebody at the table must have been at least part of the partnership, or the whole works if there never was a partnerнship at all. But everyone at the table has still been alibied, somewhere in the story.'
Freddie's brow was creased with the strain of following the argument.
'Suppose two of the girls were in partnership?'
'I thought of that. It's possible, but absolutely not probable. I doubt very much whether any two women could collaboнrate on a proposition like this, but I'm damned sure that no two of these girls could.'
'Then where does that get you?'
'We have to look at the alibis again. And one of them has to be a phony.'
The corrugations deepened on Freddie's forehead. Simon watched him silently. It was like watching wheels go round. And then a strange expression came into Freddie's face. He looked at the Saint with wide eyes.
'My God!' he said. 'You mean-Lissa ...'
Simon didn't move.
'Yes,' Freddie muttered. 'Lissa. Ginny's got a perfect alibi. She couldn't have shot at me. You were with her yourself. Esther might have done it if she'd hidden a gun there before. But she was in your room when somebody threw that snake at me. She couldn't have faked that. And the servants have all gone . . . The only alibi Lissa has got is that she was the first one to be attacked. But we've only got her word for it. She could have staged that so easily.' His face was flushed with the excitement that was starting to obstruct his voice. 'And all that criminology of hers ... of course . . . she's the one who's always reading these mysteries-she'd think of melodramatic stuff like that snake-she'd have the sort of mind. ..'
