'The mistake that all of us made,' he said, 'was not figurнing Freddie for a moderately clever guy. Because he was a bore, we figured he was moderately stupid. Which is a rather dangerous mistake. A bore isn't necessarily stupid. He doesn't necessarily overrate his own intelligence. He just underrates everyone else. That makes him tedious, but it doesn't make him dumb. Freddie isn't dumb. He just sounds dumb because he's talking down to how dumb he thinks the rest of us are. As a matter of fact, he's quite a lively lad. He put a lot of gray matter into this little scheme. As soon as he heard that I'd arrived in town, he had the inspiration that he'd been waiting for. And he didn't waste a day in getting it started. He wrote himself the famous threatening letter at once-it was quite a coincidence, of course, that there was that last Christнmas party to hang it on, but if there hadn't been that he'd certainly have thought of something else almost as good. He only had to establish that he was being menaced, and get me into the house to protect him. Then he had to put you in the middle of the first situation, in a set-up that would look swell in the beginning but would get shakier and shakier as things went on. That wasn't difficult either.'
The only sound when he paused was Freddie Pellman's heavy sobbing breathing.
'After that, he improvised. He only had to stage a series of incidents that would give everyone else in turn an absoнlutely ironclad alibi that would satisfy me. It wasn't hard to do-it was just a matter of being ready with a few props to take advantage of the opportunities that were bound to arise. Perhaps he was a bit lucky in having so many chances in such a short space of time, but I don't know. He couldn't go wrong anyway. Everything had to work in for him, once the primary idea was planted. Even an accident like Angelo picking up the knife was just a break for him-there weren't any fingerнprints on it, of course, and it just helped the mystery a litнtle ... And this evening he was able to finish up in style with the snake routine. It wasn't exactly his fault that the routine fitted in just as well with another pattern that was gradually penetrating into my poor benighted brain. That's just one of the natural troubles with trying to create artificial mysteries -when you're too busy towing around a lot of red herrings, you don't realise that you may be getting a fishy smell on your own fingers ... That was what Freddie did. He was being very clever about letting it work out that your alibi was the only flimsy one; but he forgot that when I had to start questioning alibis it might occur to me that there was one other person whose alibis were flimsier still. And that was him.'
Simon drew on his cigarette again.
'Funnily enough, I was just leading up to telling him that when he made his first major mistake. You see, I had an idea what was going on, but I was going nuts trying to figure out why. There didn't seem to be any point to the whole perнformance, except as a terrific and ponderous practical joke. And I couldn't see Freddie with that sort of humor. So I was just going to come out flatly and face him with it and see what happened. It's a shock technique that works pretty well someнtimes. And then he took all the wind out of my sails by insistнing on helping me to see how it all pointed to you. That's what I mean about him underrating other people's intelliнgence. He was just a little too anxious to make quite sure that I hadn't missed any of the points that I was supposed to get. But it had just the opposite effect, because I happened to know that your alibi must have been genuine. So then I knew that the whole plot didn't point to you-it was pointed at you. And when Freddie went a little further and helped me to think of the idea of staying behind tonight and searching your room, I began to guess that the climax would be someнthing like this. I suppose he got hold of you privately and told you he'd started to get suspicious of what I was up to- maybe I was planning to plant some evidence and frame one of you?'
'Yes.'
'So he suggested that the two of you sneak off and see if you could catch me at it?'
She nodded.
'Then,' said the Saint, 'you peeked in through the window and saw me with the exhibits on the dressing- table, and he said 'What did I tell you?' . . . And then he said something like: 'Let's really get the goods on him now. You take this gun and walk in on him and keep him talking. If he thinks you're alone he'll probably say enough to hang himself. I'll be listening, and I'll be a witness to everything he says.' Something like that?'
'Something like that,' she said huskily.
'And then the stage was all set. He only had to wait a minute or two, and shoot you. I was supposed to have susнpected you already. I'd found a lot of incriminating evidence in your room. And then you'd walked in on me with a gun . .. While of course his story would have been that he was suspicious when you sneaked off, that he followed you home, and found you holding me up, and you were just about to give me the works when he popped his pistol and saved my life. Everyone would have said that 'of course' you must have been Smoke Johnny's moll at some time, and nobody would ever have been likely to find the record of that marriage in Yuma unless they were looking for it-and why should they look for it? So you were out of the way, and he was in the clear, and I'd personally be his best, solid, hundred-per-cent witness that it was justifiable homicide. It would have made one of the neatest jobs that I ever heard of-if it had worked. Only it didn't work. Because just as I knew you had a good alibi all the time, I knew that all this junk in your drawer had been planted there, and so I knew that I still had someнthing else to look for-the real motive for all these things that were going on. Maybe I was lucky to find it so quickly. But even so, from the moment when you walked in, something exciting was waiting to happen . . . Well, it all worked out all right-or don't you think so, Freddie?'
'You've got to get me a doctor,' Freddie said hoarsely.
'Do I have all the right answers?' Simon asked relentнlessly.
Freddie Pellman moaned and clutched his arm tighter and raised a wild haggard face.
'You've got to get me a doctor,' he pleaded in a rising shout. 'Get me a doctor!'
'Tell us first,' insisted the Saint soothingly. 'Do we know all the answers?'
Pellman tossed his head, and suddenly everything seemed to disintegrate inside him.
'Yes!' he almost screamed. 'Yes, damn you! I was going to fix that little bitch. I'll do it again if I ever have the chance. And you, too! . . . Now get me a doctor. Get me a doctor, d'y hear? D'you want me to bleed to death?'
The Saint drew a long deep breath, and put out the stub of his cigarette. He took a pack from his pocket and lighted anнother. And with that symbolic action he had put one more episode behind him, and the life of adventure went on.
'I don't really know,' he said carelessly. 'I don't think there'd be any great injustice done if we let you die. Or we might keep you alive and continue with the shakedown. It's really up to Lissa.'
He glanced at the girl again curiously.
She was staring at Freddie in a way that Simon hoped no woman would ever look at him, and she seemed to have to make an effort to bring herself back to the immediate present. And even then she seemed to be a little behind.
She said: 'I just don't get one thing. How did you know all that stuff had been planted in my drawer? And why were you so sure that my flimsy alibi was good?'
He smiled.
'That was the easiest thing of all. Aren't you the detective-story fan? You might have gotten good ideas from some of your mysteries, but you could hardly have picked up such bad ones. At least you'd know better than to keep a lot of unnecessary incriminating evidence tucked away where anyнone with a little spare time could find it. And you'd never have had the nerve to pull an alibi like that first attack on yourself if it was a phony, because you'd have known that anyнone else who'd ever read a mystery too would have spotted it for a phony all the time. About the only thing wrong with Freddie is that he had bright ideas, but he didn't read the right books.'
'For Christ's sake,' Freddie implored shrilly, 'aren't you going to get me a doctor?'
'What would they do in a Saint story?' Lissa asked.
Simon Templar sighed.
'I imagine they'd let him call his own doctor, and tell the old story about how he was cleaning a gun and he didn't know it was loaded. And I suppose we'd go back to the Coral Room and look for Ginny and Esther, because they must be getting hungry, and I know I still am. And I expect Freddie would still pay off in the end, if we all helped him to build up a good story ...'
Lissa tucked her arm under his.
'But what are the rest of us going to do tonight?'
'The Hays Office angle on that bothers the hell out of me,' said the Saint
II: HOLLYWOOD
1
