But there was a time when the suspects were very vague. I even wasted a few minutes suspecting you. Oh, not as an active killer--I couldn't really visualise you garrotting Gabriel with your own strong hands, and besides a police surgeon decided soon afterwards that Gabriel was getting the tourniquet on his tonsils at about the time when you would have been trying to persuade an unfriendly head waiter that it wasn't your fault if your host sneaked out without paying for dinner. And also I'd collided with Cokey in the rneantime. But somebody sent Cokey; and somebody sent Varetti--at least, I'm guessing that it was that fugitive from a tango tournament who rescued Cokey after I'd tied him up. It could conceivably have been you who was the master mind; but after some profound meditation I decided that you just didn't have that much brain.'
Her eyes smouldered like tar pits as she glared at him, and he realised that things happened to her beauty under stress.
He had a fleeting instant of wondering whether it was right for him to destroy so much loveliness piece by piece as he was dolng, even to achieve what he had to achieve.
Then he thought about nameless men dying in foxholes or plunging out of the sky in naming fortresses, and knew that it was still all right.
He said: 'Believe it or not, I thought about Titania too. She makes sillier noises than you do, but she's a lot shrewder and tougher. I could see Milton with a mistress as ornamental as you, and I could see him going to all these lengths to get back a little of his own life. But I could just as well see Titania taking the last colossal step to get rid of Milton, whom she hates and despises, and at the same time make herself even richer and stronger than before. But what was wrong with that was that if she'd had the real master-mind cunning she wouldn't have stuck her neck out so far. She wouldn't have been so specific, and she wouldn't have dragged Linnet in. She wouldn't have made it so easy for the suspicion to be transferred to herself. So that was something else that didn't connect. I could see her as a phenomenally vicious and nasty woman with a great hate and jealousy in her complicated brain; but she wasn't subtle enough. . . . All that's just a lot of wordage now, of course, because I know all the answers.'
'You're just talking,' she said.
His lean face was untouched and impassive.
'I know the answers, and I can practically prove them. The police will put the rest of it together. There's only one person who could have done all these things. Who stole Uttershaw'si iridium, and created the shortage at the same time as he set up his own black market with inside information. Who had Gabriel Linnet killed, because I was too damn smart and couldn't keep my stupid mouth shut. Who fixed you up for me, to make sure I wouldn't have an alibi for that murder. Who left that suitcase at your apartment, and who sent Varetti and Walsh with a key to pick it up, and who let them out of your closet a little while ago and sent them off to the Algonquin to pick it up again.'
He smiled pleasantly at her, sipping his cigarette again while he measured her for his penultimate thrust.
'And,' he said, 'I know who's been planning to kill you at any convenient moment now, besides killing me.'
He would never have believed that a face like hers could have looked so bleached and frozen.
'Now I know you must be insane,' she breathed.
He shook his head sadly.
'No, dear. Not any more insane than your beloved, who is very sane indeed. Sane enough to know that this is too hot now to take any more chances on you, because you know too much anyhow and you might still change your mind.' The Saint's voice was utterly passionless and level, and his mind felt as if it were standing alone in the middle of a great empty hall. 'Your life is run-ning out while you're stalling, darling. And it doesn't make a bit of difference, because I did see those pajamas.'
'I wore those pajamas,' she said, 'and I think your insinua-tions----'
'Why not save it? I can see where you might need all those his-trionics. You'll need plenty of them for the most dead-pan audience you ever saw--the jury who'll decide whether to give you the electric cure or burden the taxpayers with the cost of your gray uniforms and oatmeal for twenty years. Which will be quite a change from Saks Fifth Avenue and coq au vin.'
'You----'
'I am no gentleman,' said the Saint regretfully. 'Because I know that even if you did wear those pajamas, you didn't buy them--at least not for yourself. They would have been too big for you. They might have fitted Titania, but she would never go lor any tomboy styles--she would be strictly for lace and chiffon, ind lots of it. But they were also very obviously too long for Milton. Which confused me more than somewhat for quite a little while; but eventually it made sense. So the showdown is right now, and this is the very last time I can ask you which side you're on.'
Her lips were wooden.
'Presently.' He nodded.
'Yes. That's what you said before.'
'Then why don't you go away now?'
'Because I want to be finished with this. And I think this is a perfect time to finish.'
He moved towards the center table, to the ashtray which had been his first landmark of all with its litter of crumpled butts. He stirred the mess with his fingers, and picked out one stub to hold up.
His eyes picked her up again like blued points of steel.
'When I came in here,' he said, 'I happened to notice that there was one cigarette in this ashtray that didn't have any lipstick on it. So I was quite sure that your boy friend was herealready, and I've been talking to him as much as to you. Now thatyou've made your choice, and he's listened so patiently to whatI've got on him, we can stop playing hide-and-seek. I'm quite certain that he's just inside the bedroom door, and I think it would be much more sociable if he came out and joined us.'
' 'Journeys end in lovers meeting',' said Allen Uttershaw, in his mild and ingratiating way. 'Or would you prefer the other one --'Journeys end in death'?'
15 He stepped into the room with a gun held almost diffidently in his hand; but his eyes were much too calm for carelessness, and it was noticeable that his aim appeared to be steady and accurate enough.
'For the moment, the choice seems to be yours,' said the Saint placidly.
He stood with his hands raised, and made no movement while Uttershaw circled cautiously around him, came up behind him, and felt over his pockets with unflurried thoroughness.
'You might put down your cigarette,' Uttershaw said as he stepped back and circled into view again. 'And if it explodes, I assure you I shall not look round.'
The Saint smiled as he dabbed at the ashtray.
'So Ricco told you about that one, did he? I imagine he must have been quite pained about being taken in by an old gag like that.'
'He did seem to have a grudge against you.'
'I'm sure he has a much worse one by now.'
'I was wondering about that. How did it happen?'
'I was expecting him. And I'm afraid he loused up the job again. Really, Allen, he did let you down. I bullied and badgered him until he was too bothered to keep two worries bouncing in his head at the same time, and then he dropped a couple of words which were just enough to tell me for sure that you'd be here and what you were planning to do.'
Uttershaw smiled and nodded. It was just as though somebody were telling him about a friend of his whose record trout had gotten away because the leader broke.
'I knew I'd been disappointed when you arrived here,' he acknowledged. 'And I suppose the iridium is still safe in your room.'
'Oh, no.'
'What did you do with it?'
'It never was in my room. So I hope you won't disturb the atmosphere of my elegant estaminet by sending any more of your messengers after it. You see, after I left Barbara here I went to mother luggage store and bought another bag and put the iridium in it, and I filled your bag with an assortment of sporting goods of suitable weight and, I think, of rather an appropriate shape. Then I left the really valuable bag at a police station on the way home,
