The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

'Put that down, you ass,' he said; and then Toby recognized him and lowered the gun slowly.

'What are you doing here?'

'Getting you out of trouble,' said the Saint briskly. 'You needn't worry-the crew won't be interfering yet. I've just locked them up to keep them out of mischief.'

His gaze swept comprehensively round the room- over the body of Abdul Osman, who lay stretched out on his back, half underneath a table that he had clutched at and brought down with him in his fall, with a slowly widening red stain on his white shirt front; over the unconscious figure of Galbraith Stride; over the enslaved secretary, Clements, who sat without movement on one of the couches, his face hidden in his hands, with an empty hypodermic syringe lying where it had fallen on the dark tapestry beside him. ... He reached out and took the automatic from Halidom's unresisting fingers.

'I don't care if I hang for it!' said the young man hysterically. 'He deserved everything he got.'

Simon's eyebrows went up through one slow half-centimetre.

'If you hang for it?' he repeated.

'Yes. They can do what they like. I killed him-the swine. I shot him-'

The Saint's smile, that quirk of the lips which could be so gay, so reckless, so mocking, so debonair, so icily insolent, so maddeningly seraphic, as his mood willed it, touched his mouth and eyes with a rare gentleness that transformed him. A strange look, almost of tender­ness, touched the chiselled lines of that mad buccaneer­ing face.

'Hang you, Toby?' he said softly. 'I don't think they'll do that.'

The young man scarcely heard him. For at that mo­ment Laura's eyes opened, full of the horror of her last moment of consciousness, and saw the face of the young man bending over her with a queer little choking sob.

'Toby!'

She clung to him, raising herself against his shoulder, still wild-eyed with lingering nightmares; and then she shrank back as she saw Abdul Osman.

'Toby! Did you'

'It's all right, darling,' said Halidom huskily. 'He won't trouble us again.'

Then the Saint's hands touched each of their shoulders.

'I don't think you need to stay here,' he said quietly.

He led them out onto the deck, out into the night air that was cool and fresh with the enduring sweetness of the sea. The motorboat in which they had come was still moored at the bottom of the gangway; but now the Puffin was made fast behind it, with its spread sails stirring like the wings of a grey ghost against the dark water. Between them they helped the girl down to the motorboat; and Simon sat on the half-deck and gazed aft to the seats where the other two had settled them­selves. A match flared at the end of his cigarette.

'Will you try and listen to me?' he said, in the same quiet tone. 'I know what you've been through tonight, because I was listening most of the time. There were some things I had to know before I moved-and then, when the time came for me to interfere, there wasn't much for me to do. I did what I could, and no one will stop you going back to the Claudette.'

The hand with the cigarette moved towards the Luxor's side in a faint gesture.

'A man was killed there tonight. I've never seen any good reason for buttering up a bad name just because it's a dead one. As Toby said, he deserved everything he got-maybe more. He was a man whose money had been wrung farthing by farthing out of the ruin and degradation of more human lives than either of you can imagine. He was a man who'll leave the world a little cleaner for being dead.

'But in the eyes of the law he was murdered. In the eyes of the law he was a citizen who had every right to live, who could have called for policemen paid for by other citizens to protect him if he'd ever been threat­ened, who would have been guiltless for ever in the eyes of the law until his crimes could have been proved according to the niggling rules of evidence to twelve bamboozled half-wits by a parade of blathering lawyers. And the man who killed him will be sentenced to death according to the law.

'That man was Galbraith Stride.'

They were staring at him, intent and motionless.

'I know what you thought, Toby,' said the Saint. 'You burst into the saloon with murder in your heart, and saw Osman dead, and Laura with the gun close to her hand. You could only think for the moment that she had done it, and you made a rather foolish and rather splendid confession to me with some wild idea of shielding her. If I had any medals hung around me I'd give you one. But you certainly weren't in your right mind, because it never occurred to you to ask what Stride was doing there, or where Laura found the gun.

'Laura, I don't want to make it any harder for you, but there is one thing you must know. Every word that Osman told you was true. Galbraith Stride himself was just such a man as Osman. He has never been such a power for evil, perhaps; but that's only because he wasn't big enough. He was certainly no better. Their trades were the same, and they met here to divide their kingdoms. Osman won the division because he was just a shade more unscrupulous, and Stride sent you to him in accordance with their bargain.

'You might like to think that Stride repented at the last moment and came over to try and save you; but I'm afraid even that isn't true. He killed Osman for a much more sordid reason, which the police will hear about in due time.'

Even in the darkness he could see their eyes fixed on him. It was Laura Berwick who spoke for them both.

'Who are you?' she asked; and Simon was silent only for a second.

'I am Simon Templar, known as the Saint-you may have heard of me. I am my own law, and I have sen­tenced many men who were lesser pestilences than Abdul Osman or Garbraith Stride. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking. The police will also think it for a little while. I did come here tonight to kill Abdul Osman, but I wasn't quick enough.'