'Julia.'
They stared at him hesitantly-even Portmore looked doubtful. Then Jeffroll's trembling hand brought up the revolver again.
'That's a lie! Julia didn't know anything'
'That's why she wrote to me,' said the Saint. 'The letter's in my breast pocket-why don't you read it?'
Portmore took it out and passed it over.
'Is that her writing?'
Jeffroll nodded.
'My God,' he said stupidly.
Voss took the letter from him, glanced through it, and handed it to Portmore. They looked at each other rather foolishly. Portmore dropped the letter on the desk in front of Weems, who turned it over with a limp hand and rubbed the place where his chin would have been if he had had a chin. An awkward kind of silence settled upon the congregation and scratched itself reflectively, as Job might have done on discovering a new and hitherto unsuspected boil, Weems was the first to break it.
'That does seem to make things look a little bit different,' he admitted, gazing vacantly at the inkwell.
Portmore cleared his throat.
'What was your story again?' he asked.
The Saint repeated it, in greater detail; and this time there were no interruptions. When it was finished, the four men looked at one another almost bashfully, like members of a Civic Reform committee who have caught each other buying nudist magazines. Something compromising had certainly been done. There had, perhaps, been a slight technical departure from the canons of good form and unblemished purity. But nothing, of course, that had not been done with the most impeccable motives-that could not, naturally, be explained away with a few well- chosen words delivered in an austere and dignified and gentlemanly tone.
The other three turned automatically to Jeffroll, tacitly appointing him their spokesman; but perhaps this failure to respond immediately was understandable. The innkeeper had lowered his gun some minutes before, but the strained pallor of his face had altered only in degree.
'Then-then that means Garthwait has got her!' he stammered-. 'And if Yestering-if Yestering's gone over to him . . . or he may even have been the man who put Garthwait on to us-nobody else knew. Then it'll all have been for nothing- they'll use our work and divide the money. . . .' Suddenly, absurdly, his weak pathetic eyes turned to the Saint in helpless appeal. 'What are we going to do?'
Simon smiled.
'I'd like to help you,' he remarked lazily, 'but I'm afraid it always cramps my style when I'm tied up.'
'Sorry, old boy,' drawled Captain Voss, for after all he was an officer and a gentleman, and had once played cricket for Oxford.
He stepped forward to undo the wire; but he had barely started fumbling with it when there was a scutter of quick lurching footsteps in the passage outside, and the door burst open with a crash.
It was the big black-haired man, Kane, who reeled in under the startled eyes of his companions. His shirt was ripped into two great trailing fragments, and he was clutching one side of his head dizzily. A small trickle of blood ran down his cheek from under the heel of his hand. He stared at the scene for a moment and then nodded weakly, sagging against the jamb of the door.
'Good,' he said huskily. 'We've still got one of the swine, anyhow.'
'What the hell are you talking about?' demanded Port-more, with the reaction of his nerves indexed in the unnecessary loudness of his voice. 'This fellow's all right-we made a mistake. What's happened?'
Kane glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
'Who made a mistake?' he rasped. 'That pal of his-that Yankee thug-came out just now. After Yestering. He tried to hit me with the butt of his gun-did it, too. Laid me out. When I woke up I was lying in the hall-and he'd got away!'
IX SIMON TEMPLAR wriggled his cramped limbs into the most comfortable position he could find, and tried to doze. There was really nothing to encourage him in this relaxation, for even the most ascetic of mortals might find it difficult to fall into a peaceful sleep while lying on a hard floor with his hands tied behind his back, and the mental serenity which might have made these physical discomforts tolerable was noticeably lacking. The Saint scratched an itching part of his nose by rubbing it against the edge of the carpet, and contemplated the inscrutable capriciousness of Life.
Six hours ago he had been on the very point of removing himself from under the aim of a thunderbolt with masterly adroitness and aplomb. Five and three-quarter hours ago he might have been in complete control of the situation, with Jeffroll and the Four Horsemen sitting in eager humility at his feet while he planned and ordered their counterattack with crisp and inspiring efficiency. But during that vital quarter of an hour things had gung, as they had with Robert Burns' immortal mouse, distressingly agley.
They had, fairly enough, given him a chance to explain the conduct of Mr. Uniatz; but for once in his life the Saint felt as if he had been hit below the belt. He had been swatted with the full force of the sort of situation which he had himself so often used on Chief Inspector Teal, of Scotland Yard; and he admitted the poetic justice of the reversal without enjoying it any the more for that.
'The damn fool must have gone off his rocker,' was the only thing he had honestly been able to say; and even now, five hours and three quarters later, he could think of no other explanation. The psychological motivations of Hoppy's mind remained, as they always had been, shrouded in the unpenetrable darkness of the Styx. Down in the forest of Mr. Uniatz's fogbound brain, something occasionally stirred; and only God Almighty could predict what would develop from one of those rare bewildering feats of cerebral peristalsis.
Simon tried to derive some consolation from the fact that he was not dead yet.
