The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

At midnight Toby had seen Laura sent to bed by a kindly doctor with a draught which would send her the sleep that could not have come naturally; and he had gone back to his bachelor apartment to get what rest he could. All her sufferings had been his by sympathy: he had seen her stared at in the court by goggle-eyed vampires with no better use for their time than to regale themselves with the free entertainment provided for them by her ordeal-had read with a new-found disgust the sensational journalism that was inevitably splurged on the case, and seen press photographers descending on her like a pack of hounds every time she left the court. He had knocked down one who was too importu­nate, and it had given him some relief. But the rest of it had remained; and it had been made no easier by the sudden inaccessibility of the one man who might have been able to help him. Simon Templar had been as elusive as a phantom; a couple of days after the case, Chief Inspector Teal, who came down with a watching brief, told him that the Saint had gone abroad.

Toby had slept fitfully until six o'clock, and had woken up unrested. He got up and brewed himself a cup of tea, and paced restlessly up and down his tiny sitting room. The clatter of the postman's knock on his front door was a kind of relief: anything that would serve to distract his mind for a few minutes was wel­come.

He went out and found that single letter. It bore a Spanish stamp, and was postmarked from Barcelona.

"MY DEAR TOBY: "I know you've been thinking some hard things about me since I became so obstinately impossible to lay hands on during the trial of Galbraith Stride. Will you understand that I only did what I thought was best, and what I think in the future you also will see was the best thing for you both ?

"You will remember that at our last meeting, after the police-court proceedings, you told me what was on your mind, and I could only give you the vaguest possible comfort. I didn't want to try you too highly then; because not all of us are born to be self-appointed judges and executioners, and what you didn't know you couldn't possibly be tempted to reveal. We agreed that it would be better if you knew nothing until it was all over; and that Laura must never know.

"Well, that time has nearly come; and it has been brought much nearer by a cable I had this morning, which removes the last reason I might have had for keeping silent. Clements is dead.

"And he, Toby, was the man who killed Abdul Osman.

"I know all the things you've been thinking. That confession you made in the saloon, when you told me that you had done it, wasn't quite such a foolish thing as I tried to make you believe; and perhaps you never did wholly believe it. Perhaps even now there are mo­ments when you wonder . . . You couldn't ask her, of course. Well, that's one shadow I can take away from your young lives.

"And then there were other times when you thought I'd done it myself. Toby, old lad, you may have gath­ered some idea of my views on the Englishman and Public School Man legend; but here's where I make an everlasting exception in your case. You rose to something much bigger then-something that makes me sorry you'll always have that Public School background behind you in your ordinary life, and go on to become a highly respected county magistrate, chairman of the golf club, and member of the Athenaeum. But even though it wasn't necessary, I think a hell of a lot of the loyalty that kept you from breathing a word of it when they were grilling you in the box.

"You figured to yourself that it was Galbraith Stride who sold Laura and I who saved her; and therefore even if I perjured myself to hell you had a debt to me that would never let you speak. And now, Toby, you've got to show yourself just as big a man to the memory of that poor devil who died the other day. "This is exactly what happened. "I arrived on the Claudette just as you and Laura were pushing off from the other side. I heard your boat buzzing away, and thought nothing of it at the time. I was after Galbraith Stride and Abdul Osman at the same time. You know all about me, and all the things I've done in the name of what I think is justice. I had decided that both Osman and Stride were far too foul to live any longer. I've killed men before, many of them -it didn't mean anything like the same thing to me as it would have to you. I meant to carry the pair of them off on the Puffin, rope them together with half a ton of lead for ballast, and drop them quietly into the sea away off beyond Round Island where there's forty fathoms of water and they could swing there on the tides till the lobsters had finished with them. There'd have been no bungling about it, no fuss; and I'd have had a peach of an alibi waiting back on St. Mary's for me if there hadn't been other things doing that night which upset all my plans.