The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

"I hauled Stride up onto the Luxor, and whizzed over the ship to locate the crew so I'd know where to expect trouble coming from if there was any. Then I headed for the saloon, lifted the skylight half an inch to look in, and saw all the jamboree going on. Toby, I simply had to stay watching. Call it morbid fascination or what you like, there were things going on down there that I had to know more about. I heard most of it- and remember that I could have butted in at any time things started looking too rough. I might have spared you some of the things that happened, but my pro­fessional curiosity had to see the scene through as far as I dared let it go.

"Osman was telling the truth about Stride's bargain -I could tell that at once. You remember that the torn note they found in the saloon, the one Laura was sent over with, was just a blank sheet of paper? Wasn't that proof enough? You saw it later; but I was looking down right over Osman's shoulder, and I saw it the minute he opened it.

"You know what happened up to the time you were taken out of the saloon. Then Abdul started trying his sheik stuff on Laura, as you've been told. The only other person there was Clements-the man Abdul for­got-the man everyone always forgot. And Clements, crazed with the need for the drug that Abdul had broken him in to-he had been kept without it all day, as he told me afterwards, just for one of those spiteful whims of torture that Abdul's pleasant imagination was always producing-Clements' only idea was to take advantage of the confusion and help himself from the cupboard where the stuff was kept. I could see him stumbling towards it like a madman; and it seemed that that was the cue for me to butt in at last.

"I'd started out unarmed-recent notoriety has made me rather cautious about running the risk of letting anyone catch me within miles of a gun-but Stride had an automatic when I captured him, and I'd shoved it away in a hip pocket that wasn't designed for a quick draw, after considering for some moments whether I should pitch it into the sea. I wanted it badly then, and I was trying to get hold of it with one hand while I held the skylight propped up with the other, when Clements pulled his big scene.

"He'd got his hands into the cupboard, and there was an automatic there.He touched it, actually picked it up -heaven knows why. And then he looked round. Laura had just fainted, and Abdul was clawing at her.

"I told you that I was my own judge and jury; but there are some things which even I will not presume to judge. You may say that Clements had every reason to hate Osman, that even he might know that Osman's death, whatever it cost him, would mean the end of a slavery that was worse than any hangman. You may say that Osman's demonstration on him that night, before your eyes, fanned his hate to a furnace that even the fear of being deprived of his drug could not quell. Or perhaps, Toby, you may like to think that even in that broken wreck of a man that Osman had made of him there was a lingering spark of the man that Clem­ents had been before, a spark that had been awakened into a faint flame of new courage by that last brutal humiliation which you saw, a spark that even in his hopeless soul could feel the shame of that final outrage which he had been left to witness. You will think what you like; and so shall I. I shall only tell you what I saw.

"Clements turned round, with the gun. His face was under the light, and it had a look-I can't say of hate or rage-a look of sudden peace that was almost glorious. He stepped up to Abdul Osman and shot him through the heart, and stood quite still and watched him fall. And then he dropped the gun-it just happened to fall near Laura, that's all-and went back to the cupboard. And I should like to say that he didn't stagger back like a starving animal, as he had gone there at first: he went quite slowly, quite quietly, though I could see that every one of his nerves was a white-hot wire of agony with his hunger for that poison.

"Well, it seemed as if the inquest was the next thing, and I didn't want it to be held on any of us at the same time, with that heathen crew roused by the shot. I dashed round and locked them up pronto, after heaving the skylight wide open and dumping Galbraith bodily in to get him out of the way-he was still sleeping peacefully from the clout I'd given him on the jaw, and wasn't likely to make any trouble for some time.