The splitting detonation of a shot racketed in his ears as he rolled up on one elbow. Patricia had missed, somehow, and the big man was grappling for the gun. Simon crawled up and flung himself forward. As he did so, the big man saw his own gun lying in the corner where the Saint had kicked it, and dived for it. Simon caught him from behind in a circling sweep, locking the big man's arms to his sides at the elbows; but the big man had the gun. The Saint saw it curling round for a backward shot that could not help scoring somewhere: he made a wild grab at the curving wrist and caught it, jerking it up as the trigger tightened, and the shot smashed through the floor. Simon flung his left leg forward, across the big man's stance. The steel dome was a yard away on his left. He heaved sideways, across the leverage of his thigh, and sprang back. . . . The man's scream rang in his ears as he staggered away. Once again that spurt of eye-aching blue flame seared across his eye's and turned suddenly orange. The big man had hit the dome with his shoulder, and his coat was burning; the smell of singeing cloth stung the Saint's nostrils, and the crack of cordite sang through his head as the galvanic current clamped a dead finger convulsively on the trigger and held it there rigidly in one last aimless shot. . . .
"And we still don't know his real name," murmured the Saint.
He pushed a handkerchief across his brow and looked at Patricia with a crooked grin. Patricia was fingering her wrist tenderly, where the big man's crushing grip had fastened on it. She looked back at the Saint with a pale face that was still hopelessly puzzled.
"That's your fault," she said.
"I know." The Saint's eyes had a mocking twist in their inscrutable blue that she couldn't understand. "You see, when you've made up your mind about a thing like Brother Jones's demise, the only way is to get it over quickly. And Claud Eustace will be along soon. But I promise you, Pat, I've never hated killing anyone so much-and there was never anyone who'd 've been so dangerous to my peace of mind if he'd stayed alive. If you want any excuses for it, he'd got two deliberate murders on his own hands and one more for which he was deliberately responsible, so he only got what was coming to him."
She waited alone in the room of death while the Saint vanished along the landing towards one of the bedrooms. It took the Saint a few minutes to repair the damage which the fight had done to his immaculate elegance, but when he had finished there was hardly a trace of it -nothing but a slight disorder that could have been caused by a brief scuffle. He used the dead man's hair-brushes and clothesbrush, and wrapped a handkerchief round his hand before he touched anything. Everything went back on the dressing table exactly as he had found it; and he returned to the girl with a ready smile.
"Let's finish the clean-up, Pat-I don't know that we've a lot of time."
He went over the floor with keen, restless eyes. Two cartridge cases he picked up from odd corners where they had rolled away after the snap action of the recoil had spewed them out of a pistol breech. He identified them as the products of his own gun, for he had marked each of them with a nick in the base. They went into his pocket: the others, which testified to the shots which Jones had fired, he left where they lay, and added to them the souvenir which he had preserved in a match-box from his breakfast table that morning. He searched the room once more for any other clues which he might have overlooked, and was satisfied.
His hand fell on Patricia's shoulder. "Let's go," he said.
They went down to the hall. Simon left her again while he went out into the garden. His automatic, and the shells he had picked up, went deep under the earth of a neglected flower bed; and he uprooted a clump of weeds and pressed them into a new berth where they would hide the marks of freshly turned earth.
"Don't you ever want me to know what you're up to?" asked Patricia, when he came back; and the Saint took her by the arm and led her to a chair.
"Lass, don't you realize I've just committed murder?
And times is not what they was. I've known much bigger things than this that were easy enough to get away with before Claud Eustace had quite such a life-and-death ambition to hang my scalp in his belt; but this is not once upon a time. We might have run away and left the mystery to uncover itself, but I didn't think that was such a hot idea. I'd rather know how we stand from the start. Now sit down and let me write some more about Wilberforce Gupp-this is a great evening for brainwork."
He propelled her gently into the chair and sat himself down in another. An envelope and a pencil came out of his pocket; and with perfect calm and detachment, as if he were sitting in his own room at home with a few minutes to spare, the amazing Saint proceeded to scribble down and read aloud to her the epilogue of his epic.
"Thus, on good terms with everyone, Nothing accomplished, nothing done, Sir Wilberforce, as history knows, Earned in due course a k-night's repose, And with his fellow pioneers Rose shortly to the House of Peers, Which nearly (but not quite) woke up To greet the noble Baron Gupp.
Citizens, praise careers like his, Which have made England what she is, And prove that only Lesser Breeds Follow where a stuffed walrus leads."
He had just finished when they both heard a car swing into the drive. Feet crunched over the gravel, and heavy boots grounded on the stone outside the front door. The resonant clatter of a brass knocker curtly applied echoed through the house.
Simon opened the door.
"Claud Eustace himself!" he murmured genially. "It seems years since I last saw you, Claud. And how's the ingrowing toenail?" He glanced past the detective's bulky presence at the four other men who were unloading themselves and their apparatus from the police car and lining up for the entrance. " I rather thought you'd be bringing a party with you, old dear, but I don't know that the caviare will go all the way round."
The detective stepped past him into the hall, and the other men followed. They were of various shapes and sizes, deficient in sex appeal but unconversationally efficient. They clumped themselves together on the mat and waited patiently for orders.
Mr. Teal faced the Saint with a certain grimness. His round pink face was rather more flushed than usual, and his baby-blue eyes were creased up into the merest slits, through which pinpoints of red danger lights glinted like scattering embers. He knew that he had taken a chance in coming to that house at all, and the squad he had brought with him multiplied his potential regrets by more factors than he cared to think about. If this was one of the Saint's practical jokes, Chief Inspector Teal would never hear the last of it. The whole C.I.D. would laugh itself sick-there were still giggles circulating over the gramophone-record incident -and the assistant commissioner's sniff would flay him till he wanted to find a quiet place to die. And yet he had had no choice. If he was told about a murder he had to go out and investigate it, and his private doubts did not count.