"Yes."
The Saint nodded silently and turned away. He went over to the desk and sat in the chair behind it, smoking thoughtfully. The demise of Ivar Nordsten meant nothing to him personally--it was all very unfortunate and must have annoyed Ivar a good deal, but Simon was dispassionately unable to feel that the amenities of the world had suffered an irreparable loss. He had it to thank for something else, which was the shock that had probably saved Erik's reason. Equally well, perhaps, it might have struck the final blow at that pitifully tottering brain; but it had not. The man who had looked at him and answered his questions just now was not the quivering half-crazed wretch who had looked up into the beam of his flashlight out of that medieval dungeon under the floor: it was a man to whom sanity was coming back, who understood death and illogical grief--who would presently talk, and answer other questions. And there would be questions enough to answer.
Simon was too sensible to try to hurry the return. When his cigarette was finished he got up and found his torch and went down into the pit. It was only a small brick-lined cellar, with no other outlet, about twelve feet square. There was a rusty iron bedstead in one corner, and a small table beside it. On the table were a couple of plates on which were the remains of some food, and the table top was spotted with blobs of candle wax. Under the table there was an earthenware jar of water and an enamel mug. A small grating high up in one wall spoke for some kind of ventilating system, a gutter along one side for some kind of drainage, but the filth and smell were indescribable. The Saint was thankful to get out again.
When he returned to the library he found that Erik had taken down one of the curtains to cover up the body of his brother. The man was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands, but he looked up quite sanely as the Saint's feet trod on the parquet.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't understand you just now."
Simon smiled faintly and went for his cigarette-case again.
"I don't blame you, brother," he said. "If I'd spent two years in that rat hole, I guess I should have been a bit scatty myself."
The man nodded. His eyes roved involuntarily to the huddled heap under the rich curtain and returned to the Saint's face.
"He was always clever," he said, as if reciting an explanation which had been distilled through his mind so often during those dreadful years of darkness that nothing was left but the starkest essence, pruned to the barest minimum of words, to be spoken without apology or preface. "But he only counted results. They justified the means. His monopoly was built upon trickery and ruth-lessness. But he was thorough. He was ready to be found out. That's why he kept me--down there. If necessary, there was to be a tragic accident. Ivar Nordsten would be killed by his panther. But I was to have been the body, and he had another identity to step into."
"Did he hate you very much?"
"I don't think so. He had no reason to. But he had a kink. I was the perfect instrument for his scheme, and so he was ready to use me. Nothing counted against his own power and success."
It was more or less a confirmation of the amazing theory which the Saint had built up in his own mind. But there was one other thing he had to know.
"What is supposed to have happened to you?" he asked.
"My sailing boat capsized in Sogne Fjord. 1 was supposed to be in it, but my body was never found. Ivar told me."
The Saint smoked for a minute or two, gazing at the ceiling; and then he said: "What are you going to do now?"
Erik shrugged weakly.
"How do I know? I've had no time to think. I've been dead for two years. All this------"
The gesture of his hands concluded what he could not put into words, but the Saint understood. He nodded sympathetically; but he was about to make an answer when the telephone bell rang.
Simon's eyes settled into blue pools of quiet, and he put the cigarette to his lips again rather slowly in a moment's passive hesitation. And then, with an infinitesimal reckless steadying of his lips, he stretched out a lazy arm and lifted the instrument from its rack.
"Hullo," said a girl's voice. "Can't I speak to------"
"Pat!" The Saint straightened up suddenly and smiled. "I was wondering why I hadn't heard from you."
"I tried to get through twice before, but------"
"I guessed it, old darling," said the Saint quickly. He had detected the faint tremor of strain in her voice, and his eyes had gone hard again. "Never mind that just now, lass. I've got no end of news for you, b'ut I think you've got some for me. Let's have it."
"Teal's been here," she said. "He's on his way to Hawk Lodge right now. Are you all right, boy?"
He laughed; and his laughter held all of the hell-for-leather lilt which rustled through it most blithely when trouble was racing towards him like a charging buffalo.
"I'm fine," he said. "But after I've seen Claud Eustace, I'll be sitting on top of the world. Get the whisky away from Hoppy, sweetheart, and hide it somewhere for me. I'll be seein' ya!"
He dropped the microphone back on its perch and stood up, crushing his cigarette into an ashtray, seventy-four inches of him, lean and dynamic and unconquerable, with a dancing light shifting across devil-may-care blue eyes.
"Listen, Erik," he said, standing in front of the man who looked so much like Nordsten, "a little while ago I tried to tell you who I was. Do you think you can take it in now?"
The man nodded.
"I'm Simon Templar. They call me the Saint. If it was only two years ago when Ivar put you away, you must have heard of me."
The other's quick gasp was sufficient answer; and the Saint swept on, with all the mad persuasion which he could command in his voice, crowding every gift of inspired personality which the gods had given him into the task of carrying away the man who looked, like Nordsten on the stride of his own impetuous decision:
"I'm here because I pretended to be a man named Vickery. I pretended to be Vickery because Ivar wanted him for some mysterious job, and 1 wanted to find out what it was. I heard about that from Vickery's sister, because I got her away last night in London after she'd been arrested by the police. If I hadn't butted in here, Ivar wouldn't have rushed into your murder without a proper stage setting: he wouldn't have been killed, but you would. If you like to look at it that way, you're free and alive at this moment for the very same reason that the police are on their way here to arrest me now."
"I don't understand it altogether, even yet," Erik Nordsten said huskily, "But I know I must owe you more than I can ever repay."
"That's all you need to understand for the next half-hour," said the Saint. "And even then you're wrong. You can repay it--and repay yourself as well."
There was something in the quiet clear power of his voice, some quality of contagious urgency, which brought the other man stumbling up out of his chair, without knowing why. And the Saint caught him by the shoulders and swung him round.
"I'm an outlaw, Erik," he said. "You know that.
But in the end I don't do a lot of harm. You know that, too. Chief Inspector Teal, who's on his way here now, knows it--but he has his duty to do. That's what he's paid for. And he has such a nasty suspicious mind, wherever I'm around, that he couldn't come in here and see--your brother--as things are--without finding a way to want me for murder. And that would all be very troublesome."
"But I can tell him------"
"That it wasn't my fault. I know. But that wouldn't cover what I did last night. I want you to say more than that."
The man did not speak, and Simon went on: "You look like Nordsten. You are Nordsten-- with another first name. With a bit of good food and exercise, it'd be hard for anyone to tell the difference who didn't know Ivar very well; and from the look of things I shouldn't think he encouraged very many people', to know him well. You were intended to take his place eventually-- why not now?"