Simon reversed the automatic with a deft flip and held it on him. Even while he was making his spring, out of the corner of his eye he had seen Hoppy Uniatz flash away from him with an electrifying acceleration that would have stunned anyone who had misguidedly judged Mr Uniatz on the speed of his intellectual reactions; now he glanced briefly aside and saw that Hoppy was holding his gun again and keeping the girl pinioned with one arm.
"Okay, Hoppy," he said. "Keep your Betsy and let her go. She's going to call the police for us."
Hoppy released her, but the girl did not move. She stood against the wall, rubbing slim wrists that had been bruised by Mr Uniatz's untempered energy, looking from Simon to the striped blazer, with scared desperate eyes.
"Go ahead," said the Saint impatiently. "I won't damage little Jimmy unless he makes trouble. If this was one of my murdering evenings, you don't think I'd bump him and let you get away, do you? Go on and fetch your policemen — and we'll see whether the boy friend can make them believe his story!"
IV
They had to wait for some time…
After a minute, Simon turned the prisoner over to Hoppy and put his Luger away under his coat. He reached for his cigarette case again and thoughtfully helped himself to a smoke. With the cigarette curling blue drifts past his eyes, he traced again the course of the bullet that had so nearly stamped finale on all his adventures. There was no question that it had been fired from outside the window — and that also explained the peculiarly flat sound of the shot which had faintly puzzled him. The cleavage lines on the few scraps of glass remaining in the frame supplied the last detail of incontrovertible proof. He devoutly hoped that the shining lights of the local constabulary would have enough scientific knowledge to appreciate it.
Mr Uniatz, having brilliantly performed his share of physical activity, appeared to have been snared again in the unfathomable quagmires of the Mind. The tortured grimace that had cramped itself into his countenance indicated that some frightful eruption was taking place in the small core of grey matter which formed a sort of glutinous marrow inside his skull. He cleared his throat, producing a noise like a piece of sheet iron getting between the blades of a lawn mower, and gave the fruit of his travail to the world.
"Boss," he said, "I dunno how dese mugs t'ink dey can get away wit' it."
"How which mugs think they can get away with what?" asked the Saint somewhat vacantly.
"Dese mugs," said Mr Uniatz, "who are tryin' to take us for a ride, like ya tell me in de pub."
Simon had to stretch his memory backwards almost to breaking point to hook up again with Mr Uniatz's train of thought; and when he had finally done so he decided that it was wisest not to start any argument.
"Others have made the same mistake," he said casually, and hoped that would be the end of it.
Mr Uniatz nodded sagely.
"Well, dey all get what's comin' to dem," he said with philosophic complacency. "When do I give dis punk de woiks?"
"When do you — What?"
"Dis punk," said Mr Uniatz, waving his Betsy at the prisoner. "De mug who takes a shot at us."
"You don't," said the Saint shortly.
The equivalent of what on anybody else's face would have been a slight frown carved its fearsome corrugations into Hoppy's brow.
"Ya don't mean he gets away wit' it after all?"
"We'll see about that."
"Dijja hear what he calls us?"
"What was that?"
"He calls us washouts."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah, dat's too bad," Mr Uniatz glowered disparagingly at the captive. "Maybe I better go over him wit' a paddle foist. Just to make sure he don't go to sleep."
"Leave him alone," said the Saint soothingly. "He's young, but he'll grow up."
He was watching the striped blazer with more attention than a chance onlooker would have realized. The young man stood glaring at them defiantly — not without fear, but that was easy to explain if one wanted to. His knuckles tensed up involuntarily from time to time; but a perfectly understandable anger would account for that. Once or twice he glanced at the strangely unreal shape of the dead girl half hidden in the shadows, and it was at those moments that Simon was studying him most intently. He saw the almost conventionalized horror of death that takes the place of practical thinking with those who have seen little of it, and a bitter disgust that might have had an equally conventional basis. Beyond that, the sullen scowl which disfigured the other's face steadily refused him the betraying evidence that might have made everything so much simpler. Simon blew placid and meditative smoke rings to pass the time; but there was an irking bafflement behind the cool patience of his eyes.
It took fifteen minutes by his watch for the police to come, which was less than he had expected.
They arrived in the persons of a man with a waxed moustache, in plain clothes, and two constables in uniform. After them, breathless when she saw the striped blazer still inhabited by an apparently undamaged owner, came Rosemary Chase. In the background hovered a man who even without his costume could never have been mistaken for anything but a butler.
Simon turned with a smile.
"Glad to see you, Inspector," he said easily.
"Just 'Sergeant'," answered the plainclothes man, in a voice that sounded as if it should have been "sergeant-major."
He saw the automatic that Mr Uniatz was still holding, and stepped forward with a rather hollow but courageous belligerence.
"Give me that gun!" he said loudly.
Hoppy ignored him, and looked inquiringly at the only man whom he took orders from; but Simon nodded. He politely offered his own Luger as well. The Sergeant took the two guns, squinted at them sapiently, and stuffed them into his side pockets. He looked relieved, and rather clever.
"I suppose you've got licences for these firearms," he said temptingly.
"Of course," said the Saint, in a voice of saccharine virtue.
He produced certificate and permit to carry from his pocket. Hoppy did the same. The sergeant pored over the documents with surly suspicion for some time before he handed them to one of the constables to note down the particulars. He looked so much less clever that Simon had difficulty in keeping a straight face. It was as if the Official Mind, jumping firmly to a foregone conclusion, had spent the journey there developing an elegantly graduated approach to the obvious climax, and therefore found the entire structure staggering when the first step caved in under his feet.
A certain awkwardness crowded itself into the scene.
With a businesslike briskness that was only a trifle too elaborate, the sergeant went over to the body and brooded over it with portentous solemnity. He went down on his hands and knees to peer at the knife, without touching it. He borrowed a flashlight from one of the constables to examine the floor around it. He roamed about the boathouse and frowned into dark corners. At intervals, he cogitated. When he could think of nothing else to do, he came back and faced his audience with dogged valour.
"Well," he said, less aggressively, "while we're waiting for the doctor I'd better take your statements." He turned. "You're Mr Forrest, sir?"
The young man in the striped blazer nodded.
"Yes."
"I've already heard the young lady's story, but I'd like to hear your version."
Forrest glanced quickly at the girl, and almost hesitated. He said: "I was taking Miss Chase home, and we saw a light moving in here. We crept up to find out what it was, and one of these men fired a shot at us. I turned my torch on them and pretended I had a gun too, and they surrendered. We took their guns away; and then this man started arguing and trying to make out that somebody else had fired the shot, and he managed to distract my attention and get his gun back."