" 'Phoney' is the way I pronounce it," answered the Saint bluntly.
She nodded.
"I wondered about him too — after I read that letter. But how could I say anything?"
"Can you think of anything that might have given him a hold over your father?"
She moved her hands desperately.
"How could I know? Father never talked business at home. I never heard anything — discreditable about him. But how could I know?"
"You've seen your father since he was brought home?"
"Of course. Lots of times."
"Did he seem to have anything on his mind?"
"I can't tell—"
"Did he seem to be worried, or frightened?"
"It's so hard" she said. "I don't know what I really saw and what I'm making myself imagine. He was badly hurt, you know, and he was still trying to keep some of his business affairs going, so that took a lot out of him, and Dr Quintus never let me stay with him very long at a time. And then he didn't feel like talking much. Of course he seemed shaky, and not a bit like himself; but after an accident like that you wouldn't expect anything else… I don't know what to think about anything. I thought he always liked Jim, and now… Oh, God, what a mess I've made!"
The Saint smothered the end of his cigarette in an ashtray, and there was an odd kind of final contentment in his eyes. All the threads were in his hands now, all the questions answered — except for the one answer that would cover all the others. Being as he was, he could understand Rosemary Chase's story, forgetting the way it had ended. Others might have found it harder to forgive; but to him it was just the old tale of amateur adventuring leading to tragic disaster. And even though his own amateur adventures had never led there, they were still close enough for him to realize the hairbreadth margin by which they had escaped it… And the story she told him gathered up many loose ends.
He sat down beside her and put his hand on her arm.
"Don't blame yourself too much about Jim," he said steadyingly. "He made some of the mess himself. If he hadn't thrown me off the track by the way he behaved, things might have been a lot different. Why the hell did he have to do that?"
"He'd made up his mind that you'd only come into this for what you could get out of it — that if you found out what Nora knew, you'd use it to blackmail father, or something like that. He wasn't terribly clever. I suppose he thought you'd killed her to keep the information to yourself—"
The Saint shrugged wryly.
"And I thought one of you had killed her to keep her mouth shut. None of us has been very clever — yet."
"What are we going to do?" she said.
Simon thought. And he may have been about to answer when his ears caught a sound that stopped him. His fingers tightened on the girl's wrist for an instant, while his eyes rested on her like bright steel; and then he got up.
"Give me another chance," he said, in a soft voice that could not even have been heard across the room.
And then he was walking across to greet the doctor as the footsteps that had stopped him arrived at the door and Quintus came in.
"Dr Quintus!" The Saint's air was sympathetic, his face full of concern. He took the doctor's arm. "You shouldn't have come down alone. I was just coming back for you, but there've been so many other things—"
"I know. And they were probably more valuable than anything you could have done for me."
The blurry resonance of the other's voice was nearly normal again. He moved firmly over to the table on which the tray of drinks stood.
"I'm going to prescribe myself a whisky and soda," he said.
Simon fixed it for him. Quintus took the glass and sat down gratefully on the edge of a chair. He rubbed a hand over his dishevelled head as though trying to clear away the lingering remnants of fog. He had washed his face and hands, but the darkening patches of red stain on his clothing were still gruesome reminders of the man who had not come down.
"I'm sorry I was so useless, Mr Templar," he said heavily. "Did you find anything?"
"Not a thing." The Saint's straightforwardness sounded completely ingenuous. "Mr Chase must have been taken out of the window — I climbed down from there myself, and it was quite easy. I walked most of the way round the house, and nothing happened. I didn't hear a sound, and it was too dark to see anything."
Quintus looked across at the girl.
"There isn't anything I can say, Miss Chase. I can only tell you that I would have given my own right hand to prevent this."
"But why?" she said brokenly. "Why are all these things happening? What is it all about? First Nora and then — Jim… And now my father. What's happened to him? What have they done with him?"
The doctor's lips tightened.
"Kidnapped, I suppose," he said wretchedly. "I suppose everything has been leading up to that. Your father's a rich man. They'd expect him to be worth a large ransom — large enough to run any risks for. Jim's death was… well, just a tragic accident. He happened to run into one of them in the corridor, so he was murdered. If that hadn't confused them, they'd probably have murdered me."
"They?" interposed the Saint quickly. "You saw them, then."
"Only one man, the one who hit me. He was rather small, and he had a handkerchief tied over his face. I didn't have a chance to notice much. I'm saying 'they' because I don't see how one man alone could have organized and done all this… It must be kidnapping. Possibly they were trying to force or bribe Nora to help them from the inside, and she was murdered because she threatened to give them away."
"And they tried to kill me in case she had told me about the plot."
"Exactly."
Simon put down the stub of his cigarette and searched for a fresh one.
"Why do you think they should think she might have told me anything?" he inquired.
Quintus hesitated expressionlessly. He drank slowly from his glass, and brought his cavernous black eyes back to the Saint's face.
"With your reputation — if you will forgive me — finding you on the scene… I'm only theorizing, of course—"
Simon nodded good humouredly.
"Don't apologize," he murmured. "My reputation is a great asset. It's made plenty of clever crooks lose their heads before this."
"It must be kidnapping," Quintus repeated, turning to the girl. "If they'd wanted to harm your father, they could easily have done it in his bedroom when they had him at their mercy. They wouldn't have needed to take him away. You must be brave and think about that. The very fact that they took him away proves that they must want him alive."
The Saint finished chain-lighting the fresh cigarette and strolled over to the fireplace to flick away the butt of the old one. He stood there for a moment, and then turned thoughtfully back to the room.
"Talking of this taking away," he said, "I did notice something screwy about it. I didn't waste much time getting upstairs after I heard the commotion. And starting from the same commotion, our kidnapping guy or guys had to dash into the bedroom, grab Mr Chase, shove him out of the window, and lower him to the ground. All of which must have taken a certain amount of time." He looked at the doctor. "Well, I wasted a certain amount of time myself in the corridor, finding out whether you were hurt, and so forth. So those times begin to cancel out. Then, when I got in the bedroom, I saw at once that the bed was empty. I looked in the cupboard and the bathroom, just making sure the old boy was really gone; but that can't have taken more than a few seconds. Then I went straight to the window. And then, almost immediately, I climbed out of it and climbed down to the ground to see if I could see anything, because I knew Marvin Chase could only have gone out that way. Now, you remember what I told you? I didn't hear a sound. Not so much as the dropping of a pin."