Simon offered a cigarette.
"What did Smith tell you?"
"Well, sir, he told me that you were having a drink in the bar, and one of those fellows put dope in your beer, and you punched his nose. Then one of them came down and threw the beer away, so there was no evidence except a fly that Smith couldn't find. And Smith said you said something about Abdul Osman, which he said he thought might be a man who has a yacht over by Tresco."
The sergeant's pleasant face was puzzledly serious, as well it might be. Such things simply did not happen on his well-conducted island.
Simon lighted his cigarette and thought for a moment. Abdul Osman was too big a fish for the net of a police force consisting of one man, and the only result of any interference from that official quarter would most likely be the unhappy decease of a highly amiable sergeant-a curiosity whom Simon definitely felt should be preserved for the nation. Also he recalled a story, that the sergeant had told him on their first meeting- a story so hilariously incredible that it surpassed any novelist's wildest flights of fantasy.
A previous holder of the office once arrested a man and took him to the village lock-up, only to find that he hadn't the keys of the lock-up with him.
"Stay here while I get my keys," said the worthy upholder of the law sternly; and that was the last they saw of their criminal.
While Simon did not doubt for a moment that Sergeant Hancock would be incapable of such a magnificent performance as that, his faith did not extend to the ability of a village lock-up to keep Abdul Osman inside and his shipload of satellites out.
"That's very nearly what happened, Sergeant," he said easily. "I think their idea was to rob the hotel and get away on the boat that afternoon. Smith wasn't drinking, so they couldn't drug him; but with me out of the way they'd have been two to one, and he wouldn't have stood much chance. They'd been staying in the hotel for a fortnight to get the lie of the land. I just happened to notice what they'd done to my beer."
" But what was that about Abdul Osman ?"
"I think Smith can't have heard that properly. He was telling me some story about a man of that name, and it must have been on his mind. When I punched this bloke's face he threatened to call the police, and what I said was: 'Ask your pal what he thinks of the idea first.' Smith must have thought I said 'Ask Abdul.' "
The sergeant's face was gloomy.
"And you just punched his nose and let him get away! Why, if you'd only got hold of me-"
"But Smith did get hold of you."
"Oh, yes, he got hold of me after they'd gone. I had to go over and see a man over at the other end of the island about paying his rates, and Smith couldn't find me till it was too late. I can't be everywhere at once."
The Saint grinned sympathetically.
"Never mind. Come in here and drown it in drink."
"Well, sir, I don't mind if I do have just one. I don't think I'm supposed to be on duty just this minute."
They went into the bar and found the barman enjoying his evening shave-a peculiarity of his which the Saint had observed before, and which struck Simon as being very nearly the perfect illustration for a philosophy of the Futility of Effort.
They carried their drinks over to the window at the bottom end of the bar, which looked across the harbour. The local boats were coming in to their moorings one by one, with their cargoes of holiday fishing parties. Simon studied them with a speculative eye as they came in.
"Whose boat's that-just coming in?" he asked; and the sergeant looked out.
"What, that nearest one? That's Harry Barrett's. He's a good boatman if you want to go out for the day."
"No-the other one-just coming round the end of Rat Island."
The sergeant screwed up his eyes.
"I don't know that one, sir." He turned round. "John, what's the name of that boat out there by the pier?"
The barman came down and looked out.
"That? That one's Lame Frankie's boat-the Puffin. Built her himself, he did."
Simon watched the boat all the way in to her mooring, and marked its position accurately in his memory. He discarded the idea of Barrett's trim-looking yawl reluctantly-he was likely to have his hands full while he was using the craft he proposed to borrow, and the Puffin, though she was too broad in the beam for her length, judged by classic standards of design, looked a trifle more comfortable as a single-hander for a busy man. And in making his choice he noted down the name of Lame Frankie for a highly anonymous reward; for the Saint's illicitly contracted obligations were never left unpaid.
But none of his intentions just then were public property. He held up to the light a glass of gin and bitters of astounding size for which he had been charged the sum of ninepence, and sighed.
"How I shall ever be able to bring myself to pay one and six for a drink about one eighth the size of this in London again, is more than I know," he murmured contentedly, and improved the shining hour by drinking it down rapidly and calling for another.
He strolled back with Patricia to their modest supper as it was beginning to grow dark. Their meal was just being put on the table.
"You poach a wonderful egg, Mrs. Nance," he remarked approvingly, and sank into his chair as the door closed behind that excellent landlady. "Pat, darling, you must wish me bon appétit, because I've got a lot to do on these vitamins."
She had not liked to question him before, but now she gazed at him resignedly.
"We were going away for a holiday," she reminded him.
"I know," said the Saint. "And we still are-away to the south, where there's sunshine and good wine and tomorrow is also a day. But we came by this roundabout way on a hunch, and the hunch was right. There is still a little work for us to do."
He finished his plate without speaking again, poured himself out a cup of coffee, and lighted a cigarette. Then he said: "There's more nonsense talked about capital punishment than anything else, and the sentimentalists who organize petitions for the reprieve of every murderer who's ever sentenced are probably less pernicious than the more conventional humanitarians. Murder, in England anyway, is the most accidental of crimes. A human life is such a fragile thing, it's so easily snuffed out; and dozens of respectable men, without a thought of crime in their heads, have lost control of themselves for one second, and have woken up afterwards to the numbing and irrevocable realization that they have committed murder, and the penalty is death. There are deliberate murders; but there are other crimes no less deliberate and no less damning. The drug trafficker, the white slaver, the blackmailer-not one of them could ever plead that he acted in uncontrollable passion, or gave way to an instant's temptation, or did it because his wife and children were starving. All of those crimes are too deliberate-need too much capital, too much premeditation, too long to work through from beginning to end. And each of them wrecks human lives less mercifully than a sudden bullet. Why should the death penalty stop where it does? . . . That is justice as we have chosen to see it; and even now I believe that the old days were worth while."
He sat and smoked until it was quite dark; and, being the man he was, no detail of the future weighed on his mind. He scribbled industriously on a writing pads with occasional pauses for thought; and presently Patricia came round behind him to see what he had written.
At the top of the sheet he had roughly pinned the scrap of a report torn from the Daily Telegraph, and panelled it in characteristic slashes of blue pencil.
"... He saw his friend in difficulties," said the coroner, "and although he could not swim himself he went to his assistance. He did what any Englishman would have done......"
The blue pencil had scored thickly under the last sentence. And underneath it the Saint was writing:
FLOREAT HARROVIA!
When Adam fell, because of Eve, Upon that dreadful day, He did not own up loud and strong, And take his licking with a song, In our good English way: He had so little chivalry.