Then the Saint's hands touched each of their shoulders.
"I don't think you need to stay here," he said quietly.
He led them out onto the deck, out into the night air that was cool and fresh with the enduring sweetness of the sea. The motorboat in which they had come was still moored at the bottom of the gangway; but now the Puffin was made fast behind it, with its spread sails stirring like the wings of a grey ghost against the dark water. Between them they helped the girl down to the motorboat; and Simon sat on the half-deck and gazed aft to the seats where the other two had settled themselves. A match flared at the end of his cigarette.
"Will you try and listen to me?" he said, in the same quiet tone. "I know what you've been through tonight, because I was listening most of the time. There were some things I had to know before I moved-and then, when the time came for me to interfere, there wasn't much for me to do. I did what I could, and no one will stop you going back to the Claudette."
The hand with the cigarette moved towards the Luxor's side in a faint gesture.
"A man was killed there tonight. I've never seen any good reason for buttering up a bad name just because it's a dead one. As Toby said, he deserved everything he got-maybe more. He was a man whose money had been wrung farthing by farthing out of the ruin and degradation of more human lives than either of you can imagine. He was a man who'll leave the world a little cleaner for being dead.
"But in the eyes of the law he was murdered. In the eyes of the law he was a citizen who had every right to live, who could have called for policemen paid for by other citizens to protect him if he'd ever been threatened, who would have been guiltless for ever in the eyes of the law until his crimes could have been proved according to the niggling rules of evidence to twelve bamboozled half-wits by a parade of blathering lawyers. And the man who killed him will be sentenced to death according to the law.
"That man was Galbraith Stride."
They were staring at him, intent and motionless.
"I know what you thought, Toby," said the Saint. "You burst into the saloon with murder in your heart, and saw Osman dead, and Laura with the gun close to her hand. You could only think for the moment that she had done it, and you made a rather foolish and rather splendid confession to me with some wild idea of shielding her. If I had any medals hung around me I'd give you one. But you certainly weren't in your right mind, because it never occurred to you to ask what Stride was doing there, or where Laura found the gun.
"Laura, I don't want to make it any harder for you, but there is one thing you must know. Every word that Osman told you was true. Galbraith Stride himself was just such a man as Osman. He has never been such a power for evil, perhaps; but that's only because he wasn't big enough. He was certainly no better. Their trades were the same, and they met here to divide their kingdoms. Osman won the division because he was just a shade more unscrupulous, and Stride sent you to him in accordance with their bargain.
"You might like to think that Stride repented at the last moment and came over to try and save you; but I'm afraid even that isn't true. He killed Osman for a much more sordid reason, which the police will hear about in due time."
Even in the darkness he could see their eyes fixed on him. It was Laura Berwick who spoke for them both.
"Who are you?" she asked; and Simon was silent only for a second.
"I am Simon Templar, known as the Saint-you may have heard of me. I am my own law, and I have sentenced many men who were lesser pestilences than Abdul Osman or Garbraith Stride. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking. The police will also think it for a little while. I did come here tonight to kill Abdul Osman, but I wasn't quick enough."
He stood up and swung himself lightly back onto the gangway. His deft fingers cast off the painter and tossed it into the boat; and without another word he went up to the deck and down again to the saloon.
They sentenced Galbraith Stride for the murder of Abdul Osman on the first day of November, just over a month after these events that have been recorded, after a trial that lasted four days.
One of the documents that played a considerable part in bringing the jury to their verdict was a sealed letter that was produced by a London solicitor at the inquest. It was addressed in Abdul Osman's own heavy sprawling calligraphy:
To the Coroner: to be handed to him in the event of my death in suspicious circumstances within the next three months.
Inside was a comprehensive survey of Galbraith Stride's illicit activities that made the police open their eyes. It was typewritten; but the concluding paragraph was in Osman's own handwriting.
This is written in the expectation of a meeting between Stride and myself at which our respective spheres of influence are to be agreed on and mutually limited. If any ''accident" should happen to me during this conference, therefore, the man responsible will certainly be Galbraith Stride, whom I should only expect to violate our truce as he has violated every other bargain he has ever made.
[Signed] ABDUL OSMAN.
The defense made a valiant effort to save their case by making great play with the fact that the notorious Simon Templar was not only in the district, but was actually on board the Luxor when the murder was committed; but the judge promptly repressed all questions that were not directly concerned with the circumstances of the murder.
''The police," he said, "have charged Galbraith Stride with the murder, and I cannot have alternative murderers dragged in at this stage of the proceedings. We are here to decide whether the prisoner, Galbraith Stride, is guilty or not guilty; and if he should eventually be found not guilty it will be open to the police to bring charges against such other persons as they think fit."
There was also, somewhat inconsistently, an attempt on the part of the defense to represent their client as a repentant hero hastening to rescue his stepdaughter from her fate. The case for the prosecution lasted two days, and this happened when the Crown's position was rapidly becoming unassailable. And then Clements was called, and that finished it.
He was a very different man from the whimpering wreck who had suffered all the indignities that Osman's warped brain could think of to heap upon him. From the moment of Osman's death he had become free of the supplies of cocaine that were stocked in that concealed cupboard in the saloon: he had used them liberally to maintain himself in the normal state that he would never be able to return to again without the help of drugs, keeping their existence secret until the case was transferred to the mainland and he could secure proper treatment. But there was no treatment that could give him back the flame of life; and so the police surgeon told him.
"Honestly, Clements, if I'd been told that a man could develop the resistance to the stuff that you've got, so that he would require the doses that you require to keep him normal, without killing himself, I shouldn't have believed it. You must have had the constitution of an ox before you started that-that --"
"Folly?" queried Clements, with a flicker of expression passing over his wasted features. "Yes, I used to be pretty strong, once."
"There's no cure for what you've got," said the doctor bluntly; for he was still a young man, an old Rugger blue, and some of the things that he saw in his practice hurt him.
But Clements only smiled. He knew that the poisons they were pumping into him six times a day to keep him human would kill him within a matter of weeks, but he could not have lasted much longer anyway. And he had one thing to finish before he died.
He went into the witness box steady-nerved, with his head erect and the sparkle of cocaine in his eyes. The needle that the young doctor had rammed into his arm half an hour before had done that; but that was not in evidence. They knew he was a cocaine addict, of course-he told them the whole story of his association with Abdul Osman, without sparing himself. The defense remembered this when their turn came to cross-examine.