" I took you and Laura down to your motorboat and left you-by the way, you must be a pretty hefty bird when you're roused, for the hinges of that door you'd busted open looked as if they'd been through an earthquake. I still had to go on thinking at a speed that nearly gave me brain fever, because when you've got to work out alibis that weren't prepared in advance in less than sixty seconds there isn't much time for writing poetry. I hashed up everything I told you in the boat straight out of my head, without coffee or ice compresses; and then I left you and went back to the saloon to try and stage it to look true.
"Even on the spur of the moment, you see, I'd made up my mind that Clements wasn't going to swing for what he'd done if I could possibly avoid it. Abdul had asked for it, and Abdul had got what was coming to him anyhow. Clements had simply paid off a debt of ten years of living death; and, Toby, after all, it had been Clements who actually saved your girl. I'd seen that look on his face when he shot Osman, that look which I can't hope ever to describe to you, and which I'd rather leave out of this story and leave for you to see in your own heart if you can. There seemed to be a much more suitable victim ready to hand: Galbraith Stride, who had also had it coming to him that night The only question was whether Clements could be pulled together sufficiently to catch on.
"The dope had taken effect when I got back to him, and he was more or less normal. Also he was very calm. He used practically your own words.
" 'They can hang me if they like,' he said. 'It doesn't matter much.'
"I took him by the shoulders; and believe it or not, he could look me in the eye.
" 'They're not hanging you,' I said. 'They're going to hang Galbraith Stride.'
'"I don't mind what happens,' said Clements. 'I'm not sorry to have killed Osman. Do you see me? I'm only one man that he's ruined. There were thousands of others. I've seen them. You haven't been through it, and you don't know what it means.'
" 'Perhaps I do,' I said. 'But Galbraith Stride is only another like him.'
"And I told him that I had meant to kill Stride as well that night, and who I was. Then he caught on.
" 'I haven't long to live anyway,' he said. 'But I should like to see this work finished.'
" He wanted to shoot Stride then and there where he lay and take the rap for the two of them, but I told him there was a better way. It didn't seem to mean much to him; bat somehow I wanted to be able to think that that poor devil was going to see out the rest of his life decently, in the freedom that he hadn't known for ten years. I talked to him for twenty minutes, working out the story we were to tell; and he took it in quickly enough. Then the crew busted down the door of the glory hole and came yelling down to the saloon; and it was lucky for me Clements could swing a good line of Arabic oratory and tell 'em the facts as we'd agreed on them.
"And so we told our stories as you heard them; and Galbraith Stride will hang on the day you get this.
"I've no excuses to make to you. Deliberately and with infinite malice aforethought I arranged to frame your stepfather-in-law-to-be to the gallows; and nothing that can ever happen can make me sorry for what I did. That was a just thing as I have always seen justice, and as I shall see it all my life, according to a law that is bigger than all your man-made laws. But you have been taught to respect those man-made laws; so this letter will help to set your conscience free. You guessed some of it, of course; and you're free now to say as much of it as you like. Clements is beyond your justice, but Chief Inspector Teal would like nothing better than a chance to send his sleuths trailing after me with extradition warrants overflowing from their pockets. They wouldn't catch me, of course, but they could have lots of harmless fun trying.
"If you're interested in anything that Clements thought, after what I've told you, you might like to know the last thing I heard from him. It came to me in a letter, which he must have written when he knew that the sands had almost run out. There was just one line: " 'Go on and prosper.'
"Not a very Public School sentiment, Toby, you may think. Rather more melodramatic than any English Gentleman should have been. But he had come back from depths that I hope you'll never see-from which, even if I hadn't been on board that night, he would still have saved you. You will judge him and decide what to do according to what you think of that farewell. It is only right that you should make your own choice.
"If that choice is what I think it will be, we may meet again.
" Ever yours, "SIMON TEMPLAR."
Toby Halidom lighted a cigarette and read the letter through again, word by word. In some way it lifted a terrible load from his mind, brought him a great breath of relief in the fullness of knowledge that it gave him. And, as he read, there was a queer little smile on his lips that any headmaster of Harrow would have been surprised to see. ...
He put the letter in the empty grate, set a match to it, and watched the sheets flare and curl and blacken. "Go on and prosper." . . . And then, with a heart that felt suddenly light and clear, he went to the open window and leaned on the sill, looking out into the blue-grey lightening of that morning of the 22nd of November. Somewhere a clock was striking the hour of eight.
(bm)