“I was just going to tell Nadine the latest development,” he said, now speaking in fluent French himself. “There are no fingerprints of McGeorge’s on the spear-gun that shot Oddington.”
They both turned to him with sharply widening eyes.
“Fingerprints?” Eschards repeated. “But of course there would not be any. It was in the water.”
“A greasy fingerprint wouldn’t wash off so quickly,” said the Saint. “And where people are using sun-tan oil, they usually have greasy fingers. There were other fingerprints on the gun, but none of his. And because he was new here and afraid of a burn, he had oil all over him.”
There were times when the Saint’s facility of invention was almost incredible, but now he was hardly touching its resources. It was more like describing things that came to his mind by extrasensory perception, which were separated from actuality only by a slight displacement of time and would soon become authenticated facts even if he took the liberty of anticipating them.
“Then they have not searched well enough,” Eschards said. “In any case, why do they want fingerprints? The spear that killed Oddington was attached to the gun by a cord, so it was not fired from any other gun.”
“But the gun was not attached to McGeorge,” Simon said calmly. “In his statement, McGeorge said that when his uncle was shot, he dropped the gun he was holding and went to help him. The gun was pulled in afterwards by the cord. Now, there are many arbalètes exactly like that, because the experts consider it the best. Suppose somebody with an identical gun swam beside McGeorge and shot his Uncle Waldo, and then, when McGeorge let go his gun, exactly as one could expect, and went to help his uncle, this other person grabbed McGeorge’s gun and swam away with it under water — it would look, as if McGeorge did it. And even McGeorge might believe that he had had an accident, n’est-ce pas?”
Nadine said, “But the water was so clear—”
“No,” said the Saint. “If you remember, it had turned a little choppy.”
“But it is absurd anyway,” Eschards broke out. “Who else would have a reason to do that?”
Simon shrugged.
“That may be harder to answer. But the first thing is to find the other gun. My guess is that the man who did it would have hidden it somewhere around the beach, because with his guilty conscience he would be nervous about being seen with the same type of gun so soon after the killing. If we find it, it will have McGeorge’s fingerprints on it besides the other man’s, and that will be the proof. I came here to borrow a flashlight, and I’m going back to search.”
“Tonight?” Eschards objected. “You will find nothing. Wait till tomorrow, and I will help you.”
“By tomorrow the murderer may have gone back himself and taken it away.” Simon addressed himself to the girl. “Is there a flashlight here?”
Nadine seemed to be straining to read his eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “In the top drawer on the left.”
Simon took it out and tested it.
“Just wish me luck,” he said, with a brief grin at them both, and went out quickly.
He walked out on the road over which Mr Oddington had led him so happily that afternoon, not dawdling but not rushing it. The night was full of a massed chirping of cicadas that could have practically drowned any other sound further from his ears than his own footsteps; but he was not worried until he had turned off the road on the side path, and picked his way rather gingerly down the steepening slope, and come out at last on the narrow trail that edged down the sheerest stretch of the final cliff. That was where he heard the tiny scuff of sound that he had steeled himself to wait for, exactly where he had expected it, and he twisted to one side as something grazed the side of his head and thudded with sickening heaviness into the blackness beyond.
Then a weight clamped on his shoulders and an arm around his neck, and he was borne irresistibly down, but he was set for it, and he dropped the flashlight and threw all his strength into turning so that at the last instant it was his assailant who hit the rocky path first and the Saint was on top and cushioned. The attacker had the strength of a young lion, but the Saint was powered by a cold fury such as few crimes had ever aroused in him, a pitiless hate that could only be slaked by doing personal violence to the wanton destroyer of one simple happy man. He got one forearm solidly across his opponent’s throat, clamping the neck to the ground, and drove his fist like a reciprocating piston into the upturned face…
“Ça suffit,” said the gendarme.
With a flashlight in his hand, he forced himself between the Saint and another potential corpse, and metal clicked on the wrists of the man underneath.
“I told you this was where someone would jump me, if my scheme worked out,” said the Saint exultantly. “I only had to be found at the bottom there with my skull caved in on a rock, and it would look as if I slipped and fell in the dark. Another fortunate accident. Shall we really hunt for that other spear-gun now, or wait till tomorrow?”
“I saw him following you, and then I saw him attack you.” said the gendarme judicially. “That requires a motive, and there is only one that is plausible.”
“You have the rest of it,” Simon said. “It was only the kind of impulse, or inspiration, that you spoke of this afternoon, but he saw how to kill Monsieur Oddington so that McGeorge would surely be convicted of it, and therefore would not be able to inherit anything. And in that way Nadine would become rich, and he was sure that after a while he would be able to win her again and marry her.”
The swollen eyes of Pierre Eschards glared up into the flashlight beam out of his bruised and bloody and no longer handsome face.
“It is not true,” he croaked. “It was my gun that killed Oddington, and then I was frightened and I let go of it and took the gun that McGeorge dropped and swam away with it so that he would be accused instead of me. But I had not meant to fire the gun. It was an accident!”
“I think it is you, instead of Monsieur McGeorge, who will now have to convince the juge d’instruction of that,” said the gendarme.
6
They buried Waldo Oddington in a shaded corner of the tiny flower-grown cemetery on the island.
“That is what he would have chosen,” Nadine said.
Later after they had walked most of the way back to the village in silence, George McGeorge said, in his stiff awkward way, “I suppose you’ll soon be wanting something to occupy yourself. I’ve been getting involved in one or two deals with European connections lately, and I’ll need a secretary here who speaks languages. Perhaps you’d like to think about the job.”
She looked at him uncertainly for a moment, and then put out her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, with a very small smile. “I think I would like it.”
Simon wondered if there might be some unforeseen changes in the future of Mr McGeorge.
Middle East: The lovelorn sheik
1
The BOAC manager located Simon in the bar of the Cairo airport, and said, “I’m awfully sorry, Mr Templar, but I still haven’t been able to get you confirmed beyond Basra on this flight. So you’ll have to get off there, and hope they’ll be able to put you right back on the plane. If not, they can definitely put you on the Coronet flight to Karachi on Tuesday. So you’d only be stuck there for one night — and two days. You might find ’em interesting. Or of course you could just stay here. I can book you all the way through to Tokyo on this flight next week.”