Charteris, Leslie - 11 by scott

Author:scott
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-08-29T12:44:46+00:00

"Tell me about it when I come back," said Teal, looking at his watch. "I'd better see Whipplethwaite at once and get it over with."

"Give him my love," drawled the Saint, dipping his nose into the pint of beer which the detective had bought for him. "He'll get his satisfaction all right when you arrest Vallance."

The detective stood stock still and stared at him with an owl-like face. "Arrest who?" he stammered.

"Mr. Spencer Vallance—the bloke who put insomnia tablets in Whipplethwaite's dyspepsia bottle at lunch-time, nipped up to Whipplethwaite's room for the key, opened the safe, replaced the key, and then staggered out of the study bellowing that he'd been sandbagged. The bloke I've just been having words with," said the Saint. ——

Teal leaned back rather limply against the bar.

"Good Lord alive, Templar "

"You meant well, Claud," said the Saint kindly. "And it was quite easy really. The only difficult part was that insomnia-tablet business. But I figured that the culprit might want to make quite sure that Joseph would be sleeping soundly when he buzzed up for the key, and the method was just an idea of mine. Then I saw that Joseph's insomnia dope was white, while his indigestion muck was light grey, and I guessed he must have been short-sighted to fall for the change-over.

"When I looked up at the house it was quite obvious that if anyone could climb down that flying buttress, someone else could just as easily climb up. That's why I was going to say something about your brilliant police ideas."

The Saint patted the detective consolingly on the back. "Policemen are swell so long as they plod along in their methodical way and sort out facts—they catch people that way quite often. But directly they get on to a really puzzling case, and for some reason it strikes them that they ought to be Great Detectives just for once—they fall down with the gooseberries. I've noticed those symptoms of detectivosis in you before, Claud. You ought to keep a tighter hand on yourself."

"How long have you known it wasn't Whipplethwaite?" asked Teal.

"Oh, for months," said the Saint calmly. "But when your elephantine hints conjured up the vision of Joseph creeping stealthily down from the balcony upon his foe, couldn't you see a sort of grisly grotesqueness about it? I could. To stage a crime so that another man would naturally be suspected requires a certain warped efficiency of brain. To think for a moment that Joseph could have produced a scheme like that was the sort of brilliant idea that only a policeman in your condition would get. How on earth could Joseph have worked all that out?"

The Saint smiled blandly. "He's only a politician."

10. The Unpopular Landlord

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.