“I know,” she said mechanically.
“Let’s face it,” said the Saint evenly. “The question is whether anything could have happened to him.”
His bluntness hit her with a kind of chilling shock that only lasted for a fraction of a second. And then it was as if a light had been turned on in a haunted room. Whatever had to be faced could be seen and estimated, and no matter how it looked it could never be worse than the creation of imagination feeding upon fear. She had had many thoughts about the Saint already, but never before had she sensed the quality of power that gave life to every other impression that could be caught from him. All at once, with a curiously calm relaxation, she had a ridiculous feeling that he was a man who could never fail, because he would never know when to be afraid of failure.
He smiled at her as he crushed out his cigarette.
“I’m going to eat, anyway,” he said. “It won’t do your father any good for us to starve ourselves, and we won’t be able to do nearly as much to help him with our stomachs sticking to our spines like punctured balloons.”
He ate thoughtfully for a while, without talking, as if nothing could disturb his appetite or his enjoyment of the food, but his face was intent, and his brain was coldly sorting one speculation after another, as dispassionately as though they were moves in a casual chess game. Yet he avoided looking at Jean Morland while he was thinking, because he was not certain whether the fine edge of his detachment would stand up to that.
Presently he said, “We can start working from this: Don Morland hasn’t been killed, and won’t be — barring accidents. But for that matter he could always fall down in a bath tub and break his neck. The Ungodly certainly wouldn’t encourage that.”
Jean said, “But they’re trying to get the ranch—”
“How would that get it for them? They aren’t his nearest relatives. The odds are that if anything drastic happened to him, you’d inherit it. If they used... various persuasions to force him to sign a new will before he had an accident, you’d probably contest it and the estate would be tied up for years before they got anything, if they ever did. And there’d also be a lot more publicity than they want.”
“They might think Jean’d be easier to deal with than the old man,” said Reefe.