“I have nothing to say! You can’t be serious about such an accusation — and from such a person! Can you believe I would have my own husband murdered?”
“Such things have happened,” Kleinhaus said sadly. “However, we can check in another way. I’m glad to be able to tell you now that the two men have already been caught. Mr Tombs will be able to identify them. Then you can confront them, and we’ll see what they say when they realize there’s only one way to save their own skins.”
It was pitiful to see the false indignation drain out of her face, and the features turn ugly and formless with terror. She moistened her lips, and her throat moved, but no sound came. And then, as if she understood that in that silence she had already betrayed her own guilt for all to see, she gave an inarticulate little cry and ran past Galen, shoving him out of the way with a hysterical violence that sent him staggering, and ran out through the French windows, out on to the sunlit terrace that went to the edge of the cliff where the house perched, and kept on running...
Inspector Kleinhaus, presently, was the first to turn from looking down over the edge. With a conclusive gesture he replaced his absurdly juvenile hat.
“Perhaps that saves a lot of unpleasantness,” he remarked. “Well, I must still ask you to identify the two men, Mr Tombs — your name really is Tombs, is it?”
“It sounds sort of ominous, doesn’t it?” said the Saint easily.
He still had eight diamonds, six emeralds, and ten valuable stamps in his pockets which no one was left to ask embarrassing questions about, and at such a time it would have been very foolish to draw any more attention to himself.
Juan-les-Pins: The Spanish Cow
Introduction
There are just a few stories which I genuinely regret losing, which were lost by force of circumstance and which I can do nothing about. They were all original Saint stories too, and I was thinking of them while working on a new collection of shorter pieces which I am now trying to finish up.