He stepped into the room with a gun held almost diffidently in his hand; but his eyes were much too calm for carelessness, and it was noticeable that his aim appeared to be steady and accurate enough.
"For the moment, the choice seems to be yours," said the Saint placidly.
He stood with his hands raised, and made no movement while Uttershaw circled cautiously around him, came up behind him, and felt over his pockets with unflurried thoroughness.
"You might put down your cigarette," Uttershaw said as he stepped back and circled into view again. "And if it explodes, I assure you I shall not look round."
The Saint smiled as he dabbed at the ashtray.
"So Ricco told you about that one, did he? I imagine he must have been quite pained about being taken in by an old gag like that."
"He did seem to have a grudge against you."
"I'm sure he has a much worse one by now."
"I was wondering about that. How did it happen?"
"I was expecting him. And I'm afraid he loused up the job again. Really, Allen, he did let you down. I bullied and badgered him until he was too bothered to keep two worries bouncing in his head at the same time, and then he dropped a couple of words which were just enough to tell me for sure that you'd be here and what you were planning to do."
Uttershaw smiled and nodded. It was just as though somebody were telling him about a friend of his whose record trout had gotten away because the leader broke.
"I knew I'd been disappointed when you arrived here," he acknowledged. "And I suppose the iridium is still safe in your room."
"Oh, no."
"What did you do with it?"
"It never was in my room. So I hope you won't disturb the atmosphere of my elegant estaminet by sending any more of your messengers after it. You see, after I left Barbara here I went to mother luggage store and bought another bag and put the iridium in it, and I filled your bag with an assortment of sporting goods of suitable weight and, I think, of rather an appropriate shape. Then I left the really valuable bag at a police station on the way home, to be called for later."
"Which police station?" asked Uttershaw; and suddenly his casual mien had vanished.
Now he looked rather like a polished gray vulture, and the transformation was so slight that it was startling.
The Saint shrugged.
"I'm afraid it wouldn't do you much good to know," he said. "I told the local mandarin that they were to be delivered to our pal Inspector Fernack. I mean those two pretty green bottles in the bag. And I'm quite sure they've been moved by now. You might be good enough to take a precinct, but I don't think even you could raise the troops to storm the bastilles you'd have to break into to get that dust back now."
He paused, and asked: "Incidentally, do you think one would have to pay income tax on a reward like your insurance company was offering? Not that taxpaying isn't a pleasure these days, but 1 have to think of my budget."
"I imagine you would," Uttershaw said judicially, his composure flowing back into him like a returning tide. "Did you make any other arrangements for Varetti and Walsh?"
"Only a welcoming deputation of two of the ugliest cops I've seen in a long life of looking at ugly cops."
Uttershaw's finely modeled face was as soberly thoughtful as if he had been concentrating on an ordinary business problem.
"The first time I met you, I was afraid something like this might happen," he said. "You really have been very clever… Of course, when you walked into the Algonquin, with that suitcase I knew you were getting on too well."
"I hoped somebody would think that."
"But I did think I was doing a pretty good job myself."
Simon nodded.
"You were terrific," he said sincerely. "With all the things that must have been skittering about in your mind, it was the coolest job I ever saw. It was quite a bit later when you spoilt it."
"When was that?" asked the other interestedly.
"When you improvised such a wonderful build-up for the Ourleys. It was just a little too pat. It fitted in just a little too neatly. You might have gotten away with just setting the combination, on the bag to open at Ourley's initials — did you pick those for final insurance, or just out of your own sense of humor, by the way?… It doesn't matter. But you were just a little too coy about telling me that Ourley might have had a cosy corner of his own with somebody like Barbara waiting for him. And you were just a little too circumstantial and detailed about giving me the inside dope on the intricacies of the Ourley menage. You bore down too hard on being the impeccable I-don't-want-to-say-this- but guy. But it couldn't possibly have been quite as good as that unless you'd known just a little too much… All those little things, but what a big difference they make."
Uttershaw grimaced ruefully, the gleaming barrel of his gun still drawing a solid and level line at Simon's middle.
"This is an invaluable education," he remarked. "Please don't stop."
"Even then," said the Saint agreeably, "I had one or two tiny little doubts. But they went away when you were so careful to find out where Milton was, and when he arrived so aptly a few minutes later. I know it was brilliant of you to stop off at the Harvard Club to tell him his wife was having lunch with me, so that you could be sure he'd come bellowing back to make a commotion that would tie me up for long enough for you to get a start on a whole lot of new adjustments. But what you hadn't thought of was that even brilliance can be overdone. You were awfully good, Allen; and if it's any consolation to you, the only mistake you ever made was that you were just too good."
They might have been discussing a routine matter of merchandising policy.
"O what a tangled web we weave," Uttershaw said philosophically. "I suppose I really shouldn't have gone to the Algonquin at all today, but there was nothing about you in the papers in connection with last night's affair, and I had to find out if you were still at large. I happened to be in the neighborhood, so I stopped in instead of telephoning. It seemed safe enough at the time. But if I'd been in another part of town, I'd have spent a nickel, and I wouldn't have run into you, and I mightn't have had half this trouble. As you say, the little things make such a big difference."
"Exactly." In his own strange and equally fantastic way, the Saint was just as interested. He would always be interested, even with death waiting on an unpredictable trigger finger. "You had a beautiful racket, even though it could have looked slightly soiled if you'd considered the people who got hurt in the end. You stole your own property, collected the insurance, and still Lad the same goods to sell at even more than the legitimate market price. Of course, a few insignificant soldiers might have been blown apart as a derivative result of your business acumen, but soldiers are only hired to get blown apart, aren't they?"
Uttershaw rubbed his chin with a familiar gesture.
"I never really thought about that," he said, rather sublimely.
The Saint's eyes were not even regretful any more.
"But you threw it all away, Allen. And now you're going to have to die just like any other soldier, because you couldn't be satisfied with the dollars you already had in your bank account."
The lean gray man shook his head.
"I don't know about dying," he said. "Perhaps you've made a few miscalculations yourself. I think you're banking rather a lot on the testimony of Varetti and Walsh."
"I think they'll talk."
"I think you're forgetting what a good attorney could do to them on the stand. But I don't even think they will talk. All those things have been tried on them before. And they can't talk, if they want to get off with anything less than life. But they can plead guilty to just trying to rob your room, and get away with that, and wait for me to buy them a parole. Milton doesn't know much, and he wouldn't even dare to say that."
"But you're admitting everything to me."
"Why not? The only people who could make it hard for me are Barbara and yourself. And as you so rightly prophesied, I don't intend to allow either of you to go that far. I hate to do it, but you put me in this position."
"Allen!"
Barbara Sinclair moved towards Uttershaw in a wild kind of rush. She held out her arms as though she expected other arms to receive her; and the Saint's eyes narrowed as he snapshot his distances. But even before he could have stirred, Uttershaw's left hand reached flatly to meet her oncoming face, and sent her spinning back. She landed on the floor, with one hand clinging to an overturned chair.
"Allen," she said again, with a sort of incredulous tonelessness.
"Shut up," Uttershaw said coldly, and the snout of his gun was back on the Saint in the same instant, if it had ever wavered. "Keep still, please," he said; but the Saint had not moved. Uttershaw glanced at the girl again. "Mr Templar told you all about it," he said. "You should have believed him. But as he seems to have discovered, you don't have enough brains."
The Saint memorized her blanched face with an expression that was too late for sympathy.
"I did tell you," he said.
"Allen — no!"
"Yes, my dear," Uttershaw said. "I'm afraid he was perfectly right."
Simon Templar took a deep breath.
"Speaking of being put in positions," he said clearly, "how will you like your position on the broiler at Sing Sing if you do this?"
"I'm not very worried about that," Uttershaw said with the same unreal removal from emotion. "You see, I was careful enough to take the elevator to two floors above this, and I walked down here. I also found a fine little back stairway, with an openable window that leads out on to a fire escape. Apparently the management of this hotel trusts its guests. So I'll have plenty of time for any other arrangements I may think of to account for what I've been doing during this time. And I shall certainly take your lecture to heart, and try not to be too brilliant… I'm sorry, but it wouldn't be fair to leave you any false hopes."
The Saint looked at him with a face of stone.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Barbara Sinclair also, still crouched on the floor, speechless and rigid and chalky in a trance of the real horror that she had so immutably refused to see.
But those choices were over now, for her as they were for Uttershaw.
And as they might be over for him too, if he had been so preoccupied with other excessive cleverness that he had overdone his own, after all.
He said: "This makes quite a curtain."
He turned abruptly on his heel, and walked in an aimless way towards the bookcase.
And thought what an immortal laugh it would be if after so much staging the clock in his mind had never been really right.
And what a picturesque finale it all was…
"Our death is but a sleep and a forgetting," Uttershaw said gently; and the Saint stood still.
"I hope that will make you very happy," he said.
He thought that Inspector Fernack had delayed his entrance to the last possible filament of suspense, doubtless with all conceivable malice aforethought, and then chosen a peculiarly dangerous moment for it. But he admitted to himself that he had helped to ask for that.
And the temptation to repay the performance was almost more than he could resist, but he knew at the same time that that filament was too fragile to risk even with a breath.
He seemed to have no emotional feeling at all; but he had his own. quality of mercy that was apart from all the other things.
As the door burst open, and Fernack lumbered in, and Utter-shaw whirled at the sound, Simon Templar took his gun out of the vase of chrysanthemums and fired as carefully as if he had been on a target range.