The Saint on the Spanish Main by Leslie Charteris

whole thing transformed into a huge unearthly dart flung with literally
superhuman power, the arrow of God
indeed. A fantastic, an almost unimaginable
solution; and yet it did not have to be imagined because there were witnesses that it had actual ly almost happened once before… .
    Fanshire was saying: “By Jove, that’s
the best sugges tion I’ve heard yet—without any religious implication, of
course. It sounds as if it could be the right answer!”
    Simon’s eyes opened on him fully for an
instant, almost pityingly, and then closed completely as the true and right
and complete answer rolled through the Saint’s mind like a
long peaceful wave.
    “I have one question to ask,” said
the Saint.
    “What’s that?” Fanshire said, too
politely to be ir ritable, yet with a trace of impatience, as if he hated
the inconvenience of even defending such a divinely tailored theory.
    “Does anyone here have a gun?”
asked the Saint.
    There was an almost audible creaking of
knitted brows, and Fanshire said: “Really, Mr. Templar, I don’t quite
follow you.”
    “I only asked,” said the Saint
imperturbably, “if anyone here had a gun. I’d sort of like to know the
answer before I explain why.”
    “I have a revolver,” Wexall said
with some perplexity. “What about it?”
    “Could we see it, please?” said the Saint.
    “I’ll get it,” said Pauline Stone.
    She got up and left the room.
    “You know I have a gun, Fanshire,” Wexall said. “You gave me my permit. But I don’t
see—”
    “Neither do I,” Fanshire said.
    The Saint said nothing. He devoted himself
to his cigarette, with impregnable detachment, until the vol uptuous
secretary came back. Then he put out the cigarette and
extended his hand.
    Pauline looked at Wexall, hesitantly, and at
Fanshire. The Superintendent nodded a sort of grudging ac quiescence.
Simon took the gun and broke it expertly.
    “A Colt .38 Detective Special,” he
said. “Unloaded.” He sniffed the barrel. “But fired quite
recently,” he said, and handed the gun to Fanshire.
    “I used it myself this morning,”
Lucy Wexall said cheerfully. “Janet and Reg and I were shooting at
the Portuguese men-of-war. There were quite a lot of them around before the breeze came
up.”
    “I wondered what the noise was,”
Wexall said vaguely.
    “I was coming up the drive when I heard
it first,” Gresson said, “and I thought the next war had
started.”
    “This is all very int’resting,”
Fanshire said, removing the revolver barrel from the proximity of his nostrils with a trace of exasperation, “but I don’t
see what it has to do with the case.
Nobody has been shot—”
    “Major Fanshire,” said the Saint
quietly, “may I have a word with you, outside? And will you keep
that gun in your pocket so that at least we can hope there will be no more
shooting?”
    The Superintendent stared at him for several
seconds, and at
last unwillingly got up.
    “Very well, Mr. Templar.” He stuffed the revolver into the side pocket of his rumpled white jacket,
and glanced back at his impassive
chocolate sentinel. “Ser geant,
see that nobody leaves here, will you?”
    He followed Simon out on to the verandah and
said almost peremptorily: “Come on now, what’s this all about?”
    It was so much like a flash of a faraway
Scotland Yard Inspector that the Saint had to control a smile.
But he took Fanshire’s arm and led him persuasively down the front steps to the
beach. Off to their left a tiny red glowworm blinked low down under the
silver stars.
    “You still have somebody watching the
place where the body was found,” Simon said.
    “Of course,” Fanshire grumbled.
“As a matter of rou tine. But the sand’s much too soft to show any footprints,
and—”
    “Will you walk over there with
me?”
    Fanshire sighed briefly, and trudged beside
him. His politeness was dogged but unfailing. He was a type that had been
schooled from adolescence never to give up, even to the ultimate