He felt
the girl’s fingers cling to his arm. And in spite of
all he knew about
her, her physical nearness was something
that his senses could
not ignore.
“He’s
going to get it,” she breathed.
The Saint
nodded. That psychic electricity was still
coursing through his
nerves, only now he began to find its
meaning. From force of habit, his
right hand slid under
the cuff of his left sleeve and touched the
hilt of the razor-
edged throwing knife in its sheath strapped to his
forearm,
the only weapon he had thought it worth while to bring
with him,
making sure that it would slip easily out if he
needed it; but the
action was purely automatic. His thoughts were a thousand miles away from such
things as his instinct
associated with that deadly slender blade. He
smiled
suddenly.
“We
ought to be there to give him a cheer,” he said.
He took her up the stairs with
him. From the upper landing
he saw an open
door and a lighted room from which came
confused scurrying noises
combined with Verdean’s imbecile
grunting
and chattering. Simon went to the door. The room was unquestionably Mr Ebenezer
Hogsbotham’s bedroom.
He would have
known it even without being told. Nobody
but an Ebenezer Hogsbotham could ever have slept volun
tarily in such a dismally austere and mortifying
chamber. And
he saw Robert Verdean in
the centre of the room. The bank
manager
had lugged a shabby suitcase out of some hiding
place, and had it open on the bed; he was pawing and
crooning crazily over the contents—ruffling the
edges of packets of pound notes, crunching the bags of silver. Simon
stood
for a moment and watched him, and it was like looking
at a scene from a play that he had seen before.
Then he
stepped quietly in and laid his hand on Verdean’s
shoulder.
“Shall
I help you take care of it?” he said gently. He had
not thought
much about how Verdean would be likely to
respond to the
interruption, but had certainly not quite
expected the response
he got.
For the
first time since Hoppy had applied his remarkable
treatment, the bank
manager seemed to become aware of
outside personalities in a flash of
distorted recognition. He
squinted upwards and sidelong at the Saint,
and his face
twisted.
“I
won’t give it to you!” he screamed. “I’ll kill you first!”
He flung
himself at the Saint’s throat, his fingers clawing,
his eyes red and
maniacal.
Simon had
very little choice. He felt highly uncertain
about the possible
results of a third concussion on Verdean’s
already inflamed
cerebral tissue, following so closely upon the two previous whacks which it had
suffered in the last
twenty-four hours; but on the other hand he
felt that in Mr Verdean’s present apparent state of mind, to be tied up and
gagged and
left to struggle impotently while he watched his loot being taken away from him
would be hardly less likely
to cause a fatal hemorrhage. He therefore
adopted the less
troublesome course, and put his trust in any guardian
angels
that Mr Verdean might have on his overburdened payroll.
His fist
travelled up about eight explosive inches, and Mr Verdean travelled down… .
Simon
picked him up and laid him on the bed.
“You
know,” he remarked regretfully, “if this goes on much longer, there
is going to come a time when Comrade Verdean is going to wonder whether fifteen
thousand quid is really worth it.”
Angela
Lindsay did not answer.
He looked
at her. She stood close by the bed, gazing
without expression at
Verdean’s unconscious body and the suitcase full of money at his feet. Her face
was tired.
Still
without saying anything, she went to the window and
stood there with her
back to him.
She said,
after a long silence: “Well, you got what you
wanted, as
usual.”
“I do
that sometimes,” he said.
“And
what happens next ?”
“You’ll
get the share you asked for,” he answered
carefully. “You
can take it now, if you like.”
“And
that’s all.”
“Did
we agree to anything else?”
She turned
round; and he found that he did not want to
look at her eyes.
“Are you sure you’re never
going to need any more help ?”
she
said.
He did not
need to hear any more. He had known more
than she could have
told him, before that. He understood
all the presentiment that had troubled
him on the way there.
For that moment he was without any common
vanity, and
very
calm.
“I may
often need it,” he said, and there was nothing but
compassion
in his voice. “But I must take it where I’m lucky
enough to find it.
…
I know
what you mean. But I never
tried to make you fall in love with me. I
wouldn’t wish that
kind of trouble on anyone.”
“I
knew that,” she said, just as quietly. “But I couldn’t
help
wishing it.”
She came
towards him, and he stood up to meet her. He
knew that she was
going to kiss him, and he did not try to stop her.
Her mouth
was hot and hungry against his. His own lips
could not be cold.
That would have been hypocrisy. Perhaps
because his
understanding went so much deeper than the super
ficial smartness that
any other man might have been feeling
at that time, he was moved in a way
that would only have been cheapened if he had tried to put word to it. He felt
her
lithe softness pressed against him, her arms encircling him,
her hands moving over him, and
did not try to hold her away.
Presently
she drew back from him. Her hands were under his coat, under his arms, holding
him. The expression in her
eyes was curiously hopeless.
“You
haven’t got any gun,” she said.
He smiled
faintly. He knew that her hands had been
learning that even
while she kissed him; and yet it made no
difference,
“I
didn’t think I should need one,” he said.
It seemed
as if she wanted to speak, and could not.
“That
was your mistake,” said the harsh voice of Judd
Kaskin. “Get your
hands up.”
The Saint
turned, without haste. Kaskin stood just inside
the door, with a
heavy automatic in his hand. His florid face
was savagely
triumphant. Morris Dolf sidled into the room after him.
X
T
HEY WERE
tying the
Saint to a massive fake-antique
wooden chair placed close to the bed. His
ankles were
corded to the legs, and Kaskin was knotting his wrists
behind the
back of it. Dolf kept him covered while it was
being done, The gun
in his thin hand was steady and
impersonal: his weasel face and bright beady
eyes held a
cold-blooded sneer which made it plain that he would have
welcomed an
opportunity to demonstrate that he was not holding his finger off the trigger
because he was afraid of
the bang.
But the
Saint was not watching him very intently. He was looking most of the time at
Angela Lindsay. To either of the
other two men his face would have seemed
utterly impassive,
his
brow serene and amazingly unperturbed, the infinitesimal
smile that lingered on his lips only adding to the
enigma of
his self-control. But that
same inscrutable face talked to the
girl
as clearly as if it had used spoken words.
Her eyes
stared at him in a blind stunned way that said:
“I know. I know.
You think I’m a heel. But what could I do ?
I didn’t have long
enough to think… .”
And his own
cool steady eyes, and that faintly lingering
smile, all of his
face so strangely free from hatred or con
tempt, answered in the
same silent language: “I know, kid.
I understand. You
couldn’t help it. What the hell?”
She looked
at him with an incredulity that ached to
believe.
Kaskin
tightened his last knot and came round from
behind the chair.
“Well,
smart guy,” he said gloatingly. “You weren’t so smart, after
all.”
The Saint
had no time to waste. Even with his wrists
tied behind him, he
could still reach the hilt of his knife
with his fingertips.
They hadn’t thought of searching for
a weapon like that, under his sleeve.
He eased it out of its sheath until his ringers could close on the handle.
“You
certainly did surprise me, Judd,” he admitted
mildly.
“Thought
you were making a big hit with the little lady,
didn’t you ?”
Kaskin sneered. “Well, that’s what you were
meant to think. I
never knew a smart guy yet that wasn’t a
sucker for a jane. We
had it all figured out. She tipped us off as soon as she left your house this
afternoon. We could have
hunted out the dough and got away with it
then, but that
would have still left you running around. It was worth
waiting a
bit to get you as well. We knew you’d be here. We
just watched the house
until you got here, and came in after
you. Then we only had to wait until Angela got close enough
to you to grab your gun. Directly we heard
her say you
hadn’t got one, we walked
in.” His arm slid round the
girl’s
waist. “Cute little actress, ain’t she, Saint? I’ll bet you
thought you were in line for a big party.”
Simon had
his knife in his hand. He had twisted the blade back to saw it across the cords
on his wrists, and it was keen
enough to lance through them like butter. He
could feel
them loosening strand by strand, and stopped cutting just
before they would have fallen away altogether; but one
strong
jerk of his arms would have been enough to set
him free.
“So
what ?” he inquired coolly.
“So
you get what’s coming to you,” Kaskin said.
He dug
into a bulging coat pocket.
The Saint
tensed himself momentarily. Death was still
very near. His hands
might be practically free, but his legs were still tied to the chair. And even
though he could throw his knife faster than most men could pull a trigger, it
could
only be thrown once. But he had taken that risk from the
beginning,
with his eyes open. He could only die once, too; and all his life had been a
gamble with death.
He saw
Kaskin’s hand come out. But it didn’t come out
with a gun. It came out
with something that looked like an ordinary tin can with a length of smooth
cord wound round it. Kaskin unwrapped the cord, and laid the can on the edge
of the bed,
where it was only a few inches both from the
Saint’s elbow arid
Verdean’s middle. He stretched out the
cord, which terminated
at one end in a hole in the top of the
can, struck a match,
and put it to the loose end. The end
began to sizzle slowly.
“It’s
a slow fuse,” he explained, with vindictive satis
faction. “It’ll
take about fifteen minutes to burn. Time
enough for us to get
a long way off before it goes off, and
time enough for you
to do plenty of thinking before you
go skyhigh with Verdean. I’m going to
enjoy thinking about
you thinking.”
Only the Saint’s
extraordinarily sensitive ears would have
caught the tiny
mouselike sound that came from somewhere
in the depths of the
house. And any other ears that had
heard it might still have dismissed it
as the creak of a dry
board.
“The
only thing that puzzles me,” he said equably, “is
what you
think you’re going to think with.”
Kaskin
stepped up and hit him unemotionally in the face.
“That’s
for last night,” he said hoarsely, and turned to the
others.
“Let’s get started.”