The Saint
checked on one foot, abruptly conscious even
of his breathing in
the sudden quiet. He was less than a yard
from the door that
must have belonged to the living-room. Standing there, he heard the harsh
rumble of a thick brutal
voice on the other side of the door, dulled in
volume but
perfectly
distinct.
“All
right,” it said. “That’s just a sample. Now will you
tell us
what you did with that dough, or shall we play some
more music?”
III
S
IMON LOWERED
his spare
foot to the carpet, and bent his
leg over it until he was down on one knee.
From that
position he could peer through the keyhole and get a view
of
part of the room.
Directly
across from him, a thin small weasel-faced man
stood over a
radiogram beside the fireplace. A cigarette
dangled limply from
the corner of his mouth, and the eyes that squinted through the smoke drifting
past his face were
beady and emotionless like a snake’s. Simon placed the
lean
cruel face almost instantly in his encyclopedic mental records
of the
population of the underworld, and the recognition
walloped into his
already tottering awareness to register yet
another item in the
sequence of surprise punches that his
phenomenal resilience was trying to stand
up to. The weasel-
faced man’s name was Morris Dolf; and he was certainly no
kind of guest for anyone with the reputation of Ebenezer
Hogsbotham
to entertain.
The
Saint’s survey slid off him on to the man who sat in
front of the
fireplace. This was someone whom the Saint did
not recognize, and
he knew he was not Mr Hogsbotham. He
was a man with thin sandy hair and a
soft plump face that
would have fitted very nicely on somebody’s
pet rabbit. At
the moment it was a very frightened rabbit. The man sat
in a
stiff-backed chair placed on the hearthrug, and pieces of
clothesline
had been used to keep him there. His arms had been stretched round behind him
and tied at the back of the
chair so that his shoulders were hunched slightly forward
by the strain. His shirt had been ripped open to
the waist, so
that his chest was
bare; and his skin was very white and
insipid,
as if it had never seen daylight since he was born. It
was so white that two irregular patches of
inflammation on it
stood out like
blotches of dull red paint. His lips were trembling, and his eyes bulged in
wild orbs of dread.
“I
don’t know!” he blubbered. “I tell you, you’re making
a mistake.
I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t got it.
Don’t burn me
again!”
Morris
Dolf might not have heard. He stood leaning
boredly against the
radiogram and didn’t move.
Someone
else did. It was a third man, whose back was
turned to the door. The back was broad and
fitted tightly into
his coat, so that the
material wrinkled at the armpits, and the
neck above it was short and thick and reddish, running
quickly into close-cropped wiry black hair. The
whole rear
view had a hard coarse
physical ruthlessness that made it
unnecessary
to see its owner’s face to make an immediate summary of his character. It
belonged without a shadow of doubt to the thick brutal voice that Simon had
heard first—
and equally without
doubt, it could not possibly have be
longed
to Mr Ebenezer Hogsbotham.
The same
voice spoke again. It said: “Okay, Verdean. But
you’re the one who made the mistake. You
made it when you
thought you’d be smart and
try to doublecross us. You made
it worse when you tried to turn us in to
the cops, so we could
take the rap for you
and leave you nothing to worry about.
Now
you’re going to wish you hadn’t been so damn
smart.”
The broad
back moved forward and bent towards the
fireplace. The gas fire was burning in the
grate, although the evening was warm; and all at once the Saint understood why
he had heard through the music those screechy
ululations which no orchestral instrument could have produced. The man with the
broad back straightened up again, and his
powerful hand was holding an ordinary kitchen ladle of
which the bowl glowed bright crimson.
“You
have it just how you like, rat,” he said. “I don’t
mind how
long you hold out. I’m going to enjoy working on
you. We’re going to
burn your body a bit more for a start,
and then we’ll take
your shoes and socks off and put your
feet in the fire and see how you like
that. You can scream your
head off if you want to, but nobody ‘ll hear
you over the gramophone… . Let’s have some more of that loud stuff,
Morrie.”
Morris Dolf
turned back to the radiogram, without a fl
icker of expression, and moved the pick-up
arm. The ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ crashed out
again with a fearful vigour that
would
have drowned anything less than the howl of a
hurricane; and the broad back shifted towards the man in
the
chair.
The man in
the chair stared in delirious horror from the
glowing ladle to the
face of the man who held it. His eyes
bulged until there were white rims all
round the pupils. His
quivering lips fluttered into absurd jerky
patterns, pouring out frantic pleas and protestations that the music swamped
into
inaudibility.
Simon
Templar removed his eye from the keyhole and loosened the gun under his arm. He
had no fanciful ideas
about rushing to the rescue of a hapless
victim of persecu
tion. In fact, all the more subtle aspects of the victim
looked
as guilty as hell to him—if not of the actual doublecrossing
that seemed
to be under discussion, at least of plenty of
other reprehensible
things. No entirely innocent house
holder would behave in exactly that way
if he were being
tortured by a couple of invading thugs. And the whole
argu
ment as Simon had overheard it smelled ripely with the rich
fragrance
of dishonour and dissension among thieves.
Which was an odour
that had perfumed some of the most
joyous hours of the Saint’s
rapscallion life. By all the portents,
he was still a
puzzlingly long way from getting within kick
ing distance of the
elusive Mr Hogsbotham; but here under
his very nose was a proposition that
looked no less diverting
and a lot more mysterious; and the Saint had
a sublimely
happy-go-lucky adaptability to the generous vagaries of
Fate. He
took his gun clear out of the spring harness where
he carried it, and
opened the door.
He went in
without any stealth, which would have been
entirely superfluous. The operatic
pandemonium would have
made his entrance
mouselike if he had ridden in on a caper
ing elephant. He walked almost nonchalantly across the room; and its
occupants were so taken up with their own
business that he was within a
couple of yards of them before
any of them
noticed that he was there.
Morris
Dolf saw him first. His beady eyes swivelled in
curiously towards the
movement that must have finally
caught the fringes of their range of vision,
and became
petrified
into glassy blankness as they fastened on the Saint’s
tall figure. His jaw dropped so that the cigarette would have
fallen
out of his mouth if the adhesive dampness of the paper
hadn’t kept it hanging from his lower lip. He stood as horri
pilantly still as if a long icy needle had shot up
out of the
floor and impaled him from
sacrum to occiput.
That glazed
paralysis lasted for about a breath and a
half. And then his
right hand whipped towards his
pocket.
It was
nothing but an involuntary piece of sheer stupidity
born out of shock,
and the Saint was benevolent enough to
treat it that way. He
simply lifted the gun in his hand a little,
bringing it more
prominently into view; and Dolf stopped
himself in time.
The man
with the beefy neck, in his turn, must have
caught some queer
impression from Dolf’s peculiar movements out of the corner of his eye. He
turned and looked at his companion’s face, froze for an instant, and then went
on
turning more quickly, straightening as he did so. He let go
the red-hot
ladle, and his right hand started to make the
same instinctive grab
that Dolf had started—and stopped in
mid-air for the same reason. His
heavy florid features seemed
to bunch into knots of strangulated
viciousness as he stood
glowering numbly at the Saint’s masked face.
Simon
stepped sideways, towards the blaring radiogram, and lifted the needle off
the
record. The nerve-rasping bom
bardment of sound broke off into blissful
silence.
“That’s
better,” he murmured relievedly. “Now we can
all talk to each
other without giving ourselves laryngitis.
When did you discover
this passion for expensive music,
Morrie?”
Morris
Dolf’s eyes blinked once at the jar of being addres
sed by name, but he
seemed to find it hard to work up an enthusiasm for discussing his cultural
development. His
tongue slid over his dry lips without forming an answering
syllable.
Simon
turned to the big florid man. Now that he had seen his face, he had identified
him as well.
“Judd
Kaskin, I believe ?” he drawled, with the delicate suavity of an
ambassador of the old regime. “Do you know
that you’re burning
the carpet ?”
Kaskin
looked at the fallen ladle. He bent and picked it
up, rubbing the sole
of his shoe over the smouldering patch
of rug. Then, as if
he suddenly realized that he had done all
that in mechanical
obedience to a command that the Saint
hadn’t even troubled to utter
directly, he threw it clattering
into the fireplace and turned his savage scowl
back to the
Saint.
“What
the hell do you want ?” he snarled.
“You
know, I was just going to ask you the same ques
tion,” Simon
remarked mildly. “It seemed to me that you
were feeling your
oats a bit, Judd. I suppose you get that way
after doing five years on the Moor. But
you haven’t been out
much more than three
months, have you ? You shouldn’t be
in
such a hurry to go back.”
The big
man’s eyes gave the same automatic reaction as
Dolf’s had given to
the accuracy of the Saint’s information,
and hardened again
into slits of unyielding suspicion.
“Who
the hell are you ?” he grated slowly. “You aren’t a
cop. Take
that rag off your face and let’s see who you are.”
“When
I’m ready,” said the Saint coolly. “And then you
may wish I
hadn’t. Just now, I’m asking the questions. What
is this doublecross you’re trying to find
out about from Com
rade Verdean?”
There was
a silence. Morris Dolf’s slight expression was
fading out again. His
mouth closed, and he readjusted his
cigarette. Simon knew that behind that
silent hollow-
cheeked mask a cunning brain was getting back to work.
Kaskin’s face, when he wanted
to play tricks with it, could
put on a ruddy
rough-diamond joviality that was convincing enough to deceive most people who
did not know too much
about his
criminal record. But at this moment he was making
no effort to put on his stock disguise. His mouth
was but
toned up in an ugly
down-turned curve.
“Why
don’t you find out, if you’re so wise ?”
“I
could do that,” said the Saint.
He moved on
the arc of a circle towards Verdean’s chair,
keeping Dolf and
Kaskin covered all the time. His left hand
dipped into his coat
pocket and took out a penknife. He
opened it one-handed, bracing it
against his leg, and felt
around to cut the cords from Verdean’s wrists
and ankles
without shifting his eyes for an instant from the two men
at
the other end of his gun.