He balanced the gun in his hand and pushed the door wider.
Then he heard it — a faint but clear rustle of movement that threw a momentary uncontrollable syncopation into his heartbeats and sent a flying column of eskimo beetles skirmishing up into his scalp. And with the rustle, a low, sleepy, inarticulate moan.
“What’s dat?” breathed Mr Uniatz hoarsely.
The Saint hardly bothered to whisper. After the first instant’s shock, he understood the rustle and the moan so vividly that the needlessness of further stealth seemed to be established.
“That’s Monica,” he said, and went down the steps.
His pencil flashlight broke the darkness as he reached the bottom, and in the round splash where the beam struck, he saw her.
She lay on a canvas cot in one corner of the cellar. Her wrists were strapped to the side members. As he had expected, she was dressed in the grimy shapeless rags in which he had first met her, but most of the beggar-woman make-up had been roughly wiped from her face. Her eyes were closed, but as the light fell on them her eyelids lifted a little as if with an infinite effort.
“No,” she mouthed huskily. “No...”
“Monica,” he said.
He checked the eagerness of his stride as he reached the cot, to come up to her gently.
“It’s me,” he said. “Simon. Simon Templar.”
Her eyes sought for him as he touched her, and he could see the pin-point contraction of the pupils. He turned the flashlight on his own face, then back to her.
She knew him — the sound of his voice and the glimpse of him. Even through the mists of the drug he saw the awareness of him struggle into her mind, and saw the tiny smile that lighted her whole face for an instant. She tried to raise her head, and her lips formed his name: “Simon...”
The effort was all she could make. Her head fell back and the lids closed over that shining look.
And then suddenly there was a blaze of lights that smashed away all shadows and wiped out the beam of his pencil light like a deluge would put out a match.
“Okay,” said the saw-toothed voice of Frankie Weiss. “This is a tommy gun. Don’t try anything, or I’ll blast all three of you.”
The Saint turned.
The stairs behind him had horizontal treads but no solid rises. Thus a man concealed behind them had a good vantage point. The unmistakable nozzle of a sub-machine-gun projected through one of the openings, and behind the Saint, Monica Varing lay directly in the line of fire.
“Drop your guns and reach,” Frankie said.
Simon obeyed.
Hoppy said, “Boss—”
“No,” said the Saint. “You haven’t a chance. Do what Frankie tells you.”
Hoppy’s Betsy clattered ignominiously on the floor.
The gross bulk of Big Hazel Green came out from behind the stairs. She circled around them, kicked their guns out of reach, and searched them with competent hamlike hands. Then she stepped aside again, and Frankie Weiss moved out into the open.
There was a small dew of perspiration on his face, but the weapon he held was perfectly steady.
“How nice to see you, Frankie,” Simon drawled. “You’re looking well, too. That work-out we had together must have done you good.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Frankie bit out of the side of his mouth. “Well, when I get through giving you a work-out—”
“The same old dialogue,” sighed the Saint. “I wish I could remember how many times I’ve heard that line. Frankie, you kill me.”
“Maybe you’re not kidding,” Frankie sneered. “Sit down on the bed and keep your hands where I can see ’em.”
The Saint sat down, and Monica Varing stirred again uneasily. He felt very calm and quiet now. The inward exultation that danger could always ignite in him had steadied down and chilled. He had a cold estimate of all their chances, an equally cold watchfulness for his own first opening, an arrogant confidence that when the time came he could do more than any other human being could do.
“I just want you to know,” he said, “that if you’ve done anything to Monica Varing—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mr Templar,” said a new voice from the top of the stairs. “We may have to kill Miss Varing, but I would never allow that sort of thing.”
It was Mrs Laura Wingate.
Chapter fifteen
The Saint watched her come down the stairs, while his brain struggled dizzily to recover its balance. It was fantastic, preposterous. In a story, of course, he would have guessed it long ago, but he had been thinking strictly in realities. This was unreal, and yet he was seeing it with his own eyes.
She was still the same fantastic figure out of a Helen Hokinson drawing. She protruded fore and aft, a plump, apparently brainless woman whose thoughts should have dealt with nothing more dangerous than planning theatre parties or buying Renoirs she couldn’t appreciate. Her lower lip protruded a little; that was the only change.
She looked at the Saint, and he felt one small flicker of chill as their eyes met. The glaring light seemed to bleach all colour out of her eyes, and the ruthless ophidian coldness of the gaze in that powdered face was shocking.
“Good evening, Your Majesty,” he said.
He started to stand up.
“Siddown!” Frankie barked, and the Saint raised his eyebrows as he subsided.
“Excuse me. It was just my old-world manners. I was always taught to stand up when a lady comes into the room — especially if she’s a queen.”
Hoppy said incredulously, “Ya mean dat’s de King of de Beggars? Dat old bag?”
“Shut up,” Frankie snarled.
“It doesn’t matter what they say now,” Mrs Wingate said. “Hazel—”
Big Hazel nodded and went to a small side table. She pulled out a drawer and took out the materials for a hypodermic injection — a syringe, ampules, cotton, alcohol. She began to fit a needle on the glass barrel of the syringe, as efficiently as a trained nurse. Simon realised that she might once have been one.
“Do we get the treatment, too?” he asked.
Mrs Wingate gave him a pale-eyed glance.
“Of course. There are several things I need to know immediately. I want to be sure you tell the truth.”
“You want to know how many people I’ve talked to, is that it?”
“A good deal depends on that, Mr Templar. I have made my arrangements to disappear if necessary. But I hope it will not be necessary yet — or ever.”
“I see,” Simon murmured. “If you can keep your secret safe by a few more murders — very wise of you, Mrs Wingate. I should have remembered my chess better — it’s the Queen that’s the most dangerous piece in the game. Not the King.”
“Chess,” Hoppy said blankly. “A dame — de King of de Beggars. An’ I t’ought—”
“That it was Elliott. Well, we had some reason to. We were looking for a man in the first place. That’s exactly the false scent Mrs Wingate meant to leave when she coined her title. You know, Hoppy, there was an Egyptian woman a long time ago who had herself crowned Pharaoh. She even insisted on appearing in public with a beard on state occasions. Mrs Wingate never went quite that far, but the disguise was good enough, anyhow. And then she made such good use of Stephen Elliott’s property. The hotel, and this. She seems to specialise in that sort of operation — like giving me Sammy the Leg’s house. I don’t doubt that if anyone else gets hot on the trail, Elliott is the one who’s going to have the explaining to do.” He gazed at Mrs Wingate thoughtfully. “Just between ourselves, and since it won’t go any farther, Laura, I wouldn’t mind betting now that Elliott isn’t even in the racket at all.”