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 superficial 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
They 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 impersonaclass="underline" 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 contempt, 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 satisfaction. "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.