"I think we had better do so," said Bravache, still smiling with a face of marble. "We have already wasted enough time." He turned his head. "Dumaire, you know what to do. We will leave you to do it." He looked at the Saint again, with his lips drawn back from his white even teeth. "You, Mr Templar, will accompany Pietri and myself. If you resist or try to obstruct us you will be shot at once. I advise you to come quietly. I am hoping that as a reasonable man you will agree that the prospect of death in a number of hours is preferable to the certainty of death immediately. Besides" — the gleam of the white teeth was feline — "as a gentleman, you will not wish to deprive me of the opportunity to answer some of your remarks which I have not had time to deal with here."
The Saint smiled.
"By no manner of means," he said. "Only I should rather like to take charge of the interview myself at this point — if you don't mind."
He stepped aside and backwards, and took hold of Pietri by the ear. The movement was so improbable and unexpected that it was completed before either Bravache or Dumaire could reorient their wits sufficiently to do anything about it. And by that time Pietri was securely held, like a writhing urchin in the grip of an old-fashioned schoolmarm, so that his body was between the Saint and Bravache, who was still trying to make up his mind whether to grab for the automatic which he had confidently left lying on the table a yard away.
Bravache's poise broke for a moment.
"Use your gun, you fool!" he thundered.
"He can't," said the Saint. "You tell them why, Sam."
An extra turn on the piece of gristle he was holding made his victim squeak like a mouse.
"There's nothing in it," wailed Pietri, with the revolver quivering futilely in his grasp. "They caught me outside — him and two other fellows—"
Bravache started to move then, and Simon's voice ripped out like a lash.
"I wouldn't," he said. "Really I wouldn't. It's dangerous."
And as he spoke Peter and Hoppy came through the doorway.
Bravache stood very still. His face was cold and unmoved, but the veins on the backs of his clenched hands stood out in knotty blue cords. Dumaire, caught with one hand at the edge of his coat pocket, prudently let it fall back to his side. He flattened himself against the wall like a cornered rat, with his shoulders hunched up to the jaw level of his small ebony-capped head.
Simon released Pietri and strolled over to pick up Bravache's automatic and retrieve his cigarette case and lighter from among his strewn belongings on the table. With a cigarette between his lips and the lighter wick burning steadily, he looked at Bravache with cerulean mockery in his eyes.
"I'm hoping that as a reasonable man you will agree that the prospect of death in a number of hours is preferable to. the certainty of death immediately," he said in a voice of satin. "Go on, Major, I don't want anything to interrupt our little chat."
2
The chat appeared to have been interrupted already so far as Major Bravache was concerned. At any rate, he seemed disinclined to accept the Saint's invitation to proceed with his discourse. Or else the founts of eloquence had dried up within him. His lips closed down over his teeth until there was only a straight line to show where his mouth had been.
The Saint left him with a quizzically regretful shrug and turned to untie Lady Valerie. She stood up and stretched herself, rather like a cat by the fire, and rubbed her chafed wrists. Then she went over to the table where her bag was, in search of the ineluctable restoratives of feminine sangfroid.
"You gave me some bad moments," she said, with an attempted nonchalance in which he could still see the signs of strain like carefully darned edges on a poor man's cuffs. "For a long time I was thinking you'd let me down, but of course I ought to have remembered that you never let anyone down."
"What happened?" he asked.
She appeared from behind a card-sized mirror to point with the scarlet tip of a lipstick.
"He rang the bell and said you'd sent him round with something special to give me. I thought it was a bit funny, since we'd only said good-bye a little while ago, and he was a rather funny-looking person, but after all I thought a lot of funny things must go on in this life of crime, and I was quite intrigued. I mean, I just didn't think enough about how funny it was. So I started to let him in, and then these other two followed him in very quickly and there wasn't anything I could do. They tied me up and searched everywhere. This one was very nasty — he thought I might have the ticket on me, and he didn't miss anything."
She gazed vindictively at Dumaire, who was then having his hands efficiently taped behind his back by Peter Quentin, and kicked him thoughtfully on the shins.
"Then they made you ring me up?" Simon prompted her.
"Well, when they couldn't find the ticket they said they'd do horrible things to me unless I told them where it was. So I told them I'd given it to you to look after, and I was quite glad to be able to ring you up by that time. I–I sort of knew you'd catch on at once, because you're so frightfully clever and that's how things always happen in stories."
"It makes everything so easy, doesn't it?" said the Saint satirically. "We must talk some more about that, but I think we'll talk alone."
He watched while the taping of the other prisoners' wrists was completed; then he started exploring doors. He found one that communicated with the bedroom — a place of glass and natural woods and pale blue sheets and pillows, with a pale blue bathroom beyond it that gave an infinitesimally humorous shift to the alignment of his eyebrows. He left the door open and signed to Peter.
"Bring the menagerie in here," he said.
Dumaire, Pietri and Bravache lurched sullenly in, urged on by the unarguable prodding of gun muzzles.
On his way in after them, Hoppy Uniatz stopped at the door. It is true, as has perhaps already been made superfluously clear, that there were situations in which the light of intelligence failed to coruscate on Mr Uniatz' ivorine brow; it is no less true that in the vasty oceans of philosophy and abstract Thought he wandered like a rudderless barque at the mercy of unpredictable winds; but in his own element he was immune to the distractions that might have afflicted lesser men, and his mental processes became invested with the simplicity of true greatness.
"Boss," said Mr Uniatz, with the placidity of a mahatma approaching the settlement of an overdue grocer's bill, "I t'ink ya better gimme dem shells."
"What shells?" asked the Saint hazily.
"De shells," explained Mr Uniatz, who was now flourishing Pietri's silenced revolver in addition to his own beloved Betsy, "you take outa de dumb cannon."
Simon blinked.
"What for?"
"Dey don't make no ners," explained Mr Uniatz, with a slight perplexity for such slowness on the uptake, "when we are giving dese guys de woiks."
The Saint swallowed.
"I'll give them to you when you need them," he said and closed the door hastily on Mr Uniatz' back.
He went back and sat on the arm of a chair in front of Lady Valerie. He wanted to smile, but he had too many other things on his mind that were not smiling matters. The recent episode which had been absorbing all his nervous and intellectual energy was over, and his brain was moving on again with restless efficiency. It had not reached an end, but only a fresh beginning.
She had regained most of her composure. Her face was repaired, and she had lighted a cigarette herself. He had to admit that she possessed amazing recuperative powers. There was a naughty gleam in her eyes that would have amused him at any other time.
"You always seem to be catching me in these boudoir moments, don't you?" she said, smoothing her flimsy negligee. "I mean, first I was in my nightie at the fire, and then now. It must be fate, or something. The only trouble is, there won't be any thrills left when we get really friendly… Of course I suppose I ought to thank you for rescuing me," she went on hurriedly. "Thanks very much, darling. It was sweet of you."