“You waitin’ to help?” he asked.
Mahmud showed distinct signs of being anything but ready to assist in surgery. He looked sick, and he moved his hands behind him to hide their agitated fluttering.
“I will mix the cement,” he said. “Fowler told me—”
“I know,” Shortwave said curtly. “So do it!”
Mahmud withdrew gratefully and a moment later opened and slammed the outer door. He had seemed in command when he and Shortwave had captured Simon and Tammy. Now it was as if some subtle transfer of power had wordlessly taken place from the leader who balked at anything more disagreeable than long-range killing and the subordinate who could enjoy the running of live blood.
Shortwave regarded his sacrificial lambs with satisfaction, and stepped towards Tammy. The girl involuntarily shrank back in her chair, twisting to one side in a futile attempt to get away from the point of the knife, which he took sadistic pleasure in bringing very slowly closer and closer to her face.
Simon’s eyes were on the heavily wrought golden metal of her ring. Her hands, crossed in front of her and tied at the wrists, looked white and rigid. If she was really lapsing into a freeze of terror it could easily be too late before she used the tear-gas cartridge, if she ever used it at all.
“Wait!” he shouted.
Shortwave kept the knife a few inches from Tammy’s face as he looked at the Saint.
“Anything wrong?” he asked. “Ladies first, right? We gotta be gentlemen, don’t we?”
“Maybe we could make a deal,” Simon said.
“You’re a real wheeler and dealer, ain’t you?” the little man said. “But not with me. You belted me one, remember? Seeing you squirm is the only deal I want.”
Out of the corners of his eyes Simon caught a slight movement of Tammy’s hands. His interruption had started the thaw in her terror that he had hoped it would. Her face was no longer a plaster mask of fear. She was looking past the freshly honed knife blade at Shortwave’s face. He was still not quite within range, but she raised her wrists slightly, calculating the angle of the ring, holding it steady until Shortwave should lean closer to her.
Then he flicked the knife point teasingly at her nose without quite touching her, and stepped back three paces.
Tammy closed her eyes; her hands drooped like wilted leaves. Simon himself felt as if the blood pounding along his veins had suddenly coagulated and grown lead-heavy.
“So,” said Shortwave, not seeing the significant disappointment that a more alert eye might have noted in his prisoners, “who’s in a hurry?”
He turned the knife and took its point in his right hand, dandled it for a moment as he sized up the distance between him and Tammy, then raised it handle-up for throwing. The Saint tensed his muscles for a desperate roll across the floor towards Shortwave’s legs that might at least make the knife miss its living target.
But Shortwave abruptly let the knife topple straight down from his fingers in a lazy somersault through the air and stick into the floor at his feet. Laughter whistled up through his uneven teeth. Tammy opened her eyes and glared at him with pure hatred.
“Why not let’s have a little fun first?” he said.
He stepped up to her again, emptyhanded — and cupped the empty hands on her breasts.
Tammy brought her own hands up, as if in the instinctive attempt to fend him off, but in a motion which at the same time brought them close to his face, directly under his nose. And in exactly that perfect moment and position, as if she had mastered it from a textbook, with a twist of a thumb and the clenching of a fist, she detonated the tear-gas cartridge straight into his face.
This time it worked. The sound of the discharge was negligible, but the effect was stupendous. As the gas puff blossomed into Shortwave’s eyes he gave a startled screech and staggered back, bent almost double, rubbing his distorted countenance furiously.
The Saint, in the instant of the miniature explosion, also went into action, rolling across the floor like a log down a mountainside. It was an unorthodox means of locomotion, but it was the only way to get to Shortwave before he started to recover. The little man was still blind and choking, hunched over with his head almost level with his waist, when Simon arrived beside him. The trip had taken only two or three seconds, and the Saint decided that he had time for a more devastating attack than the rotary crash into Shortwave’s shaky shins that he had first thought might be necessary. Without any pause, he stopped on his back, drew his knees almost to his chin — cocking his lithe body on to his shoulders — and unleashed a double-footed kick straight up into Shortwave’s face.
It was an instantaneous uncoiling of supremely conditioned muscle that drew power from the whole magnificent length of the Saint’s body, from shoulder blades to thighs, and concentrated its entire force in the heels of his shoes as they came into crunching contact with the forepart of Shortwave’s steel-plated head. The would-be Jack the Ripper was rocketed straight up; then, with neither conscious will nor strength of limb to guide or support him, he crashed down like a dropped doll beside the Saint in a totally limp condition which the Saint only regretted might not prove permanent. But there was no doubt that he would be out of the game for a long time.
“Good girl!” Simon said softly. “I take back all my rude remarks about your little toy.”
She was already out of her chair and on her knees by the knife Shortwave had teasingly let fall to the floor.
“You can send me a bouquet later,” she said. “Here, I’ll cut you loose.”
She pulled the blade out of the wood while Simon scooted around into a sitting position with his back towards her.
“I’m glad we’re good friends,” he said as he felt the sharp edge of Anna bite into the cords an inch or so from his pulse.
“To the end,” she muttered. “And this was almost it.”
“It still will be if Mahmud comes in here before you’ve got me loose,” he said. “But I don’t think he will. Listen.”
He turned his head slightly, and Tammy concentrated too, without letting up in her careful work behind him.
“He’s mixing our concrete comforters,” Simon said. “It’ll keep him occupied for a while.”
The ropes gave way. Shortwave was still motionless, bleeding quietly to himself. Simon turned quickly, took the knife from Tammy, and untied the ropes that held his ankles. Then he untied her hands, also without using the knife, and turned to search Shortwave for his gun.
At that moment the busy scraping outside stopped. Both the Saint and Tammy reacted as if the silence had been a sudden loud noise.
“Is he coming?” she breathed.
“I’ll see. You take what’s left of those ropes and tie up Shortwave. If you can find his gun, keep it handy — and use it if you have to!”
Simon was talking on the run. He kept Anna in his hand and hurried through the outer part of the boathouse and across to the side door.
The scraping of metal on wood started again. The Saint peeped cautiously out. The light from the cobwebbed window fell across Mahmud’s heaving back as he worked with a hoe to mix cement in a low wooden trough on the ground in front of him. Beside him were bags of sand and lime, and a garden hose was squirting water into the straggly grass near his feet.
The Saint glanced around, saw no better weapon than he was holding already, and decided to move on Mahmud immediately while his back was turned and he was preoccupied with his work. He pushed the door wider, with tentative fingers, praying that the hinges would not squeak: they didn’t.