"You know what you have to do, boys and girls," he said. "Follow me, and let's make it snappy."
Mr Uniatz coughed, peering at him through the darkness with troubled intensity.
"I dunno, boss," he said anxiously. "I never hoid of dis invisible rye. Is dat what de guy has in de bottles in his—"
"Yes, that's it," said the Saint with magnificent presence of mind. "You go on an invisible jag on it and end up by seeing invisible pink elephants. It saves any amount of trouble. Now get hold of your Betsy and shut up, because there may be invisible ears."
The lane ran between almost vertical grass banks topped by stiff thorn hedges, and it was so narrow that a car driven down it would have had no more than a few inches clearance on either side. The car that came up it from the road must have been driven by someone who knew his margins with the accuracy of long experience, for it swooped out of the night so swiftly and suddenly that the Saint's hearing had scarcely made him aware of its approach when it was almost on top of them, its headlights turning the lane into a trench of blinding light. Simon had an instant of desperate indecision while he reckoned their chance of scaling the steep hedge-topped banks and realized that they could never do it in time; and then he wheeled to face the danger with his hand leaping to his gun, Hoppy's movement was even quicker, but it was still too late. Another light sprang up dazzlingly from behind the gates just ahead of them: they were trapped between the two opposing broadsides of eye-searing brilliance and the two high walls of the lane as if they had been caught in a box, and Simon knew without any possibility of self-deception that they were helplessly at the mercy of the men behind the lights.
"Put your hands up," ordered a new voice from the car, and the Saint acknowledged to himself how completely and beautifully he had been had.
X
"I might have known you'd be a great organizer, brother," murmured the Saint as he led the way obediently into the library of Gad Cliff House with his hands held high in the air. "But you were certainly in form tonight."
The compliment was perfectly sincere. When Simon Templar fell into traps he liked them to be good ones for the sake of his own self-esteem; and the one he had just walked into so docilely struck him as being a highly satisfactory specimen from every point of view.
It was all so neat and simple and psychologically watertight, once you were let into the secret. He had kept his first appointment with Brenda Marlow as anyone would have known he would. He had been duly suspicious of the second appointment at the crossroads in East Lulworth as he was meant to be. He had accepted it merely as a confirmation of those suspicions when Jopley arrived with the warning of the machine-gun party — exactly as he was meant to do. And with the memory of the proposition he had made to Jopley the night before still fresh in his mind, the rest of the machinery had run like clockwork. He had been so completely disarmed that even Jopley's well-simulated reluctance to lead him into the very trap he was meant to be led into was almost a superfluous finishing touch. A good trap was something that the Saint could always appreciate with professional interest; but a trap within a trap was a refinement to remember. He had announced himself as being in the market for bait, and verily he had swallowed everything that was offered him.
Simon admitted the fact and went on from there. They were in the soup, but even if it was good soup it was no place to stay in. He reckoned the odds dispassionately. Their guns had been taken away from them, but his knife had escaped the search. That was the only asset he could find on his own side — that, and whatever his own quickness of thought was worth, which on its recent showing didn't seem to be very much. And yet no one who looked at him would have seen a trace of the grim concentration that was driving his brain on a fierce, defiant search for the inspiration that would turn the tables again.
He smiled at Lasser with all the carefree and unruffled ease that only reached its airiest perfection with him when the corner was tightest and the odds were too astronomical to be worth brooding over.
"What does it feel like to be a master mind?" he enquired interestedly.
Lasser beamed back at him, with his rich jolly face shining as if it had been freshly scrubbed.
"I've read a lot about you," he said, "so I knew I should have to make a special effort. In fact I'm not too proud to admit that I've picked up a few tips from the stories I've heard of you. Naturally when I knew who our distinguished opponent was I tried not to disappoint him."
"You haven't," said the Saint cordially. "Except that I may have expected a larger deputation of welcome."
His gaze drifted over the assembly with the mildest and most apologetic hint of criticism. Besides Lasser there was only Jopley and one other man, presumably the gatekeeper — a short, thick-set individual with a cast in one eye and an unshaven chin that gave him a vicious and sinister aspect which was almost too conventional to be true. There was also Brenda Marlow, who came into the room last and sat on the arm of a chair near the door, watching from the background with an expression that the Saint couldn't quite analyze.
"I think there are enough of us," said Lasser blandly. He turned to Jopley. "You searched them all thoroughly?"
The man grunted an affirmative, and Lasser's glance passed fleetingly over Peter Quentin and Hoppy and glowed on the Saint again.
"You can put your hands down," he said. "It will be more comfortable for you. And sit down if you want to." He tugged at the lobe of his ear absentmindedly while the Saint turned a chair round and relaxed in it, crossing his legs. "Ah — about this deputation of welcome. Yes. I had thought of giving you more of a show, but I decided not to. You see, I brought you here to talk over some more or less private business, and I thought that the fewer people who knew about it the better. You have rather a persuasive way with you, Mr Templar, so Jopley tells me, and I shouldn't want you to tempt any more of my employees. Will you have a drink?"
"I'd love one," said the Saint graciously, and Lasser turned to the villainous specimen with the unshaven chin.
"Some drinks, Borieff."
Simon took out his cigarette case while Borieff slouched over to a cupboard under one of the bookshelves and brought out a bottle and a siphon.
"You know, this makes me feel quite guilty," he said. "I've had so many drinks with you before, and yet I've never bought you one."
"Two vanloads, isn't it?" Lasser agreed with his fat bright smile. "And the other van with — um — silks and things in it. Yes. Yes. That's what I brought you here to talk to you about. We shall have to have those vans back, of course, what you haven't actually used of them."
"Hoppy certainly has rather improved the shining hour," Simon admitted. "But there's quite a lot left. What sort of an offer were you thinking of making?"
Lasser shook his head.
"No," he said judiciously. "No, I wasn't thinking of making an offer. I just want them back. I'm afraid you're going to have to tell us where to find them. That's why I arranged for you to come here."
"What's all this," Brenda Marlow asked quietly, "about bringing them here?"
She had been so much in the background that the others seemed to have forgotten her, and when she spoke it was as startling an intrusion as if she had not been there before and had just walked in. Lasser looked round at her, blinking.