"Eh?"
"What's all this," she repeated in exactly the same quiet voice, "about bringing them here?"
Lasser rubbed his chin.
"Oh, of course," he said. "Bringing them here. Yes.
I didn't tell you — I didn't really mean them to meet me at Lulworth. That was just to get them ready for the story Jopley had to tell them. It was all arranged so that they'd be sure to come here, so I suppose I can say we brought them."
"I see," she said innocently. "So you were just using me as a sort of stuffed decoy."
Lasser's broad smile did not waver.
"I shouldn't say that, my dear. No. Not at all. You couldn't have played your part nearly so well if you hadn't believed in it. I was just making it easier for you." He tugged at his ear again for a moment and then pulled out his watch, consulted it, stuffed it back in his pocket and rubbed his hands briskly together with an air of breezy decision. "Now, Brenda, it's time you were off. As a matter of fact I thought you'd have started by this time. Remember you're due in London at one o'clock."
Her shoulders moved slightly.
"I can make it in three hours easily in the new Lagonda," she said slowly. "And since I'm here I'd like to see how you get on."
"But you've got to allow for accidents. If you had a puncture—"
"Do you mean you don't want me to stay?"
The Saint felt an odd thrill of breathlessness. There was a subtle tension in the room that had not been there before even in spite of the display of artillery which was still in evidence. To the Saint's preternaturally sharpened senses it was perceptible in the darkened sullenness of Jopley, in the harsh rigidity of Borieff, even in the frozen fixity of Lasser's expansive smile.
And there could only be one explanation for it. It meant that he must have been right in the one wild theory which had come to him on the way there when it was too late to probe into it, that Brenda Marlow and her contradictions were accounted for and that it was no longer necessary to look to Messalina and Lucrezia Borgia for her prototype. It gave the Saint a curious sense of lightness and relief, even though it did nothing to improve his own position. There were worse things than to be at the mercy of men like Lasser and Jopley and Borieff, and in Simon Templar's own inconsequential philosophy to have to think of a girl as he had been thinking of her was one of them.
"I don't mean that at all," Lasser was saying jovially. "No. Of course not. But that — um — envelope has got to be delivered, and this is rather a private matter—"
"Doesn't it concern all of us?"
The Saint raised his glass and drank with a certain deep satisfaction.
"Comrade Lasser has his own views about who's concerned with one thing and another, darling," he explained. "For instance, there was that business about Pargo. I'll bet he didn't tell you that Pargo was tortured to death and dumped on my—"
Borieff's lunging fist thudded against the side of the Saint's head and sent the glass he was holding spinning away to splinter itself on the edge of a table.
Simon's muscles gathered themselves in spontaneous reaction. And then as he gazed squarely into the muzzle of Borieff's automatic they slowly loosened again. Just as slowly he took out a handkerchief and wiped a few drops of spilt liquid from his coat.
After the sudden crash of shattering glass there was a brief interval of intense silence. And then Lasser spoke with his eyes creased up to slits in his plump jolly face.
"Tie them up," he said; and as Jopley and Borieff moved to obey the order the smile that had been only temporarily shaken came back to his wide elastic mouth. "I'm sorry, Templar, but you must have some respect for the position you're in. I can't have you saying things like that. Now for the rest of this interview you'd better confine yourself to speaking when you're spoken to, or I may have to do something you won't like."
Simon looked at the girl.
"You see how touchy he is?" he drawled recklessly. "I don't know how well you know the signs of a guilty conscience—"
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lasser's forefinger tightening on the trigger of his levelled gun, but there were provocations that could bring the Saint's contempt for such things to the verge of sheer insanity. What might have happened if he had been allowed to go on was something that he could hardly have refused to bow to in cold blood; but before he could say any more the girl stepped forward.
"Leave him alone, Lasser," she said. "I'm interested in this. What did happen to Pargo?"
"We sent him to Canada, of course, as I told you," Lasser replied brusquely. "You surely don't believe any of this fellow's wild accusations?"
Her dark grey eyes went over him with an unexpectedly mature kind of thoughtfulness.
"I believe what I see," she said. "And I saw Borieff hit him. I think that was a better answer than yours."
She was opening her bag as she spoke, and Lasser went to meet her suddenly with a swiftness that was surprising and somehow horrible in a man of his build. His downward-striking fist knocked the bag through her hands, and then he was holding her by the wrists.
"You mustn't interfere in things like this," he said, still smiling. "Of course I don't tell you everything — you wouldn't like it if I did. But we've got to put a stop to Templar's interference, and that isn't your business unless you want to make it so." He looked at the Saint over his shoulder. "You're going to tell me what happened to those three vans — and do you know why you'll tell me the truth? Because I'm going to take each one of you separately into the next room and ask you questions in my own way, and when you all tell me the same thing I'll know you aren't lying!"
XI
There were bands of adhesive tape around the Saint's wrists and ankles, and Peter Quentin had been quickly strapped up in the same way at the same time. Now they were working on Hoppy Uniatz, after first depriving him of the whisky bottle which by some irresistible magnetism had gravitated into his hands.
Lasser held the girl until they had finished, and then he pushed her back into an armchair and signed to Borieff to take charge of her. He straightened his coat and picked up her bag and tossed it into her lap but not before he had transferred a heavy sealed envelope from it to his pocket.
"This is really very tiresome of you, my dear," he said heartily. "Now I shall have to make some other arrangements."
"You certainly will," she retorted. "I wouldn't have any more to do with this business of yours for all the money in the world."
He stood manipulating his ear meditatively for a little while.
"No," he said. "No, of course not. No. But it's your own fault. You didn't have to know any more than was good for you. Naturally you would be — um — sentimental, but you ought to have realized that there are serious things in this business. Well, we'll talk about that presently. Now that you're here you'll have to be quiet and behave yourself, because we can't waste any more time."
"Be quiet and behave myself while you torture them, I suppose," she said with bitter directness.
"No. Not necessarily. But they've got to answer my questions. It'll only be their own fault if they're obstinate." He shrugged. "Anyhow, you've no choice. If you don't behave yourself Borieff will have to keep you quiet."
He beamed at her in his stout avuncular way as if he were insisting on giving her an especially extravagant birthday present.
She looked at Simon with a white face.
"I apologize for what I said to you last night," she said huskily. "If I'd known why you were going to burn Jopley's feet I'd have stayed and helped you."