"Considerably," Simon agreed.
In that confined space the light of the torches was reflected from the walls sufficiently to show the men behind them. Besides the Z-Man and Raddon, the third member of the party, as Simon had suspected, was Welmont, of taxicab fame. The two minor Z-Men stood a little behind and to either side of their leader.
The Z-Man put away his torch and took the Saint's own knife out of his pocket.
"You vill tell me how much you know," he said. "Tell me this, my Saint, und your fine looks vill still be yours."
He caressed the knife in his gloved hand and brought it suggestively forward so that the light glinted on the polished blade.
"So we now attempt to make the victim's blood run cold, do we?" said the Saint amusedly, although his joints felt as if they were being torn apart on the rack. "I take it that you're in the mood for one of your celebrated beauty treatments. Why don't you operate on yourself first, laddie? You look as if it would improve you."
"Tell me vot you know!" shouted the Z-Man furiously. "I giff you just one minute."
"And after I've done the necessary spilling I suppose you slit my gizzard with the grapefruit cutter and then bury my remains deeply under the fragrant sod," said the Saint sardonically. "Nothing doing, slug. It's not good enough. I've made myself a hell of a nuisance to you, and you won't be satisfied until I'm as dead as — Mercia Landon."
"You fool," screamed the Z-Man. "I mean vot I say!"
"That makes us even," said the Saint. "But I'm not a film actress, remember. Carving your alphabetical ornamentations on my face won't decrease my earning capacity by a cent. I'm surprised at your moderation. Now that you've got me in your ker-lutches I wonder you don't flay the skin off my back."
His utter indifference to the peril he was in was breath-taking. The mockery of his blue eyes and the cool insolence of his voice had something epic about it, as if he had turned back the clock to days when men lived and died with that same ageless carelessness. And yet even while he spoke his ears were listening. Events had moved faster than he had anticipated. The Z-Man's lofty eyrie, too, was a factor of the entertainment that Simon had not allowed for. Those crumbling stairs couldn't be climbed easily and quietly… Time was the essential factor now; and the Saint was beginning to realize that the support upon which he was relying was not at hand — while he was not so much at the mercy of a man as of a homicidal maniac.
The Z-Man was within arm's length of him now.
"No, I do not slit your gizzard," he said huskily. "I tell you vot I do. I only cut der rope vot hold you up. Und then der stone pulls you down, und we take off der ropes, und you haf had an accident und fallen down. Do you understand?"
The Saint understood very well. He could feel the dizzy emptiness under his dangling toes. But he still smiled.
"Well, why don't you get on with it?" he said tauntingly. "Or have you lost your nerve?"
"You crazy fool! You think you are funny! But if I take you at your word—"
"You're getting careless with that beautiful accent," mocked the Saint. "If you say 'vot', you ought to say 'vord.' The trouble with you is that you're such a lousy actor. Now if you'd been any good—"
"You asked for it," said the other in a horrible whisper and slashed at the rope from which the Saint hung.
And at the same moment the Saint made his own gamble. The fingers of his right hand strained up, closed on the iron ring from which he was suspended, tightened their grip and held it. The strain on his sinews shot red-hot needles through him; and yet he had a sense of serene confidence, a feeling of seraphic inevitability, that no pain could suppress. He had goaded the Z-Man as he had anticipated; and he had been waiting with every nerve and muscle for the one solitary chance that the fall of the cards offered — a game fighting chance to win through. And the chance had come off.
The rope no longer held him from plunging down to almost certain death, but the steel strength of his own fingers did. And as the rope parted the slipknot had loosened so that he could wrench his left hand free.
"Thanks a lot, sweetheart," said the Saint.
A hawk would have had difficulty in following the movements that came immediately afterwards. As the Z-Man gasped with sudden fear a circle of wrought steel whipped across his shoulder, swung him completely round and placed him so that his back was towards the Saint. Then the Saint's left hand snaked under his opponent's left arm, flashed up to his neck and secured a half nelson that was as solid as if it had been carved out of stone.
"We can now indulge in skylarking and song," said the Saint. "I'll do the skylarking, and you can provide the song."
To some extent he was right; but the Z-Man's song was not so much musical as reminiscent of the shriek of a lost locomotive. Some men might have got out of that half nelson, particularly as the Saint was still crucified between his precarious grip on the ring and the weight that was trying to drag him down into the black void; but the Z-Man knew nothing about wrestling, and all the strength seemed to have gone out of him. Moreover, the Saint's thumb on one side of his captive's neck and his lean brown fingers on the other were crushing with deadly effect into his victim's carotid arteries. Scientifically applied, this treatment can produce unconsciousness in a few seconds; but Simon was at a disadvantage, for half his strength was devoted to fighting the relentless drag on his ankles.
Raddon and Welmont started forward too late. The Saint's wintry laugh met them at their first step.
"If anything happens," he said with pitiless clarity, "your pal goes over first."
They checked as if they had run into an invisible wall; and Raddon's Gumpish face showed white as his torch jumped in his hand.
"For God's sake," he gasped hoarsely. "Wait—"
"Is dat you, boss?" bawled a foghorn voice far below; and the Saint's smile became a shade more blissful in spite of the wrenching agony in his right shoulder.
"This is me, Hoppy," he said. "You'd better come up quickly — and look out for someone coming down." He looked over the shuddering bundle of the Z-Man at Raddon and Welmont, still frozen in their tracks.
"There's no way out for you unless you can fly," he said. "How would you like to be a pair of angels?"
They made no attempt to graduate into a pair of angels. They stood very still as Hoppy Uniatz crashed off the stairs onto the ledge, followed by Patricia, and briskly removed their guns. A moment later an arm like a tree trunk took the weight off the Saint's hand and hauled him back to the safety of the floor.
Patricia was touching the Saint as if to make sure that he was real.
"Are you all right, boy?" she was asking tremulously. "I was afraid we'd be too late. They'd locked the outside door, and Hoppy was afraid of making a noise—"
The Saint kissed her.
"You were in plenty of time," he said and yanked the Z-Man clear of the edge of the floor. "Think you could hold him, Hoppy?"
"Wit' one finger," said Mr Uniatz scornfully.
With one swift hop that was in itself a complete justification of his nickname he heaved the Z-Man to his feet from behind and held him in a gorilla grip. The Z-Man's struggles were as futile as the wrigglings of a fly between the fingers of a small boy. And the Saint retrieved his knife and tested the point on his thumb.
"Hold him just like that, Hoppy," he said grimly, "so that his tummy occupies the centre of the stage. I want to do some surgery of my own."
With a swift movement that made Patricia catch her breath and shut her eyes quickly he thrust the knife deeply and forcefully into the Z-Man's protruding stomach. There was a loud squealing hiss, and the patient deflated like a punctured tire.
"I just wanted to see whether it would make a squashy noise or merely explode," said the Saint placidly. "You can open your eyes, darling. There's no mess on the floor. Mr Vell is mostly composed of air."