"It was an extraordinary situation," repeated his lordship in a resonant voice, "which necessitated extraordinary measures." He cleared his throat, adjusted his pince-nez, and rocked on his heels again. "Mr. Templar," he said, "let us not beat about the bush any longer. For purely personal reasons--merely, you understand, because I desire to keep my name free from common gossip--I desire to suppress these base insinuations which happen to have come into your possession; and for that reason I have accorded you this personal interview in order to ascertain what--ah--value you would place on this volume."
"That's rather nice of you," said the Saint guardedly. "If, for example," said Lord Iveldown throatily,
"a settlement of, shall we say--ah--two thousand pounds------"
He broke off at that point because suddenly the Saint had begun to laugh. It was a very quiet, very self-contained laugh--a laugh that somehow made the blood in Lord Iveldown's hardened arteries run colder as he heard it. If there was any humour in the laugh, it did not reach the Saint's eyes.
"If you'd mentioned two hundred thousand," said the Saint coolly, "you would have been right on my figure."
There was a long terrific silence in which the mere rustle of a coat sleeve would have sounded like the crash of doom. Many seconds went by before Lord Iveldown's dry cough broke the stillness like a rattle of musketry.
"How much did you say?" he articulated hoarsely.
"I said two hundred thousand pounds."
Those arctic blue eyes had never shifted from Lord Iveldown's faintly empurpled face. Their glacial gaze seemed to go through him with the cold sting of a rapier blade--seemed to strip away all his bulwarks of pomposity like tissue, and hold the naked soul of the man quivering on the point like a grub on a pin.
"But that," said Lord Iveldown tremblingly, "--that's impossible! That's blackmail!"
"I'm afraid it is," said the Saint.
"You sit there, before witnesses------"
"Before all the witnesses you like to bring in. I don't want you to miss the idea, your Lordship.] Witnesses don't make any difference. In any ordinary case--yes. If I were only threatening to advertise your illicit love affairs, or anything like that, you could bring me to justice and your own name would quite rightly be suppressed. But in a case like this even the chief commissioner couldn't guarantee you immunity. This isn't just ordinary naughtiness. This is high treason."
Simon tapped the ash from his cigarette and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling; and once again his relentless eyes went back to Lord Ivel-down's face. Nassen and the other detective, staring at the Saint in sullen silence, felt as if an icy wind blew through the room and goosefleshed their skin in spite of the warmth of the evening. The bantering buffoon who had goaded them to the verge of apoplexy had vanished as though he had never existed, and another man spoke with the same voice.
"The book you're talking about," said the Saint, in the same level dispassionate tones, "is a legacy to me, as you know, from Rayt Marius. And you know what made him a millionaire. His money was made from war and the instruments of war. All those amazing millions--the millions out of which you and others like you were paid, Lord Iveldown--were the wages of death and destruction and wholesale murder. They were coined out of blood and dishonour and famine and the agony of peaceful nations. Men--and women and children, too--were killed and tortured and maimed to find that money--the money out of which you were paid, Lord Iveldown."
Lord Iveldown licked his lips and Gpened his mouth to speak. But that clear ruthless voice went on, cleaving like a sword through his futile attempt at expostulation:
"Since I have that book, I had to find a use for it. And I think my idea is a good one. I am organizing the Simon Templar Foundation, which will be started with a capital of one million pounds-- of which your contribution will be a fifth. The foundation will be devoted to the care and comfort of men maimed and crippled in war, to helping the wives and children of men killed in war, and to the endowment of any cause which has a chance of doing something to promote peace in the future. You must agree that the retribution is just."
Iveldown's bluff had gone. He seemed to have shrunk, and he was not teetering pompously on the hearth any more. His blotched face was working, and his small eyes had lost all their dominance-- I hey were the mean shifty eyes of a man who was horribly afraid.
"You're mad!" he said, and his voice cracked. "I can't listen to anything like that. I won't listen to it! You'll change your tune before you leave here, by God! Nassen------"
The two detectives started forward, roused abruptly from their trance; and in the eyes of the Rose of Peckham particularly Simon saw the
dawn of a sudden vengeful joy. He smiled and moved his raincoat a little to uncover the gun in his hand.
"Not just now, Snowdrop," he said smoothly, and the two men stopped. "I have a date, and you've kept me too long already. A little later, I think, you'll get your chance." His gaze roved back to Lord Iveldown's sickly features, on which the fear was curdling to a terrible impotent malevolence; and the Saintly smile touched his lips again for a moment. "I shall expect that two hundre( thousand pounds by Saturday midnight," he said. "I haven't the least doubt that you'll do your best to kill me before then, but I'm equally sure that you won't succeed. And I think you will pay your share. . . ."
IV
Simon Templar was not a light sleeper, by the ordinary definition. Neither was he a heavy one. He slept like a cat, with the complete and perfect relaxation of a wild animal, but with the same wild animal's gift of rousing into instant wakeful-ness at the slightest sound which might require investigation. A howling thunderstorm would not have made him stir, but the stealthy slither of a cautiously opened drawer brought him out of a dreamless untroubled slumber into tingling con-sciousness.
The first outward sign of awakening touched nothing more than his eyelids--it was a trick he had learned many years ago, and it had saved his life more than once. His body remained still and passive, and even a man standing close beside his bed could have detected no change in the regular rate of his breathing. He lay staring into the dark, with his ears strained to pick up and locate the next infinitesimal repetition of the noise which had awaked him.
After a few seconds he heard it again, a sound of the identical quality but from a different source --the faint scuff of a rubber sole moving over the carpet in his living room. The actual volume of sound was hardly greater than a mouse might have . made, but it brought him out of bed in a swift writhing movement that made no sound in response.
And thereafter the blackness of the bedroom swallowed him up like a ghost. His bare feet crossed the floor without the faintest whisper of disturbance, and his fingers closed on the doorknob as surely as if he could have seen it. He turned the knob without a rattle and moved noiselessly across the hall.
The door of the living room was ajar--he could see the blackness ahead of him broken by a vague nimbus of light that glowed from the gap and shifted its position erratically. He came up to the door softly and looked in.
The silhouette of a man showed against the darkened beam of an electric torch with the aid of which he was silently and systematically going through the contents of the desk; and the Saint showed his teeth for a moment as he sidled through the doorway and closed the door soundlessly behind him. His fingers found the switch beside the door, and he spoke at the same time.
"Good-morrow, Algernon," he murmured.
The man swung round in the sudden blaze of light. At the very moment when he started to turn, Simon saw the gun in his hand, and thanked his immoral deities that he had not removed his fingers too promptly from the switch. In a split second he had clicked the lever up again, and the darkness fell again with blinding intensity after that one dazzling instant of luminance.