"And while you're on your way," said the Saint, "you might have time to remember that I never asked you to become a customer. You're making the most blind paralytic fool of yourself that ever a woman made of anything that God had given her such a long start on! But that's your own idea, isn't it? Now go ahead and prove it's right. Go to Birmingham, take that diseased blot of a Stephen Weald with you—"
Weald stepped forward.
"What did you say, Templar?"
"I said 'diseased blot of a Stephen Weald,' " said the Saint pleasantly. "Any objection?"
"I have," said Weald. "This—"
He struck the Saint three times in the face with his fist.
"… and this — for the first time I met you."
Simon sat like a rock.
"You've found some courage since then," he remarked, in a voice of steel and granite. "Been taking pink pills or something?"
Then the girl stepped between them.
"That'll do," she said curtly. "Weald, go and get your coat. Pinky, you and Dyson can carry Templar downstairs."
"So it's to be the cellar and the hose pipe, is it?" drawled the Saint, unimpressed.
"Just the cellar, for the present," she answered coolly. "I'll decide what else is to be done with you when I come back."
"If. If you come back," said the Saint indulgently.
2
Simon lay in the cellar where he had been carelessly dropped, and meditated his position by the light of the single dusty globe which provided the sole illumination in the place. Having dropped him there, Budd and Dyson departed, but the hope that they might have gone for good, thereby leaving him to try all the tricks of escape he knew upon the ropes with which he had been tied, was soon dispelled. They returned in a few moments, Budd carrying a table and Dyson a couple of chairs. Then they closed the door and sat down.
Clearly, the watch was intended to be a close one. Budd took a pack of greasy cards from his pocket, and the two men settled down to a game.
Cautiously, as well as he could without attracting attention, the Saint tested his bonds. The process did not take him long. His expert tests soon proved that the roping had been done by a practised hand. It remained, therefore, to depend on the loyalty of Slinky Dyson. And how much was that worth? In an interval in the game he caught Dyson's eye. Slinky's expression did not change, but Simon found something reassuring in that unpromising fact.
For a quarter of an hour the game continued, and then Slinky wiped his mouth with a soiled handkerchief.
"This is a thirsty job," he complained.
"Ain't it?" agreed Budd. "Would you like a drink?"
"Not 'arf. Is there anything?"
Budd nodded.
"I'll see if I can find something. You keep your eyes skinned for Templar, see?"
"You bet I will."
Budd rose and went out, leaving the door open, and Simon listened without speaking as the sound of the man's heavy footsteps faded up the stairs.
A moment later he found Dyson beside him.
"I don't want to hustle you," said the Saint easily, "but if you've nothing else to do at the moment—"
Dyson swallowed.
"If Budd comes back and catches me at this I'm a goner," he said.
He had opened a murderous-looking jackknife, and Simon felt the ropes loosen about his arms and legs as Dyson slashed clumsily at them. Then, beyond the sound of Dyson's laboured breathing, he heard Budd coming back. Slinky gave a little grunt of panic.
"You'll see I'm all right, Mr. Templar, won't you?"
"Sure," said the Saint.
He stood up and swiftly untwisted the loose cords that held him and dropped them on the floor.
Pinky Budd saw him standing up free beside the table, and very carefully he put down the tray he was carrying.
"So that's the idea!" breathed Budd.
"It is," said the Saint gently. "And now we're going to have a fight, aren't we?"
Dyson was still holding the murderous jackknife, but the Saint pushed him smoothly aside.
"You can put that away," he said. "This is a vegetarian party. Fairly vegetarian, anyway. I'm going to give Pinky beans, and— Oh, don't go yet, Pinky!"
Budd had made a dive for the door. The key was still in the lock, and if he had brought off the manoeuvre he might have been able to get outside and lock the door behind him. But the Saint was a shade quicker. The table was between him and Budd, but he hurled it aside as if it had been made of cardboard, and caught Budd's hand as it went to the lock.
Budd dropped the key with a scream of pain. He tried to kick, but Simon dodged neatly.
Then he pushed Budd away so that the man went reeling across the room, and the Saint picked up the key and put it in his trouser pocket. Then he slipped off his coat.
"And now, Pinky Budd, we have this fight, don't we?"
But Budd was coming on without any encouragement. He was on his toes, too. The fighting game had not dealt lightly with Pinky's face, but he had all the science and experience that he had won at the cost of his disfigurements.
He led off with a sledge-hammer left that would have ended the fight then and there if it had connected. But it did not connect. Simon ducked and landed a left-right beat to the body that made Budd grunt. Then the Saint was away again, sparring, and he also was on his toes.
Moreover, he was between Budd and the door, and he meant to stay there. Budd had asked for the fight, and he was going to get it. Budd might have been glad of the chance, or he might have wanted to get out of it, but he wasn't having the choice, anyway. Simon Templar was seeing to that. But to a certain extent that tactical necessity of keeping between Budd and the door was going to cramp his style. He appreciated the disadvantage in a fight which wasn't going to be an easy fight at any moment. But it couldn't be helped.
Budd's next lead was another left, but it was a feint. The Saint divined that and changed his guard. But he was a little slow in divining that the right cross which came over after the left was a second feint, and the half-arm jolt to the short ribs which followed it caught him unprepared drove him back gasping against the wall.
Budd came in like a tiger, left and right, and Simon dropped to one knee.
He straightened up with a raking uppercut that must have ricked Budd's neck as though a horse had kicked him under the chin. That blow would have been the end of the average man for some time to come. But Budd had been trained in a tougher school. He fell into a clinch that the Saint, still rib-bound from the smashing blow he had taken, was not quick enough to avoid. There Budd's weight told. There was no referee to give them the breakaway, and the professional was free to use every dirty trick of holding and heading and heeling for which a clinch gives openings. But the Saint also knew a few of those himself, and he broke the clinch eventually with a blow that would certainly have got him disqualified in any official contest. As he stepped out he swung up a pendulum left which should have caught Budd under the jaw. Pinky got his head back quickly enough, but not quite far enough, and the blow snicked up his nose.
It maddened him, but it also blinded him. No man, however tough, can have his nose snicked up in that particular way without having his vision momentarily fogged. And before Budd could see what was happening the Saint had sent in a pile-driving right-hander to the heart. Then he turned on his toes and followed through with a left to the solar plexus that had every ounce of his weight behind it, and Budd went smashing down as if a steam hammer had hit him.
Simon picked up his coat.
"We ought to be just in time to get that train, Slinky," he remarked, and then he turned round to find that Slinky Dyson had already gone.
With a shrug the Saint went out, locking the door behind him.