He stared.
"Not going that way?"
"How the Angels of Doom would miss you!" she said caustically. "Without you they'd be absolutely helpless. The great brain, always clear and alert in times of crisis."
"Jill!"
"Oh, be quiet!" Her sarcasm turned to contempt suddenly. "When you're sober you're futile, and when you're drunk you maunder. I don't know which is worse. Now pull yourself together. Donnell is ready to do his part, and his boys are with him, but he's looking to you and me to pull him through. The Angels have never failed yet, and they can't fail now."
"But, Jill —"
"And a little less of the 'Jill,' " she cut in icily. "This place can stand a siege for a week, and we can still get out that way if we have to. But I'm going to let Templar in — right in — and there's going to be no mistake about him this time."
He swayed towards her.
"And I say we're going out this way — now!" he shouted. "I've had about enough of being ordered about by you, and being snubbed, and treated like a child. Now you're going to do what I say, for a change. Come on!"
She regarded him with a calculating eye.
"About one more drink," she said, "and you'd be dead drunk. On the whole, I think I'd prefer that to your present state."
"Oh you would, would you?"
The resentment which Weald had been afraid to let loose before Donnell he had no need to control now. He grasped her shoulders with clumsy hands.
"That's the sort of talk I'm not standing from you any longer," he said shrilly. "You're going to stop it, right now, do you see? From now on I'm going to give the orders and you're going to obey them. I love you!"
"You're mad," she said coldly. But for the first time in her life a little imp of fear plucked at her heart.
He thrust his face down close to hers. She could smell the drink on his breath.
"I'm not mad. I've been mad before, but I'm sensible now. I want to take you away — out of here — out of England — out into the world! I'm going to give you jewels, and beautiful clothes. And you're going to love me, and there's going to be no one else. You're going to forget all this nonsense abut your father. You're not going to think about it any more. It's going to be just you and me, Jill! Lovely Jill—"
She flung him off so that he went reeling back against the wall and almost fell. Then she jerked from her bag the little automatic she always carried, but he leapt at her like a tiger and tore it out of her hands.
"No, Jill, that's not the way. Not like that. Like this."
His arms went round her. She fought him back desperately, but he was too strong for her. Once she was almost able to tear herself away, but he blundered after her, still clutching her sleeve, and caught her again. His lips were trying to find her mouth.
Suddenly she went limp in his arms. It was the only thing she could do at that moment — to pretend to faint, and thus give herself a chance to catch him off his guard. And for a space Stephen Weald looked down at her stupidly. Then, with a sudden resolution, he swung her off her feet and carried, her through the open cupboard.
Hampered by his burden, he could only feel his way down step by step. The direct light above was soon lost, and the stairs grew darker and darker. He went on. Then another light dawned below, and grew more powerful as he proceeded farther downward; at last the bulb which gave the light was on the level of his eyes. He went down beneath it, and presently found himself on level stone.
A corridor stretched away before him, lighted at long intervals by electric bulbs. He went on down it and felt a faint breath of fresh air on his face. Presently the tunnel forked. Donnell had not told him about that. He hesitated, and then plunged into the right-hand branch. In a few yards it took a turn, and a door faced him. He got it open and went into darkness. Groping round, he found a switch, and when he had clicked it over he discovered that he was in a dead end — the tunnel did not go on, but stopped in the room into which he had opened the door.
There was a tattered carpet on the floor, and a table and a chair on the carpet. In one corner was a couch, in another were a pile of tinned foods and a beaker of water.
He should have turned back and tried the left-hand branch of the tunnel, but he was not an athletic man, and the effort of carrying even such, a light weight as the girl for that distance had taxed his untrained muscles severely. He put her down on the couch and straightened up, mopping his streaming brow and breathing heavily.
His back was towards her when she opened her eyes, but she saw the bulge of the gun in his coat pocket. She raised herself cautiously and put out her hand. Her fingers were actually sliding into his pocket when he turned and saw her.
"Not that either, you little devil!" he snarled.
He caught her wrist and wrenched it away from the gun she had almost succeeded in grasping.
"You'd like to shoot me, wouldn't you?" he said thickly. "But you're not going to have the chance. You're going to love me. You're going to love me in spite of everything— even if I am Waldstein!"
She shrank away from him with wide eyes.
"Yes, even if I am Waldstein," he babbled. "Even if I did help to break your father. He was an officious nuisance. But you're quite different. You're going to settle with me in my way, Jill!"
2
There had been another man on the train to Birmingham, whom Simon Templar had not seen. He did not meet him until he had disembarked and was hailing a taxi; and, seeing him, the Saint was not pleased. But this was the kind of displeasure about which Simon Templar never let on, and it was the assistant commissioner who stared.
"Good Lord, Templar, how did you get here?"
"I came on a tricycle," said the Saint gravely. "Did you use a motor-scooter?"
"I got your message—"
"What message?"
Cullis tugged at his moustache.
"Dyson rang up to say you were caught at Belgrave Street. He said he was to tell me that you wanted to be left there, and I was to come to Birmingham and take Donnell."
The Saint looked at him thoughtfully.
"Is this another of the old Trelawney touches of humour?" he murmured. "I never sent you that message. What's more, I'll swear Dyson never sent it, either. He was never out of my sight from the time I was stuck up in Belgrave Street until a few seconds before I left. Someone's been pulling your leg!"
He bent his eyes on the commissioner's nether limbs as if he really entertained a morbid hope that he would find one of them longer than the other. Cullis pushed his hat back from his forehead.
"Just what's the idea?"
"There's some funny scheme behind it," said the Saint, with the air of a man announcing an epoch-making discovery, "and we've yet to learn what it is. However, since you're here, you can be of some use. Beetle round to the local police and make what arrangements you like. They can surround the block and be ready to take over Donnell when I bring him out. That'll save me some time."
"You're going in alone?"
"I'm afraid I've got to go in alone," said the Saint sadly. "You see, this is my nurse's afternoon off… See you at a dairy later, old pomegranate."
He tapped Cullis encouragingly in the stomach, climbed into the taxi, and closed the door, leaving the commissioner standing there with a blank look on his face.
He did not drive directly up to the mouth of the alleyway which admitted to the front door of Donnell's fortress. That would have been too blatant even for Simon Templar. Besides, reckless as he might be, he did not believe in suicide, and the long, straight alleyway which he would have to traverse if he approached in the ordinary way would leave even the worst of marksmen very little chance of missing him. And the Saint had no interest in any funeral festivities in which he could not occupy a vertical position.