"So it was you who tore Vaschetti's room at the Ascot apart," he said. "But your mob thought it was me. That's why my room was gone over this evening while we were out together, and a colored friend of mine nearly had colored kittens. You aren't overlooking any bets, are you? And since Vaschetti's indiscreet memoirs are still missing — not to mention Brother Matson's notes and papers—"
"They have those," she said listlessly. "They were in the glad-stone bag."
He was shaken as if he had been jolted in the ribs; but he went on.
"So anyway, we now have a well-staged scene in the old torture chamber, where you trick me into revealing where I have hidden all these priceless documents. You're doing a great show, Olga. If I could get my hands together I would applaud. You must be a full-fledged member of this lodge of Aryan cutthroats."
"Think what you please," she said indifferently. "It makes no difference."
She could always make him feel wrong. Like now, when she was not angry, but wounded in everything but dignity. Because that devastating ingenuousness of hers was real; because the bridges she walked on were firm and tried, and she had built them herself, and she was as sure of them and her way as he was sure of his own. There could be no facile puncturing of a foundation like that, with a skilled flick of the wrist.
She said, without any emotion: "You think of me as a mercenary adventuress. I don't deny it. I have worked for Maris — and other men — only for money. But that was before the Nazis invaded Russia. You will not believe that a greedy adventuress could have a heart, or a conscience. But it made all the difference to me… I pretended that it didn't. I went on working for them — taking their money, doing what they told me, trying to keep their trust. But I was only waiting and working for the time when I could send all of them to the hell where they belong… Yet, I had my own sins to redeem. I had done wrong things, too. That's why I thought that if I could bring something with me, something big enough to prove that all my heart had changed — then perhaps your FBI would understand and forgive me, and let me begin again here… I could swear all this to you; but what is swearing without faith?"
The Saint's head was much clearer now. He saw her again through the ruthless screen of his disbelief. And still she wasn't trying to sell him from behind the counter of any phony job of tying-up. Her wrists were lashed as cruelly tight as his own. He could see the livid ridges in her skin where the ropes cut. Her face was damp like his was from strain and pain.
"Damn it, tovarich," he said musingly, "you could act anyone in Hollywood off the screen. You've almost convinced me that you're on the level. You couldn't possibly be, but you sound just like it."
Her eyes were unwavering against his, and they looked very old. But that was from the patience of a great sadness.
"I only wish you could have believed me before the end. It would have been nicer. But it will not be long now. Siegfried Maris is one of the most important men that Hitler has in this country. He won't take any chances with us."
"At least," said the Saint, "we should feel flattered about getting the personal attention of the big shot himself."
He had crossed his left leg over his right now, but it "was not with the idea of striking an elegant and insouciant pose. He was pressing the outsides of his legs together, feeling for something. He had been searched and disarmed, he knew; but there was his own special armory which the ungodly didn't always…
"If we could have caught Maris," Olga was saying, out of that passionless and regretful resignation, "it would have meant as much as winning a battle at the front. I would have liked to do that very much. Then we could have been quite happy about this."
It was too good to be true; but it was true. He could feel the solid flat hardness of the haft and blade between the movements of his legs. And with that, he had a fantastic inspiration that might grow into a fantastic escape. But he had seen fantasy come real too often to discard it for nothing but its name.
The glint in his eyes was like sunlight on cut sapphires.
"Maybe we can still be happy, Olga," he said; and there was a lilt of exultant vitality in his voice. "We'll try to repeat a significant scrap of United Nations history. You, like some other Russians, were petting the wrong dog. Until you saw the error of your ways. And it bit you. Now I shall try to come through with the lend-lease matériel."
12
Olga Ivanovitch stared at him as though she was certain now that he was out of his mind.
"No, darling, I'm not," he said, before she could put her own words to it. "I was just remembering a movie serial that I saw as a boy, which starred the greatest of all escape artists — Harry Houdini."
"How interesting," she said blankly.
It was lucky, he thought, that he liked his shoes loose and comfortable. Otherwise, getting them off might have been quite a problem. As it was, he was able to tread on one heel with the opposite instep and force one shoe off with only a moderate amount of violence. The other shoe presented a little more difficulty, without a hard welt to scrape against, but he went on working at it.
"Now don't go all Russian on me and relapse into brooding despair," he pleaded. "You ought to be interested in the late Mr Houdini. He was a real maestro at getting out of situations like this. I was thinking of one installment in which he was tied to some sort of Oriental torture wheel, in very much the same way as we're tied up now. He managed to worry his shoes and socks off, and neatly unfastened the knots on his wrists with his toes."
He had the other shoe off at last. The socks were easier. He only had to tread on a bit of slack at each toe in turn and pull his feet out.
"So what?" Olga said skeptically. "Can you even reach your wrists with your toes?"
"Now you're coming to life," Simon approved. "I used to be a fairly agile guy before I started drinking myself to death, and I think I can manage that." He twisted his body and balanced himself on one foot, and swung his other leg lithely up to kick his hand. "There. I always knew all those years I spent in the Follies chorus would come in handy some day," he said contentedly.
"But the knots," she said in the same tone as before; yet it was already being contradicted by the curiosity kindling in her eyes.
"I'm afraid I'm not quite that good," he confessed. "However, I have an alternative solution for them which Harry might not have considered entirely ethical."
He was already working up his right trouser leg with his naked left foot. Under the amazed eyes of the girl, the upper end of the sheath and the haft of his knife came into view. He grasped the haft with his toes and drew the blade gently out of the scabbard and laid it on the floor.
"When I was swinging through the trees in my last incarnation," he said, "this would have been duck soup for me. But I'm a bit out of practice these days."
He was concentrating singly on the knife, maneuvering it between his two feet, getting the firmest possible grip on the handle between his big toe and the one next to it, adjusting and testing it before he made a decisive move. There was no sound in the room but the faint scuff of his efforts. His wrists hurt like hell; but he had forgotten about them. The sweat was standing out on his forehead by the time he was satisfied.
"Now we get to the really fancy part of the trick," he said. "Like the man on the flying trapeze without a net, I won't be able to go back and start over if I muff it."
He poised himself in the same way as he had done for his preliminary experiment, but much more carefully, gauged his distances, and drew a deep breath and held it.
Then he swung his leg, aiming the razor edge of the blade at the link of rope between his left wrist and the pipe.