Once, twice, three times he repeated the same pendulum movement, trying to strike the same spot on the rope each time, feeling the keen blade bite the fibers at every stroke.
Then the knife twisted between his toes; but he managed to keep a precarious hold on it. He brought it gingerly down to the floor and adjusted it again, with the aid of his left foot, in an intolerable hush of intense patience and concentration.
He swung his leg again.
Once more.
Twice more.
The knife spun out of his hold and clattered to the floor.
It was beyond his reach, and beyond hers.
He heard the girl's pent-up breath break out of her lungs in a long throaty sob, and saw tears swimming in her eyes.
He knew then, at last, without thinking about it any more, that she had told him the truth. He had been unsure. He had taken a chance on it, because he was forced to, but wondering all the time if this would end up as the supreme sadism of tantalization — if after he had revealed his secret weapon, and freed himself, if he could free himself, she would only call out, and Maris would walk in with a gun, and all the hope and struggle would have been for nothing. Now he knew. She couldn't have gasped and wept like that, otherwise; wouldn't have needed to, no matter how well she was playing a part.
It was worth something to be sure o£ that.
The Saint smiled grimly as he inspected the section of rope that he had been working on. He had done a good job, in spite of everything. It wasn't anything like the rope it had been before.
"I forgot to mention," he murmured, "that when I was in the circus I also used to break chains and tow tanks around with one hand."
Then with an abrupt and feral outburst of titanic effort he threw all his weight and strength together against the partly severed cords, dropping his weight on them with a plunging jerk, and simultaneously thrusting himself away from the wall with his feet and contracting his arms together with all the power of his torso. The veins swelled in his neck, and the muscles rippled over his body in quivering waves. For an instant it felt as if his wrists were being bitten off…
And then, with a suddenness that was physically sickening, the frayed and slashed portion of rope parted with a snap that flung him whirling outward and around.
He heard the girl sob again; but this time it was with a note of almost hysterical laughter.
He regained his balance without a waste motion, and fell to attacking the knots that bound his right hand.
"I must be slipping," he said. "I used to do things like that just to warm up."
The knots weren't so easy. His hands were numb, and he had to drive deliberate commands through for every movement of his fingers. He worked as fast as he could through that nightmarish impediment.
At last he was free. His wrists were chafed and bleeding a little. But that was nothing. The sense of freedom, of triumph, was like an intoxicating wind blowing through the reviving spaces of his soul.
He scooped up his knife, a little awkwardly because of the cramp in his hands, and cut Olga loose. She almost fell against him, and he had to hold her up for a moment. Until her clinging grew up from the weakness of reaction into something else.
Then he steadied her on her feet and left her standing while he went back to put on his shoes and socks. The return of circulation was filling his hands with pins and needles; but gradually, with the relentless exertion, his fingers began to feel less like swollen frozen sausages.
"There is a way out of here without going through the house," she was saying breathlessly. "We can slip out without them ever knowing that we've gone."
"Slip out?" He glanced up at her. "Darling, that would be a hell of an anticlimax. I'm going upstairs now and get Matson's notes and Vaschetti's diary away from dear old Joe!"
"But how can you?" she cried. "He'll shoot you like a dog. They took your gun. I saw them. We can call the police—"
Simon straightened up, and looked down in silent reckless laughter at her desperate imploring face.
"I've got my knife," he said; "but I haven't got any guarantee that the police would get here in time. And meanwhile Maris and Co might find out that we'd got away, and decide to take the brakes off themselves. We don't want to risk that now. And besides, we've got to deliver you as a certified heroine. Remember?" Her soft scarlet lips were only a few inches away, turned up to him below the liquid pools of her eyes; and once again he was aware of their distracting provocation. He said: "Thanks just the same for being so concerned about me. It ought to be worth at least…"
Then she was in his arms, her breath warm against his cheek, and all of her asking for him; and then he was bruising her moist mouth with his own, and it would never be like that again, but there was no time for that now and perhaps there never had been. It was like so many things in his life: they were always too late, and there was never any time.
He disengaged himself very gently.
"Now," he said, "we will have the last word with Joe."
The door on the other side of the cellar was not locked. Simon went up the crude wooden stairs, very quietly, and was conscious of Olga Ivanovitch following him. But he didn't look back. He came out through another unlatched door into the hall of the house. There was no guard there either. Obviously, Maris and his crew had great faith in the durability of manila hemp and the efficacy of their trussing system.
Which was reasonable enough; just as the Saint's faith in his knife was reasonable. He knew what it could do, and what he could do with it. He knew how it could transform itself into a streak of living quicksilver, swift as the flash of light from its polished blade, true as a rifle, deadly as any bullet that was ever launched by erupting chemicals.
He held it delicately in his resensitized fingers, frail and strong as a bird, only waiting for him to release it into life.
He was outside another door then, listening, when the voice came firmly through it to his ears. Just a voice: the voice of Siegfried Maris, generally known as Joe. But coming with a clear suddenness that was like traveling back in time and never having heard a talking picture, and suddenly hearing a screen speak.
It said: "Keep your hands well up, Lieutenant. Please don't try anything stupid. It wouldn't do you any good."
And then Kinglake's savage growclass="underline" "You son of a bitch — how did you get out of the Blue Goose?"
The Saint's mouth opened and closed again in a noiseless gasp, and a ripple of irresistible laughter rose up through him like a stream of bubbles to break soundlessly at his lips. Even at a moment like that he had to enjoy the perfection of that finishing touch.
"We have our own way out," Maris replied calmly. "It's very useful, as you see. But if you didn't know about it, how did you follow us here?"
"I didn't. When I didn't find Templar at the Blue Goose, I thought he might have come here with Ivanovitch."
"An excellent deduction, Lieutenant. And quite correct. He did come here with Ivanovitch. But that wasn't his choice… It's very fortunate that you're a detective and not a burglar, isn't it? If you'd been a burglar you wouldn't have made such a clumsy entrance, and it mightn't have been half so easy to catch you."
Simon settled his fingers on the door knob as if it had been a wafer-shelled egg. He began to turn it with micrometric gentleness.
"You bastards," Kinglake said. "What have you done with them?"
"You'll see for yourself, when you join them in just a few minutes."
"So you're Maris, are you? I should have known it."
"A pardonable oversight, Lieutenant. But you may still call me Joe, if it will make you feel more comfortable."
Simon waited through an infinitesimal pause, with the door handle fully turned.
Kinglake said: "I guess you can have oversights too. You aren't getting away with anything, Joe. I've got men outside—"