“Don’t waste your time on the jokes,” growled the mountain. “You just start tellin’ me what I wanta know, an’ maybe you won’t get hurt no more than you are now.”
Simon squirmed up into a sitting position with his back to the wall, and only a faint spangling of sweat on his forehead revealed what the exertion cost him. Destamio saw nothing but a smile of undaunted mockery, and rage rose in his throat.
“You gonna talk or you gonna give trouble?”
“I love to talk, Al,” said the Saint soothingly. “Nobody ever accused me of being tongue-tied. What would you like to chat about? Or should I start off by congratulating you on the way you got me here? — wherever this is. It’s been quite a few years now since I let myself get sapped like that. But having your boy lock himself inside that crypt and wait for me to burgle my way in was a real sneaky switch. I must remember that one.”
“You’ll be lucky if you live long enough to remember anything.”
“Well, I’ve always been rather lucky, Al. A guy has to be, when he isn’t brilliant like you—”
The words were cut off as Destamio lashed out with his slab-sized hand and dealt the Saint a crashing blow on the side of his head, jarring him sideways, the heavy ring splitting the skin of his cheek.
“No jokes, I told you, Saint. You wanna be smart, you give the right answers an’ make it easy for yourself.”
Simon shook his head, trying to arrest the internal pounding which the clout had started up again.
“But I meant it sincerely, Al,” he said in a most reasonable tone, though the ice in his blue eyes would have chilled anyone more sensitive than the post-graduate goon confronting him. “It was really brilliant of you to figure out that my next move would be to check the names in your family bone-box. Or did Gina tell you?”
“Did she know?”
The Saint could have bitten his tongue off. Now if Gina hadn’t betrayed him, he had betrayed her. It showed that the after-effects of the knock-out had left him more befuddled than he had realized.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he tried to recover. “I meant, did you think of it all by yourself, or did she help you? She’s smart enough to have an inspiration like that, judging by the way she was trying to pump me all day. But I didn’t tell her, because I’m not such a dope that I couldn’t guess what she was after.”
Destamio stared at him inscrutably. For all his crudities, the racketeer was as quick as a whip; and it was no more than a toss-up, at the most optimistic, whether he would be taken in by the Saint’s attempt to retrieve his slip.
“I wanta know lotsa more things you didn’t tell her,” Destamio said. “What was it you figured to spill to the cops, like you threatened me, if you thought I was trying to have you knocked off again? An’ how you figure to do that now?”
“That’s easy,” Simon answered. “It’s all written down and sealed in an envelope which will be delivered to the proper place whenever the person who’s taking care of it doesn’t hear from me at certain regular times. I know that’s one of the oldest gimmicks in the business, but it’s still a corker. And don’t think you can force me to call this person and say I’m okay, because if I don’t use the right code words he’ll know that somebody’s twisting my arm.”
“I think you’re bluffing,” Destamio said coldly. “But it don’t matter. Before I’m through, you’ll tell me who’s got this envelope, an’ what the code is.”
“You think so?”
Destamio met the Saint’s level and unflinching gaze for several motionless seconds; and then a throaty chuckle came up from some source around his diaphragm like the grumbling sound of an earthquake, and opened the fissure of his lipless mouth as it emerged.
“You don’t have to tell me you’re tough. I seen plenty guys worked over in different ways, an’ a few of ’em never did sing. But we don’t have to work that way no more. We got scientific ways to loosen you up, an’ what’s more we’ll know you’re tellin’ the truth. So since I don’t have to make no promises I ain’t gonna keep, like I would if I was gonna work you over in the old way, I can tell you we’re just gonna give you a little shot in the arm, an’ after you spill everything I’m gonna blow your brains out myself.”
He went to the door and called out: “Entra, dottore!”
Simon Templar knew the feeling of a sinking heart, and not merely as a metaphor. Al Destamio was certainly not bluffing. In those enlightened days, there was no longer any practical need for the clumsy instruments of the medieval torture chamber, or even their more modern electrical refinements: there were drugs available which when injected into a vein would induce a state of relaxed euphoria in which the victim would happily babble his most precious secrets. Even the Saint, with all his courage and determination, could not resist that chemical coercion. Grinning idiotically, he would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth — and once he had done that, God help him.
The man who came in was stocky and plump, although on nothing like the same scale as Destamio. He was younger, and his dewlaps were freshly shaved and powdered, his hands soft and pink; his double-breasted suit was dark blue, and his shoes, though sharply pointed, an even more conservative black. The expression on his slightly porcine features was wise and solemn, as befitted one whose trade was based upon reminders of mortality: he did not need the universal symbol of the black satchel, which he nevertheless carried with him, to identify it.
“Is this the patient?” he asked, as if he were making the most routine of house calls.
“I am if you want to prescribe something for a mild concussion, and a long cold drink to wash it down,” Simon said. “If you’ve hired yourself out for anything else, you must have dedicated yourself to hypocrisy — not Hippocrates.”
The doctor’s expression did not alter as he put down his bag on the floor and opened it.
“Do you have any allergies?” he asked with stolid conscientiousness. “Sodium pentothal sometimes has side reactions, but then again so does scopolamine. It is sometimes difficult to decide which is best to use.”
“My worst allergy is to medical quacks,” said the Saint. “But I don’t want to be unfair. Perhaps you’re wonderful with horses.”
“Affretate, dottore,” growled Destamio impatiently.
The physician was unperturbed by either of them. Taking his own time, he brought out a vial of clear fluid and a hypodermic, filled the syringe, and went through the standard procedure of forcing a small jet of liquid through the upraised needle to remove any trapped bubbles of air — a somewhat finicky precaution, it seemed, considering that Destamio’s announced program would be more positively lethal than any accidentally introduced embolism.
The Saint was turning his wrists over behind him, testing the bonds that held them. They were tied with a piece of light rope which was soft and supple with age, and there was stretch in it which could be exploited by setting his arms in certain positions known to escape artists, to gain the maximum leverage, and then applying all the power of his exceptional muscles to it. He knew that he could release himself eventually, but it would take at least several minutes. His legs, however, were not bound; and as the doctor approached Simon braced himself and measured the distance for a vicious kick which if it found its target would indubitably cause quite an interregnum in the scheduled proceedings. By fair means or foul, no matter how foul, he had to win that essential time...
Time was given to him, miraculously, by a man who looked like anything but an agent of Providence, who flung open the door at that precise moment and rattled a sentence in dialect at Destamio. Simon could not understand a word of it, but it had an instantaneous effect on its recipient that would have been envied by Paul Revere. Destamio spun around with a single grating oath, and waddled to the door with grotesque celerity.