In three strides he was across the room and between Graner and the girl. He clapped one hand over her mouth and spun her round. His other arm whipped round her waist and lifted her off her feet. The bathroom door was ajar, and he moved on towards it almost without a check.
'Tell 'em to come back presently,' he snapped over his shoulder.
In another second he was inside the bathroom and kicking the door shut behind him.
He still held the girl, but the feel of her slim young body under his arm pressed against him fought a duel with his resolution that she could never have been aware of. He bent his head so that his lips touched her ear, and the smell of her hair filled his nostrils.
'For heaven's sake don't give me away!' he whispered. 'This is a gag-d'you understand?'
He had no idea how much she understood or believed, but he had no chance to say more. He heard the closing of the outer door of the room, and a moment later the bathroom door opened.
'All right,' said Graner.
Simon carried the girl out and let her go. He straightened his coat and opened his cigarette case.
'Now, Graner,' he said, 'we'll hear from you.'
Graner looked at him unblinkingly. His right hand still rested in his jacket pocket, but the Saint's keyed-up senses registered every fraction of the change in his manner. The man was still intrinsically the same, but for the time being, at any rate, he had been bluffed over one point in the game. The Saint's trick of hitting back at a catastrophe with a riposte of such incredible audacity that his opponent could never make himself believe that it was nothing but the last desperate resource of a cornered man had worked for the latest of countless similar occasions in his life; even if it really provided no more than a spidery tightrope on which the abyss had still to be crossed. But it had worked; and his swift, decisive action in silencing the girl must have driven it home.
'There is nothing more to say,' Graner rapped at him. 'We shall take the young lady back with us-that is all.'
'Why?'
'I thought we settled that last night,' answered Graner stonily. 'While you're working for me you will obey all my orders-without argument.'
The Saint smiled at him.
'And suppose I don't?'
Graner's hand came out of his pocket.
Simon gazed at the gun with blue eyes full of mockery. He flicked his lighter and held the flame placidly under the end of his cigarette.
'I thought we'd arranged all that,' he murmured. 'But if you want to go over it again I suppose I can't stop you.' He sauntered over to the bed, where he lay down and settled himself comfortably. 'If I fix myself like this I shan't hurt myself when I fall down,' he explained. 'Oh, and there's just one other thing. Before you let off that little popgun and fetch all the hotel in, you must tell me the name of your tailor. I couldn't bear to die without knowing that.'
Graner stared down at him without expression.
'You're being ridiculous.'
'I was born that way,' said the Saint regretfully.
'If you intend to go on like this,' Graner said curtly, 'we had better consider our arrangement at an end.'
The Saint closed his eyes.
'Okay, Reuben. But leave the damsel here when you go out. I could use her.'
Graner put the gun back in his pocket. The yellow cane twirled between his fingers for a few seconds' deathly silence. His eyes glistened like moist marbles behind the lenses of his spectacles.
'I am not accustomed to answering impertinent questions,' he said grittily, 'but on this occasion I will make an exception to save unnecessary trouble. I told you last night that your predecessor had been foolish. I might have explained that the others had been unsuccessful in bringing him back. He still has some property of ours, and we are still looking for him. This girl is his daughter, and she may help us to find him. That is the whole explanation.'
'Yeah?' drawled the Saint. 'And how much is this ticket worth?'
A new silence blanketed the room, so complete that with his hands clasped behind his head the Saint could hear the ticking of his watch, at the same time as he could hear the girl breathing and the faint rustle of Graner's fingers sliding over his cane. Simon lay still and let the silence spread itself around and have its fun. He might have been asleep.
'What ticket?'
Graner's voice jarred gratingly into the quiet; and Simon opened one eye at him.
'I don't know. But you mentioned it just now.'
'That is quite a different matter. It really has nothing to do with what I was telling you.'
'It seemed to be pretty important when Lauber was talking about it last night!'
The silence fell back again, almost substantial in its intenseness, as though the room were filled with some deadening material through which a few slight and insignificant sounds penetrated from a great distance. And then, as if to give the lie to the illusion, it was horribly shattered-not by any noise from inside the room, but by the ear- piercing shriek of the locomotive which runs through Santa Cruz between the quarries and the mole, dragging rocks to a breakwater that never gets any nearer to completion.
