'Dey was a bottle I found here --'
'Go and find it again,' said the Saint sternly. 'And if you don't find it I'll pick you up and wring it out of you.'
Hoppy shuffled away and returned with a bottle. There was about an inch left in it. The Saint continued to regard him coldly; and Hoppy beetled off again and brought a glass. He was always forgetting the curious habit to which some people were addicted, of pouring whiskey into a glass before transferring it to the mouth-a superfluous expenditure of time and energy which Mr Uniatz had never been able to understand.
But he was eager to make amends, and even took the unprecedented step of pouring out the remains of the whiskey himself.
While David was drinking it, Simon tried to readjust himself to what had happened. Aliston must have been lucky enough to find the taxi back on its rank almost as soon as he started his search. Simon still had to wonder how he had succeeded in getting Christine away; but it had been done. She had been gone when Hoppy arrived. Therefore Aliston had had her for some time. But what could he have done with her? The Saint would have expected him to take her straight back to the house where he himself had been taken; and Aliston had a car to do it with. And yet up to the time when the Saint had left there, a long while after, Aliston still hadn't shown up. The explanation came to Simon in a flash: for three quarters of an hour or more, Graner's Buick had been standing outside the house to which Aliston would have been going. Aliston must have seen it, suspected a hitch and driven by without stopping.
Either that, or he had already decided to double-cross Palermo. . . .
But in any case, where else could he have gone ?
Simon realised at once that that was a question to which theories were unlikely to provide an answer. He had got to go out and do something to solve it, although the Lord alone knew how. At least it meant that Aliston would be unlikely to be going back and falling into Lauber's hands-if Lauber's hands were in working order again. Somewhere on the island of Tenerife he was at large, and he had got to be tracked down and rounded up.
'Are you feeling any better?' he asked David.
'If I had some more of that I might live,' answered Keena doubtfully, putting down his glass.
Simon gave him a cigarette.
'We'll send you out for some more in a minute,' he said. 'But there are just a couple of things you might tell me first. What were you doing here when Hoppy bopped you?'
'I just came back to see how Christine was getting on.'
'You remember what I told you?'
'Yes, but I didn't take that seriously. I didn't know you were going to fill the place with boppers.'
'You're lucky it was only kindhearted Hoppy,' said the Saint callously. 'If it had been one of the ungodly we'd probably be wondering what to do with your body by now. This isn't a Children's Hour, and anyone who butts into this picnic is liable to come out feet first. I warned you.'
David had been scanning the room in vague perplexity.
'Where's Christine?'
'They've got her-or one of them has,' said the Saint flatly. 'She was gone when Hoppy got here.'
'But how could they have done that?'
'If I knew the answer I'd tell you. There isn't a trace that I've been able to see.'
Simon roamed rapidly round the apartment, and it took him only two or three minutes to verify his assumption. Everything looked untouched, exactly as he-had left it-only Christine had gone.
'Was it like this when you arrived, Hoppy?'
'Yes, boss.'
'The door wasn't locked?'
'No, boss. I toin de handle and I walk right in.'
'It didn't look as if there had been a fight?'
'No, boss.' Mr Uniatz scratched his ear. 'Maybe dey wasn't no fight, at dat,' he suggested brilliantly.
'Maybe there wasn't,' admitted the Saint.
He went back and examined the door, but it showed none of the signs of violence or skilful wangling which would have stood out a mile to his professional eye.
He turned to David again.
'You didn't see anything when you got here?'
'I didn't have a chance to see anything-except him.'
'But you didn't see anything outside, anything the least bit out of the ordinary? A crowd, or people staring-or anything?'
'Not a thing that I noticed.'
Simon smoked silently for a little while and made up his mind.
'We can't do any good by staying here,' he said. 'Apart from which, it isn't too healthy. At least one other member of the major ungodly and a nasty specimen of the minor know this address. I just hit both of them very hard, but I don't know what they'll do when they recover. We'd better be on our way.'
