Follow the Saint

into glassy blankness as they fastened on the Saint's tall figure. His jaw dropped so that the cigarette would have fallen out of his mouth if the adhesive dampness of the paper hadn't kept it hanging from his lower lip. He stood as horripilantly still as if a long icy needle had shot up out of the floor and impaled him from sacrum to occiput.

That glazed paralysis lasted for about a breath and a half. And then his right hand whipped towards his pocket.

It was nothing but an involuntary piece of sheer stupidity born out of shock, and the Saint was benevolent enough to treat it that way. He simply lifted the gun in his hand a little, bringing it more prominently into view; and Dolf stopped himself in time.

The man with the beefy neck, in his turn, must have caught some queer impression from Dolf's peculiar move­ments out of the corner of his eye. He turned and looked at his companion's face, froze for an instant, and then went on turning more quickly, straightening as he did so. He let go the red-hot ladle, and his right hand started to make the same instinctive grab that Dolf had started—and stopped in mid-air for the same reason. His heavy florid features seemed to bunch into knots of strangulated viciousness as he stood glowering numbly at the Saint's masked face.

Simon stepped sideways, towards the blaring radiogram, and lifted the needle off the record. The nerve-rasping bom­bardment of sound broke off into blissful silence.

'That's better,' he murmured relievedly. 'Now we can all talk to each other without giving ourselves laryngitis. When did you discover this passion for expensive music, Morrie?'

Morris Dolf's eyes blinked once at the jar of being addres­sed by name, but he seemed to find it hard to work up an enthusiasm for discussing his cultural development. His tongue slid over his dry lips without forming an answering syllable.

Simon turned to the big florid man. Now that he had seen his face, he had identified him as well.

'Judd Kaskin, I believe ?' he drawled, with the delicate suavity of an ambassador of the old regime. 'Do you know that you're burning the carpet ?'

Kaskin looked at the fallen ladle. He bent and picked it up, rubbing the sole of his shoe over the smouldering patch of rug. Then, as if he suddenly realized that he had done all that in mechanical obedience to a command that the Saint hadn't even troubled to utter directly, he threw it clattering into the fireplace and turned his savage scowl back to the Saint.

'What the hell do you want ?' he snarled.

'You know, I was just going to ask you the same ques­tion,' Simon remarked mildly. 'It seemed to me that you were feeling your oats a bit, Judd. I suppose you get that way after doing five years on the Moor. But you haven't been out much more than three months, have you ? You shouldn't be in such a hurry to go back.'

The big man's eyes gave the same automatic reaction as Dolf's had given to the accuracy of the Saint's information, and hardened again into slits of unyielding suspicion.

'Who the hell are you ?' he grated slowly. 'You aren't a cop. Take that rag off your face and let's see who you are.'

'When I'm ready,' said the Saint coolly. 'And then you may wish I hadn't. Just now, I'm asking the questions. What is this doublecross you're trying to find out about from Com­rade Verdean?'

There was a silence. Morris Dolf's slight expression was fading out again. His mouth closed, and he readjusted his cigarette. Simon knew that behind that silent hollow-cheeked mask a cunning brain was getting back to work.

Kaskin's face, when he wanted to play tricks with it, could put on a ruddy rough-diamond joviality that was convincing enough to deceive most people who did not know too much about his criminal record. But at this moment he was making no effort to put on his stock disguise. His mouth was but­toned up in an ugly down-turned curve.

'Why