'I can't tell you anything.'
'Perhaps you haven't quite recovered yet,' said the Saint persuasively. 'After all, you were going to tell Chief Inspector Teal something. By the way, have you met Mr.
Uniatz? Only the other day'
'I don't know anything!'
Hoppy Uniatz shuffled his feet. It is improbable that more than two consecutive words of the conversation which has just been recorded had percolated through the protective layers of ivory that encased his brain; but he had a nebulous idea that time was being wasted, and he could not see why.
'Do I give him de heat, boss?' he inquired hopefully.
Simon inhaled thoughtfully; and Mr. Uniatz, taking silence for an answer, strengthened his grip. Fasson's face twisted and turned pale.
'Wait a minute!' he gasped shrilly. 'You're breaking my arm!'
'That's too bad,' said the Saint concernedly. 'What does it feel like?'
'You can't do this to me!' shrieked Sunny Jim. 'He'd kill me! You know what happened just now'
'I know,' said the Saint coolly. 'But there are lots of different ways of dying. Hoppy knows no end of exciting ones, and I've tried to warn you about him. I don't really want to have to let him go ahead with what he's wanting to do, instead of just playing at it as he is now; but if you've absolutely made up your mind. . . .'
Sunny Jim gulped. The sharp agony in his shoulder, where Hoppy Uniatz's powerful leverage was exerting itself, made the other unpleasant possibilities which the Saint had hinted at seem frightfully close at hand; but he could not find a shadow of pity or remorse in the clear blue eyes that were studying him with the dispassionate curiosity of an entomologist watching the wriggling of a captured insect.
'Do you want me to be murdered?' he sobbed.
'I shouldn't weep at your funeral,' Simon confessed coldbloodedly. 'But I shouldn't look at things so pessimistically, if I were you. We could probably look after you for a bit, if you told us anything worth knowing-we might even get you out of the country and send you away for a holiday in the South of France until the excitement's all over. But you've got to spill what you know first, and I'm waiting for it to dawn on you that you'll either talk voluntarily or else we'll put you through the mangle and wring it out of you.'
His voice was casual and almost kindly; but there was something so tireless and inflexible behind it that Sunny Jim shivered. He was no hot-house flower himself, but in the circles where he moved there were stories about the Saint, brought in by men who had met that amazing buccaneer to their misfortune-legends that told of a slim bantering outlaw whose smile was more deadly than any other man's anger, who faced death with a jest and sent men into eternity with his flippant farewell ringing in their ears. . . . The pain in his shoulder sharpened under Hoppy's impatient hands, and he saw that the Saint's dark lawless face was quite impassive, with the trace of an old smile lingering absent-mindedly on the reckless lips. . . .
'Damn you!' he whimpered. 'I'll talk. . . . But you've got to let me go.'
'Tell me something first.'
Fasson's breath came in a grating sigh.
'The Kosy Korner-in Holborn'
Simon blew a couple of smoke-rings, and nodded to Mr. Uniatz.
'Okay, Hoppy,' he said. 'Give him a rest.'
Hoppy Uniatz released his grip, and wiped his palms down his trousers. In so far as his gargoyle features were capable of expressing such an emotion, he looked shocked. As one who had himself kept an iron jaw under everything that could be handed to him in the back rooms of more than one station house in his own country, the spectacle of a guy who came apart under a mere preliminary treatment filled him with the same half-incredulous disgust that an English gentleman feels on meeting a cad who is not interested in cricket.
'I guess dese Limeys can't take it, boss,' he said, groping through genuine puzzlement to the only possible conclusion.
Sunny Jim glared at him in vengeful silence. His face was white with pain, and his shoulder really felt as if it had been dislocated. He rubbed it tenderly, while Simon recovered his beer and sat on the edge of the table.
'Well?' Simon prompted him gently.
'I don't know anything much. I've told you- 'Have you traded with the High Fence before?'
'Yes.' Sunny Jim sat hunched in his chair, shrugging his shoulders gingerly in an occasional effort to reassure himself that the joints were still articulating. The words dragged reluctantly through his mouth. 'That's how I know. I wanted to know who the High Fence was. I sent him some stuff once, and waited outside the address to see who picked it up. I saw who took it. I started to tail him, but then I got picked up by a split, and I lost him while we were talking.'
'But?'
'I saw him again the next day, by accident. In this restaurant.'
'The Kosy Korner?'
Fasson nodded, and licked his lips.
'Can I have a drink?' he asked hoarsely.
The Saint made a sign to Hoppy, who abandoned his futile attempt to drain non-existent dregs out of the bottle from which Simon had refilled his glass and left the room. The Saint's cool blue eyes did not leave Sunny Jim's face.
