Somebody walked with distinctly audible caution down the passage and stopped outside the door, breathing loudly. The handle rattled faintly, but the door had been locked on the inside when Jeffroll and company came in. There was a brief pause; and then a strident whisper grated through the panels.
'Is dat you, boss?'
'Good old Hoppy!' gasped the Saint joyfully.
X HE was not altogether without the power of movement: humping himself inelegantly across the floor like a sort of caterpillar he was able to reach the door, and then, on his knees in front of it, he managed to detach the key with his teeth and pushed it under the door with his feet. Hoppy unlocked the door and stood beaming down at him like a schoolboy who has come home with a prize.
'Hi,' said Mr. Uniatz, in comradely greeting.
He stepped forward and untied the Saint as casually as he would have offered him a light for a cigarette; and it only needed this casualness to remind Simon that this complacently grinning bonehead was, after all, the cause of more than half the trouble.
'Where the bloody hell have you been?' he demanded, with an ominous cooling off of his first grateful enthusiasm.
Mr. Uniatz blinked at him reproachfully, like a dog who has proudly laid a fresh-killed rat at his master's feet, only to receive a clout over the ear. Something, Mr. Uniatz began to suspect, seemed to have come between him and the Boss. The perfect harmony which had hitherto bound them together, their zusammengehorigkeitsgef?hl, as the Germans so succinctly put it, seemed to have come unstuck.
'Well, boss, I listen outside de door,' he said, with a generous attempt to clear up the entire misunderstanding in a sentence.
'Outside what door?' asked the Saint patiently.
'Outside dis door here,' said Mr. Uniatz, no less patiently -he felt that for the first time in their acquaintanceship his deity, the boss, was found wanting in rudimentary intelligence. 'I hear de udder guys have got de snatch on Julia, an' you told me dis mornin' de attorney was in de racket. So when de guy comes out I bean de guy wit' my Betsy an' go after de guy,' explained Mr. Uniatz, making everything translucently clear.
Fortunately the Saint had inside information which enabled him to distinguish one guy from another; but this was about as much as he did understand.
'Let me get this straight,' he said. 'When I came in here, you followed and listened outside the door?'
'Yes, boss.'
'And nobody caught you at it.'
'I didn't t'ink about dat, boss,' said Hoppy worriedly, as if he feared that he might yet be caught in that past act of eavesdropping.
The Saint wiped his forehead. He could remember himself wishing that he could listen outside that door, and discarding the idea as hopelessly impracticable; but a fool had ambled in where a Saint had certainly feared to tread.
'And you heard about Julia being kidnapped?'
'Yes, boss.'
'You got steamed up about it, and pushed off to give somebody the works.'
'Well, boss'
'And then the lawyer came out.'
'Yeah. He came t'ru de dinin'-room. I go after him, an' de udder guy tries to stop me; so I bean him wit' my Betsy.'
'And then what?'
'De lawyer is gittin' into his heap, an' he don't know I beaned de udder guy. So I climb up in de rumble seat, an' we hit de grit.'
Simon nodded, chafing his hands to ease the pain of returning circulation.
'Where did you go?'
'I dunno, boss. Foist we go down to de harbour, an' dis guy gets in a boat an' blows off. I can't find anudder boat to follow him, an' I guess he'd of seen me comin' on de water anyhow, so I sit in de car an' wait. He goes off to a yacht outside an' goes on board. He stays on de yacht free-four hours, an' I begin t'inkin' he ain't comin' back my way. I gotta toist like nobody's business, an' de fishin' guys start lookin' at me an' one of 'em comes up an' asks if I want to rent a boat. After a bit de guy comes back from de yacht, an' I duck back in de rumble an' we screw. We go maybe six miles, an' he turns in de drive of a house dat's got a board outside For Sale. Maybe de house is for sale at dat, because I take a gander t'ru de windows an' it ain't got no foinitchure inside. De red-haired guy is inside wit' a coupla gophers; an' I go in t'ru de door, which is not locked, an' dey lamp my Betsy an' stick 'em up.'
'They didn't try to shoot it out with you?'
'Say, when I get a hist on a guy he don't have no chance to shoot it out,' said Hoppy indignantly. 'So I pull deir teet'- lookit, I got de rods here.' He fished about in his pockets and produced an assortment of weapons which explained the curious bulges that Simon had noticed on his person. 'Well, I say: 'What youse guys done wit' Julia?' Dey don't say nut'n.'
'So what?'
Mr. Uniatz scratched his head.
'Well, boss, I give dem a massage.'
Simon's fingers had recovered sufficiently for him to be able to get out a cigarette. He lighted it without
