Nather's eyes seemed to glaze over; then they switched to the Saint's face. Simon moved his gun under the desk lamp and edged it a little forward, and his gaze was as steady as the steel. Nather swallowed.
"I—I'll be here," he stammered.
"See that you are," came the terse conclusion, in the same voice of bewitching overtones; and then the wire went dead.
Watching Nather, the Saint knew that at least half the audience had understood that cryptic conversation perfectly. The judge was staring vacantly ahead into space with the lifeless receiver still clapped to his ear and his mouth hung half open.
"Very interesting," said the Saint softly.
Nather's mouth closed jerkily. He replaced the receiver slowly on its hook and looked up.
"A client of mine," he said casually; but he was not casual enough.
"That's interesting, too," said the Saint. "I didn't know judges were supposed to have clients. I thought they were unattached and impartial. . . . And she must be very beautiful, with a voice like that. Can it be, Algernon, that you are hiding something from me?"
Nather glowered up at him.
"How much longer are you going on with this preposterous performance?"
"Until it bores me. I'm easily amused," said the Saint, "and up to now I haven't yawned once. So far as I can see, the interview is progressing from good to better. All kinds of things are bobbing up every minute. This Big Fellow of yours, now: let's hear some more about him. I'm inquisitive."
Nather's eyes flinched wildly.
"I'm damned if I'll talk to you any more!"
"You're damned if you won't."
"You can go to hell."
"And the same applies," said the Saint equably.
He stood up and came round the desk, poising himself on straddled feet a pace in front of the judge, lean and dynamically balanced as a panther.
"You're very dense, Algernon," he remarked calmly. "You don't seem to get the idea at all. Maybe our little interlude of song and badinage has led you up the wrong tree. You can make a good guess why I'm here. You know that I didn't drop in just for the pleasure of admiring your classic profile. You know who I am. I don't care what you pick on, but you can tell me something. Any of your maidenly secrets ought to be worth listening to. Come through, Nather—or else . . ."
"Or else what?"
The Saint's gun moved forward until it pressed deep into the judge's flabby navel.
"Or else find out what Ionetzki and Jack Irboll know!"
Nather's heavy, sullen lips twisted back from yellowed teeth. And Simon jabbed the gun a notch further into the judge's stomach.
"And don't lie," said the Saint caressingly; "because I'm friendly to undertakers and that funeral parlour looked as if it could do with some business."
Nather passed a fevered tongue over hot dry lips. He had not lived through thirty years of intermittent contacts with the underworld without learning to recognize that queer bitter fibre in a man that makes him capable of murder. And the terrific inward struggle of that last moment before the telephone bell rang had blunted his vitality. The strength was not in him to screw himself to that desperate pitch again. He knew, beyond all question, that if he refused to talk, if he attempted to lie, that bantering tiger of a man who was squeezing the gun ever deeper into his vitals would destroy him as ruthlessly as he would have crushed an ant. Nather's larynx heaved twice, convulsively; and then, before he could speak, a muffled tread sounded beyond the locked door.
The Saint tautened, listening. From the ponderous, flat-footed measure of the stride he guessed it to belong to the butler. Nather looked up with a sudden gleam of hope; but the steady pressure of the gun muzzle in his yielding flesh did not vary by a milligram. The Saint's light whisper floated to his ears in an airy breath.
"Heroes die young," it murmured pithily.
A knock sounded on the door—a discreet knock that could only have been made by a servant. Nather, with his vengeful eyes frozen on the Saint, lip-read the order rather than heard it. "Ask him what he wants."
"Well?" Nather growled out.
"Inspector Fernack is downstairs, sir. He says it's important."
Nather stared at the Saint And the Saint smiled. Once again his reckless fighting lips shaped an almost inaudible command.
"Tell him to come up," Nather repeated after him, and could not believe that he was obeying an order.
He sat silent and rigid as the butler's footsteps receded and died away; and at last Simon withdrew the gun barrel which had for so long been boring insidiously into the judge's abdomen.
"Better and better," said the Saint amazingly, flipping a cigarette into his lips. "I was wanting to meet Fernack."
Nather gaped at him incredulously. The situation was grotesque, unbelievable; and yet it had occurred. The automatic had been eased out of his belly—it was even then circling around the Saint's forefinger in one of those carelessly confident gyrations—which it certainly would not have been if any of the Saint's instructions had been disobeyed. The thing was beyond Nather's understanding. The glacial recklessness of it was subtly disquieting, in a colder and more deadly way than the menace of the gun had ever been: it argued a self-assurance that was frightening, and with that fear went the crawling question of whether the Saint's mind had leapt to some strategy of lightning cunning that Nather could not see.
"You'll get your chance," said the judge gruffly, searching for comprehension through a kind of fog.
Simon rasped the head of a match with his left thumbnail, applied the spluttering flame to the tip of his cigarette, and inhaled luxuriously. With a drift of smoke trailing back through his lips, he lounged towards a large tapestried Morris chair that stood between the French windows by which he had entered, and swung the chair around with his foot so that its heavily padded side was presented to the door through which the detective would enter.
He came back, overturned the wastebasket with an adroit twist of his toe, and picked up the crumpled scrap of paper and dropped it into his pocket in one smooth swoop that frustrated the judge's flash of fight even before the idea was conceived. He pulled open the drawer to which Nather's hand had jumped at the first sound of his voice, and transferred the revolver from it to his hip. And then, with the scene set to his satisfaction, he walked back to his chosen chair and settled himself comfortably in it with his right leg draped gracefully over the arm.
He flicked a quarter inch of ash from his cigarette onto the expensive carpet.
"When your man announces Fernack," he directed, "open the door and let him in. And come back yourself. Understand?"
Nather did not understand. His brain was still fumbling dazedly for the catch that he could not find. On the face of it, it seemed like the answer to a prayer. With Fernack on the scene, there must be the chance of a way out for him—a way to retrieve that scrap of paper buried in Templar's pocket and to dispose of the Saint himself. But something told him that the calm smiling man in the chair was not legislating foe any such dénouement.
Simon read his thoughts.
"The gun won't be in evidence for a while, Nather. But it'll be handy. And at this range I'm a real sniper. I shouldn't want you to get excited over any notions of ganging up on me with Fernack. Somebody might get hurt."
Nather's gaze rested on him venomously.
"Some day," said the judge slowly, "I hope we shall meet again."
"In Sing Sing," suggested the Saint breezily. "Let's call it a date."
He drew on his cigarette again and listened to the returning footsteps of the butler, accompanied by a heavier, more determined tread. As a matter of fact, he was innocent of all subterfuge. There was nothing more behind his decision than appeared on the face of it. Fernack was there, and the Saint saw no reason why they should not meet. His whole evening had started off in the same spirit of open-minded expectation, and it had turned out very profitably. He waited the addition to his growing circle of acquaintances with no less kindly interest.