It was to her, rather than to Ualino, that he spoke.
"Good-evening," said the Saint.
No one in the room answered. Ualino dipped a brush into a tiny bottle and stroked an even film of liquid polish on the nail of his little finger. A diamond the size of a bean flashed from his ring as he inspected his handiwork under the light. He corked the bottle and fluttered his graceful hand back and forth to dry off the polish, and his tawny eyes returned at leisure to the Saint.
"I wanted to have a look at you." Simon smiled at him.
"That makes us both happy. I wanted to have a look at you. I heard you were the Belle of New York, and I wanted to see how you did it." The ingenuousness of the Saintly smile was blinding. "You must give me the address of the man who waves your hair one day, Morrie—but are you sure they got all the mud pack off last time your face had a treatment?"
There was a hideous clammy stillness in the room, a stillness that sprawled out of sheer open-mouthed incredulity. Not within the memory of anyone present had such a thing as that happened. In that airlessly expanding quiet, the slightest touch of fever in the imagination would have made audible the thin whisper of eardrums waving soggily to and fro, like wet palm fronds in a breeze, as they tried dazedly to recapture the unbelievable vibrations that had numbed them. The faces of the two pinochle players revolved slowly, wearing the blank expressions of two men who had been unexpectedly slugged with blunt instruments and who were still wondering what had hit them.
"What did you say?" asked Ualino pallidly.
"I was just looking for some beauty hints," said the Saint amiably. "You know, you remind me of Papulos quite a lot, only he hasn't got the trick of those Dietrich eyebrows like you have."
Ualino stroked down a thread of hair at one side of his head.
"Come over here," he said.
There was no actual question of whether the Saint would obey. As if answering an implied command, each of the two gorillas on either side of the Saint seized hold of his wrists. His arms were twisted up behind his back, and he was dragged round the table; and Ualino turned his chair round and looked up at him.
"Did you ever hear of the hot box?" Ualino asked gently.
In spite of himself, the Saint felt an instant's uncanny chill. For he had heard of the hot box, that last and most horrible product of gangland's warped ingenuity. Al Capone himself is credited with the invention of it: it was his answer to the three amazing musketeers who pioneered the kidnapping racket in the days when other racketeers, who had no comeback in the law, were practically the only victims; and Red McLaughlin, who led that historic foray into the heart of Cook County—who extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom from Capone's lieutenants and came within an ace of kidnapping the Scarface himself—died by that terrible death. A cold finger seemed to touch the Saint's spine for one brief second; and then it was gone, leaving its icy trace only in the blue of his eyes.
"Yeah," said the Saint. "I've heard of it. Are you getting it ready for Viola Inselheim?"
Again that appalling silence fell over the room. For a full ten seconds nobody moved except Ualino, whose manicured hand kept up that steady mechanical smoothing of his hair.
"So you know about that, too," he purred at last.
The Saint nodded. His face was expressionless; but he had heard the last word of confirmation that he wanted. His inspiration had been right—his simple stratagem had achieved everything that he had asked of it. By letting himself be taken to Ualino as a helpless prisoner, already doomed, he had been shown a hideout that he could never otherwise have found, for which Fernack and his officers could search for weeks in vain.
"Sure I know," said the Saint. "Why else do you think I should have let your tame gorillas fetch me along here? There isn't any other attraction about the place—except that chat about complexion creams that you and I were going to have."
"He's nuts," explained one of the guards vaguely, as if seeking comfort for his own reeling sanity.
Simon smiled to himself and looked towards the open window. Through it he could see the edge of the roof hanging low over the oblong of blackness, the curved metal of the gutter catching a gleam of light from the bulb over the table. From the sill, it should be within easy reach; and the rest lay with the capricious gods of adventure. ... And he found his gaze wandering back with detached curiosity, even in that terrific moment, to the girl who must be Fay Edwards. He could see her over Ualino's shoulder, watching him steadily; but he could read nothing in her amber eyes.
Ualino took the hand down from caressing his hair and stuck the thumb in his vest pocket. He seemed to be playing with a vial of sadistic malignance as a child might play with a ball, for the last time.
"What did you think you'd do when you got here?" he asked; and the Saint's level gaze returned to his face with the chill of antarctic ice still in it.
"I'm here to kill you, Ualino," Simon said quietly.
One of the pinochle players moved his leg, and a card slipped off the sofa and hit the floor with a tiny scuff that was as loud as a drumbeat in the soundless void. A stifling silence blanketed the air that was like no silence which had gone before. It was a stillness that reached out beyond the deadest infinities of disbelief, an unfathomable immobility in which even incredulity was punch-drunk and paralyzed. It rose out of the waning vibrations of the Saint's gentle voice and throbbed back and forth between the walls like a charge of static electricity; and the Saint's blue eyes gazed through it in an inclement mockery of bitter steel. It could not last for more than a second or two—the fierce tension of it was too intolerable— but for that space of time no one could have interrupted. And that quiet, gentle voice went on, with a terrible softness and simplicity, holding them with a sheer ruthless power that they could not begin to understand:
"I am the Saint; and I have my justice. This afternoon Jack Irboll died, as I promised. I am more than the law, Ualino, and I have no corrupt judges. Tonight you die."
Ualino stood up. His tawny eyes stared into the Saint's with a greenish glow.
"You're pretty smart," he said venomously; and then his fist lashed at Simon's face.
The Saint's head rolled coolly sideways, and Ualino's sleeve actually brushed his cheek as the blow went by. A moment later the Saint's right hand touched the hilt of his knife and slid it up in its sheath—with both his arms twisted up behind his back it was hardly more difficult than it would have been if his hand and wrist had come together in front of him. Ualino's eyes blazed with sudden raw fury as he felt his clenched fist zip through into unresisting air. He drew his arm back and smashed again; and then a miracle seemed to happen.
The man on the Saint's right felt a stab of fire lance across the tendons of his wrist, and all the strength went out of his fingers. He stared stupidly at the gush of blood that broke from the severed arteries; and while he stared, something flashed across his vision like a streak of quicksilver, and he heard Ualino cry out.
That was about as much as anybody saw or understood. Somehow, without a struggle, the Saint was free; and a steel blade flashed in his hand. It swept upwards in front of him in a terrible arc; and Ualino clutched at his stomach and sank down, with his knees buckling under him and a ghastly crimson tide bursting between his fingers. . . . Nobody else had time to move. The sheer astounding speed of it numbed even the most instinctive processes of thought—they might as easily have met and parried a flash of lightning. . . . And then the knife swept on upwards, and the hilt of it struck the electric light bulb over the table and brought utter darkness with an explosion like a gun.