A tremor went over the man's throat, as he swallowed mechanically out of a parched mouth. He spoke between twitching lips.
"You're the man who sent Irboll that note."
"And killed him," said the Saint quietly. The lilt of banter was lingering only in the deepest undertones of his voice— the surface of it was as smooth and cold as a shaft of polished ice. "Don't forget that, Nather. You let him out—and I killed him."
The judge stirred in his chair, a movement that was no more than the uncontrollable reaction of nerves strained beyond the limits of their strength. His mouth shaped an almost inaudible sentence.
"What do you want?"
"Well, I thought we might have a little chat." Simon's foot swung again, in that easy, untroubled pendulum. "I thought you might know things. You seem to have been quite a pal of Jack's. According to the paper I was reading tonight, you were the man who signed his permit to carry the gun that killed Ionetzki. You were the guy who signed the writ of habeas corpus to get Irboll out when they first pulled him in. You were the guy who adjourned him the last time he was brought up. And three years ago, it seems, you were the guy who acquitted our same friend Irboll along with four others who were tried for the murder of a kid named Billie Valcross. One way and another; Algernon, it looks like you must be quite a useful sort of friend for a bloke to have."
Chapter 2
How Simon Templar Eavesdropped to Some Advantage, and Inspector Fernack Went for a Ride
Nather did not try to answer. His body was sunk deep into his chair, and his eyes glared venomously up at the Saint out of a face that was contorted into a mask of hate and fury; but Simon had passed under glares like that before.
"Just before I came in," Simon remarked conversationally, "you were reading a scrap of paper that seemed to have some connection with those twenty grand I borrowed."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the judge.
"No?" Simon's voice was honeyed, but none of the chill had gone out of his blue eyes. "Let me remind you. You screwed it up and plugged it into the wastebasket. It's there still—and I'd like to see it."
Nather's eyelids flickered.
"Why don't you get it?"
"Because I'd hate to give you the chance to catch me bending—my tail's tender today. Fetch out that paper!"
His voice crisped up like the flick of a whiplash, and Wallis Nather jerked under the sting of it. But he made no move to obey.
A throbbing stillness settled over the room. The air was surcharged with the electric tension of it. The smile had faded from the Saint's lips when his voice tightened on that one curt command; and it had not come back. There was no variation in the graceful ease with which he held his precarious perch on the edge of the desk, but the gentle rocking of his free foot had died away like the pendulum of a clock that had run down. And a thin pin-prickling temblor frisked up the Saint's spine as he realized that Nather did not mean to obey.
Instead, he realized that the judge was marshalling the last fragments of his strength and courage to make one desperate lunge for the automatic that held him crucified in his chair. It was fantastic, incredible; but there could be no mistake. The intuitive certainty had flashed through his mind at the same instant as it was born in the brain of the man before him. And Simon knew, with the same certainty, that just as surely as that desperate lunge was made, his own finger would constrict on the trigger, ending the argument beyond all human revision, without hesitation and without remorse.
"You wouldn't dare to shoot," said Nather throatily.
He said it more as if he were trying to convince himself; and the Saint's eyes held him on needle points of blue ice.
"The word isn't in my dictionary—and you ought to know it! This isn't a country where men carry guns for ornament, and I'm just getting acclimatized. . . ."
But even while Simon spoke, his brain was racing ahead to explore the reasons for the insane resolution that was whitening the knuckles of the judge's twitching hands.
He felt convinced that such a man as Wallis Nather would not go up against that gaping automatic on account of a mere twenty thousand dollars. That was a sum of money which any man might legitimately be grieved to lose, but it was not large enough to tempt anyone but a starving desperado to the gamble that Nather was steeling himself to make.
There could be only one other motive—the words scrawled on that scrap of paper in the wastebasket. Something that was written on that crumpled slip of milled rag held dynamite enough to raise the ghostly hand of Nemesis itself. Something was recorded there that had the power to drive Nather forward inch by inch in his chair into the face of almost certain death. . . .
With fascinated eyes Simon watched the slight, nerve-tingling movements of the judge's body as Nather edged himself up for that suicidal assault on the gun. For the first time in his long and checkered career he felt himself a blind instrument in the working out of an inexorable fate. There was nothing more that he could do. The one metallic warning that he had delivered had passed unheeded. Only two things remained. In another few seconds Nather would lunge; and in that instant the automatic would bark its riposte of death. . . .
Simon was vaguely conscious of the quickening of his pulse. His mind reeled away to those trivial details that sometimes slip through the voids of an intolerable suspense—there must be servants somewhere in the place—but it would only take him three swift movements, before they could possibly reach the door, to scrawl his sign manual on the blotter, snatch the crumple of paper from the wastebasket, and vanish through the open windows into the darkness. ...
And then a bell exploded in the oppressive atmosphere of the room like a bomb. A telephone bell.
Its rhythmic double beat sheared through the silence like a guillotine, cleaving the overstrained chord of the spell with the blade of its familiar commonplaceness; and Nather's effort collapsed as if the same cleavage had snapped the support of his spine. He shuddered once and slouched back limply in his chair, passing a trembling hand across his eyes.
Simon smiled again. His shoe resumed its gentle swinging, and he swept a gay, mocking eye over the desk. There were two telephones on it—one of them clearly a house phone. On a small table to the right of the desk stood a third telephone, obviously a Siamese twin of the second, linked to the same outside wire and intended for His Honour's secretary. The Saint reached out a long arm and brought it over onto his knee.
"Answer the call, brother," he suggested persuasively.
A wave of his automatic added its imponderable weight to the suggestion; but the fight had already been drained out of the judge's veins. With a grey drawn face he dragged one of the telephones towards him; and as he lifted the receiver Simon matched the movement on the extension line and slanted his gun over in a relentless arc to cover the other's heart. Definitely it was not Mr. Wallis Nather's evening, but the Saint could not afford to be sentimental.
"Judge Nather speaking."
The duplicate receiver at the Saint's ear clicked to the vibrations of a clear feminine voice.
"This is Fay." The speech was crisp and incisive, but it had a rich pleasantness of music that very few feminine voices can maintain over the telephone—there was a rare quality in the sound that moved the Saint's blood with a queer, delightful expectation for which he could have given no account. It was just one of those voices. "The Big Fellow says you'd better stay home tonight," stated the voice. "He may want you."