It was a kind of receptive cylindrical silence, open at both ends.
“We’re having a breakfast meeting at 9 a.m.,” Simon confided into the receiver. “Would you like to come, too?”
He heard a faint click — a sudden blank deadness.
The Saint hung up thoughtfully, and an airless draught prickled along his nerves like a spectral breeze. It was a well-remembered sensation, a wave-length registered on the sensitive antenna of a sixth sense which selected and amplified it throughout his being into an unmistakable alarum. It had warned him before more times than he could remember of impending danger and sudden death — just as it whispered to him now.
Someone had hung up as soon as he’d recognised the Saint’s voice. Someone who wanted to make sure whether he was there.
“Hoppy,” he said, “something tells me we’re going to have more visitors tonight.”
Mr Uniatz’s cogitative machinery ground to an excruciating halt.
“What for, boss?”
“It’s the price we pay for being so irresistibly attractive.”
He was taking a rapid mental inventory of the room, until his eyes settled on a table lamp with a fairly long cord. He pulled the plug out of the baseboard outlet and broke the lamp cord off close to the lamp, while Hoppy stared at him.