He would have sworn that the stranger had never touched him except with his gun since they got into the car, but suddenly an electric flashlight spilled a tiny strip of luminance over the boards between them, and in the bright centre of the beam he saw the other's hand running through the contents of a wallet which looked somehow familiar. All at once Eisenfeld recognized it and clutched unbelievingly at his pocket. The wallet which his guest had given him an hour ago was gone; and Eisenfeld's heart almost stopped beating.
"What are you doing with that?" he croaked.
"Just seeing how much this installment of graft is worth," answered the Saint calmly. "And it looks exactly like thirty thousand dollars to me. Well, it might have been more, but I suppose it will have to do. I promised Molly that I'd see she was looked after, but I don't see why it shouldn't be at your expense. Part of this is your commission for getting this cenotaph filled with cement, isn't it?… It seems very appropriate."
Eisenfeld's throat constricted, and the blood began to pound in his temples.
"I'll get you for this," he snarled. "You lousy crook."
"Maybe I am a crook," said the Saint, in a voice that was no more than a breath of sound in the still night. "But in between times I'm something more. In my simple way I am a kind of justice… Do you know any good reason why you should wait any longer for what you deserve?"
There is a time in every man's life when he knows beyond doubt or common fear that the threads of destiny are running out. It had happened to Al Eisenfeld too suddenly for him to understand — he had no time to look back and count the incredible minutes in which his world had been turned upside down. Perhaps he himself had no clear idea what he was doing, but he knew that he was hearing death in the quiet voice that spoke out of the darkness in front of him.
His muscles carried him away without any conscious command from his brain, and he was unaware of the queer growling cry that rattled in his throat. There was a crash of sound in front of him as he sprang blindly forward, and a tongue of reddish-orange flame spat out of the darkness almost in his face…
Simon Templar steadied himself on one of the scaffold poles and stared down into the square black mould of the monument; but there was nothing that he could see, and the silence was unbroken. After a while his fingers let go the gun, and a couple of seconds later the thud of its burying itself in the wet cement at the bottom of the shaft echoed hollowly back to him.
Presently he climbed up to the chute from which the monument was being filled. He found a great mound of sacks of cement stacked beside it ready for use, and, after a little more search, a hose conveniently arranged to provide water. He was busy for three hours before he decided that he had done enough.