The Saint sat on the edge of the table and stared abstractedly at the body on the settee. If only Pargo could have got through to him before that happened with the information which he had paid for at such a price…
Pargo's left arm slid off the edge of the sofa, and his hand flopped onto the carpet so that his limp wrist turned over at a horribly unnatural angle.
Simon went on looking at it, with his face as impassive as a mask of bronze.
"Some guy tells me once," went on Mr Uniatz, seeking a solution, "dat if you look in a guy's eyes what's been moidered…"
The Saint seemed suddenly to have become very still, with his cigarette poised half an inch from his lips.
His examination of Pargo had been confined to the body itself and the contents of the pockets. The former had given nothing but confirmation to his first impressions, and the latter had been emptied of everything that might have given him any kind of information. Now with a queer feeling of breathless incredulity he was staring at something so obvious that he could hardly understand how he had overlooked it before, so uncannily like a direct answer from the dead that it made the blood race thunderously in his veins.
As the arm had fallen the sleeve had been dragged back from the grimy shirt cuff. And on the shirt cuff itself there were dark marks too distinct and regularly patterned to be entirely grime.
Simon moved forward and lifted the lifeless hand with a sense of dizzy unreality.
He was barely able to decipher the lines of cramped and twisted writing.
Their onto me Im done for— The stuff comes in Brandy bay His name is LASSER— I had to tell them — if you—