He had no intention of using it, but he wanted her to feel some of the mental agony that she had given to others before he dealt with her in the only way he could. But all the things he would have liked to do were in his voice, and the girl was too demented with terror to distinguish between fine shades of meaning. She gaped at him in stupefied horror as he took a step towards her; and then, with an inarticulate, despairing shriek, she flung herself backwards into the black pit below…
Raddon started forward with a queer animal moan, but Hoppy's gun whipped up and thrust him back. And the Saint looked at him.
"It's no use, Andy," he said with his first tinge of pity. "You backed the wrong horse."
He slid his knife back into its sheath and put an arm around Patricia.
"Where are we?" he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
"This is some sort of old ruin with a modern house built into one wing of it." She spoke mechanically, with her eyes still hypnotized by the dark silence into which Sheila Ireland had disappeared. "I suppose it belonged to her…"
The Saint buttoned his coat. Life went on, and business was still business.
"Then it probably contains a safe with some boodle in it," he said. "I know a few good causes that could use it. And then we'd better hustle back and untie Comrade Sentinel before he bursts a blood vessel. We'll have to take him back to Weybridge and add him to Beatrice and Irene for the alibi we're going to need when Claud Eustace hears about this. Let's keep moving."