"I think it would be simpler to hand you over to the police," he said.
"Imbecile!" Urivetzky spoke, breaking his own long silence. "What could you tell the police—"
"Exactly," agreed the Saint. "And what could I tell them? No, boys, it won't do. That's what I was trying to show you. I suppose they couldn't hurt you much, on account of your position and what not, but they could make it pretty difficult for you. And there certainly wouldn't be anything left of your beautiful finance scheme. And then I don't suppose you'd be so popular with the Spanish Patriots when you went home. Probably you'd find yourselves leaning against a wall, watching the firing squad line up." The Saint shook his head. "No — I think forty thousand quid is a bargain price for the good turn I'm doing you."
Major Perez grinned at him like an ape.
"And suppose you didn't have a chance to use your information?" he said.
The Saint smiled with unruffled tranquillity.
"My dear Pongo — do you really think I'd have come here without thinking of that? Of course you can use your artillery any time you want to; and at this range, with a bit of luck, you might even hit me. But it wouldn't do you any good. I told some friends of mine that I'd be back with them in ten minutes from now, and if I don't arrive punctually they'll phone Scotland Yard and tell Chief Inspector Teal exactly where I went and why. You can think it over till your brains boil, children, but your only way out will still cost you forty thousand quid."
VIII
The silence that followed lasted longer than any of its predecessors. It was made up of enough diverse ingredients to fill a psychological catalogue, and their conflicting effects combined to produce a state of explosive inertia in which the dropping of a pin would have sounded like a steel girder decanting itself into a stack of cymbals.
The Saint's cigarette expired, and he pressed it quietly out on the mantelpiece. For a few moments at least he was the only man in the room who was immune to the atmosphere of the petrified earthquake which had invaded it, and he was clinging to his immunity as if it was the most precious possession he had — which in fact it was. Whether the hoary old bluff he had built up with such unblinking effrontery could be carried through to a flawless conclusion was another question; but he had done his best for it, and no man could have done more. And if he had achieved nothing else he had at least made the opposition stop and think. If he had left them to their immediate and natural impulses from the time when they found him there he would probably have been nothing but a name in history by this time: they might still plan to let him end the adventure in the same way, but now they would proceed with considerable caution. And the Saint knew that when the ungodly began to proceed with caution instead of simply leaning on the trigger and asking questions afterwards as common sense would dictate was when an honest man might begin to look for loopholes. If there was anything that Simon Templar needed then it was loopholes; and he was watching for them with a languid and untroubled smile on his lips and his muscles poised and tingling like a sprinter at the start of a race.