“That makes it easier to deal with you,” he said, and then a cloud of pepper struck him squarely in the face.
It came with a crisp upward fling that drove the powder straight up his nostrils and up under the shield of his glasses into his eyes. He choked and gasped, and in the same instant his gun was struck aside and detached skillfully from his fingers.
Minutes of streaming agony passed before his tortured vision returned. While he wept with the stinging pain of it his pockets were rifled again, this time without any attempt at stealth. Once he tried to rise, and was pushed back like a child. He huddled away and waited impotently for the blindness to wear off.
When he looked up the Saint was still there, sitting on the seat opposite him with a handkerchief over his face and a litter of papers sorted out on his lap and overflowing on either side. The window had been lowered so that the draught could clear the air.
“You crook!” Voyson moaned.
“Well, well, well!” murmured the Saint amiably. “So the little man’s come to the surface again. Bad business, that hay fever of yours. Speaking as one crook to another, Bruce, you ought to give up gun play until you’re cured. Sneezing spoils the aim.”
He removed the handkerchief from his face, sniffed the air cautiously, and tucked the silk square back in his pocket. Then he began to gather up the papers he had been investigating.
“I can only find ninety thousand dollars in cash,” he said. “That’s not a lot of booty out of a five-million-dollar swindle. But I see there are notes of two million-dollar transfers to the Asiatic Bank in Batavia, so maybe you didn’t do so badly out of it. I wish we could touch some of that bank account, though.”
He enveloped the documents deliberately in the wallet from which he had taken them, and tossed it back. Voyson’s bloodshot glare steadied itself.
“I’ll see that you don’t get away with this,” he snarled.