He turned briskly.
"Are you all set for the fade-away, Jill? Want to powder your nose or anything first?"
She was still staring at him. The new atmosphere that had crept into his personality from the moment of his first swipe at Donnell's jaw had grown up like the strengthening light of an incredible dawn, and the intervening interlude had merely provided circumstances to shape its course without altering its temper in the least. And the gun that she had been levelling at him half the time had made no difference at all.
"Aren't you going to try to arrest me?" she asked, with a faint rasp of contempt laid like the thinnest veneer on the bewildering beginnings of preposterous understanding that lay beneath.
And Simon Templar smiled at her.
"Arrest you for ferreting out and bumping off the bloke I've been wanting to get at myself for years? Jill, darling, you have some odd ideas about me!.. But there really is a posse around this time — they're waiting at the other end of that there rat's hole, with the assistant commissioner himself in command, and you wouldn't have a hope in hell of getting through alone. D'you mind if I take over the artillery a moment?"
He detached the automatic from her unresisting hand, dropped it into his pocket, and swept her smoothly through the open door of the dummy cupboard. It was all done so calmly and quietly, with such an effortless ease of mastery, that all the strength seemed to ebb out of her. It was impossible to resist or even question him: she suffered herself to be steered down the stairs without a word.
"On the other hand," said the Saint, as if there had been no interruption between that remark and the conclusion of his last speech, "you'll have to consider yourself temporarily under arrest, otherwise there might be a spot of trouble which we shouldn't be in a position to deal with effectively."
She made no answer. In the same bewildered silence she found herself at the junction of the two forks in the tunnel; they took the left-hand fork this time, and went on for about a hundred yards before the light of the last electric bulb was lost behind them and they found themselves in darkness. She heard the crackle of the Saint's lighter, and saw another flight of steps on the right.
"Up here."