He finished, and then made a quick search of the room and the person of his test specimen, looking for one thing only; but it seemed that Mr. Pairfield's wanderings into wickedness hadn't taken the course of acquiring any of the useful armaments of evil. No doubt he was glad to delegate all such crudities to underlings. The Saint ended his brief quest still weaponless; yet he gave it up with a glance at Avalon that had all the carefree lights of supreme laughter in its blue brilliance.
"Knock 'em off one by one," he remarked—"as the bishop said as he surveyed the new line-up of thespian talent at the Follies. That's our motto. Shall we move on to the next experiment?"
Their hands touched momentarily; and then he was out of the room and on his way down the stairs.
On his way, with the new chill ugly knowledge that the palpitating fright of Ferdinand Pairfield could only have been germinated by something that had been there in that house before any board creaked and Pairfield had thrown his door open and seen the Saint. And that that something, whatever form it took, could only be deadly for the federal man who had called himself Patrick Hogan — if it hadn't been conclusively deadly already.
Or if simple death might not be much better than what could be going on.
Simon was at the foot of the stairs, in the hall, with the front door only a few steps away; and Avalon was still close beside him. Escape would have been easy for them. But he knew without even wordless asking that neither of them had thought of that. Her eyes were steady and quiet and only inquiring as they met his again. The sounds that came through the solid closed door of the living-room were strangely distorted and dreadful in their muffled distortion.
The Saint saw her throat move as she listened and looked at him; but her gaze was only waiting, always.
Their hands met and held that time, for an instant; and something quirked over his lips that could have been a smile, but wasn't. Then he left her.
He didn't go to the living-room door, but vanished the other way, towards the kitchen.
In a few seconds more he was back, and he brought with him a stag-handled carving knife. The blade was strong and gleaming, and he tested it with his thumb before he slid it up his left sleeve and held it there with the pressure of a bent elbow against the flat of the blade.