Mayne laughed. 'Loved you! He despised you. He kept you because you were useful to him. He was a fugitive in a foreign country, and you knew how to hide him. And you stayed with him because your greedy little soul was in love with four million in gold.'
'Greed! You talk about greed! You…'
Mayne went on drinking and allowed the flood of Italian invective to pass over his head. His manner was one of studied insolence. Carla suddenly stopped. There was a wild look in her eyes. 'I hate you,' she stormed. 'Do you hear? I hate you.'
'Do you, Carla?' He laughed. 'And it was such a 14.1 short time ago that you were telling me you loved me. Don't you still love me?'
His supercilious, jeering voice seemed to hurt her. 'Why did you leave me, Gilbert?' Her voice was suddenly desperately quiet. 'We might have been very happy. Why did you leave me?'
'Because, as you very rightly guessed, you were no longer useful to me,' he answered coldly. 'You don't even know where the gold is, do you, Carla? Your poor Heinrich, who loved you so much, never told you. He killed a lot of men to get that gold. He shot them and buried them up here. After taking all that trouble, he wasn't going to tell his secret to a little prostitute he'd picked up in a Milan dance hall.'
'You—' With a quick movement of her wrist, Carla broke her tumbler against the brass rim of the bar and slashed at him with the broken edge.
It all happened in a flash. But even so, Mayne was quicker. He caught her wrist as she jabbed at his face and twisted it so that she spun round on her heels. He held her there, with her body arched in agony and her left hand clawing for his face with her blood-red nails.
It was at that moment that Valdini and Keramikos returned to the bar. I do not recall seeing Valdini get that gun out. It was a practised movement and very quick. I saw him come in out of the tail of my eye. He came in behind Keramikos. And, like the Greek, he stopped dead at the strange scene by the bar. Carla called to him something in Italian — or it may have been Sicilian, for I did not understand it. And in the same instant Valdini had that little black automatic in his hand.
'Keep very still, please, gentlemen,' he said, and his suave voice had an authoritative snap in it that went with the gun. 'I am a very good shot. Nobody move, please. Release the Contessa, Mr Mayne!'