Something touched me and I looked down. The Russian’s hand held a small nickel-plated revolver, and the muzzle of it was nosing the lowest button of my vest. “Sorry,” he added, smiling, “but we must take precautions, you see. You will be careful?”
I laughed. “Well, this is getting to be a melodrama all of a sudden, isn’t it? All right. Don’t shoot. I’ll be good.”
At my first word the Russian’s face lost its mask of good-humor for the first time. The lips drew back from even white teeth and the eyes narrowed into a vicious scowl. “You will be good—and silent,” he observed. “Not another word!”
I let my mouth sag open, staring at him in simulated amazement. But the man’s cold eye had killing in it, and I did not venture to speak again. He turned away, opened the little window again and put his ear to it. He listened for a long minute. Then he clapped the window shut and took up the speaking tube. For some reason, probably to annoy me, he spoke in English this time.
“Alexandre! We are being followed. Give the signal!”
Then he leaned back again, stowed away his revolver and turned to me with his former cold smile.
“I must apologize, my dear Clayton, for being a little insistent,” he said, his eyes full of malicious amusement. “But, you see, we have to take precautions, and as long as you talked I could not hear. However, our friends back there have a little surprise in store for them that will probably discourage them for some time. So we can now resume our pleasant conversation.”
“I confess,” I answered lightly, “that your manner of asking for silence seemed a little abrupt, but it was certainly efficient. Of course, if I had realized what you wanted, I would have been silent without all that display of force.” I tried to seem startled and aggrieved rather than resentful.
To some extent I think it worked, for he looked at me curiously, with a shadow of doubt in his eyes. But he visibly swept it aside a moment later and began to talk again.
For my part, while I listened to him with half an ear, I was listening as keenly as I could for any evidence of pursuit. Nothing happened for several moments, however, and I was just beginning to wonder whether the whole thing had been planned by him to see whether I knew of any pursuit and would rise to the bait, when the chauffeur suddenly blew three long melancholy blasts on his Klaxon. A moment later he repeated the signal.