Iris laughed. "Captain Thorne has a very unusual constitution, my dear. I did not trust the crystals entirely, but though he can move his head, he is as paralyzed as the rest of them."
Thorne turned a contemplative eye upon his erstwhile companion of the misdirected adventure. "I remember, you were our cook this merry evening, Senator Chanler."
His formal insistence upon her betrayed trust did not trouble her. "The yellow ray is entirely harmless unless the prospective victim has certain mineral salts in his system. I supplied them in your food."
"Eating none yourself," he agreed. "A clever method. You had no qualms, striking down your friends for this gay blade?"
"They go to ransom, as you do," she replied, her lovely face hardening. "No friends of mine, Captain Thorne. If they accepted me, it was because I had money and position. I have no love for their silly kind."
The pirate chief swaggered forward, grinning. "Let us leave the moral questions for others, Captain Thorne, and speak of more solid matters. Solid gold, let us say."
Thorne balked instantly. Time was all he had left to play, aside from his unsuspected ability to move and his ruthless speed with guns, time for Bannerman or General Wheelwright to realize something had gone amiss with the plan to expose Iris Chanler to the bloody ruins of Banya Tor. He could have wept with rage at the futility with which they had laid their ingenious trap.
"If you refer to a ransom," he coldly replied, "I demand something better than the word of a flash-gun rock-trader like yourself that you have any right to hold me at all."
They gaped at him. "We hold you, Captain Thorne. Is that insufficient?" demanded Iris, teeth glinting between livid and unpleasant lips.