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"Comrade, you've just cleaned three fish that swallowed it."
"How do you make fish eat these feathers?"
"You cast the fly out on the water, and if you do it right a fish comes and
takes it. But as I said, no Russian could ever do it."
"A Russian can do anything that you can," Netchideff said violently.
"One ruble will get you fifty dollars thatyou can't."
Netchideff hefted the rod, as if he had a mind to hit Simon across the face
with it. Then he looked at it again, and at the little red-bodied fly dancing
at the end of the leader. A confused sort of anger twisted his face in a way
that was incongruously suggestive of a baby preparing to cry.
"I will show you," he said. "I will catch more fish than you with this thing.
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If I do not, it will prove you are lying!"
He flung open the door and went out.
Marian Kent and the Saint looked at each other without daring to speak.
The door opened again and Netchideff stood there.
"I do not want you to think that you have changed anything for yourselves,"
he said. "I have to pass the time, that is all. It does not suit me to kill
you, Templar, until Julius returns and I am ready to leave. So it is good that
you have time to think of your mistakes. As for this pretty and foolish
girl" his yellowish cat's eyes shifted to her with the naked directness of an
animal "I am not in a hurry for her because I do not need to be. I am going to
take her back to my submarine where I can enjoy her better, and when I have
enough my comrades will be glad to have their turn, until we get home and give
her to other comrades who will ask her questions about the Canadian Police."
vi
"If I live to be a hundred," Marian said at last, and giggled a little
hysterically, "I don't suppose I'll ever listen to a more fantastic argument."
"It worked, though, didn't it?" Simon grinned tightly.
"I still can't believe it. I can't think why."
"I gambled on a psychological gimmick. Haven't you noticed the formula in all
the Communist purges, how they can't be satisfied with just erasing the
opposition, as every other dictatorship has been? Their heretics have got to
confess, and acknowledge how wrong they've been and how richly they deserve
their punishment. I don't know how a psychiatrist would explain it, I just
know how it works. So I figured Igor mightn't be able to resist the chance to
make me eat crow before he kills me."
"How long will he try?"
"An hour maybe more if he's stubborn."
"But as he kindly told us, it won't make aay difference to what we've got
coming," she said. "When Pavan gets back with that part, the liquidation will
proceed as scheduled."
"We're still ahead, Any time we can keep him arguing, fishing, or playing
charades, is time where he won't be developing his nastier ideas. And time for
the cavalry to come galloping over the hill."
"We didn't kid him when he was" listening," she said quietly. "Why kid
ourselves? There ain't goin' to be no cavalry."
He met her eyes steadily.
"Are you sure of that?"
"Have you arranged for them?"
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"No," he said. "I'm on my own. But I hoped you might have."
"Pavan didn't spring this invitation on me till the last moment, and from
then on he didn't let me any farther away from him than a rest room where
there was no phone. I was afraid to try too hard to get word out, because part
of the time I was wondering if the invitation itself was a trap, to see if I'd
try to communicate with anyone and how I did it. And at the same time, if I
was really getting a break. I didn't want to risk fumbling it."
"You must have some regular schedule of contacts. When will the other
Mounties miss you?"
"Not before Monday. I only work for Pavan Monday through Friday, and I'd
already reported everything okay yesterday afternoon just before Pavan asked
me to come up here. My boss will think I'm just spending a nice restful
weekend which I should have been."
Simon smiled fractionally.
"This could be quite a problem for us, if we can't find a way to get loose."
"Doesn't the Saint always have something up his sleeve?"
"Sometimes I have had a knife. But not today. In any case, it wouldn't have
done any good. That's one of the various advantages of handcuffs. You can't
cut them off without special tools." He stared at his wrists. "Of course, you
could cut your hands off. They say some animals caught in a trap will do
that."
She shuddered almost imperceptibly.
"I don't know whether I could do it."
"Frankly, neither do I. But fortunately we don't have the gruesome decision
to make. No knife."
"How did Houdini do it?"
"If the handcuffs weren't fixed in advance, he had a key stashed away
somewhere. But I wasn't told there were going to be handcuffs. No key."
"And you can't take them apart, can you? No screwdriver. No hacksaw. No
file."
"I'll never be able to look a boy scout in the eye again," he said, "but I'm
not wearing one of those things."
"Could you pick the lock?"
"Maybe, if you were wearing a bobby pin, or even a hairpin." He glanced over
her short-cut dark hair. "But you aren't, of course."
"I haven't even a safety pin or any kind of pin."
He looked down at his waist.
"And out of all the ordinary belts I've got," he said, "I had to pick one
with a new-fangled plastic catch instead of a buckle. If I ever get out of
here, it goes straight in the ash-can."
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"A bedspring!" she gasped.
It was a forlorn idea, but they went through some strained contortions to
explore its far-fetched possibility. This did not take long.
"The hell with Progress," said the Saint. "And especially foam rubber."
They sat on their shared corner of the bunk again, linked together around the
corner post.
"There's nothing we could reach, is there?" she said. "I mean with our feet,
as far as they could stretch."
"No," he said briefly. "If I could get at my tackle box, it might be a
different story. But Julius and Igor aren't dopes, and they knew I couldn't
make my legs twelve feet long."
He studied the post that their arms were linked around. It was a smooth pole
fully five inches in diameter, with the bunk frames fastened solidly to it at
their outside corner. Two other corners of the frames were fastened to the log
walls, and their fourth corners were in the corner of the cabin itself. The
pole went down to some attachment through a snug-fitting hole in the floor
planking, and its upper end was notched into a tie beam overhead. It looked
and felt as solid as a growing tree, but it was the only possible weak point
left to try.
"Let's see if we can shake this loose," Simon said grimly.
For several minutes he heaved, pulled, jolted, pushed, and twisted against
the pole from a number of carefully selected angles. Because of the way their
arms were intertwined, he knew that some of his savage onslaughts must have [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]