CHAPTER XXVIII

LAST ROUND

Storm's face was bleak, but his two guns might have been gripped in vises mounted on rock-based foundations for all the quivering they showed. He thought that the colossal impact of Morini's bullet must have broken a rib, for, although no revolver in the world loaded a charge heavy enough to penetrate that wonderful steel-chain armour, the imperviousness of it was no defence against the sheer shock of the blow. Every breath he took stabbed an excruciating pang through his lungs. Yet his gay, reckless fighting smile was on his lips; and, when he spoke again, his voice was still deadly even, still rippling so deceptively smoothly over jagged slivers of quartz.

"Free Tip Number Two--straight from the stable--Big Triangle: When you flick out the king of trumps, never start in gloating until you're dam' sure the other man hasn't got the ace tucked away in his fist some place! This is where you look round for your umpteenth guess! All of you. And listen--just bat so much as an eyelid, one of you frogricked horse thieves, and you'll find out where fleas go when they've dined off a dope-soaked suicide! Anybody care to try it? No? Nobody curious? I'll say you're a crew of unenterprising sons of a Port Mahon baboon! And I'll bet less than twelve hours ago you were all scratching each other's backs and telling yourselves what a tough lot of hell-for-leather fire-eaters you were. Je-rusalem! You make me tired. What about it--huh? Can't you even raise one lone cuss-word among the lot of you? Tough? Gosh! I'd like to have the whole boiling of you aboard a good old-fashioned windjammer with a hard-case bucko mate to help me teach you real toughness."

They said nothing. One or two were on their feet, but even they remained safely motionless, having apparently no wish to court the certain death which lurked in the breech of the automatic that roamed so hopefully from head to head. And Storm went on baiting them, playing for a few minutes' grace in which to recover slightly from the stunning results of the shot he had taken and to formulate some scheme for getting Susan loose from the ropes without exposing himself to attack.

"You poor wet fish!" The tang of his whiplash contempt bit tellingly into the raw ends of their vanity with every measured stroke. "A suckling could boss a gang of white-livered slum rats like you! Hold up London itself for fifteen million? Take an expert's advice and go off and practice on hen-rabbits till you get stringy enough to hold up a hysterical old woman for fifteen cents and get away with it. I'm disappointed. I'm a plain ornery fighting machine--I'll fight anyone, any time, any place, and any old how--and I thought I'd landed the goods when I picked on you. Instead of which I find I'm bullyragging a grown-up Sunday School. This is my second guess! After grubstaking a stumer like this, I'm going fishing for tadpoles next time I feel bored. It's more exciting, and a heap more dangerous."

He had them writhing under the scourge, knew that every iota of the smart sank right in where it was meant to go--but still they stayed their hands. Tenacity of life, for the moment, held them at bay. Only for the moment. Storm knew that it couldn't last. It was only a question of time before someone gave the cue for the next movement of the ballet, and that time wasn't likely to be over-long elapsing. Very soon they must realise their strength, just as he realised his weakness. He was alone in the house, and no one knew where he was. No rescue party had been arranged for at the critical moment. If they attacked him in one concerted mob, he might kill half a dozen of them if he were lucky, but after that they'd have their revenge. And Susan would be left to face the final racket....

Zero hour.

Already he had pondered every detail of the room. As far as he knew, there was only the one exit--the door through which he had entered. There might be others--in fact, there probably were--but those hangings which surrounded the room were as bad as a fog. There wasn't a hope of gaining sufficient time to poke round all the four walls until one spotted the necessary bolt-hole. Therefore....

"Big Triangle, this is a private bus," Storm said. "Get off! Go and play with your friends in the audience."

One gun motioned him away from the platform, and then returned to aim on Surcon's heart. The Apex hesitated, but there was a flaring menace in Storm's grey eyes which brooked no refusal.

"And keep those hands of yours miles away from everything!" added Storm.

Slowly the Apex stepped off the daïs and walked towards one wall in the body of the room. Then Storm dropped one gun into his coat pocket, stooped swiftly, and gained possession of his knife. Backing in front of the silver sign to which Susan was bound, he felt for the cords which held her. Once found, a couple of rapid slashes, and she was free....

His luck had held--incredibly--but he had no leisure to waste on applauding his good fortune. Quick as light, he slipped the automatic from his pocket again and placed the knife in her hand; and even as he did so he saw that the pent-up torrent was on the point of breaking. The men were looking to the Apex, waiting tensely, keyed up for the signal to let fly. Storm could almost see the squall careering up to engulf him. Only a few seconds more--if that--but Heaven grant him the respite of those few seconds!

"Big Triangle!" Arden's voice clipped out again, and this time he glutted into it every fierce, rampaging demon of savage command he could concentrate on the words. "You're my hostage. Freeze on to that! It's no bluff this journey! The first man who makes a threatening movement'll finish it after you're dead! I've got you covered, and I never miss. Look!"

And then Storm diced everything on an even chance. Either his action would win the few seconds' cowed stillness he needed, or it would be as a spark to the over-dried tinder which was only waiting for its opportunity to blaze up and wipe him off the earth.

He made the gamble without a flicker of an eye.

Two vicious little tongues of orange flame spat out of his automatics, and the two shots rattled like the sharp rat-tat of a drum.

And Storm was sidling towards the door with Susan following him. And Ezra Surcon had sprung back a pace, clapping shaky hands to his ears, for Storms' bullets had grazed under the lobes like two hot searing irons scraped across the skin.

"That'll show you whether I've handled gats before!" Storm challenged, frostily as a Siberian zephyr. "And next time it won't be fancy shooting you'll see demonstrated. Now think again, all of you, before you cut up crusty with me!"

Susan's hand was already on the door, and in the tingling silence Storm heard her catch her breath. The next moment she was whispering in his ear.

"There're men moving about outside--creeping around. I can hear them."

"Hell!"

The word murmured almost inaudibly in Storm's throat. More mess! When he had heard the Apex summon to that room all the men who were in the house, he had naturally assumed that the order would be obeyed. With the only exit he knew ruled out, they were in the most ghastly blind alley two people could have strayed into. And once again the effect of his arrogant threatening was wearing off--more quickly than before, now that the men he was dealing with had grasped their own danger as well as the precariousness of his position. They would never let him get away if they could possibly prevent it, even though they ran the risk of being shot down in the attack. Each one of them would hope to be lucky and escape the few rounds Kit could loose off before they reached him, and each would be aware of the havoc which would be running amok once he got in touch with Scotland Yard. The Apex most of all. Surcon's hands were coming slowly down from his face, and a fiendish lustre burned in his pale blue eyes. His voice rang out suddenly, breaking in on the sizzling intensity of Storm's thought.

"Wait, Captain Arden!"

Surcon, too, could move like an arrow. And the shock of Susan's discovery had taken that last, infinitesimal perfection of keenness off Storm's alert brain--such an all but imperceptible blunting, yet great enough to make an incalculable difference.

Ezra Surcon had flung up his hands and parted the hangings behind him. They saw that screwed to the wall was a small switchboard of porcelain from which protruded two six-inch levers of ebonite. And the Apex had one of these firmly gripped in each of his upraised hands.

"Now listen to me," he shouted. "Haven't forgotten Piccadilly Circus, have you? Well, try to imagine twice that amount of NCl3 under--_Buckingham Palace_! Why else should I make my headquarters here? There's a tunnel from the cellars--or was, before the explosive was tamped in--and the Palace isn't far. The stuff's packed in huge blocks of ice, but when I pull down this switch it'll close a circuit, and this heat's a network of platinum wires among the charge. Shoot me, and the weight of my body'll pull down the switch. I'll prove to you I'm not bluffing, either. See the other switch? That connects with a tiny tube of nitrogen trichloride upstairs. Show you----"

He dragged down the second lever. From over their heads came a dull, ear-numbing thud. The ceiling cracked, and little fragments of plaster broke away and crumbled to the floor....

The explosion, small as Surcon had said the charge was, shook the house. Came a hoarse exclamation outside the door, and someone barked out two words ... then, the muffled patter of feet stumbling up the stairs.... The Apex looked drawn and haggard suddenly, and an almost childlike puzzlement crept into his eyes.

"What was that?"

"More of your friends, I expect," remarked Storm coolly, for he had recognised the voice outside in the hall. "Susan, get the door open--hustle!"

"It's locked!" screamed Surcon. A mad triumph shook him. "Locked--locked--locked! No escape! Get after him, men! _Get on--get on--what're you waiting for?_ Watch, Captain Arden!"

Storm saw the knuckles of Surcon's right hand whiten over the lever they still held. Storm blazed away--carelessly, with one gun, into the ugly surge of men who hurled themselves at him; accurately, with the other, at Ezra Surcon. And Storm thanked all his pagan gods that his boast had been a sound one--that he never missed. Three bullets sped like three crashing thunderbolts into Surcon's right wrist, smashing flesh and bone and sinew to a spurting crimson pulp.

Storm saw the Apex drop his hand, and then Captain Christopher Arden, trouble-hunter, was slap in the middle of as big a slice of trouble as any Hotspur could desire. With two empty guns clenched in his hands to add weight to his blows, he was battling for dear life against a horde of raging maniacs who, fortunately for him, were too closely packed to be able to use their weapons without risk of killing each other, were hampered by their own numbers ... men who used tooth and talon like wild beasts ... men, like animals, thirsting for blood....

No giant of legend could have stood up to that terrible onslaught for more than three minutes. Human muscle and nerve, however willing, were physically incapable of sustaining the fearful pace of such a fight. Storm slogged away with the powerful precision of the fighting machine he had called himself, but he felt his strength going and the _sog_ of his sledge-hammer blows into contorted faces growing less potent with every punch. His fists catapulted out from all angles--he still smiled, but grimly--and all the time he knew it couldn't last. A red mist shot with eddying whirls of black and silver swam before his eyes nauseatingly; his chest was a hive of toiling agony; he wondered wearily how long it could last. But he never let up. He knew he was going out, knew that his hour had struck ... a great and worthy end to so wildly glorious a life. He knew no fear--only a strange, primitive exaltation.

Battered, bruised, and torn, thereafter he fought on in silence. He knew that he had been fighting for no more than half a minute, yet in that short space he felt as if he had lived through an eternity. As though separated from his body, his mind stood out clear as a crystal globe in sunlight. He could think coldly, calmly, and work out exactly how much longer he could keep going. Another half-minute, perhaps, and then--_finis_....

And then a new voice broke into the tempest. A familiar voice, preternaturally excited. Teal! How had Teal got in? Had he found the secret entrance, or broken through the locked door? Funny, that--Storm hadn't expected rescue. All the odds had been against Teal getting in before it was too late. But it was Teal's booming bass all right--no doubt about that--and Teal himself, ploughing like a cruiser towards him.

"Hold on, Captain Arden! ... Hold on! ... Come on, boys!"

And Storm managed to cheer back:

"Atta baby, Teal! Give 'em Hell!"