He was peering around fearfully, and presently he saw what had made the noise--a fountain pen heavily encrusted with gold work. He picked it up and looked at it suspiciously. "Thet yores, Arden?" "Oh, yes," said Storm boredly. "Combination turnip-slicer, gramophone, trouser-press and portable aeroplane." He reached out a hand for it, but Mecklen thrust the pen into a pocket and pushed him away. "Keep movin'," he growled. "Funny, ain't yuh? Mebbe yew'll be sick presently." "I shall if I see much more of you," remarked Storm crudely. "One day," threatened Lew sullenly, "I'm gonna make yuh wish yew'd never bin born. Yew flap yore mouth too much. I'm gonna----" "I'll be there," yawned Storm, and Mecklen relapsed into a pugnacious silence. As Storm climbed the steps an odd, dancing, metallic laughter glittered in his grey eyes. That fountain pen had given an entirely new twist to the situation, and as yet he was unable to gauge whether the twist was going to be big or small. For Storm knew and had recognised the ornate filigree with which the pen was embellished, and he wondered what business James Norman Mattock might have in Buckingham Gate that morning. CHAPTER XXVI SECONDS OUT OF THE RING "Believe we've met before, Captain Arden," said the Apex. "Somehow I can't get into the way of calling you Kit." "Don't bother to try," advised Storm. "Somehow, I can't get into the way of calling you father." Ezra Surcon sat down again on his throne, taking in every detail of Storm's appearance with a keenly appreciative eye. It was a strange meeting between father and son, that. Family love is mostly a matter of long proximity, and there had been none of that between those two. No affection was in their clashing glances--Storm's interrogating, half-mirthful, accusing, dangerous, assured, level; Surcon's full of frank admiration blended with a trace of fear. Neither hate nor love was in the air, yet the atmosphere bristled with something far more potent. Circumstances had thrown them together to do battle on opposite sides of the law; battle to the death, fought out with words alone right up to the final _mêlée_--surely the strangest encounter in the annals of crime. "You're like your mother, son," said Surcon slowly. "You've got that cornfield Saxon hair of hers, and her eyes. And yet you're _me_.... I used to stand up that way, once--that proud, reckless way...." There was a short silence, while Storm met his father's gaze inscrutably, and Morini propped the door, an automatic swinging unobtrusively in one hand. "You're clever--like I am," said Surcon. "You found me--probably nobody else could have." "Yeh!" agreed Storm. "But you're like Lew--you flatter yourself. You weren't so very difficult, although I grant you--every time--there was a lot of luck in it. And now the game's up. I've got you. What're you going to do about it?" Surcon raised his eyebrows. "Do about it?" he repeated.