"You said it! You're right where I want you. Hear me! I'll tell you a home truth you missed through not bringing me up yourself instead of slinging me into a workhouse when my mother died. And that home truth is that there's one big wad of conceit swollen up above your ears, which same has just landed you in the fishiest kettle of fish you ever dived into in your sweet life! You think you're sitting on several square miles of velvet. You've got me, you've got Miss Hawthorne, and you figure it out you've got every card in the pack neatly stacked up in your own private mitt. Guess again! Maybe you think I'm bluffing. Guess twice more! I never put up a bluff unless I've got an even chance of pulling out if it's called. That applies now. Scotland Yard have got your little dossier nicely tied up in pink ribbon, just waiting to travel along to the Public Prosecutor. And d'you know where you'll be when that dossier makes its speech? On the drop, Big Triangle, plumb on the drop! It's all sealed up, because just now this game happens to be a private one, and I don't want any policemen sitting in if I can help it. But if I don't rock into Scotland Yard by midnight--the witching hour!--the seals'll be broken, and that means the hangman'll be earning big money about eight weeks later. Which prison'd you fancy? Pentonville--Wormwood Scrubs--Holloway--Brixton? ... I expect it could be arranged." Surcon stared as though he could not believe his ears. Here was his prisoner talking calmly about executions, and all the minor troubles that were coming to the Big Triangle, when all the time Morini had the bead on him, and would use it at a word! And, in spite of their terse, slangy phraseology, Storm's words carried conviction in every ice-flecked syllable.