"You'll hear that all in good time," said Storm. "Wait till I've finished my speech, and don't interrupt. It's rude. Right! Item Two: I know exactly why you sent your cheap Bowery lead-slingers clinking for the men you did. I know why Cardan was killed, and Marker nearly, just like I know why Hannassay died. Why, I've seen plate glass less transparent than you! The amazing, everlasting, all-fired and brass-bound miracle is that even a mutt like old fat Teal didn't have the bracelets on you days and weeks ago. I could've done it; except that, as I've explained, it'd've been embarrassingly public. A day or two late, you decided it was time one of your incarnations faded out, and you got away with it. You kidded Teal, but you'd have to put up a bit of whole cloth big enough to cover the world before you got me guessing! And I think that tots up to about _that_. You never did anything particularly mysterious. I saw you stick up Moraine's, and all the world knows how you wangled the getaway from Marlborough Street Police Station. That was smart, I'll say. But it didn't matter. A few little fish don't matter when there's a whacking great whale jumping round the net. And that net is now blocked in with sheet iron and reënforced concrete tough enough to hold even you! D'you doubt me--d'you think I'm bluffing still--or shall I fire off another tankful?" Surcon said nothing. As Storm's staccato sentences shot out their deadly burden, the Apex had receded further and further into his throne, his jaw thrust out, his pale blue eyes gleaming like pin-points of azure flame, his whole crouching position resembling the compression of a wild animal about to spring. A crackling electricity had oozed into the air. The trace of uneasiness which had been in Surcon's eyes from the first had grown now into a raging devil of fear, with hate, desperation, and fury leaping in to join forces with it and bolster up its fundamental weakness. Storm's gun-metal grey eyes, drilling without a waver into his father's blue ones, were hard and pitiless.