bandoliers which the Saint ordered his prisoners to discard, for these were required for a certain purpose. Then the Saint returned to the doorway. 'Hasta la vista!' he murmured mockingly. 'Until we meet again!'
And he hurled the two gleaming round black objects he carried, and a wail of terror went up from the doomed men.
The Saint sprang back, slamming and barring the doors in the face of the panic-stricken stampede; and the two tennis balls, which he had coated with Kelly's providential enamel for the purpose, rebounded off the heads of the cowering comisarios, leaving great splashes of paint on the gorgeous uniforms and the gorgeous mustachios of Santa Miranda's Big Two, and went bouncing insolently round the room.
The Saint vaulted over the veranda rail and ran round to the front of the bungalow. Sheridan, his bag of cartridges slung over his shoulder, was already mounted on one of the police horses, and holding the other by the bridle. From inside the dining room could be heard the muffled shouting and cursing of the imprisoned men, and on the panels of the barred doors thundered the battering of their efforts to escape.
The Saint sprang into the saddle.
'Vamos!' he cried, and smacked his hand down on the horse's quarters.
The pounding of departing hoofs came to the ears of the men in the locked room, and redoubled the fury of their onslaught on the doors. But the mahogany of which the doors were made was thick and well seasoned, and it was ten minutes before they broke out. And then, on foot and unarmed, there was nothing for them to do but to return to Santa Miranda and confess defeat.
The which they did, collaborating on the way down to invent a thrilling tale of a desperate and perilous battle, in which they had braved a hundred deaths, their heroism availing them naught in the face of Simon Templar's evil cunning. But first, to restore their shattered nerves, they partook freely of three bottles of Sheridan's whisky which they found. And it may be recorded that on this account the next day found them very ill; for, before he left, Archie Sheridan had liberally adulterated the whisky with Epsom salts. in anticipation of this very vandalism. But, since guardia and comisario alike were unfamiliar with the flavour of whisky, they noticed nothing amiss, and went unsuspecting to their hideous fate.
But when they returned to Santa Miranda they said nothing whatever about bombs, wisely deeming that the inclusion of that episode in their story could not but cover them with derision.
Meantime, Simon Templar and Archie Sheridan had galloped neck and neck to Kelly's bungalow, and there Kelly was waiting for them. He had a kitbag already packed with certain articles that the Saint had required, and Simon took the bag and lashed it quickly to the pommel of his saddle.
Sheridan dismounted. The Saint shook hands with him, and took the bridle of the spare horse.
'All will be well,' said the Saint blithely. 'I feel it in my bones. So long, souls I See you all again soon. Do your stuff- and good luck!'
He clapped his heels to his horse, and was gone with a cheery wave of his hand.
They watched him till the trees hid him from view, and then they went back to the bungalow.
'A piece of wood, pliers, screws, screwdriver, and wire, Kelly, my bhoy!' ordered Sheridan briskly. 'I've got some work to do before I go to bed to-night. And while I'm doing it you can gather round and hear the biggest laugh yet in this revolution, or how the Battle of Santa Miranda was nearly won on the courts of Wimbledon.'
'I thought you weren't coming back,' said the girl accusingly.
'I didn't know whether I was or not,' answered the shameless Archie. 'It all depended on whether the Saint's plan of escape functioned or not. Anyway, a good-bye like you gave me was far too good to miss just because I might be coming back. And don't look so disappointed because I got away. I'll go down to the town and surrender, if that's what you want.'
Towards sundown a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the bungalow, and the officer in command declared his intention of making a search. Kelly protested.
'You have no right,' he said, restraining an almost irresistible desire to throw the man down the steps and thus precipitate the fighting that his fists were itching for.
'I have a warrant from the Minister of the Interior, El Supremo e Ilustrisimo Senor Manuel Conception de Villega,' said the officer, producing the document with a flourish.
'El Disgustado y Horribilisimo Senor!' muttered Kelly.
The officer shrugged, and indicated the men who waited below.
'I do not wish to use force, Senor Kelly,' he said significantly, and Kelly submitted to the inevitable.
'But,' he said, 'I do not know why you should suspect me to be hiding him.'
'You are known to be a friend of the Senor Sheridan,' was the brief reply, 'and the Senor Sheridan is a friend of this man. We are looking for both of them.'
Kelly followed the officer into the house.
'What did you say was the name of this man you are looking for?' he inquired.
'To the Senor Shannet, whom he attacked,' said the officer, 'he gave his name as Benito Mussolini.'
He was at a loss to understand Kelly's sudden earthquaking roar of laughter. At last he gave up the effort, and put it down to another manifestation of the well-known madness of all ingleses. But the fact remains that the joke largely compensated Kelly for the indignity of the search to which his house was subjected.
The officer and half a dozen of his men went through the bungalow with a small-toothed comb, and not a cubic inch of it, from floor to rafters, escaped their attention. But they did not find Archie Sheridan, who was sitting out on the roof, on the opposite side to that from which the soldiers had approached.
At last the search party allowed themselves to be shepherded out, for barely an hour's daylight was left to them, and they had already fruitlessly wasted much valuable time.
'But remember, Senor Kelly,' said the officer, as his horse was led up, 'that both Sheridan and Mussolini have been declared outlaws for resisting arrest and assaulting and threatening the lives of the guardia civiles sent to apprehend them. In the morning they will be proclaimed; and the Senor Shannet, who has heard of the insolence offered to the Law, has himself offered to double the reward for their capture, dead or alive.'
The troopers rode off on their quest, but in those latitudes the twilight is short. They scoured the countryside for an hour, until the fall of night put an end to the search, and five miles away they found the horses of the two comisarios grazing in a field, but of the man Mussolini there was no trace. The Saint had had a good start; and what he did not know about the art of taking cover in the open country wasn't worth knowing.
He was stretched out on a branch of a tall tree a mile away from where the horses were found when the troop of cavalry reined in only twelve feet beneath him.
'We can do no more now,' said the officer. 'In the morning we shall find him. Without horses he cannot travel far. Let us go home.'
The Saint laughed noiselessly in the darkness.
5
That night there came into Santa Miranda a peon.
He was dirty and disreputable to look upon. His clothes were dusty, patched in many places, and threadbare where they were not patched; and his hair was long, and matted into a permanent thatch, as is the slovenly custom of the labourers of that country.
Had he wished to do so, he might have passed unnoticed among many other similarly down-at-heel and poverty-stricken people; but this he did not seem to want. In fact, he went out of his way to draw attention to himself; and this he found easy enough, for his poverty-stricken appearance was belied by the depth of his pocket.
He made a fairly comprehensive round of the inferior cafes in the town, and in each he bought wine and aguardiente for all who cared to join him. Naturally, it was not long before he acquired a large following; and, since he seemed to account for two drinks to everybody else's one, there was no surprise when he became more and more drunk as the evening wore on.
It was not to be expected that such display of affluence on the part of one whose outward aspect argued against the probability that he would have more than a few centavos to his name could escape comment, and it was not long before the tongues that devoured the liquor which he bought were busy with rumour. It was
