De Villega echoed the word involuntarily, and the Saint bowed.
'I am the revolution,' he said, 'and I have just started. For my purpose I arranged that the army should leave Santa Miranda, so that I should have nothing to deal with but a few officials, yourselves, and a handful of guardias. Wonderful as I am, I could not fight an army.'
'Fool!' croaked Don Manuel, in a voice that he hardly knew as his own. 'The army will return, and then you will be shot.'
'Permit me to disagree,' said the Saint. 'The army will return, certainly. It will be to find a new government in power. The army is the servant of the state, not of one man, nor even of one government. Of course, on their return, the soldiers would be free to begin a second revolution to overthrow the new government if they disliked it. But I do not think they will do that, particularly as the new government is going to increase their pay. Observe the subtle difference. To have attempted to bribe the army to support a revolution would have been treason, and rightly resented by all patriotic citizens; but to signalize the advent of the new constitution by a bonus in cash to the army is an act of grace and generosity, and will be rightly appreciated.'
'And the people?' said Don Manuel, as in a dream.
'Will they weep to see you go? I think not. You have crushed them with taxes-we shall liberate them. They could have liberated themselves, but they had not the initiative to begin. Now I give them a lead, and they will follow.'
The Saint straightened up off the door. His blue eyes, with a sparkle of mischief in them, glanced from the Minister of the Interior to the President, and back to the Minister of the Interior again. His right hand came off his hip in a commanding gesture.
'Senores,' he said, 'I come for your resignations.'
The President came to his feet, bowed, and stood to attention.
'I will write mine at once, senor' he said hurriedly. 'It is plain that Pasala no longer needs me.'
It was the speech of his life, and the Saint swept him a low bow of approval.
'I thank your excellency!' he said mockingly.
'Half-wit!' snarled De Villega over his shoulder. 'Let me handle this!'
He thrust the President back and came round the table.
A sword hung at his side, and on the belt of his ceremonial uniform was a revolver holster. He stood before the Saint, one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other fiddling with the little strap which secured the flap of the holster. His dark eyes met Simon Templar's bantering gaze.
'Already the revolution is accomplished?' he asked.
'I have accomplished it,' said Templar.
De Villega raised his left hand to stroke his moustache.
'Senor,' he said, 'all this afternoon we have sat in this room, which overlooks the front courtyard of the palace. Beyond, as you know, is the Calle del Palacio. Yet we have heard no commotion. Is a people that has been newly liberated too full of joy to speak?'
'When the people hear of their liberation,' said the Saint, 'you will hear their rejoicing.'
De Villega's eyes glittered under his black brows.
'And your friends, senor?' he pursued. 'The other liberators? They have perhaps, surrounded the palace and over come the guards without an alarm being raised or a shot fired?'
The Saint laughed.
'Don Manuel,' he said, 'you do me an injustice. I said I was the father of the revolution. Can a child have two fathers? Alone, Manuel, I accomplished it-yet you persist in speaking of my private enterprise as if it were the work of a hundred. Will you not give me the full credit for what I have done?' De Villega stepped back a pace.
'So,' he challenged, 'the people does not know. The palace guards do not know. The army does not know. Will you tell me who does know?'
'Our three selves,' said the Saint blandly. 'Also two friends of mine who organized the war for me. And the governor of the prison, whom I captured on his way to mobilize the guardias against me. It is very simple. I intend this to be a bloodless revolution, for I am against unnecessary killing. You will merely resign, appointing a new government in your places, and leave Pasala at once, never to return again on pain of death.'
The holster was now undone, and De Villega's fingers were sliding under the flap.
'And you-alone-demand that?'
'I do,' said the Saint, and leaped at De Villega as the revolver flashed from its place.
With one arm he grasped Don Manuel around the waist, pinning his left arm to his side; with his left hand he gripped Don Manuel's right wrist, forcing it back, and twisting.
The President sprang forward, but it was all over in a couple of seconds. The revolver exploded twice, harmlessly, into the floor, and then fell with a clatter as the Saint's grip be came too agonizing to be borne.
The Saint hurled De Villega from him, into the President's very arms, and as De Villega staggered back his sword grated out of its sheath and remained in the Saint's right hand. The President's revolver was halfway out of its holster when the Saint let him feel the sword at his breast. 'Drop it!' ordered Simon. The President obeyed.
Templar forced the two men back to the wall at the sword's point. Then he turned quickly, using the sword to fish up the two revolvers from the floor by their trigger guards, and turned again to halt their immediate rally with the guns impaled on his blade.
From below, through the open windows, came the shouting of the sentries, and the sound of running feet thundered in the passage outside the room.
Like lightning the Saint detached the revolvers from his sword, and held them one in each hand. They covered their owners with an equal steadiness of aim.
The two shots that De Villega had fired, though they had hit no one, had done damage enough. They hadn't entered into the Saint's plan of campaign. He had betted on being quick enough to catch De Villega before he could get his hand to his gun in its cumbersome holster-and the Saint, for once, had been a fraction of a second slow on his timing. But the error might yet be repaired.
'You, excellency, to the windows!' rapped the Saint in a low voice. 'You, De Villega, to the door! Reassure the guards. Tell them that the President was unloading his revolver when it accidentally exploded. The President will repeat the same thing from the window to the sentries below.'
He dodged out of sight behind the door as it burst open, but there was no mistaking the menace of the revolvers which he still focussed on the two men.
The President was already addressing the sentries below. De Villega, with one savagely impotent glance at the unfriendly muzzle that was trained upon him, followed suit, giving the Saint's suggested explanation to the guards who crowded into the doorway.
'You may go,' he concluded. 'No harm has been done. But remain within call-I may need you shortly.'
It required some nerve to add that last remark, in the circumstances, but De Villega thought that the Saint would not betray his presence with a shot if he could possibly help it. He was right. The President came back from the window. The guards withdrew, with apologies for their excited irruption, and the door closed. The Saint slid the bolt into its socket.
'A wise precaution, Don Manuel, to warn the guards that you might need them,' he said. 'But I do not think it will help you.'
He stuck the revolvers into his sash and picked up the sword again. It was a better weapon for controlling two men than his little knife, and much quieter than the revolvers.
'Your resignations or your lives, senores?' said the Saint briskly. 'I will take whichever you prefer to give, but I must have one or the other at once.'
De Villega sat down at the table, but did not write. He unbuttoned his coat, fished out a packet of cigarettes, and lighted one, blowing out a great cloud of smoke. Through it he looked at the Saint, and his lips had twisted into a sneering grin.
'I have another thing to offer, senor,' he remarked viciously, 'which you might prefer to either of the things you have mentioned.'
'Es decir?' prompted Simon, with a frowning lift of his eyebrows.
De Villega inhaled again with relish, and let the smoke trickle down from his nostrils in two long feathers. There was a glow of taunting triumph in his malignant stare.
'There is the Senorita McAndrew,' he said, and the Saint's face suddenly went very meek.
