There was a quicker route than the one he was taking, he knew. He had been taken over it once—a route that wound intricately through deserted side streets, occasionally crossing the more populous thoroughfares, and then hurriedly breaking away into the empty roads again. It was longer, but it was quicker to traverse. But the Saint had only been over it that once, and that by daylight; now, in the dark, he could not have trusted himself to find it again. The landmarks that a driver automatically picks out by day are of little use to him in the changed aspect of lamplight. And to get lost would be more maddening than the obstruction of the traffic. To waste min utes, and perhaps miles, travelling in the wrong direction, to be muddled by the vague and contradictory directions of accosted pedestrians and police, to be plagued and pestered with the continual uncertainty—that would have driven him to the verge of delirium. The advantage that might be gained wasn't worth all that might be lost. He had decided as much when he swung into the car in Brook Street. And he kept to the main roads.
He smashed through the traffic grimly, seizing every opportunity that offered, creating other opportunities of his own in defiance of every law and principle and point of etiquette governing the use of His Majesty's highway, winning priceless seconds where and how he could.
Other drivers cursed him; two policemen called on him to stop, were ignored, and took his number; he scraped a wing in a desperate rush through a gap that no one else would ever have considered a gap at all; three times he missed death by a miracle while overtaking on a blind corner; and the pugnacious driver of a baby car who ventured to insist on his rightful share of the road went white as the Hirondel forced him on to the kerb to escape annihilation.
It was an incomparable exhibition of pure hogging, and it made everything of that kind that Roger Conway had been told to do earlier in the evening look like a child's game with a push-cart; but the Saint didn't care. He was on his way; and if the rest of the population objected to the manner of his going, they could do one of two things with their objections.
Some who saw the passage of the Saint that night will remember it to the end of their lives; for the Hirondel, as though recognising the hand of a master at its wheel, became almost a living thing. King of the Road its makers called it, but that night the Hirondel was more than a king: it was the incarnation and apotheosis of all cars. For the Saint drove with the devil at his shoulder, and the Hirondel took its mood from his. If this had been a superstitious age, those who saw it would have crossed themselves and sworn that it was no car at all they saw that night, but a snarling silver fiend that roared through London on the wings of an unearthly wind.
For half an hour . . . with the Saint's thumb restless on the button of the klaxon, and the strident voice of the silver fiend howling for avenue in a tone that brooked no contention . . . and then the houses thinned away and gave place to the first fields, and the Saint settled down to the job—coaxing, with hands as sure and gentle as any horseman's, the last possible ounce of effort out of the hundred horses under his control. . . .
There was darkness on either side: the only light in the world lay along the tunnel which the powerful headlights slashed out of the stubborn blackness. From time to time, out of the dark, a great beast with eyes of fire leapt at him, clamouring, was slipped as a charging bull is slipped by a toreador, went by with a baffled grunt and a skimming slither of wind. And again and again, in the dark, the Hirondel swooped up behind ridiculous, creeping glow-worms, sniffed at their red tails, snorted derisively, swept past with a deep-throated blare. No car in England could have held the lead of the Hirondel that night
The drone of the great engine went on as a background of gigantic song; it sang in tune with the soft swish of the tyres and the rush of the cool night air; and the song it sang was:
And the Saint had no idea what he was going to do. Nor was he thinking about it. He knew nothing of the geography of the 'house on the hill'—nothing of the lie of the surrounding land—nothing of the obstacles that might bar his way, nor of the resistance that would be offered to his attack. And so he was not jading himself with thinking of these things. They were beyond the reach of idle speculation. He had no clue: therefore it would have been a waste of time to speculate. He could only live for the moment, and the task of the moment— to hurl himself eastwards across England like a thunderbolt into the battle that lay ahead.
Softly the Saint took up the song; but his own voice could not be heard from the voice of the Hirondel. The song of the car bayed over wide spaces of country, was bruised and battered between the walls of startled village streets, was flung back in rolling echoes from the walls of hills.
That he was going to an almost blindfold assault took nothing from his rapture. Rather, he savoured the adventure the more; for this was the fashion of forlorn sally that his heart cried for—the end of inaction, the end of perplexity and helplessness, the end of a damnation of doubt and dithering. And in the Saint's heart was a shout of rejoicing, because at last the God of all good battles and desperate endeavour had remembered him again.
No, it wasn't selfish. It wasn't a mere lust for adventure that cared nothing for the peril of those who made the adventure worth while. It was the irresistible resurgence of the most fundamental of all the inspirations of man. A wild stirring in its ancient sleep of the spirit that sent the knights of Arthur out upon their quests, of Tristan crying for Isolde, of the flame in a man's heart that brought fire and sword upon Troy, of Roland's shout and the singing blade of Durendal amid the carnage of Roncesvalles. 'The sound of the trumpet. . . .'
Thus the miles were eaten up, until more than half the journey must have been set behind him.
If only there was no engine failure. . . . He had no fear for fuel and oil, for he had filled up on the way back from Maidenhead.
Simon touched a switch, and all the instruments on the dashboard before him were illuminated from behind with a queer ghostly luminance. His eye flickered from the road and found one of them.
Seventy-two.
Seventy-four.
Seventy-five . . . six. . . .
'Battle, murder, and sudden death. . . .'
'You know, Pat, we don't have a chance these days. There's no chance for magnificent loving. A man ought to fight for his lady. Preferably with dragons. . . .'
Seventy-eight.
Seventy-nine.
A corner loomed out of the dark, flung itself at him, menacing, murderous. The tyres, curbed with a cruel hand, tore at the road, shrieking. The car swung round the corner, on its haunches, as it were . . . gathered itself, and found its stride again. . . .
Ping!
Something like the crisp twang of the snapping of an overstrained wire. The Saint, looking straight ahead, blinking, saw that the windscreen in front of him had given birth to a star— a star of long slender points radiating from a neat round hole drilled through the glass. And a half-smile came to his lips.
The first sound repeated; then, in quick succession, two other sounds, sharp and high, like the smack of two pieces of metal. In front of him they were. In the gleaming aluminum, bonnet.
'Smoke!' breathed the Saint. 'This is a wild party!'
He hadn't time to adjust himself to the interruption, to parse and analyse it and extract its philosophy. How he came to be under fire at that stage of the journey—that could wait. Something had gone wrong. Someone had blundered. Roger must have been tricked, and Marius must have escaped—or something. But, meanwhile . . .
Fortunately the first shot had made him slow up. Otherwise he would have been killed.
The next sound he heard was neither the impact of a bullet nor the thin, distant rattle of the rifle that fired it. It was loud and close and explosive, under his feet it seemed; and the steering wheel was wrenched out of his hand—nearly.
He never knew how he kept his grip on it. An instinct swifter than thought must have made him tighten his hold at the sound of that explosion, and he was driving with both hands on the wheel. He tore the wheel round in the way it did not want to go, bracing his feet on clutch and brake pedals, calling up the last reserve of every sinew in his splendid body.
Death, sudden as anything he could have asked, stared him in the face. The strain was terrific. The Hirondel
