The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror)

apparatus of which Simon Templar had most need; and no effort of his could dislodge it.

'Step out, Cuthbert,' snapped the Saint, with a slight rasp in his voice.

In the darkness inside the car, a slight blur of white caught and interested Simon's eye. It lay on the seat beside the driver. With that premonition of failure dancing about in his subcon­scious and making faces at his helpless stupidity, the Saint grabbed at the straw. He got it away—a piece of paper—and the Scorpion, seeing it go, snatched wildly but not soon enough.

Simon stuffed the paper into his coat pocket, and with his other hand he took the Scorpion by the neck.

'Step!' repeated the Saint crisply.

And then his forebodings were fulfilled—simply and straight­forwardly, as he had known they would be.

The Scorpion had never stopped the engine of his car—that was the infinitesimal yet sufficient fact that had been strug­gling ineffectively to register itself upon the Saint's brain. The sound was scarcely anything at all, even to the Saint's hypersen­sitive ears—scarcely more than a rhythmic pulsing disturbance of the stillness of the night. Yet all at once—too late—it seemed to rise and racket in his mind like the thunder of a hundred dynamos; and it was then that he saw his mistake.

But that was after the Scorpion had let in the clutch.

In the blackness, his left hand must have been stealthily engaging the gears; and then, as a pair of swiftly growing lights pin-pointed in his driving-mirror, he unleashed the car with a bang.

The Saint, with one foot in the road and the other on the running-board, was flung off his balance. As he stumbled, the jamb of the door crashed agonisingly into the elbow of the arm that reached out to the driver's collar, and something like a thousand red-hot needles prickled right down his forearm to the tip of his little finger and numbed every muscle through which it passed.

As he dropped back into the road, he heard the crack of Patricia's gun.

The side of the car slid past him, gathering speed, and he whipped out the Scorpion's own automatic. Quite casually, he plugged the off-side back tyre; and then a glare of light came into the tail of his eye, and he stepped quickly across to Patricia.

'Walk on,' he said quietly.

They fell into step and sauntered slowly on, and the head­lights of the car behind threw their shadows thirty yards ahead.

'That jerk,' said Patricia ruefully, 'my shot missed him by a yard. I'm sorry.'

Simon nodded.

'I know. It was my fault. I should have switched his engine off.'

The other car flashed past them, and Simon cursed it fluently.

'The real joy of having the country full of automobiles,' he said, 'is that it makes gunning so easy. You can shoot anyone up anywhere, and everyone except the victim will think it was only a backfire. But it's when people can see the gun that the deception kind of disintegrates.' He gazed gloomily after the dwindling tail light of the unwelcome interruption. 'If only that four-wheeled gas-crocodile had burst a blood-vessel two miles back, we mightn't have been on our way home yet.'

'I heard you shoot once——'

'And he's still going—on the other three wheels. I'm not expecting he'll stop to mend that leak.'

Patricia sighed.

'It was short and sweet, anyway,' she said. 'Couldn't you have stopped that other car and followed?'

He shook his head.

'Teal could have stopped it, but I'm not a policeman. I think this is a bit early for us to start gingering up our publicity campaign.'

'I wish it had been a better show, boy,' said Patricia wist­fully, slipping her arm through his; and the Saint stopped to stare at her.

In the darkness, this was not very effective, but he did it.

'You bloodthirsty child!' he said.

And then he laughed.