The others saw him brace himself on his feet as if to resist falling; and he remained quite still, with his eyes fixing and going dim. And then he took one step sideways, swayed, and crumpled down on to the floor with his limbs twitching convulsively and his chest labouring. . . .
Quite calmly and casually the Saint put out a hand and clasped it on the gun wrist of the man who stood beside him.
The man seemed to come alive out of a dream. And without any noticeable interregnum of full consciousness, he seemed to pass right on into another kind of dream—the transition being effected by the contingence upon the point of his jaw of a tearing uppercut that started well below the Saint's waistline and consummated every erg of its weight and velocity at the most vital angle of the victim's face. With the results aforementioned. He went down in a heap and lay very still, even as his companion had done a little earlier; and Simon picked up the gun.
'Which finishes that,' said the Saint, and found Patricia looking down again at Kuzela.
'What happened to him?' she asked, a trifle unsteadily.
'More or less what he tried to make happen to me. Ever come across those trick match-boxes that shoot a needle into you when you try to open them? I bought one last afternoon, and replaced the needle with something that was sent to me along with the message you know about. And I don't know that we shall want it again.'
He took the little box of death over to the fireplace, dropped it in the grate, and raked the glowing embers over it. Then he took up his hat and stick, which he saw lying in a chair, and glanced around for the last time. Only Kuzela's fingers were twitching now, and a wet froth gleamed on his lips and dribbled down one cheek. . . . Simon put an arm round the girl's shoulders.
'I guess we can be going,' he said, and led her out of the room.
It was in the hall that the expression on the face of a clock caught his eye and pulled him up with a jerk.
'What time did you say Beppo was going to get in touch with Teal?' he inquired.
'Four o'clock.' Patricia followed his gaze and then looked at her wrist. 'That clock must be fast ——'
'Or else you've stopped,' said the Saint pithily. He turned back his sleeve and inspected his own watch. 'And stopped you have, old darling. It's thirty-three minutes after four now— and to give Claud Eustace even a chance to think that he'd pulled me out of a mess would break my heart. Not to include another reason why he mustn't find us here. Where did you leave the car?'
'Just one block away.'
'This is where we make greyhounds look lazy,' said the Saint, and opened the front door.
They were at the gate when Simon saw the lights of a car slowing up and swinging in to the kerb on his left. Right in front of him, Kuzela's car was parked; and the Saint knew clairvoyantly that that was their only chance.
He caught Patricia's arm and flipped up the collar of her coat.
'Jump to it,' he crisped.
He scudded round to the driving-seat, and the girl tumbled in beside him as he let in the clutch. He shot right past the police car with his head well down and his shoulders hunched. A tattered shout reached him as he went by; and then he was bucking off down a side street with the car heeling over on two wheels as he crammed it round the corner. The police car would have to be turned right round in a narrow road before it could get after him, and he knew he was well away. He dodged hectically south-east, and kept hard at it till he was sure he had left any pursuit far behind.
Somewhere in the northern hinterlands of the Tottenham Court Road he stopped the car and made some hurried repairs to his appearance with the aid of the driving-mirror, and ended up looking distinctly more presentable than he had been when they left Hampstead. He looked so presentable, in fact, that they abandoned the car on that spot, and walked boldly on until they met a taxi, which took them to Berkeley Square.
'For the night isn't nearly over yet,' said the Saint, as they walked down Upper Berkeley Mews together after the taxi had chugged off out of sight.
It was one of those fool-proof prophecies which always delighted his sense of the slickness of things by the brisk promptness with which they fulfilled themselves. He had hardly closed the door of his house when the telephone bell began to ring, and he went to answer the call with a feeling of large and unalloyed contentment.
'Hullo-o? . . . Speaking. . . . That's which? . . . Teal? . . . Well, blow me, Claud Eustace, this is very late for you to be out! Does your grandmother allow you——? What? . . .
What have I been doing tonight? I've been drinking beer with Beppo.
