wraith of humour in it
'In a few minutes more, my friend, I shall believe that your ignorance is genuine. Or possibly your intelligence has deteriorated. Such things have been known to happen. I will admit that, when I decided to call on you myself, I had my doubts about the wisdom of the proceeding. A natural curiosity of my own persuaded me to take the risk. Now the risk has been justified, and I have been disappointed. It is a pity. But perhaps one cannot have everything. . . .'
'Allow me,' murmured the Saint genially, 'to mention that I'm doing my utmost to oblige. What, after all, is one corpse more or less between friends? Of course, my shooting isn't what it was, and as a matter of fact it never has been, and if you feel like taking a chance on it——'
'I rarely feel inclined to take chances,' said the prince calmly. 'But perhaps I have been distracting your attention.'
He made a slight signal with his right hand.
Just for an instant, the movement seemed to be nothing more than a meaningless gesture; and the Saint was deceived. And then the scales fell from his eyes—just that one instant too late.
He had forgotten that drumming on the front door of the suite. When it had stopped for the arrival of the prince he had thought no more about it. He had taken it for nothing more than an elementary ruse to enable the prince to make his entrance unobserved through the sitting-room windows; he had cursed himself silently for being so simply taken in, and thereafter had dismissed it from a mind that was fully occupied with other problems. .
And now he grasped his error.
It was literally thrust upon him—jabbed firmly and incontrovertibly into his spine, and purposefully left there. Before that, in his irregular and energetic life, he had experienced the identical sensation. The feel of a gun muzzle in one's back leaves an indelible imprint on one's memory.
Simon stood quite still.
'Disappointing, in its way,' said the prince silkily, 'but satisfactory in most respects. I can recall the days when you would have been more troublesome.'
Unhurriedly he crossed the room and picked up the strongbox, and the Saint watched him coldly. There were two chips of white-hot sapphire in the Saint's eyes, twin lights of concentrated wrath that blazed through a thin crust of glacial immobility. The memory of the old days was seething through his tissues like an elixir of hot gall. The prince was right. Simon Templar had never been so easy.
The Saint's mouth writhed into a grimly tightening line. The softness had gone out of him. He felt as if he had just woken up—as if he had been fumbling feebly through a stifling fog, and suddenly the fog had vanished and he was stretching limber muscles and gulping down great lungfuls of clear mountain air. His brain was as pellucid as an Alpine pool. It had room for only one idea: to get his hands on to the contemptuous faces of the party that had made a fool of him, and hit them. Hit them, and keep on hitting. . . .
The prince was smiling at him.
'I can only repeat my assurance, Mr. Templar, that there are times when ignorance is bliss and curiosity may be an expensive pastime. Particularly in one whose hand has lost its cunning.'
Simon Templar drew a deep breath.
Then he fired from his pocket.
His gun, with a half-charged cartridge in the chamber, gave no more than an explosive little cough, which merged into the sharp smack of the bullet crashing home into the single electric light switch by the door; and the room was plunged into impenetrable blackness.
The Saint hurled himself sideways. Right behind him he heard the dull plop of an efficiently silenced gun, but he was untouched. He twisted like an eel, and his hand brushed a pair of legs. They heard his grim chuckle in the darkness. There was a gasp, a strangled cry, and a terrific thud that mingled with the slamming of a door.
And after that there was a queer stillness in the room; and in the stillness someone groaned harrowingly. . . .
Monty Hayward dipped in his pocket and found a box of matches. He struck one circumspectly, and looked about him.
Patricia Holm was standing quietly beside the bed; and on the floor the horse-faced gun-in-the-back guy was giving a lifelike imitation of a starfish in its death agony. But the Crown Prince had gone—and so had Simon Templar.
III. HOW SIMON
