'Somehow or other,' he remarked, after a short interval of contented rumination, 'we seem to have disposed of the opposition. Let's have a look at Little Willie.'
He walked over and hitched the cause of all the trouble to its feet. In the clear light of one of the standard lamps mounted on the parapet, he saw a thin, sallow face from which two dull brown eyes blinked at him dazedly. Simon studied the little man curiously. On closer inspection, the prize he had collected from the lucky dip seemed a rather inadequate reward for the expenditure of so much energy and mental stress; but the Saint had a sublime faith in his good fortune.
'Where were you on your way to, George?' he inquired affably.
The little man shook his head.
To his surprise, the little man's lips tightened, and a sullen glaze came over his eyes. He almost snarled out his reply.
Simon frowned.
Somewhere a new shrill noise was drifting through the stillness of the night, and he realized that both Monty and Patricia were standing rather tensely at his side; but he paid no attention. His brain registered the impressions as if it received them through a fog. He had no time to think about them then.
A little pulse was beating deep within him, throbbing and surging up in a breathless fever of surmise. The stubborn rigid-ness of the small man's mouth had started it, and the harsh violence of his voice had suddenly quickened it to a great pounding tumult that welled clamorously up and hammered on the doors of understanding. It was preposterous, absurd, fantastic; and yet with an almost jubilant fatalism he knew that it was true.
Somewhere there was a catch. The smooth simplicity of things as he had seen them till that instant was a delusion and a snare. A child of ten could have perceived it; and yet the deception had been so bland and natural that the unmasking of it had the effect of a battering ram aimed at the solar plexus. And it had all been so forthright and aboveboard. A small and harmless-looking little man is hurrying home with his week's wages in his little bag. Three hairy thugs set on him and proceed to beat him up. Like a good citizen, you intervene. You swipe the ungodly on the snitch, and rescue Reginald. And then, most naturally, you approach your protege. You prepare to comfort him and bathe his wounds, what time he hails you as his hero and sends for the solicitors to revise his will. In your role of the compleat Samaritan, you inquire whither he was going, so that you may offer to shepherd him a little further on his way. . . . And then he bites your head off——
The Saint laughed.
'Yes, yes, I know, brother.' Very gently and soothingly he spoke, just as before; but way down in the impenetrable undertones of his voice that whisper of soft laughter was lilting about like a mirthful will-o'-the-wisp. 'But you've got us all wrong.
The German language has been spoken better. The Saint himself, who could speak it like a native when he chose, would have been the first to acknowledge that. But he computed that he had made his meaning fairly clear. Intelligible enough, at any rate, to encourage any ordinary person to investigate his credentials without actual hostility. And definitely he had given no just cause for the response which he received.
Perhaps the little man's normal nerve had been blown into space by his adventure. Perhaps his head was still muzzy with the painful memory of his recent experience. These questions can never now be satisfactorily settled. It is only certain that be was incredibly foolish.
With a vicious squeal that contorted his whole face, he wrenched one arm free from the Saint's grip and clawed at the Saint's eyes like a tigercat. And with that movement all doubts vanished from Simon Templar's mind.
'Not quite so quickly, Stanislaus,' he drawled.
He swerved adroitly past the tearing fingers and pinned the little man resistlessly against the wall; and then he felt Monty Hayward's hand on his shoulder.
'If you don't mind me interrupting you, old man,' Monty said coolly, 'is that bloke over there a friend of yours?'
