wondered just how the thing was done. I'd be awfully disappointed if you didn't bump me off in the most approved style.'
At the back of him, Joe choked on an oath; but Maxie was unimpressed.
'Sure,' he agreed affably. 'We'll give you a show. But there ain't much to it. Just in the line of business, see?'
'I see,' said the Saint quietly.
The complete unconcern, the blandly brutal callousness of Maxie's reply, seemed to have frozen something deep in his heart. He had faced death before—death that flamed out at him in violent, seething hate, death that dispassionately proposed his annihilation as a matter of cold expedience. He had dealt out death himself, in various ways. But never had he known a man to attempt to snuff out another's Life so casually, with such an indescribable absence of all personal feeling, as this ruthless killer who was preparing to send a bullet through his vitals—'just in the line of business. . . .'
The Saint had had his own rules of the game; but at that moment they were forgotten. If he ever broke loose from the trap in which he was held, if Destiny offered him that one lone ghost of a break to get away and join in the game again, for the rest of that adventure he would play it as his opponents played it—giving no quarter. He would be the same as they were—utterly without mercy or compunction. He would have only one remedy for all mistakes—the same as theirs.
In the dim light his eyes had lost all expression. Their gaze was narrowed down to a mere frosty gleam of jagged ice.
'Over by that tree,' directed Maxie conversationally. 'That's the best spot.'
His phrasing of the words held a sinister implication that many other spots in that locality had been tried, and that his choice was based on the findings of long experience; but the suggestion was absolutely unconscious. He seemed even more indifferent than if he had been posing the Saint for a photograph.
Simon looked at him for a moment and then turned away. There was nothing else he could do. Sometimes he had wondered why even on the way to certain death a man should still submit to the dictation of a gun; now, with a terrible clarity of reason, he knew the answer. Until death had actually struck him, until the ultimate unanswerable instant of annihilation, he would cling to the hope that some miracle must bring reprieve; obedient to some illogical blind instinct of self-preservation, he would do nothing to precipitate the end.
Under the turning muzzle of Maxie's gun, the Saint took up his position against the trunk of a towering elm and turned round again. Joe nodded approvingly and at a sign from Maxie stepped closer to prepare the victim for execution according to the gangland code.
Methodically he unbuttoned the Saint's coat and opened it; then began a similar task upon his shirt.
'Some guys started wearin' bullet-proof vests,' Maxie explained cheerfully.
Simon's nerves were tensed to the last unbearable ounce; his body was rigid like a steel bar. Now there was only Maxie covering him: Joe was fully taken up with his gruesome ritual, and the voiceless driver had raised the hood of the car and was seemingly engrossed in some minor ailment that he had detected in its mechanism. If he was to have a chance at all, it could only be now.
He moved slightly, as if to help Joe with his unbuttoning. Then, with a lightning movement, his left hand shot up. Lean fingers closed on Joe's left wrist as he fumbled with the Saint's shirt, and a sudden whipping contraction of steel sinews jerked the man aside, throwing him off balance and turning him half round on the leverage of his extended arm. The gun in his right hand was flung out of aim: Simon heard the crack of the explosion and saw the vicious splash of flame from the barrel, but the shot went off at right angles to the line it should have taken.
Simon's fist snapped over and thudded into the back of the gunman's neck, accurately at the base of his skull, smacking into the hard flesh and bone in a savage punch that must have almost jarred the bones loose from their sockets. The man grunted stupidly and lurched forward; but the Saint's left arm lashed round his upper body and held him up as a human shield, while his right hand grabbed at the man's gun wrist and held it to prevent Joe twisting it up behind his back and firing at point-blank range. He had had no time to wonder what Maxie might be doing during that flurry of hectic action; when the Saint had last observed him he had been three yards away and a trifle to his left; but the first jerk which had hurled Joe across the line of fire had made that position useless. Simon looked for him over Joe's shoulder and did not see him. He hauled his living shield round in a frantic spin; and then he heard the deafening peal of an automatic exploding somewhere close behind him on his right, and something hit him in the right side of his back below the shoulder with terrific force.
