Simon's right hand started the hundredth part of a second later, moving with the speed of light—and the stiffness of his wounded shoulder caught it in midflight like a cruel brake. A stiletto of pain stabbed through his back like a hot iron. In the hypnotic grasp of that uncanny moment his disability had been driven out of his mind: he had used his right hand by instinct which moved faster than thought. In an instant he had corrected himself, and his left hand was snatching at Fernack's revolver in his coat pocket; but by that time Valcross was also holding a gun.
A shot smacked past his ear, stunning the drum like the blast of an express train concentrated twenty thousand times. His revolver was stuck in his pocket. Of the next shot he heard only the report. The bullet went nowhere near him. Then he twisted his gun up desperately and fired through the cloth; and Valcross dropped his automatic and clutched at his side, swaying where he stood.
Simon hurled himself forward. The street had turned into pandemonium. White-faced pedestrians blocked the sidewalk on either side of the bank, crushing back out of the danger zone. The air was raucous with the screams of women and the screech of skidding tires. He caught Valcross round the waist with his sound arm, swung him mightily off his feet, and started back with him towards the cab. He saw Mr. Lipski, his features convulsed with intolerable excitement, scrambling down from his box to assist. And he saw Fay Edwards.
She was leaning against the side of the taxi, holding onto it, with one small hand pressed to the front of her dress; and Simon knew, with a terrible finality, where Valcross's second shot had gone.
Something that was more than a pang came into his throat; and his heart stopped beating. And then he went on.
He jerked open the door and flung Valcross in like a sack. And then he took Fay Edwards in his arms and carried her in with him. She was as light in his arms as a child; he could not even feel the pain in his shoulder; and yet he carried the weight of the whole world. He put her down on the seat as tenderly as if she had been made of fragile crystal, and closed the door. The cab was jolting forward even as he did so.
'Where to, pal?' bellowed the driver over his shoulder.
Simon gave him Fernack's address.
There was a wail of police sirens starting up behind them— far behind. Weaving through the traffic, cornering on two wheels, whisking over crossroads in defiance of red lights, supremely contemptuous of the signs on one-way streets, performing hair-raising miracles of navigation with one hand, Mr. Sebastian Lipski found opportunities to scratch the back of his head with the other. Mr. Lipski was worried.
'Chees!' he said bashfully, as if conscious that he was guilty of unpardonable sacrilege, and yet unable to overcome the doubts that were seething in his breast. 'What is dis racket, anyway? Foist ya puts de arm on a guy wit' out any trouble. Den ya lets him go. Den ya shoots up Fift' Avenue an' brings him back again. Howja play dis snatch game, what I wanna know?'
'Don't think about it,' said the Saint through his teeth. 'Just drive!'
He felt a touch on his arm and looked down at the girl. She had pulled off her hat, and her hair was falling about her cheeks in a flood of soft gold. There were shadows in her amazing amber eyes, but the rest of her face was untroubled, unlined, like unearthly satin, with the bloom of youth and life undimmed on it. The parting of her lips might have been the wraith of a smile.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'I'm not going with you—very far.'
'That's nonsense,' he said roughly. 'It's nothing serious. 'You're going to be all right'
But he knew that he lied.
She knew, too. She shook her head, so that the golden curls danced.
'It doesn't hurt,' she said. 'I'm comfortable here.'
She was nestling in the crook of his arm, like a tired child. The towers and canyons of New York whirled round the windows, but she did not see them. She went her way as she had lived, without fear or pity or remorse, out of the unknown past into the unknown future. Perhaps even then she had never looked back, or looked ahead. All of her was in the present. She belonged neither to times nor seasons. In some strange freak of creation all times and seasons had been mingled in her, were fused in the confines of that flawless incarnation; the eternal coordinates of the ageless earth, death and desire. She sighed once.
'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I
