Prelude For War

'Of course not,' said the girl. 'Really, Sergeant, you're very kind, and I'm sure you mean well and all that sort of thing, but this is getting too ridiculous for words.'

'It's a gang,' repeated the constable confidently. 'That's wot——'

'Will you shut your mouth?' said the sergeant crush­ingly; and when his subordinate had obeyed he looked rather miserable and lonely. 'Wot the 'ell,' he said, giving way to forces stronger than official rank, 'are we goin' to do about this ?'

There was a pause of intense cogitation.

'Get 'old of Scotland Yard,' said the constable, 'and tell 'em wot Lady Valerie says.'

'While we keep Mr Templar in custody,' said the ser­geant, seeing light.

'But you can't!' the girl said indignantly. 'How can you lock Mr Templar up in your beastly prison for kid­napping me when I'm here to prove that he hasn't done anything of the sort? I mean, I'm the one who's supposed to have been kidnapped, so I ought to have some say about it. Who's got any right to say I've been kidnapped if I say I haven't?'

The sergeant wriggled wretchedly inside his coat.

'I dunno, miss,' he said. 'But those are the instructions we 'ad from London.'

'I won't hear of it!' she said tearfully.

She sat down on the bed beside the Saint and took hold of his arm. Her lovely brown eyes gazed at him with some­thing like worship.

'Do you think we ought to tell them, Simon ?' she said.

'Do you ?' he replied, not knowing what she was talking about, but with an awful premonition.

'Yes.' She flounced up and took hold of the sergeant's arm. 'You see,' she said, 'Mr Templar and I are going to be married.'

Simon Templar leaned back on his elbows just a split second before he would have fallen back on them. His brain whirred like a clock preparing to strike.

The sergeant blinked.

The constable gulped, and then his face opened in a great joyful romantic beam.

He said: 'Wot?'

She said: 'Yes. You see, we only just fixed it up last night, when we found out we were in love. And—-and we didn't want any publicity. I mean, you know what the newspapers would do with anything like that. So we thought we'd just run away. I suppose some of my friends have been trying to get hold of me, or something, and when they found I'd disappeared they thought something frightful had happened to me, and so they told Scotland Yard and started all this silly scare; but there's nothing in it really, and we've just eloped, and we're going to get married as soon as we can fix it up, and you can't arrest Mr Templar because that would spoil everything and it 'd be in all the papers and we'd get all the limelight that we're trying to get away from. You do understand, don't you ?'

The Saint lay completely back and closed his eyes, because he could think of nothing else to do.

And she had the nerve to sit down beside him and kiss him.

And then the constable was pumping his limp hand and saying: 'Well sir, may I 'ave the honour of being the first to congratulate you.'

'You may,