Prelude For War

one through which he had been brought in. He had been turned round enough while he was blindfolded to lose his bearings completely.

Valerie was beside him, and the four uniformed Sons of France who had formed their escort were drawn up on either side of them and behind them.

Bravache was there also. He emphasized his own im­portance by stopping to very deliberately draw off his gloves before he strolled across to one of the doors that opened off the room where they were. He knocked, turned the handle, and clicked his heels in the doorway as he raised his arm in salute.

'Les prisonniers, mon commandant.'

'Tres bien,' answered a voice from the room beyond; and even in those two words the Saint recognized the harsh strident tones that he had heard on the radio in his car— at least a hundred and fifty years ago.

Bravache turned away from the door and clicked his heels again.

'Garde a vous!' he barked.

The escort sprang to attention, but without taking their hands from the butts of their revolvers.

Out of the room, striding past the stiffly drawn up figure of Bravache, came a tall gray-haired man of about fifty-five. He wore the same uniform as the escort, except that there was a double row of coloured ribbons on his breast and his blue shirt had six gold bars on each shoulder. No French­man would have needed any introduction to him. That long narrow face with the low forehead and the black piercing eyes and the chin that stuck out like the toe of a boot had been caricatured by a score of artists who tomorrow might be wishing that their talents had been otherwise employed. It was Colonel Raoul Marteau, prospective dictator of France.

And after him came Kane Luker.

Luker glanced at the prisoners without expression, as if he had never seen them before, while Marteau ceremoniously returned the escort's salute. He followed the commandant as he went on to take one of- the chairs behind the long table; and the Saint's old dauntlessly irreverent smile touched his bruised lips.

'You know,' he remarked to Valerie, 'if Luker only had a barrel organ he'd still be a bloated capitalist. An ordinary organ-grinder thinks himself lucky if he's just got one monkey.'

Marteau glanced at Luker inquiringly. Apparently he did not speak English. Translating for him, Luker looked al­most amused. And Simon realized that to try and bait Kane Luker was not even worth the waste of breath. He was that uncommon type of man for whom abuse or insolence simply had no meaning: they were inane puerilities, incapable of making the slightest difference to any material issue, there­fore not worth the loss of an atom of composure.

Marteau was different. His eyes burned darker, and he rasped an order through thin tense lips; and the escort on Simon's right turned and struck him brutally in the face, and returned woodenly to attention.

The force of the blow staggered the Saint back a pace before he recovered his balance; and the girl gasped and whimpered: 'You bloody swine!' The blood boiled in Simon's veins, and his cords cut into his wrists against the fierce strain that tautened his muscles; but it was not the blow that hurt him so much as the humiliation of knowing that any courage he could show would only whet the sadistic contempt of these shining crusaders who made a fetish of their own courage. Yet he kept his face set in its mask of indomitable derision, while his mind said pitilessly: 'Pres­ently it 'll be over, but they'll never be able to say that they made me crawl.'

Ignoring him after that swift and callous retaliation, Marteau had turned to Bravache.

'They have been searched?' he was asking in French.

'Oui, mon commandant.'