have ideals, and you would wish to be called a gentleman. Will you be proud to record the torture of a helpless girl as the glorious beginning of the revolution in which you believe?'
Marteau's face flushed, but the arrogant unyielding lines deepened around his mouth.
'The individual, monsieur, is of no more importance than an ant compared with the destiny of France.' His dark eyes glowed with a mystic light. 'Tomorrow—today—we make history, and France takes her rightful place among the nations of Europe. I can give way to no sentimental re luctance to do anything that may be necessary to safeguard the trust which is in my hands. Those who are not with us are our enemies.' The glow faded from his eyes, leaving only the hard lines still shifting about his mouth. 'As a man, I confess that I should prefer to spare Mademoiselle; but that responsibility is yours. As a leader, with the destiny of France in my care, my own course cannot falter.'
'I see,' said the Saint softly. 'And if I told you what you want to know, I suppose we should be murdered just the same, only without the trimmings.'
Marteau's face grew colder and more distant.
'I should like you to understand, monsieur, that the Sons of France do not commit murder. Although your guilt is perfectly evident, you will receive a fair trial by court-martial ; naturally, if you are found guilty, you must expect to suffer the due penalty.'
'Exactly.' Luker spoke in English and the old ironical gleam was back in his eyes. 'You'll get a fair trial by court-martial, and you'll be shot immediately afterwards. The day after tomorrow we shall probably start court-martialling traitors in batches of twenty. I'll try to arrange for you both to be in the first batch. But you must agree that that will be far preferable to the same inevitable result with the preliminary addition of what I think you called the trimmings.'
'Of course,' said the Saint. 'You're so generous that it brings a lump into my throat.'
But his smile was very tight and cold.
His shoulders ached with a weary hopelessness. No one except himself, not even Luker, could guess what dregs of defeat he had to taste. Death he could have met carelessly: he had lived with it at his elbow for so long that it was almost a friend. He had fenced and bantered with it, and lightheartedly made rendezvous and broken them, but never without the calm knowledge that the day must come, however distant, when they would have to sit down together and talk business. Death with trimmings, even, would not have made him cringe; he had faced that, too, and other men had gone through it, men many of them forgotten and nameless now, who had endured their brief futile agony that was swept away and obliterated like a ripple in the long river of time. But here he was not alone. He had to sentence the girl in the acceptance of his own fate.
And there was nothing to give it even a plausible ultimate glory. They died, anyway. And if he died, and let the girl die, without speaking under any torture, it achieved no more than just that. It was not a question of keeping the photograph safe for what might be done with it. There would be no one left to do anything with it, after Patricia and the others had been rounded up in the morning. And even if they escaped, there would be nothing to be done. The negative would remain where it was hidden, in his fountain pen, and would probably be destroyed along with his body and the clothes he was wearing; or at the best someone would appropriate it, and the most likely person to appropriate it was one of the Sons of France, and even if he found it it would alter nothing. If the Saint was silent and it was never found, it would only mean that Luker and Marteau would be worried about it for some time, but nothing would happen, and their anxieties would ease with every day that went by, and soon they would be too strong to care. How could he condemn the girl to that extra unspeakable ugliness of death for no better reason than to leave Luker and Marteau with a little unnecessary trepidation, and to give his pride the boast that they had never been able to make him talk?
But the bitterness of surrender fought against letting him speak.
He saw Luker watching him steadily, and knew that the other was following almost every step in his inevitable thoughts. Luker's eyes were hardening with the cold certainty of triumph.
'Perhaps you would like to discuss it with your fiancee, Mr Templar,' he said. 'I shall arrange for you to be given five minutes alone. I'm sure that that will be sufficient for you to reach the only conclusion that two sensible people can come to.'
