Prelude For War

a gun. And the Saint knew that he could never silence them all.

Quite coolly and deliberately he levelled his sights be­tween Luker's eyes. Other gun muzzles were settling upon him, other eyes crisping behind the sights, other fingers tightening on triggers; but he seemed to have all the time in the world. Perhaps he had all the time in eternity. . . . But whatever happened he must make no more mistakes. This was the last thing that he could do. His body was braced against the shock of lead that must soon be plough­ing from four directions through his flesh and bone; but none of that must stir his aim by as much as a summer breeze. Not until he had placed exactly where he wanted them the two shots that had to stand as the last witnesses to everything to which he had given his tempestuous life. . . . He did not feel any doubt or any fear.

He squeezed the trigger, and the revolver jumped in his hand. A round black mark appeared in Luker's forehead, and while Simon looked at it the rim of it turned red.

And then the room seemed to be full of thunder.

The Saint felt nothing. He wondered, in a nightmarishly detached sort of way, whether he had actually been hit or not. But he was able to turn and align his sights without a quiver on their next target.

And that was when he really felt that something must have snapped in his brain. For Colonel Marteau was not even looking at him. He was standing stiffly upright, a strangely drawn and bloodless expression on his face, his right arm down at his side and the muzzle of his gun resting laxly on the table. And somewhere a little further off Bra­vache seemed to be sliding down the wall, like a lay figure whose knee joints have given way. And there was a blue-shirted figure squirming on the floor and making queer moaning noises. And another pair of blue-sleeved arms raised high in the air. And another door open, and grim-visaged armed men swarming in, men in plain clothes, men in the uniforms of gendarmes and agents de police and the black helmets of the Gardes Mobiles. And among them all two men who could only have been the ghosts of Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz, with automatics smoking in their hands. And another man, short and dapperly dressed, with a blue chin and curled moustaches and bright black eyes, who seemed to be armed only with a cigarette in an amber holder, who strode up between them and bowed to the Saint with old-fashioned elegance.

'Monsieur Templar,' he said, 'I only regret that your message reached me too late to save you this inconvenience.'

The Saint had no idea what he was talking about; but he could never have allowed the prefect of police of Paris to outdo him in courtesy.

'My dear Monsieur Senappe,' he said, 'really, it's been no trouble at all.'

 

 

 

Epilogue

'THAT'S a nice bit of chinchilla,' said the Saint.

'It is, isn't it,' said Lady Valerie Woodchester, rubbing her cheek luxuriously on her shoulder.

They had met quite by chance in Piccadilly. Simon took her into the Berkeley and bought her a sherry.

'By the way,' she said very casually, 'I think I'm going to be married soon.'

'Quite right, too,' he approved. 'A healthy, good-looking girl like you ought to get married. Who's the unlucky man?'

'Don Knightley—Captain Knightley. You remember him don't you? He rescued me from the fire.'

'So he did.' The