head with a row of worried fingers.
'I dunno, boss,' he said shyly. 'Every time I get married I am not t'inking about it very much. So I never know if I have got married or not,' he said, summarizing his problem with a conciseness that could scarcely have been improved upon.
Peter pondered over the exposition until he felt himself getting slightly giddy, when he decided that it would probably be safer to leave it alone. And the Saint spun the wheel again and sent the Hirondel thundering down Grosvenor Place.
'When you two trollops have finished gloating over your sex life,' he said, 'you'd better try to remember what happens when we get to Marsham Street.'
'But we know,' said Peter, carefully continuing to refrain from looking at the road. 'Don't we, Hoppy? If we ever get there alive, which is very unlikely, we jump about in the foreground and try to attract the bullets while the beauteous heroine swoons into Simon's arms.'
Simon squeezed the car through on the wrong side of a crawling taxi which was hogging the centre of the road, and while he was doing it he neatly swiped Peter's cigarette with his disengaged hand.
'That's something like the idea; except that as usual you'll be in the background. I'm just building on probabilities, but I think I've got it pretty straight. Two or more thugs will be in possession. When I ring the bell, one of them will come to the door. They can't all open it at once, and at least one of them will probably be busy keeping Valerie quiet, and in any case they won't want any noise that they can avoid. Besides, they'll be expecting me to walk in like a blindfolded lamb. Now, I think it can only break two ways. Either the warrior who opens the door will open it straight on to a gun . . .'
He went on, sketching possibilities in crisp, comprehensive lines, dictating move and countermove in quick sinewy sentences that strung the strides of a supreme tactician together into a connected chain on which even Hoppy Uniatz could not lose his grip. It might all seem very simple in the end, but in that panoramic grasp of detail lay the genius that made amazing audacities seem simple.
'Okay, skipper,' Peter said soberly, as the car swooped into Marsham Street. 'But don't forget you're responsible to Hoppy's widows and my orphans.'
Ever since the first few hectic moments of the ride they had been running with the cutout closed, and the dying of the engine was scarcely perceptible as Simon turned the switch.
After the last turn they had slid up practically in silence to their destination, which was one of a row of modern apartment buildings that had not long ago transformed the topography of that once sombre district. One or two other cars were parked within sight, but otherwise the street seemed quiet and lifeless. Simon glanced up at the crossword design of light and dark windows as he stepped out of the car and crossed the pavement, with some attention to the softness of his footsteps, for he knew well how sounds could echo to the upper windows of a silent street at that hour of the night. He said nothing to the others, for all the ground had been covered in advance in his instructions. He read off the apartment number from the indicator in the empty lobby, and an automatic elevator carried them up to the top floor. The Saint was as cool as chromium, as accurate and self-contained as a machine. He left the elevator doors open and waited until Peter and Hoppy had taken up their positions flattened against the wall on either side of the door; then he put his knuckle against the bell.
There was an interval of perhaps ten seconds, then the door opened.
It opened, according to the Saint's first diagnosis, straight on to an awkward-looking silenced revolver in the hand of the stocky ape-faced man who unfastened the latch.
'Come in,' he said.
Blank astonishment, anger and incredulity chased themselves over the Saint's face—exactly as they were expected to chase themselves.
'What's the idea of this?' he demanded wrathfully. 'And who the hell are you, anyway?'
'Come in,'
