Prelude For War

it,' wailed Pietri, with the revolver quivering futilely in his grasp. 'They caught me outside —him and two other fellows——'

Bravache started to move then, and Simon's voice ripped out like a lash.

'I wouldn't,' he said. 'Really I wouldn't. It's danger­ous.'

And as he spoke Peter and Hoppy came through the doorway.

Bravache stood very still. His face was cold and unmoved, but the veins on the backs of his clenched hands stood out in knotty blue cords. Dumaire, caught with one hand at the edge of his coat pocket, prudently let it fall back to his side. He flattened himself against the wall like a cornered rat, with his shoulders hunched up to the jaw level of his small ebony- capped head.

Simon released Pietri and strolled over to pick up Bra­vache's automatic and retrieve his cigarette case and lighter from among his strewn belongings on the table. With a cigarette between his lips and the lighter wick burning stead­ily, he looked at Bravache with cerulean mockery in his eyes.

'I'm hoping that as a reasonable man you will agree that the prospect of death in a number of hours is preferable to. the certainty of death immediately,' he said in a voice of satin. 'Go on, Major, I don't want anything to interrupt our little chat.'

2

The chat appeared to have been interrupted already so far as Major Bravache was concerned. At any rate, he seemed disinclined to accept the Saint's invitation to proceed with his discourse. Or else the founts of eloquence had dried up within him. His lips closed down over his teeth until there was only a straight line to show where his mouth had been.

The Saint left him with a quizzically regretful shrug and turned to untie Lady Valerie. She stood up and stretched herself, rather like a cat by the fire, and rubbed her chafed wrists. Then she went over to the table where her bag was, in search of the ineluctable restoratives of feminine sangfroid.

'You gave me some bad moments,' she said, with an attempted nonchalance in which he could still see the signs of strain like carefully darned edges on a poor man's cuffs. 'For a long time I was thinking you'd let me down, but of course I ought to have remembered that you never let anyone down.'

'What happened?' he asked.

She appeared from behind a card-sized mirror to point with the scarlet tip of a lipstick.

'He rang the bell and said you'd sent him round with something special to give me. I thought it was a bit funny, since we'd only said good-bye a little while ago, and he was a rather funny-looking person, but after all I thought a lot of funny things must go on in this life of crime, and I was quite intrigued. I mean, I just didn't think enough about how funny it was. So I started to let him in, and then these other two followed him in very quickly and there wasn't anything I could do. They tied me up and searched everywhere. This one was very nasty—he thought I might have the ticket on me, and he didn't miss anything.'

She gazed vindictively at Dumaire, who was then having his hands efficiently taped behind his back by Peter Quen­tin, and kicked him thoughtfully on the shins.

'Then they made you ring me up?' Simon prompted her.

'Well, when they couldn't find the ticket they said they'd do horrible things to me unless I told them where it was. So I told them I'd given it to you to look after, and I was quite glad to be able to ring you up by that time. I—I sort of knew you'd catch on at once, because you're so fright­fully clever and that's how things always happen in stories.'

'It makes everything so easy, doesn't it?' said the Saint satirically. 'We must talk some more about that, but I think we'll talk alone.'