Prelude For War

shoulder, and they went back into the living room together. The Saint's new sureness was like a steel blade, balanced and deadly.

3

'You can't do this!' babbled Bravache. Little specks of saliva sprayed from his mouth with his words. 'It is a crime! You will be punished—hanged. You cannot commit murder in cold blood. Surely you can't do that!' His manner changed, became fawning, wheedling. 'Look, you are a gentleman. You could not kill a defenceless man, any more than I could. You have misunderstood my leetle joke. It was only to frighten you——'

'Put some tape on his mouth, Hoppy,' ordered the Saint with cold distaste.

Pietri and Dumaire were gagged in the same way, and the three men were pushed on out of the flat and crowded into the lift. Simon left them with Peter and Hoppy in the foyer of the building while he went out to reconnoitre the car. It was nearly half-past two by his watch, and the street was as still and lifeless as a graveyard. The Saint's rubber-soled shoes woke no echoes as they moved to their destina­tion. There was a man dozing at the wheel of the small black sedan and he started to rouse as the Saint opened the door beside him, but he was still not fully awake when the Saint's left hand reached in and took hold of him by the front of his coat and yanked him out like a puppy.

'Have you tried this for insomnia?' asked the Saint con­versationally, and brought up his right hand in a smashing uppercut.

The man's teeth clicked together; his knees gave; he buckled forward without a sound, and Simon let him fall. He went back to the entrance of the building.

'All clear,' he said in a low voice. 'Make it snappy.'

He led the way back to the black sedan and picked up his sleeping patient. There was a board fence on the op­posite side of the road, above which rose the naked girders of another new apartment building under construction. Simon applied scientific leverage, and the patient rose into the air and disappeared from view. There was a dull thud in the darkness beyond.

Simon crossed the road again. The loading of freight had been completed with professional briskness while he was away. Already Peter Quentin was at the wheel; and Hoppy Uniatz, sitting crookedly beside him in the other front seat, was covering the three men who were bundled together in the back. The engine whirred under the starter.

Simon looked in at the prisoners, and particularly at the staring cringing eyes of Bravache.

'It won't hurt much, Major,' he said, 'and you ought to be proud to be a martyr for the flag. . . . On your way, boys.'

He stood and watched the receding taillight of the car until it turned the corner at the end of the street; and then he strolled slowly back to the entrance of the building. He waited there less than five minutes before a dark Daimler limousine swept into the street and drew up in front of the door.

The Saint leaned in the open window beside the driver and kissed her.

'What's been happening?' asked Patricia.

In a few sentences he let her know as much as he knew himself; and while he was speaking he rummaged in the nearest side pocket of the car. He found what he was look­ing for—a chauffeur's blue cap—and set it at an angle on her curly head.

'I'll be back in a minute,' he said.

When he re-entered the flat Lady Valerie Woodchester was dressed. She came out of the bedroom carrying a small valise.

'What's happened to everyone?' she asked in surprise.

'Peter and Hoppy have removed the exhibits,' he said irrepressibly. 'They'll get what's coming to them somewhere else. We didn't want to make any more mess for you here.'

The edges of pearly teeth