heart off its beat, squeezed all the air out of his lungs; his legs felt as if the marrow had been sucked out of the bones. He kept on walking through nothing but sheer muscular automatism.
There was one thing he had forgotten, and he had almost walked straight into it.
A burly man in a dark suit was pacing bovinely past the entrance to the platform, methodically scanning the faces of all the passengers who came within his view. He had the trade marks of Scotland Yard stamped all over him, and Simon could have picked him out of a crowd at five hundred yards if he had not been too preoccupied to look for him. As it was, another dozen steps would have planted him squarely on the man's shinily booted toes.
The alarm had gone out in earnest. A searingly vengeful Chief Inspector Teal had covered every exit from London that it was in his power to cover. No doubt there were the same burly bovine men at every station in the metropolis. The Saint hadn't a snowflake's hope in hell of boarding the train that Lady Valerie had taken. He would be lucky enough to get out of Paddington without irons on his wrists.
VII
SIMON KEPT ON WALKING. How he managed it was one of those unsung victories of mind over matter; but he kept on. His steps remained outwardly unchanged, and to all ordinary appearances he was still only one of the undistinguished members of the crowd who scurried to and fro like well-trained movie extras providing background atmosphere for the picture of any busy terminus. None of them knew how easy it would have been for him to turn and run like a hunted fox.
But that would have singled him out at once. His only hope was to retain the anonymity which had so far given him divine protection. Quietly, evenly, without a trace of excitement, the Saint walked on, turning in a gradual curve that took him imperceptibly further away from the watching detective and finally reversed his direction entirely without ever including an abrupt movement that would have caught anyone's eye. Icy needles danced over his skin, but he completed the manoeuvre without a tremor. He knew that the detective had seen him and was looking at him; as he headed back towards the nearest exit, he could feel the man's eyes boring into the back of his neck. . . .
God who in His infinite wisdom has ordained that all respectable English citizens shall go for their holidays to the same places at the same time chose that moment to let a fresh horde of tourists loose in the station. Hot, sun blistered, multitudinous, clutching their bags and parcels and souvenirs and progeny, they swarmed around the Saint and swallowed him up. Simon had never been glad of such inundations before, but he was so grateful for that one that he could have embraced each individual member of the motley mob. He let himself be carried along by the spate of humanity, and it held him in its midst and swept him through the exit he had been making for, and the rearguard jammed in the doors behind him with a hearty unanimity that could scarcely have impeded pursuit more effectively if it had been organized.
Simon did not wait to see what happened. Perhaps the detective who had seen him was still not certain of his identification; perhaps he had at last made up his mind and was even then trying to struggle through the crowd; but in either event the Saint had no desire to linger. As soon as he was outside he set off at the speed of a racing walker, and felt as if he only began to breathe again when he had crossed Eastbourne Terrace with no sounds of a hue and cry behind him.
His taxi driver was still optimistically waiting, and he opened the nearest door as he saw the Saint approach.
Simon smiled and shook his head.
'Sorry,' he said, 'but I just came to tell you you needn't wait any more.'
