visage seemed to grow thinner and meaner, and his fingers twitched hungrily around the butt of Simon's gun. Judd Kaskin's sanguine complexion changed colour for a moment, and then his mouth twisted as though tasting its own venom.
'The Saint!' he said hoarsely.
'I told you you might be sorry,' said the Saint.
He smiled at them pleasantly, as if nothing had happened to disturb his poise since he was holding the only weapon in sight. It was a smile that would have tightened a quality of desperation into the vigilance of certain criminals who knew him better than Dolf and Kaskin did. It was the kind of smile that only touched the Saint's lips when the odds against him were most hopeless—and when all the reckless fighting vitality that had written the chapter headings in his charmed saga of adventure was blithely preparing to thumb its nose at them. . . .
Then he turned and looked at the girl.
She was blonde and blue-eyed, with a small face like a very pretty baby doll; but the impression of vapid immaturity was contradicted by her mouth. Her mouth had character—not all of it very good, by conventional standards, but the kind of character that has an upsetting effect on many conventional men. It was a rather large mouth, with a sultry lower lip that seemed to have been fashioned for the express purpose of reviving the maximum amount of the Old Adam in any masculine observer. The rest of her, he noticed, carried out the theme summarized in her mouth. Her light dress moulded itself to her figure with a snugness that vouched for the fragility of her underwear, and the curves that it suggested were stimulating to the worst kind of imagination.
'Angela,' said the Saint genially, 'you're looking very well for your age. I ought to have remembered that Judd always worked with a woman, but I didn't think he'd have one with him on a job like this. I
'You know everything, don't you?' Kaskin gibed.
He was recovering from the first shock of finding out whom he had captured; and the return of his self-assurance was an ugly thing.
'Only one thing puzzles me,' said the Saint equably. 'And that is why they sent you to Dartmoor instead of putting you in the Zoo. Or did the RSPCA object on behalf of the other animals?'
'You're smart,' Kaskin said lividly. His ugliness had a hint of bluster in it that was born of fear—a fear that the legends about the Saint were capable of inspiring even when he was apparently disarmed and helpless. But the ugliness was no less dangerous for that reason. Perhaps it was more dangerous. . . . 'You're smart, like Verdean,' Kaskin said 'Well, you saw what he got. I'm asking the questions again now, and I'll burn you the same way if you don't answer. And I'll burn you twice as much if you make any more funny answers. Now do your talking, smart guy. How did you get here?'
'I flew in,' said the Saint, 'with my little wings.'
Kaskin drew back his fist.
'Wait a minute,' said the girl impatiently. 'He had another man with him.'
Kaskin almost failed to hear her. His face was contorted with the blind rage into which men of his type are fatally easy to tease. His fist had travelled two inches before he stopped it. The girl's meaning worked itself into his intelligence by visibly slow degrees, as if it had to penetrate layers of gum. He turned his head stiffly.
'What's that?'
'There were two of them. I saw them.'
'Then where's the other one?' Kaskin said stupidly.
Simon was asking himself the same question; but he had more data to go on. He had left the kitchen door open, and also left the living-room door open behind him when he came in. The girl had come in through the door without touching it; and she must have entered the house at the front, or she would have met Hoppy before. The chances were, therefore, that Hoppy had heard
