sky. Looking upwards, he saw a shadow like a great black cross diving against the hazy luminousness of the clouds, barely skimming the tree tops: it plunged into the lane of light, gathering shape and detail--flattened out, bumped once, and landed.
Almost at the same moment the nearer flares began to flicker and die down. One of them went out; then another. . . .
'Never again, so long as I live, will I be rude to luck,' the Saint said to Patricia Holm, much later. 'For every dozen minor troubles the little lady gives us, somehow or other she manages to let you draw three to a straight flush and fill your hand--once or twice in a lifetime.'
He stood, fascinated, and watched the flares going out. Fifteen minutes earlier, he might have run into no end of trouble, without profit to himself or anybody else; fifteen minutes later, there might have been nothing whatever to see; only the blind gods of chance had permitted him to arrive at the exact moment when things were happening. In the outer glow of the farthest flare he saw a man attaching himself to the tail of the aeroplane and beginning to push it farther into the darkness; in a few seconds he was joined by the pilot, unidentifiable in helmet and goggles and leather coat. The engine had been switched off as the ship touched the deck, and the last scene of the drama was played out in utter silence. The two men wheeled the machine away, presumably into some invisible hangar: the last flare wavered and blinked, and the fitful gloom of the night came down once again upon the scene.
Simon Templar drew a long deep breath and stepped back out of the shadow of his tree. Of all the sins which he might have accused the top hat and spats of Sir Hugo Renway of camouflaging, ordinary smuggling was the last; but he was always accessible to new ideas.
In this case the most obvious course which presented itself was a further and yet more sleuthlike investigation into the topography and individual peculiarities of March House; and with the sublime abandon of the congenitally insane he proposed to pursue the said course without delay. The last flare was finally extinguished, and the peaceful darkness settled once more upon the field. As far as anyone outside the estate could have told, the aeroplane had flown on across the Channel-- if any reflected glow of light had been visible beyond the belt of woodland through which he had passed, and the high fence beside the road, it could hardly have attracted any ordinary citizen's attention, and it had lasted such a short time that there would have been nothing particularly remarkable about it anyway. But to anyone who had been privileged to witness the performance from the inside, the whole thing was highly furtive and irregular, especially at the country house of a justice of the peace and permanent Treasury official; and the Saint could see nothing for it but to intrude.
And it was at that psychological moment that the moon, to whose coy tactics we have already had occasion to refer, elected once again to say peekaboo to the slumbering world.
Simon Templar had owed his life to many queer things, from opening a window to dropping a cigarette, but he had never owed it before to such a rustic combination of items as a flirtatious moon and a rabbit. The rabbit appeared about one second after the moon, by lolloping out of a bush into the pool of twilight which the moon provided between two trees. The Saint had been so absolutely immobile in his observation post by the tree trunk that it could never even have noticed him: it had simply been attracted by the lighting effects provided in the adjoining field, and, being a bunny of scientific appetites and an inquisitive turn of mind, it had suspended its foraging for a space to explore this curious phenomenon. Simon saw the moving blur of it out of the corner of his eye before he realized what it was--and froze instinctively back into motionlessness almost before he had begun to move. Then he saw the rabbit clearly and moved again. A dry leaf rustled under his foot, and the rabbit twitched its nose and decided to abandon its cosmic investigations for that evening.
But it didn't lollop back into the bush from which it had emerged. Perhaps it had a date with some loose- moraled doe in the next parish and had merely paused to admire the wonders of nature on its way to more serious business or perhaps it had only heard news of some fresh young lettuces sprouting in the kitchen gardens of March House; only its reincarnation in the shape of a theosophist will ever tell. But at all events, it pushed on instead of turning back. It made a rapid hopping dive for the nearest gap in the hedge through which Simon himself had been preparing to pass.
And it died.
There was a momentary flash of blue flame, and the rabbit kicked over backwards in a dreadful leap and lay twitching in the patch of moonlight.
IV
SlMON turned it over with his foot: it was indubitably one of the deadest rabbits in the county of Kent. Then he took a tiny flashlight from his pocket and examined the hedge with great caution. There were lines of gleaming copper wire strung through it at intervals of about six inches and rising to a height of six feet above the ground --if he had not stopped to watch the rabbit he could not have helped touching one of them.
The Saint pushed a hand somewhat unsteadily across his forehead and turned his attention to the tree. But there was no chance there of repeating his Tarzan impersonation, for there were similar copper wires coiled round the trunk to a greater height than he could reach. Without rubber gloves and insulated wire cutters he could go no farther; and he had no doubt that the same high-voltage circuit continued all the way round the landing field and enclosed everything else that might be interesting to look at.
Twenty minutes later he dropped out of another tree into the road beside his car and found Hoppy Uniatz sitting on the running board and gazing disconsolately at an inadequate hip flask which had long since run as dry as a Saharan water hole.
'Hi, boss,' said Mr. Uniatz, rising stiffly from his unprofitable meditations. 'Dijja get de dough?'
Simon shook his head, lighting a cigarette in his cupped hands.
'I didn't get to first base,' he said. 'A rabbit stopped me.' He saw a vacuous expression of perplexity appear on Mr. Uniatz's'homely dial and extinguished his lighter with a faint grin. 'Never mind, Hoppy. Pass it up. I'll tell you all about it next year. Let's get back to London.'
He slid into the driving seat; and Mr. Uniatz put his flask away and followed him more slowly, glancing back doubtfully over his shoulder with a preoccupied air. As Simon pressed the starter, he coughed.
'Boss,' said Mr. Uniatz diffidently, 'is it oke leavin' de cop here?'
'Leaving the which?' ejaculated the Saint limply.
'De cop,' said Mr. Uniatz.
Simon pushed the gear lever back into neutral and gazed at him.
'What are you talking about?' he inquired.
