Featuring the Saint

1

THE WONDERFUL WAR The Republic of Pasala lies near the northward base of the Yucatan peninsula in Central America. It has an area of about 10,000 square miles, or roughly the size of England from the Tweed to a line drawn from Liverpool to Hull. Population, about 18,000. Imports, erratic. Exports, equally erratic, and consisting (when the population can be stirred to the necessary labour) of maize, rice, sugar-cane, mahogany, and-oil.

"You can hurry up and warble all you know about this oil, Archie," said Simon Templar briskly, half an hour after he landed at Santa Miranda. "And you can leave out your adventures among the seńoritas. I want to get this settled-I've got a date back in England for the end of May, and that doesn't give me a lot of time here."

Mr. Archibald Sheridan stirred slothfully in his long chair and took a pull at a whisky-and-soda in which ice clinked seductively.

"You've had it all in my letters and cables," he said. "But I'll just run through it again to connect it up. It goes like this. Three years ago almost to the day, a Scots mining engineer named McAndrew went prospecting round the hills about fifty miles inland. Everyone said he was crazy-till he came back six months later with samples from his feeler borings. He said he'd struck one of the richest deposits that ever gushed- and it was only a hundred feet below the surface. He got a concession-chiefly because the authorities still couldn't believe his story-staked his claim, cabled for his daughter to come over and join him, and settled down to feel rich and wait for the plant he'd ordered to be shipped over from New Orleans."

"Did the girl come?" asked Templar.

"She's right here," answered Sheridan. "But you told me to leave the women out of it. She doesn't really come into the story anyway. The man who does come in is a half-caste bum from God knows where, name of Shannet. Apparently Shannet had been sponging and beachcombing here for months before McAndrew arrived. Everyone was down on him, and so McAndrew, being one of these quixotic idiots, joined up with him. He even took him into partnership, just to defy public opinion; and, anyhow, he was wanting help, and Shannet had some sort of qualifications. The two of them went up into the interior to take a look at the claim. Shannet came back, but McAndrew didn't. Shannet said a snake got him."

Simon Templar reached for another cigarette.

"Personally, I say that snake's name was Shannet," remarked Archie Sheridan quietly. "Lilla-McAndrew's daughter-said the same thing. Particularly when Shannet produced a written agreement signed by McAndrew and him self, in which it was arranged that if either partner should die, all rights in the claim should pass to the other partner. Lilla swore that McAndrew, who'd always thought first of her, would never have signed such a document, and she got a look at it and said the signature was forged. Shannet replied that McAndrew was getting over a bout of malaria when he signed it, and his hand was rather shaky. The girl carried it right to the court of what passes for justice here, fighting like a hero, but Shannet had too big a pull with the judge, and she lost her case. I arrived just after her appeal was turned down."

"What about McAndrew's body?"

"Shannet said he buried it by the trail; but the jungle trails here are worse than any maze that was ever invented, and you can almost see the stuff grow. The grave could quite reasonably be lost in a week. Shannet said he couldn't find it again. I took a trip that way myself, but it wasn't any use. All I got out of it was a bullet through a perfectly good hat from some sniper in the background-Shannet for a fiver."

"After which," suggested Simon Templar thoughtfully, "Shannet found he couldn't run the show alone, and sold out to our dear friend in London, Master Hugo Campard, shark, swindler, general blackguard, and promoter of unlimited dud companies--"

"Who perpetrated the first sound company of his career, Pasala Oil Products, on the strength of it," Sheridan completed. "Shares not for public issue, and sixty percent of them held by himself."

Simon Templar took his cigarette from his mouth and blew a long, thin streamer of smoke into the sunlight.

"So that's what I've come over to deal with, Archibald?" he murmured. "Well, well, well! . . . Taken by and large, it looks like a diverting holiday. Carol a brief psalm about things political, son."

"Just about twice as crooked as anything else south of the United States border," said Sheridan. "The man who matters isn't the President. He's under the thumb of what they call the Minister of the Interior, who finds it much more convenient and much safer to stay in the background-they never assassinate Ministers of the Interior, apparently, but Presidents are fair game. And this man-Manuel Conception de Villega is his poetic label-is right under the wing of Shannet, and is likely to stay there as long as Shannet's money lasts."

The Saint rose and lounged over to the veranda rail. At that hour (which was just after midday) the thermometer stood at a hundred and two in the shade, and the Saint had provided himself suitably with white ducks. The dazzling whiteness of them would have put snow to shame; and he wore them, as might have been expected of him, with the most cool and careless elegance in the world. He looked as if he would have found an inferno chilly. His dark hair was brushed smoothly back; his lean face was tanned to a healthy brown; altogether he must have been the most dashing and immaculate sight that Santa Miranda had set eyes on for many years.

Sheridan was in despair before that vision of unruffled perfection. His hair was tousled, his white ducks looked some what limp with the heat, and his pleasantly ugly face was moist.

"What about the rest of the white, or near-white, inhabitants?" inquired the Saint.

"A two-fisted, rip-roaring giant of a red-headed Irishman named Kelly," was the reply. "His wife-that's two. Lilla McAndrew, who's staying with them-I wouldn't let her put up at the filthy hotel in the town any longer-three. Four and five, a couple of traders, more or less permanently drunk and not worth considering. Six-Shannet. That's the lot."

The Saint turned away and gazed down the hillside. From where he stood, on the veranda of Sheridan's bungalow, he could look down onto the roofs of Santa Miranda-the cluster of white buildings in the Moorish style which formed the centre, and the fringe of adobe huts on the outskirts. Left and right of him, on the hill above the town, were other bungalows. Beyond the town was the sea.

The Saint studied the view for a time in silence; then he turned round again.

"We seem to be onto the goods," he remarked. "Shannet, the small fish, but an undoubted murderer-and, through him, our real man, Campard. I had a hunch I shouldn't be wasting your time when I sent you out here as soon as I heard Campard was backing Pasala Oil Products. But I never guessed P.O.P. would be real till I got your first cable. Now we're on a truly classy piece of velvet. It all looks too easy."

"Easy?" queried Sheridan skeptically. "I'm glad you think it's easy. With Shannet's claim established, and the concession in writing at Campard's London office, and Lilla McAndrew's petition dismissed, and Shannet twiddling the government, the army, the police, and the rest of the bunch, down to the last office boy, round and round his little finger with the money he gets from Campard-and the man calls it easy. Oh, take him away!"

The Saint's hand drove even deeper into his pockets. Tall and trim and athletic, he stood with his feet astride, swaying gently from his toes, with the Saintly smile flickering faintly round his mouth and a little dancing devil of mischief rousing in his blue eyes.

"I said easy," he drawled.

Sheridan buried his face in his hands.

"Go and put your head in the ice bucket," he pleaded. "Of course, it's the sun. You're not used to it-I forgot that."

"How big is the army?"

"There's a standing army of about five hundred, commanded by seventeen generals, twenty-five colonels, and about fifty minor officers. And if your head hurts, just lie down, close the eyes, and relax. It'll be quite all right in an hour or two."

"Artillery?"

"Three pieces, carried by mules. If you'd like some aspirin--"

"Navy?"

"One converted tug, with 5.9 quick-firer and crew of seven, commanded by two admirals. I don't think you ought to talk now. I'll put up the hammock for you, if you like, and you can sleep for an hour before lunch."

"Police force?"

"There are eleven constables in Santa Miranda, under three superintendents. And in future I shouldn't have any whisky before sundown."

The Saint smiled.

"I'm probably more used to the sun than you are," he said. "This is merely common sense. What's the key to the situation? The government. Right. We don't propose to waste any of our good money bribing them-and if we did, they'd double-cross us. Therefore they must be removed by force. And at once, because I can't stay long. Long live the revolution!"

"Quite," agreed Sheridan helplessly. "And the revolutionary army? This state is the only one in South America that's never had a revolution-because nobody's ever had enough energy to start one."

The Saint fished for his cigarette case.

"We are the revolutionary army," he said. "I ask you to remember that we march on our stomachs. So we'll just have another drink, and then some lunch, and then we'll wander along and try to enlist the mad Irishman. If we three can't make rings round six hundred and fifteen comic-opera dagoes, I'm going to retire from the fighting game and take up knitting and fancy needlework!"

"MY dear soul," the Saint was still arguing persuasively at the close of the meal, "it's so simple. The man who manages the government of this two-by-four backyard is the man who holds the fate of Pasala Oil Products in his hands. At present Shannet is the bright boy who manages the government, and the master of P.O.P. is accordingly walking around under the Shannet hat. We'll go one better. We won't merely manage the government. We'll be the government. And POP is ours to play hell with as we like. Could anything be more straightforward? as the actress said when the bishop showed her his pass book."

"Go on," encouraged Sheridan weakly. "Don't bother about my feelings."

"As the actress said to the bishop shortly afterwards," murmured the Saint. "Blessed old Archie, it's obvious that three months in this enervating climate and the society of Lilla McAndrew have brought your energy down to the level of that of the natives you spoke of so contemptuously just now. I grant you it's sudden, but it's the only way. Before I knew the whole story I thought it would be good enough if we held up the post office and sent Campard a spoof cable purporting to come from Shannet, telling him the government had been kicked out, the concession revoked, and the only thing to do was to sell out his POP holdings as quickly as possible. What time our old friend Roger, back in London, snaps up the shares, discreetly, as fast as they come on the market."

"Why won't that work now?"

"You're forgetting the girl," said Templar. "This oil is really her property, so it isn't good enough just to make Campard unload at a loss and sell back to him at a premium when the rumour of revolution is exploded. The concession has really got to be revoked. Therefore I propose to eliminate the present government, and make Kelly, your mad Irishman, the new Minister of the Interior. That is, unless you'd take the job."

"No, thanks," said Sheridan generously. "It's not quite in my line. Pass me up."

The Saint lighted a cigarette.

"In that case Kelly is elected unanimously," he remarked with charming simplicity. "So the only thing left to decide is how we start the trouble. I've been in South American revolutions before, but they've always been well under way by the time I arrived. The technique of starting the blamed things was rather missed out of my education. What does one do? Does one simply wade into the Presidential Palace, chant Time, gentlemen, please!' in the ear of his illustrious excellency, and invite him to close the door as he goes out? Or what?"

"What, probably," said Sheridan. "That would be as safe as anything. I might get you reprieved on the grounds of insanity."

The Saint sighed.

"You aren't helpful, Beautiful Archibald."

"If you'd settle down to talk seriously--"

"I am serious."

Sheridan stared. Then: "Is that straight, Saint?" he demanded.

"From the horse's mouth," the Saint assured him solemnly. "Even as the crow flieth before the pubs open. Sweet cherub, did you really think I was wasting precious time with pure pickled onions?"

Sheridan looked at him. There was another flippant rejoinder on the tip of Archie Sheridan's tongue, but somehow it was never uttered.

The Saint was smiling. It was a mocking smile, but that was for Sheridan's incredulity. It was not the sort of smile that accompanies a test of the elasticity of a leg. And in the Saint's eyes was a light that wasn't entirely humorous.

Archie Sheridan, with a cigarette in his mouth, fumbling for matches, realized that he had mistaken the shadow for the substance. The Saint wasn't making fun of revolutions. It was just that his sense of humour was too big to let him plan even a revolution without seeing the funny side of the show.

Sheridan got a match to his cigarette.

"Well?" prompted the Saint.

"I think you're pots, bats, and bees," he said. "But if you're set on that kind of suicide-lead on. Archibald will be at your elbow with the bombs. You didn't forget the bombs?"

The Saint grinned.

"I had to leave them behind," he replied lightly. "They wouldn't fit into my sponge bag. Seriously, now, where and how do you think we should start the trouble?"

They were sitting opposite one another at Sheridan's bare mahogany dining table, and at the Saint's back was the open door leading out onto the veranda and commanding an uninterrupted view of the approach to the bungalow.

"Start the thing here and now and anyhow you like," said Sheridan, and he was looking past the Saint's shoulder towards the veranda steps.

Simon Templar settled back a little more lazily into his chair, and a very Saintly meekness was spreading over his face.

"Name?" he inquired laconically.

"Shannet himself."

The Saint's eyes were half closed.

"I will compose a little song about him immediately," he said.

Then a shadow fell across the table, but the Saint did not move at once. He appeared to be lost in a day-dream.

"Buenos dias, Shannet," said Archie Sheridan. "Also, as soon as possible, adios. Hurry up and say what you've got to say before I kick you out."

"I'll do any kicking out that's necessary, thanks," said Shannet harshly. "Sheridan, I've come to warn you off for the last time. The Andalusia berthed this morning, and she sails again on the evening tide. You've been nosing around here too long as it is. Is that plain enough?"

"Plainer than your ugly face," drawled Sheridan. "And by what right do you kick me out? Been elected President, have you?"

"You know me," said Shannet. "You know that what I say here goes. You'll sail on the Andalusia-either voluntarily or because you're put on board in irons. That's all. . . . What's this?"

The Saint, perceiving himself to be the person thus referred to, awoke sufficiently to open his eyes and screw his head round so that he could view the visitor.

He saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of indeterminate age, clad in a soiled white suit of which the coat was unbuttoned to expose a grubby singlet. Shannet had certainly not shaved for two days; and he did not appear to have brushed his hair for a like period, for a damp, sandy lock drooped in a tangle over his right eye. In one corner of his mouth a limp and dilapidated cigarette dangled tiredly from his lower lip.

The Saint blinked.

"Gawd!" he said offensively. "Can it be human?"

Shannet's fists swept back his coat and rested on his hips.

"What's your name, Cissy?" he demanded.

The Saint flicked some ash from his cigarette and rose to his feet delicately.

"Benito Mussolini," he answered mildly. "And you must be one of the corporation scavengers. How's the trade in garbage?" His gentle eyes swept Shannet from crown to toe. "Archie, there must have been some mistake. The real scavenger has gone sick, and one of his riper pieces of refuse is deputizing for him. I'm sorry."

"If you--"

"I said I was sorry," the Saint continued, in the same smooth voice, "because I'm usually very particular about the people I fight, and I hate soiling my hands on things like you."

Shannet glowered.

"I don't know who you are," he said, "and I don't care. But if you're looking for a fight you can have it."

"I am looking for a fight, dear one," drawled the Saint. "In fact, I'm looking for a lot of fights, and you're the first one that's offered. 'Cissy' is a name I particularly object to being called, O misbegotten of a pig!"

The last words were spoken in colloquial Spanish, and the Saint made more of them than it is possible to report in printable English. Shannet went white, then red.

"You--"

His answering stream of profanity merged into a left swing to the Saint's jaw, which, if it had landed, would have ended the fight there and then. But it did not land.

Simon Templar swayed back, and the swing missed by a couple of inches. As Shannet stumbled, momentarily off his balance, the Saint reached round and took the jug of ice water off the table behind him. Without any appearance of effort or haste, he sidestepped and poured most of the contents of the jug down the back of Shannet's neck.

Shannet swung again. The Saint ducked, and sent the man flying with a smashing jab to the nose.

"Look out, Saint!" Sheridan warned suddenly.

"Naughty!" murmured the Saint, without heat.

Shannet was getting to his feet, and his right hand was drawing something from his hip pocket.

The Saint took two steps and a flying leap over Shannet's head, turning in the air as he did so. Shannet had only got to his knees when the Saint landed behind him and caught his opponent's throat and right wrist in hands that had the strength of steel cables in their fingers. Shannet's wrist was twisted behind his back with an irresistible wrench. . . .

The gun cluttered to the floor simultaneously with Shannet's yelp of agony, and the Saint picked up the gun and stepped away.

"A trophy, Archie!" he cried, and tossed the weapon over to Sheridan. "Guns I have not quite been shot with-there must be a drawer full of them at home. . . . Let's start, sweet Shannet!"

Shannet replied with a chair, but the Saint was ten feet away by the time it crashed into the opposite wall.

Then Shannet came in again with his fists. Any one of those whirling blows carried a kick that would have put a mule to sleep, but the Saint had forgotten more about ringcraft than many professionals ever learn. Shannet never came near touching him. Every rush Shannet made, somehow, expended itself on thin air, while he always seemed to be running his face slap into the Saint's stabbing left.

"Want a rest?" the Saint asked kindly.

"If you'd come in and fight like a man," gasped Shannet, his tortured chest heaving, "I'd kill you!"

"Oh, don't be silly!" said the Saint in a bored voice, as though he had no further interest in the affair. "Hurry up and get out-I'm going to be busy."

He turned away, but Shannet lurched after him.

"Get out yourself!" snarled the man thickly. "D'you hear? I'm going right down to fetch the police--"

The Saint sat down.

"Listen to me, Shannet," he said quietly. "The less you talk about police when I'm around, the better for you. I'm telling you now that I believe you murdered a man named McAndrew not so long ago, and jumped his claim on a forged partnership agreement. I'm only waiting till I've got the proof. And then-well, it's too much to hope that the authorities of this benighted republic will execute the man who pays half their salaries, and so in the name of Justice I shall take you myself and hang you from a high tree."

For a moment of silence the air seemed to tingle with the same electric tension as heralds the breaking of a thunder storm, while the Saint's ice-blue eyes quelled Shannet's reawakening fury; and then, with a short laugh, the Saint relaxed.

"You're a pawn in the game," he said, with a contrasting carelessness which only emphasized the bleak implacability of his last speech. "We won't waste good melodrama on you. We reserve that for clients with really important discredit accounts. Instead, you shall hear the epitaph I've just composed for you. It commemorates a pestilent tumour named Shannet, who disfigured the face of this planet. He started some fun, but before it was done he was wishing he'd never began it. That otherwise immortal verse is marred by a grammatical error, but I'm not expecting you to know any better. . . . Archibald-the door!"

Archie Sheridan had no reason to love Shannet, and the kick with which he launched the man into the garden was not gentle, but he seemed to derive no pleasure from it.

He came back with a grave face and resumed his chair facing the Saint.

"Well," he said, "you've done what you wanted. Now shall we sit down and make our wills, or shall we spend our last hours of life in drinking and song?"

"Of course, we may be shot," admitted the Saint calmly. "That's up to us. How soon can we expect the army?"

"Not before five. They'll all be asleep now, and an earth quake wouldn't make the Pasala policeman break off his siesta. Much less the army, who are inclined to give themselves airs. We might catch the Andalusia," he added hope fully.

The Saint surveyed him seraphically.

"Sweetheart," he said, "that joke may now be considered over. We've started, and we've got to keep moving. As I don't see the fun of sitting here waiting for the other side to surround us, I guess we'll bounce right along and interview Kelly. And when you two have coached me thoroughly in the habits and topography of Santa Miranda, we'll just toddle along and capture the town."

"Just toddle along and which?" repeated Sheridan dazedly.

The Saint spun a cigarette high into the air, and trapped it neatly between his lips as it fell.

"That is to say, I will capture the town," he corrected him self, "while you and Kelly create a disturbance somewhere to distract their attention. Wake up, sonny! Get your hat, and let's go!"

3

The Saint's breezy way of saying that he would "just toddle along and capture the town" was a slight exaggeration. As a matter of fact, he spent nearly four days on the job.

There was some spade-work to be done, and certain preparations to be made, and the Saint devoted a considerable amount of care and sober thought to these details. Though his methods, to the uninformed observer, might always have seemed to savour of the reckless, tip-and-run, hit-first-and-ask-questions-afterwards school, the truth was that he rarely stepped out of any frying pan without first taking the temperature of the fire beyond.

Even in such a foolhardy adventure as that in which he was then engaged, he knew exactly what he was doing, and legislated against failure as well as he might; for, even in the most outlandish parts of the world, the penalty of unsuccessful revolution is death, and the Saint had no overwhelming desire to turn his interesting biography into an obituary notice.

He explained his plan to Kelly, and found the Irishman an immediate convert to the Cause.

"Shure, I've been thinkin' for years that it was time somebody threw out their crooked government," said that worthy, ruffling a hand like a ham through his tousled mop of flaming hair. "I'm just wonderin' now why I niver did it meself."

"It's a desperate chance," Simon Templar admitted. "But I don't mind taking it if you're game."

"Six years I've been here," mused Kelly ecstatically, screwing up a huge fist, "and I haven't seen a real fight. Exceptin' one or two disagreements with the natives, who run away afther the first round."

The Saint smiled. He could not have hoped to find a more suitable ally.

"We might easily win out," he said. "It wouldn't work in England, but in a place like this--"

"The geography was made for us," said Kelly.

On a scrap of paper he sketched a rough map to illustrate his point.

Pasala is more or less in the shape of a wedge, with the base facing northeast on the seacoast. Near the centre of the base of the wedge is Santa Miranda. In the body of the wedge are the only other three towns worth mentioning-Las Flores, Rugio, and, near the apex, Esperanza. They are connected up by a cart track of a road which includes them in a kind of circular route that starts and finishes at Santa Miranda, for the State of Pasala does not yet boast a railway. This is hardly necessary, for the distance between Santa Miranda and Esperanza, the two towns farthest apart, is only one hundred and forty miles.

It should also be mentioned that the wedge-shaped territory of Pasala cuts roughly into the Republic of Maduro, a much larger and more civilized country.

"Of course, we're simply banking on the psychology of revolutions and the apathy of the natives," said the Saint, when they had finished discussing their plan of campaign. "The population aren't interested-if they're shown a man in a nice new uniform, and told that he's the man in power, they believe it, and go home and pray that they won't be any worse off than they were before. If we take off a couple of taxes, or something like that, as soon as we get in, the mob will be with us to a man. I'm sure the exchequer can stand it-I don't imagine Manuel Conception de Villega has been running this show without making a substantial profit on turnover."

"That'll fetch 'em," Kelly averred. "They're bled dhry with taxes at present."

"Secondly, there's the army. They're like any other army. They obey their officers because it's never occurred to them to do anything else. If they were faced with a revolution they'd fight it. So instead of that we'll present the revolution as an accomplished fact. If they're like any other South American army, they'll simply carry on under the new government- with a bonus of a few pesos per man to clinch the bargain."

They talked for a while longer; and then they went out and joined Archie Sheridan, who had not been present at the council, being otherwise occupied with Lilla McAndrew on the veranda.

The Saint had a little leisure to admire the girl. She was rather tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed, superbly graceful. Her sojourn in that sunny climate had coloured her skin a pale golden brown that was infinitely more becoming than mere pink-and-white; but the peachlike bloom of her complexion had not had time to suffer.

It was plain that Archie Sheridan was fatally smitten with the inevitable affliction, and the Saint was mischievously delighted.

"You want to be careful of him, Miss McAndrew," he advised gravely. "I've known him since he was so high, and you wouldn't believe what a past he's collected in his brief career of sin. Let's see. . . . There was Gladys, the golden-haired beauty from the front row of the Gaiety chorus, Susan, Beryl-no, two Beryls-Ethel, the artist's model, Angela, Sadie from California, Joan-two Joans-no, three Joans__"

"Don't believe him, Lilla," pleaded Archie. "He's been raving all day. Why, just before lunch he said he was Benito Mussolini!"

The girl laughed.

"It's all right," she told Simon. "I don't take him seriously."

"There's gratitude for you!" said Sheridan wildly. "After all I've done for her! I even taught her to speak English. When she arrived here she had a Scots accent that would have made a bawbee run for its life. She reeked of haggis--"

"Archie!"

"Haggis," persisted Sheridan. "She carried one around in her pibroch till it starved to death."

"What are pibroch?" asked the Saint curiously. "Are they something you wear under a kilt?"

When the girl had recovered her composure: "Is he really so impossible?" she exclaimed.

"I don't know you well enough to tell you the whole truth," said the Saint solemnly. "The only hope I can give you is that you're the first Lilla in his life. Wait a minute-sorry-wasn't Lilla the name of the barmaid---"

"Go away," said Sheridan morosely. "With sudden death staring you in the face, you ought to be spending your time in prayer and repentance. You'll be shot at dawn to-morrow, and I shall look over the prison walls and cheer on the firing squad."

He watched Kelly and the Saint retire to the other end of the veranda, and then turned to the girl, with his pleasant face unusually serious.

"Lilla," he said, "I don't want to scare you, but it isn't all quite as funny as we make out. The Saint would still be laughing in the face of the firing squad I mentioned; but that doesn't make the possibility of the firing squad any less real."

She looked at him with sober eyes.

"Then it's easily settled," she said. "I won't let you do it."

Sheridan laughed.

"It isn't me you've got to deal with," he replied. "It's the Saint. Nothing you could say would stop him. He'd simply tell me to beat it with you on the Andalusia this evening if I was scared. And I'd rather face the said firing squad than have the Saint say that to me."

She would have protested further, but something in the man's tone silenced her. She knew that he was making no idle statement. She had no experience whatever of such things, and yet she realized intuitively what she was up against, recognized the heroic thing when she met it-the blind, unswerving loyalty of a man to his friend, the unshakable obedience of a man to a loved leader. And she knew that any attempt she made to seduce her man from that reality would only lower herself in his eyes.

Perhaps there are few women who could have shown such an understanding, but Lilla McAndrew was-Lilla McAndrew.

She smiled suddenly."I've always wanted to see a revolution," she said simply.

Moments passed before Sheridan could grasp the full wonder of her sympathy and acquiescence. And then his arms went round her, and her hands tousled his hair.

"Dear Archie!" she said, and found herself unaccountably breathless.

"I admit every girl the Saint mentioned," said Sheridan defiantly. "And a few more. But that doesn't alter the fact that I love you, and as soon as this comic revolution's over I'm going to marry you."

"I'll believe that when you do it," she teased him; but her heart was on her lips when he kissed her. . . .

Some almost offensively discreet coughing from the Saint interrupted them ten minutes later.

"I tried to save you," said the Saint, declining to avert his shamelessly quizzical gaze from the girl's efforts to straighten her hair inconspicuously. "And I'm sorry to have to butt in, but your boy friend and I have work to do. If you look down towards the town you'll see a file of men advancing up the main street in our direction, led by two men on horseback in the uniform of commissionaires. The entire police force of Santa Miranda, as far as I can make out from this distance, is on its way up here to arrest me for assaulting and battering one of their most prominent citizens, and to arrest Archie as an accessory before, after, and during the fact. They have just woken up from their afternoon snooze and have been put on the job by the aforesaid citizen with commendable rapidity. Will you excuse us if we escape?"

They went to the edge of the veranda and looked down. Below them, about a mile away, Santa Miranda, as yet hardly astir from its siesta, lay bathed in the afternoon sunshine.

The town, indeterminately vignetted at the edges, had a definite core of nearly modem white buildings ranged down its principal streets. These numbered two, and were in the form of a T. The top of the T ran parallel with the waterfront; the upright, halfway down which was the Presidential Palace, ran inland for nearly a mile, tailing off in the mass of adobe huts which clustered round the core of the town.

From where they stood they could look down the length of the street which formed the upright of the T; and the situation was even as the Saint had diagnosed it. ...

"One minute for the fond farewell, Archie," said the Saint briskly, and Sheridan nodded.

Simon Templar drew Kelly inside the bungalow.

"By the way," he said, "do you happen to have such a thing as a good-looking pot of paint?"

"I've got some enamel," replied the mystified Kelly.

He produced a couple of tins, and the Saint selected one with every appearance of satisfaction.

"The very idea," he said. "It's just an idea of mine for dealing with this arrest business."

Kelly was suspicious.

"I don't seem to have much to do," he complained aggrievedly. "It's hoggin' the best of the fightin' yez are. Now, if I had my way, I'd be shtartin' the throuble with these police men right away, I would."

"And wreck the whole show," said the Saint. "No, it's too soon for that. And if you call being fifty percent of an invading army 'having nothing to do' I can't agree. You're one of the most important members of the cast. Besides, if your bus doesn't break down, you'll be back here just when the rough stuff is warming up. You get it both ways."

He adjusted his hat to an appropriately rakish and revolutionary angle on his head, and went out to collect Archie Sheridan.

They shook hands with the still grumbling Kelly; but the Saint had the last word with Lilla McAndrew.

"I'm sorry I've got to take Archie," he said. "You see, he's the one man I can trust here who can tap out Morse fluently, and I sent him out from England for that very reason, though I didn't know it was going to pan out as it's panning out now. But I'll promise to get him back to you safe and sound. You needn't worry. Only the good die young. I wonder how you've managed to live so long, Lilla?"

He smiled; and when the Saint smiled in that particularly gay and enchanting manner, it was impossible to believe that any adventure he undertook could fail.

"Archie is marked 'Fragile-With Care' for this journey," said the Saint, and went swinging down the veranda steps.

He walked back arm-in-arm with Sheridan to the latter's bungalow at a leisurely pace enough, for it was his last chance to give Sheridan his final instructions for the opening of the campaign.

Archie was inclined to voice much the same grievance as Kelly had vented, but Templar dealt shortly with that insubordination.

"I'm starting off by having the most boresome time of any of you," he said. "If I could do your job, I promise you I'd be making you do mine. That being so, I reckon I deserve a corresponding majority ration of excitement at the end. Anyway, with any luck we'll all be together again by Thursday, and we'll see the new era in in a bunch. And if you're going to say you've thought of another scheme that'd be just as effective, my answer is that you ought to have spoken up before. It's too late to change our plans now."

At the bungalow the Saint made certain preparations for the arrival of the police posse which to some extent depleted Archie Sheridan's travelling athletic outfit. That done, he sent Sheridan to his post, and himself settled down with a cigarette in an easy chair on the veranda to await the coming of the Law.

4

The guindillas came toiling up the last two hundred yards of slope in a disorderly straggle. The hill at that point became fairly steep, they were in poor condition, and, although the sun was getting low, the broiling heat of the afternoon had not yet abated; and these factors united to upset what might otherwise have been an impressive approach. The only members of the squad who did not seem the worse for wear were the two comisarios, who rode in the van on a pair of magnificent high-stepping horses, obvious descendants of the chargers of Cortes's invading Spaniards, the like of which may often be seen in that part of the Continent. The Saint had had an eye for those horses ever since he spied them a mile and a half away, which was why he was so placidly waiting for the deputation.

He watched them with a detached interest, smoking his cigarette. They were an unkempt and ferocious-looking lot (in Pasala, as in many other Latin countries, Saturday night is Gillette night for the general public), and every man of them was armed to somewhere near the teeth with a musket, a revolver, and a sabre. The Saint himself was comparatively weaponless, his entire armoury consisting of a beautifully fashioned little knife, strapped to his left forearm under his sleeve, which he could throw with a deadly swiftness and an unerring aim. He did not approve of firearms, which he considered messy and noisy and barbarous inventions of the devil. Yet the opposition's display of force did not concern him.

His first impression, that the entire police force of Santa Miranda had been sent out to arrest him, proved to be a slight overestimate. There were, as a matter of fact, only ten guardias behind the two mounted men in resplendent uniforms.

The band came to a bedraggled and slovenly halt a few yards from the veranda, and the comisarios dismounted and ascended the short flight of steps with an imposing clanking of scabbards and spurs. They were moustached and important.

The Saint rose.

"Buenas tardes, senores," he murmured courteously.

"Seńor," said the senior comisario sternly, unfolding a paper overloaded with official seals, "I regret that I have to trouble a visitor illustrious, but I am ordered to request your honour to allow your honour to be taken to the prevencion, in order that in the morning your honour may be brought before the tribunal to answer a charge of grievously assaulting the Seńor Shannet."

He replaced the document in his pocket, and bowed extravagantly.

The Saint, with a smile, surpassed the extravagance of the bow.

"Seńor polizante," he said, "I regret that I cannot come."

Now the word "polizonte," while it is understood to mean "policeman," is not the term with which it is advisable to address even an irascible guardia-much less a full-blown comisario. It brought to an abrupt conclusion the elaborate ceremony in which the comisario had been indulging.

He turned, and barked an order; and the escort mounted the steps and ranged themselves along the veranda.

"Arrest him!"

"I cannot stay," said the Saint sadly. "And I refuse to be arrested. Adios, amigos!"

He faded away-through the open door of the dining room. The Saint had the knack of making these startlingly abrupt exits without any show of haste, so that he was gone before his audience had realized that he was on his way.

Then the guardias, led by the two outraged comisarios, followed in a body.

The bungalow was small, with a large veranda in front and a smaller veranda at the back. The three habitable rooms of which it boasted ran through the width of the house, with doors opening onto each veranda. The dining room was the middle room, and it had no windows.

As the guardias surged in in pursuit, rifles at the ready, with the comisarios waving their revolvers, the Saint reappeared in the doorway that opened onto the back of the veranda. At the same moment the doors to the front veranda were slammed and barred behind them by Archie Sheridan, who had been lying in wait in an adjoining room for that purpose.

The Saint's hands were held, high above his head, and in each hand was a gleaming round black object.

"Senores," he said persuasively, "I am a peaceful revolutionary, and I cannot be pestered like this. In my hands you see two bombs. If you shoot me, they will fall and explode. If you do not immediately surrender I shall throw them-and, again, they will explode. Is it to be death or glory, boys?"

He spoke the last sentence in English; but he had already said enough in the vernacluar to make the situation perfectly plain. The guardias paused, irresolute.

Their officers, retiring to a strategic position in the back ground from which they could direct operations, urged their men to advance and defy death in the performance of their duty; but the Saint shifted his right hand threateningly, and the guardias found the counter-argument more convincing. They threw down their arms; and the comisarios, finding themselves alone, followed suit as gracefully as they might.

The Saint ordered the arsenal to be thrown out of the door, and he stepped inside the room and stood aside to allow this to be done. Outside, the guns were collected by Archie Sheridan, and their bolts removed and hurled far away into the bushes of the garden. The cartridges he poured into a large bag, together with the contents of the bandoliers which the Saint ordered his prisoners to discard, for these were required for a certain purpose. Then the Saint returned to the doorway. "Hasta la vista!" he murmured mockingly. "Until we meet again!"

And he hurled the two gleaming round black objects he carried, and a wail of terror went up from the doomed men.

The Saint sprang back, slamming and barring the doors in the face of the panic-stricken stampede; and the two tennis balls, which he had coated with Kelly's providential enamel for the purpose, rebounded off the heads of the cowering comisarios, leaving great splashes of paint on the gorgeous uniforms and the gorgeous mustachios of Santa Miranda's Big Two, and went bouncing insolently round the room.

The Saint vaulted over the veranda rail and ran round to the front of the bungalow. Sheridan, his bag of cartridges slung over his shoulder, was already mounted on one of the police horses, and holding the other by the bridle. From inside the dining room could be heard the muffled shouting and cursing of the imprisoned men, and on the panels of the barred doors thundered the battering of their efforts to escape.

The Saint sprang into the saddle.

"Vamos!" he cried, and smacked his hand down on the horse's quarters.

The pounding of departing hoofs came to the ears of the men in the locked room, and redoubled the fury of their onslaught on the doors. But the mahogany of which the doors were made was thick and well seasoned, and it was ten minutes before they broke out. And then, on foot and unarmed, there was nothing for them to do but to return to Santa Miranda and confess defeat.

The which they did, collaborating on the way down to invent a thrilling tale of a desperate and perilous battle, in which they had braved a hundred deaths, their heroism availing them naught in the face of Simon Templar's evil cunning. But first, to restore their shattered nerves, they partook freely of three bottles of Sheridan's whisky which they found. And it may be recorded that on this account the next day found them very ill; for, before he left, Archie Sheridan had liberally adulterated the whisky with Epsom salts. in anticipation of this very vandalism. But, since guardia and comisario alike were unfamiliar with the flavour of whisky, they noticed nothing amiss, and went unsuspecting to their hideous fate.

But when they returned to Santa Miranda they said nothing whatever about bombs, wisely deeming that the inclusion of that episode in their story could not but cover them with derision.

Meantime, Simon Templar and Archie Sheridan had galloped neck and neck to Kelly's bungalow, and there Kelly was waiting for them. He had a kitbag already packed with certain articles that the Saint had required, and Simon took the bag and lashed it quickly to the pommel of his saddle.

Sheridan dismounted. The Saint shook hands with him, and took the bridle of the spare horse.

"All will be well," said the Saint blithely. "I feel it in my bones. So long, souls I See you all again soon. Do your stuff- and good luck!"

He clapped his heels to his horse, and was gone with a cheery wave of his hand.

They watched him till the trees hid him from view, and then they went back to the bungalow.

"A piece of wood, pliers, screws, screwdriver, and wire, Kelly, my bhoy!" ordered Sheridan briskly. "I've got some work to do before I go to bed to-night. And while I'm doing it you can gather round and hear the biggest laugh yet in this revolution, or how the Battle of Santa Miranda was nearly won on the courts of Wimbledon."

"I thought you weren't coming back," said the girl accusingly.

"I didn't know whether I was or not," answered the shameless Archie. "It all depended on whether the Saint's plan of escape functioned or not. Anyway, a good-bye like you gave me was far too good to miss just because I might be coming back. And don't look so disappointed because I got away. I'll go down to the town and surrender, if that's what you want."

Towards sundown a squadron of cavalry galloped up to the bungalow, and the officer in command declared his intention of making a search. Kelly protested.

"You have no right," he said, restraining an almost irresistible desire to throw the man down the steps and thus precipitate the fighting that his fists were itching for.

"I have a warrant from the Minister of the Interior, El Supremo e Ilustrisimo Seńor Manuel Conception de Villega," said the officer, producing the document with a flourish.

"El Disgustado y Horribilisimo Seńor!" muttered Kelly.

The officer shrugged, and indicated the men who waited below.

"I do not wish to use force, Seńor Kelly," he said significantly, and Kelly submitted to the inevitable.

"But," he said, "I do not know why you should suspect me to be hiding him."

"You are known to be a friend of the Seńor Sheridan," was the brief reply, "and the Seńor Sheridan is a friend of this man. We are looking for both of them."

Kelly followed the officer into the house.

"What did you say was the name of this man you are looking for?" he inquired.

"To the Seńor Shannet, whom he attacked," said the officer, "he gave his name as Benito Mussolini."

He was at a loss to understand Kelly's sudden earthquaking roar of laughter. At last he gave up the effort, and put it down to another manifestation of the well-known madness of all ingleses. But the fact remains that the joke largely compensated Kelly for the indignity of the search to which his house was subjected.

The officer and half a dozen of his men went through the bungalow with a small-toothed comb, and not a cubic inch of it, from floor to rafters, escaped their attention. But they did not find Archie Sheridan, who was sitting out on the roof, on the opposite side to that from which the soldiers had approached.

At last the search party allowed themselves to be shepherded out, for barely an hour's daylight was left to them, and they had already fruitlessly wasted much valuable time.

"But remember, Seńor Kelly," said the officer, as his horse was led up, "that both Sheridan and Mussolini have been declared outlaws for resisting arrest and assaulting and threatening the lives of the guardia civiles sent to apprehend them. In the morning they will be proclaimed; and the Seńor Shannet, who has heard of the insolence offered to the Law, has himself offered to double the reward for their capture, dead or alive."

The troopers rode off on their quest, but in those latitudes the twilight is short. They scoured the countryside for an hour, until the fall of night put an end to the search, and five miles away they found the horses of the two comisarios grazing in a field, but of the man Mussolini there was no trace. The Saint had had a good start; and what he did not know about the art of taking cover in the open country wasn't worth knowing.

He was stretched out on a branch of a tall tree a mile away from where the horses were found when the troop of cavalry reined in only twelve feet beneath him.

"We can do no more now," said the officer. "In the morning we shall find him. Without horses he cannot travel far. Let us go home."

The Saint laughed noiselessly in the darkness.

5

That night there came into Santa Miranda a peón.

He was dirty and disreputable to look upon. His clothes were dusty, patched in many places, and threadbare where they were not patched; and his hair was long, and matted into a permanent thatch, as is the slovenly custom of the labourers of that country.

Had he wished to do so, he might have passed unnoticed among many other similarly down-at-heel and poverty-stricken people; but this he did not seem to want. In fact, he went out of his way to draw attention to himself; and this he found easy enough, for his poverty-stricken appearance was belied by the depth of his pocket.

He made a fairly comprehensive round of the inferior cafes in the town, and in each he bought wine and aguardiente for all who cared to join him. Naturally, it was not long before he acquired a large following; and, since he seemed to account for two drinks to everybody else's one, there was no surprise when he became more and more drunk as the evening wore on.

It was not to be expected that such display of affluence on the part of one whose outward aspect argued against the probability that he would have more than a few centavos to his name could escape comment, and it was not long before the tongues that devoured the liquor which he bought were busy with rumour. It was whispered, as with authority, that he was a bandit from the Sierra Maduro, over the border beyond Esperanza, who had crossed into Pasala to spend his money and rest until the rurales of Maduro tired of seeking him and he could return to his old hunting grounds with safety. Then it was remarked that on his little finger was a signet ring bearing a heraldic device, and with equal authority it was said that he was the heir to a noble Mexican family indulging his hobby of moving among the peones as one of themselves and distributing charity where he found it merited. Against this, an other school of thought affirmed that he was a peón who had murdered his master and stolen his ring and his money.

The peón heard these whisperings and laughingly ignored them. His manner lent more support, however, to either of the two former theories than to the third. He was tall for a peón, and a man of great strength, as was seen when he bought a whole keg of wine and lifted it in his hands to fill his goblet as if it had weighed nothing at all. His eyes were blue, which argued that he was of noble descent, for the true peón stock is so mixed with the native that the eyes of that sea-blue colour are rare. And again, the bandit theory was made more plausible by the man's boisterous and reckless manner, as though he held life cheap and the intense enjoyment of the day the only thing of moment, and would as soon be fighting as drinking. He had, too, a repertoire of strange and barbarous songs which no one could understand.

"Drink up, amigos!" he roared from time to time, "for this is the beginning of great days for Pasala!"

But when they asked him what they might mean, he turned away their questions with a jest, and called for more wine.

Few of his following had seen such a night for many years.

From house to house he went, singing his strange songs, and bearing his keg of wine on his shoulder. One or two guardias would have barred his way, or, hearing the rumours which were gossiped about him, would have stopped and questioned him; but the peón poured them wine or flung them money, and they stood aside.

Towards midnight, still singing, the man led his procession up the Calle del Palacio. The crowd followed, not sure where they were going, and not caring, for they had drunk much.

Now, the Calle del Palacio forms the upright of the T which has been described, and halfway down it, as has been stated, is the palace from which it takes its name.

In the street opposite the palace gates the peón halted, set down his keg, and mounted unsteadily upon it. He stood there, swaying slightly, and his following gathered round him. .. "Viva! Viva!" they shouted thickly.

The peón raised his hands for silence.

"Citizens!" he cried, "I have told you that this is the beginning of great days for Pasala, and now I will tell you why. It is because at last we are going to suffer no more under this Manuel Conception de Villega. May worms devour him alive, for he is a thief and a tyrant and the son of a dog! His taxes bear you down, and you receive nothing in return. The President is his servant, that strutting nincompoop, and they are both in the pay of the traitor Shannet, who is planning to betray you to Maduro. Now I say that we will end this to-night."

"Viva!" responded a few doubtful voices.

"Let us finish this slavery," cried the peón again. "Let us storm this palace, which was built with money wrung from the poor, where your puppet of a President and this pig of a De Villega sleep in luxury for which you have been tortured! Let us tear them from their beds and slay them, and cast them back into the gutter from which they came!"

This time there were no "Vivas!" The awfulness of the stranger's blasphemy had sobered the mob as nothing else could have done. It was unprecedented-incredible. No one had ever dared to speak in such terms of the President and his minister-or, if they had, it was reported by spies to the comisarios, and guardias came swiftly and took the blasphemers away to a place where their treason should not offend the ears of the faithful. Of course the peon had spoken nothing but the truth. But to tear down the palace and kill the President! It was unheard of. It could not be done without much discussion.

The stranger, after his first speech, had seen the sentries at the palace gates creep stealthily away; and now, over the heads of the awestruck crowd, he saw a little knot of guardias coming down the street at the double. Whistles shrilled, and the mob huddled together in sudden terror.

"Amigos," said the stranger urgently, in a lower voice, "the hour of liberation will not be long coming. To-night you have heard me sing many strange songs, which are the songs of freedom. Now, when you hear those songs again, and you have thought upon the words I have said to-night, follow the man who sings such songs as I sang, for he will be sent to lead you to victory. But now go quickly, or you will be taken and punished."

The mob needed no encouragement for that. Even while the peón spoke many of them had sneaked away into the dark side streets. As he spoke his last sentence, it was as if a cord had been snapped which held them, and they fled incontinently.

The peón straightened up and shook his fists at their backs.

"Fools!" he screamed. "Cowards! Curs! Is it thus that ye fight? Is it thus that ye overthrow tyrants?"

But his audience was gone, and from either side the guardias were closing in on him with drawn sabres.

"Guarro!" challenged one of them. "What is this raving?"

"I speak for liberty!" bawled the peón, reeling drunkenly on his pedestal. "I speak against the President, who does not know the name of his father, and against the Minister of the Interior, Manuel Concepcion de Villega, whom I call Seńor Jugo Procedente del Estercolero, the spawn of a dunghill- guarros, perruelos, hijos de la puta adiva . . ."

He let loose a stream of the vilest profanity and abuse in the language, so that even the hardened guardias were horrified.

They dragged him down and hustled him ungently to the police station, where they locked him up in a verminous cell for the night; but even then he cursed and rayed against the President and the Minister of the Interior, mingling his maledictions with snatches of unintelligible songs, until the jailer threatened to beat him unless he held his tongue. Then he was silent, and presently went to sleep.

In the morning they brought him before the magistrate. He was sober, but still rebellious. They asked him his name.

"Don Fulano de Tal," he replied, which is the Spanish equivalent of saying "Mr. So-and-So, Such-and-Such."

"If you are impertinent," said the magistrate, "I shall order you to receive a hundred lashes."

"My name is Sancho Quijote," said the peón sullenly.

He was charged, and the sentries from the palace testified to the treason of his speeches. So also did the guardias who had broken up his meeting. They admitted, in extenuation of his offense, that he had been very drunk.

He was asked if he had anything to say.

"I have nothing to say," he answered, "except that, drunk or not, I shall spit upon the names of the President and the Minister Of the Interior till the end of my days. As for you, seńor juez, you are no better than the guindillas who arrested me-you are all the miserable hirelings of the oppressors, paid to persecute those who dare speak for justice. But it will not be long before your pride is turned to humiliation."

"He is mad," whispered one guardia to another.

The peón was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment with hard labour, for there are no limits to the powers of summary jurisdiction in Pasala. He heard the verdict without emotion.

"It does not matter," he said. "I shall not stay in prison seven days. It will not be long before you know why."

When he reached the prison he asked to be allowed to send a message by telegraph to Ondia, the capital of Maduro.

"I am of Maduro," he confessed. "I should have returned to Ondia to-morrow, and I must tell my wife that I am detained."

He had money to pay for the telegram, but it was evening before permission was received for the message to be sent, for nothing is done hurriedly in Spanish America.

Twenty-four hours later there came from Ondia a telegram addressed to Manuel Concepcion de Villega, and it was signed with the name and titles of the President of Maduro. A free translation would have read: I am informed that a citizen of Maduro, giving the name of Sancho Quijote, has been imprisoned in Santa Miranda. If he is not delivered to the frontier by Wednesday noon my armies will advance into Pasala.

Shannet was closeted with De Villega when the message arrived, and for the moment he was no better able to account for it than was the Minister.

"Who is this man Quijote?" he asked. "It's a ridiculous name. Here is a book called Don Quijote, Quixote in English, and there is a man in it called Sancho Panza."

"I know that," said Don Manuel, and sent for the judge.

He heard the story of the peón's crime and sentence and was not enlightened. But he had enough presence of mind to accuse the magistrate of inefficiency for not having suspected that the name Sancho Quijote was a false one.

"It is impossible," said De Villega helplessly, when the magistrate had been dismissed. "By Wednesday noon-that hardly gives us enough time to get him to the frontier even if we release him immediately. And who is this man? A labourer, a stranger, of whom nobody knows anything, who suddenly appears in Santa Miranda with more money than he could have ever come by honestly, and preaches a revolution to a mob that he has first made drunk, He deserves his punishment, and yet the President of Maduro, without any inquiry, demands his release. It means war."

"He knew this would happen," said Shannet. "The judge told us-he boasted that he would not stay in prison seven days."

They both saw the light at the same instant.

"An agent provocateur--"

"A trap!" snarled De Villega. "And we have fallen into it. It is only an excuse that Maduro was seeking. They sent him here, with money, for no other purpose than to get himself arrested. And then this preposterous ultimatum, which they give us no time even to consider. ..."

"But why make such an intrigue?" demanded Shannet. "This is a poor country. They are rich. They have nothing to gain."

Don Manuel tugged nervously at his mustachios.

"And we cannot even buy them off," he said. "Unless we appeal to the Estados Unidos--"

Shannet sneered.

"And before their help can arrive the war is over," he said. "New Orleans is five days away. But they will charge a high price for burying the hatchet for us."

Dan Manuel suddenly sat still. His shifty little dark eyes came to rest on Shannet.

"I see it!" he exclaimed savagely. "It is the oil! You, and your accursed oil! I see it all! It is because of the oil that this country is always embroiled in a dozen wars and fears of wars. So far Pasala has escaped, but now we are like the rest. My ministry will be overthrown. Who knows what Great Power has paid Maduro to attack us? Then the Great Power steps in and takes our oil from us. I shall be exiled. Just now it is England, through you, who has control of the oil. Perhaps it is now America who tries to capture it, or another English company. I am ruined!"

"For God's sake stop whining!" snapped Shannet. "If you're ruined, so am I. We've got to see what can be done about it."

De Villega shook his head.

"There is nothing to do. They are ten to one. We shall be beaten. But I have some money, and there is a steamer in two days. If we can hold off their armies so long I can escape."

It was some time before the more brutally vigorous Shannet could bring the minister to reason. Shannet had the courage of the wild beast that he was. At bay, faced with the wrecking of his tainted fortunes, he had no other idea but to fight back with the desperate ferocity of a cornered animal.

But even when Don Manuel's moaning had been temporarily quietened they were little better off. It was useless to appeal to the President, for he was no more than a tool in De Villega's hands. Likewise, the rest of the Council were nothing but figureheads, the mere instruments of De Villega's policy, and appointed by himself for no other reason than their willingness, for a consideration, to oppose nothing that he put forward.

"There is but one chance," said De Villega. "A radiografo must be sent to New Orleans. America will send a warship to keep the peace. Then we will try to make out to Maduro that the warship is here to fight for us, and their armies will retire. To the Estados Unidos, then, we will say that we had made peace before their warship arrived; we are sorry to have troubled them, but there is nothing to do."

It seemed a flimsy suggestion to Shannet, but it was typical of De Villega's crafty and tortuous statesmanship. Shannet doubted if America, having once been asked to intervene, would be so easily put off, but he had no more practicable scheme to suggest himself, and he let it go.

He could not support it with enthusiasm, for an American occupation would mean the coming of American justice, and Shannet had no wish for that while there were still tongues wagging with charges against himself. But he could see no way out. He was in a cleft stick.

"Why not let this peón go?" he asked.

"And will that help us?" demanded Don Manuel scornfully. "If we sent him away now he would hardly have time to reach the border by noon to-morrow, and they would certainly say that they had not received him. Is it not plain that they are determined to fight? When they have taken such pains to trump up an excuse, will they be so quickly appeased?"

A purely selfish train of thought led to Shannet's next question.

"This man Sheridan and his friend-has nothing been heard of them yet? They have been at large two days."

"At a time like this, can I be bothered with such trifles?" replied De Villega shortly. "The squadron of Captain Tomare has been looking for them, but they are not found."

This was not surprising, for the searchers had worked out wards from Santa Miranda. Had they been inspired to work inwards they might have found Simon Templar, unwashed and unshaven, breaking stones in their own prison yard, chained by his ankles in a line of other unwashed and unshaven desperadoes, his identity lost in his official designation of Convicto Sancho Quijote, No. 475.

It was the Saint's first experience of imprisonment with hard labour, and he would have been enjoying the novel ad venture if it had not been for various forms of microscopic animal life with which the prison abounded.

6

There came one morning to the London offices of Pasala Oil Products, Ltd. (Managing Director, Hugo Campard), a cable in code. He decoded it himself, for it was not a code in general use; and his pink face went paler as the transliteration proceeded.

By the time the complete translation had been written in between the lines Hugo Campard was a very frightened man. He read the message again and again, incredulous of the catastrophe it foreboded.

Maduro declared war Pasala on impossible ultimatum. Believe deliberately instigated America or rival combine. Pasala army hopelessly outnumbered. No chance. Villega appealed America. Help on way but will mean overthrow of government. Concessions probably endangered. Sell out before news reaches London and breaks market.

Shannet.

Campard's fat hands trembled as he clipped the end of a cigar.

He was a big, florid man with a bald head and a sandy moustache. Once upon a time he had been a pinched and out-at-elbows clerk in a stockbroker's office, until his ingenuity had found incidental ways of augmenting his income. For a few years he had scraped and saved; then, with five hundred pounds capital, and an intimate knowledge of the share market, he had gone after bigger game.

He had succeeded. He was clever, he knew the pitfalls to avoid, he was without pity or scruple, and luck had been with him. In fifteen years he had become a very rich man. Innumerable were the companies with which he had been associated, which had taken in much money and paid out none. He had been "exposed" half a dozen times, and every reputable broker knew his stock for what it was; but the script of the Campard companies was always most artistically engraved and their prospectuses couched in the most attractive terms, so that there was never a lack of small investors ready to pour their money into his bank account.

It is said that there is a mug born every minute, and Campard had found this a sound working principle. Many others like him, steering narrowly clear of the law, have found no lack of victims, and Campard had perhaps found more suckers than most.

But even the most triumphant career meets a check some times, and Campard had made a slip which had brought him into the full publicity of a High Court action. He had wriggled out, by the skin of his teeth and some expensive perjury, but the resultant outcry had told him that it would be wise to lie low for a while. And lying low did not suit Campard's book. He lived extravagantly, and for all the wealth that he possessed on paper there were many liabilities. And then, when his back was actually to the wall, had come the miracle-in the shape of the chance to buy the Pasala concession, offered him by a man named Shannet, whom he had employed many years ago.

Pasala oil was good. In the few months that it had been worked, the quality and quantity of the output had been startling. Campard enlisted the help of a handful of his boon companions, and poured in all his resources. More plant was needed and more labour, more expert management. That was now to be supplied. The directors of Pasala Oil Products sat down to watch themselves become millionaires.

And then, in a clear sky, the cloud.

Hugo Campard, skimming through his newspaper on his way to the financial pages, had read of the early manifestations of the Saint, and had been mildly amused. In the days that followed he had read of other exploits of the Saint, and his amusement had changed gradually to grave anxiety. . . . And one day there had come to Hugo Campard, through the post, a card. . . .

Each morning thereafter the familiar envelope had been beside his plate at breakfast; each morning, when he reached the offices of Pasala Oil Products, he had found another reminder of the Saint on his desk. There had been no message. Just the picture. But the newspapers were full of stories, and Hugo Campard was afraid. . . .

Then, two days ago, the Saint had spoken.

Campard could not have told why he opened the envelopes in which the Saint sent his mementoes. Perhaps it was be cause, each time, Campard hoped he would be given some indication of what the Saint meant to do. After days of suspense, that had painted the black hollows of sleeplessness under his eyes and brought him to a state of nerves that was sheer physical agony, he was told.

On that day, underneath the crude outline, was pencilled a line of small writing: In a week's time you will be ruined.

He had already had police protection-after the Lemuel incident there had been no difficulty in obtaining that, as soon as he showed the police the first cards. All night there had been a constable outside his house in St. John's Wood. All day a constable stood in the corridor outside his office. A plain-clothes detective rode in his car with him everywhere be went. Short of some unforeseeable masterpiece of strategy, or a recourse to the machine-gun fighting of the Chicago gangsters, it was impossible that the Saint could reach him as he had reached Lemuel.

Now, at one stroke, the Saint brought all these preparations to naught, and broke invisibly through the cordon. Against such an attack the police could not help him.

"In a week's time you will be ruined."

An easy boast to make. A tremendous task to carry out.

And yet, even while he had been racking his brains to find out how the Saint might carry out his threat, he had his answer.

For a long time he stared blindly at the cablegram, until every letter of the message was burned into his brain as with a hot iron. When he roused himself it was to clutch at a straw.

He telephoned to the telegraph company, and verified that the message had actually been received from Santa Miranda via Barbadoes and Pernarubuco. Even that left a loophole. He cabled to an agent in New York, directing him to obtain authentic information from Washington at any cost; and by the evening he received a reply confirming Shannet's statement. The U.S.S. Michigan was on its way to Santa Miranda in response to an appeal from the President.

There was no catch in it. Shannet's code message was not a bluff, not even from an agent of the Saint in Santa Miranda. It was a grimly sober utterance of fact.

But the gigantic thoroughness of it! The colossal impudence of the scheme! Campard felt as if all the strength and fight had ebbed out of him. Me was aghast at the revelation of the resources of the Saint. Against a man who apparently thought nothing of engineering a war to gain his ends, he felt as puny and helpless as a babe.

His hand went out again to the telephone, but he checked the impulse. It was no use telling the police that. They could do nothing-and, far too soon as it was, the news would be published in the press. And then, with the name of Campard behind them, P.O.P shares would tumble down the market to barely the value of their weight in waste paper.

Before he left the office that night he sent a return code in cable to Santa Miranda: Believe war organized by criminal known as Saint, who has threatened me. Obtain particulars of any strange Englishman in Pasala or Maduro. Give descriptions. Report developments.

What the Saint had started, Campard argued, the Saint could stop. Campard might have a chance yet, if he could bargain. ...

But the declaration of war was announced in the evening paper which he bought on his way home, and Hugo Campard knew then it was too late.

He had no sleep that night, and by nine o'clock next morning he was at the office, and speaking on the telephone to his broker.

"I want you to sell twenty thousand P.O.P.s for me," he said. "Take the best price you can get."

"I wish I could hope to get a price at all," came the sardonic answer. "The market's full of rumours and everyone's scared to touch the things. You're too late with your selling- the bears were in before you."

"What do you mean?" asked Campard in a strained voice.

"There was a good deal of quiet selling yesterday and the day before," said the broker. "Somebody must have had information. They're covering to-day, and they must have made thousands."

During the morning other backers of the company came through on the telephone and were accusing or whining according to temperament, and Campard dealt with them all in the same formula.

"I can't help it," he said. "I'm hit twice as badly as any of you. It isn't my fault. The company was perfectly straight; you know that."

The broker rang up after lunch to say that he had managed to get rid of six thousand shares at an average price of two shillings.

"Two shillings for two-pound shares?" Campard almost sobbed. "You're mad!"

"See if you can do any better yourself, Mr. Campard," replied the broker coldly. "The market won't take any more at present, but I might be able to get rid of another couple of thousand before we close at about a bob each-to people who want to keep them as curios. A firm of wall-paper manufacturers might make an offer for the rest--"

Campard slammed down the receiver and buried his face in his hands.

He was in the same position three hours later when his secretary knocked on the door and entered with a buff envelope.

"Another cable, Mr. Campard."

He extracted the flimsy and reached out a nerveless hand for the code book. He decoded: Maduro armies advancing into Pasala. Only chance now sell any price. Answer inquiry. Man arrived nearly four months ago-- With a sudden impatience, Campard tore the cablegram into a hundred pieces and dropped them into the waste-paper basket. There was no time now to get in touch with the Saint. The damage was done.

A few minutes later came the anticipated message from the firm that he had induced to back him over Pasala Oil Products. Rich as he had become, he would never have been able to acquire his large holding in the company without assistance. How, with his reputation, he had got any firm to back him was a mystery. But he had been able to do it on the system known as "margins"-which, in this instance, meant roughly that he could be called upon immediately to produce fifty percent of the amount by which the shares had depreciated, in order to "keep up his margin."

The demand, courteously but peremptorily worded, was delivered by special messenger; and his only surprise was that it had not come sooner. He scribbled a check, which there was no money in the bank to meet, and sent it back by the same boy.

He sent for his car and left the office shortly afterwards. The paper which he bought outside told of the panic of P.O.P's, and he read the article with a kind of morbid interest.

There was a letter, delivered by the afternoon post, waiting at his house when he got back.

I sold P.O.P.s and covered to-day. The profits are nearly twelve thousand pounds.

The expenses of this campaign have been unusually heavy; but, even then, after deducting these and my ten percent collecting fee, I hope to be able to forward nine thousand pounds to charity on your behalf.

Received the above-named sum-with thanks.

The Saint.

Enclosed was a familiar card, and one Pasala Oil Products share certificate.

Hugo Campard dined well that night, and, alone, accounted for a bottle of champagne. After that he smoked a cigar with relish, and drank a liqueur brandy with enjoyment.

He had dressed. He felt the occasion deserved it. His mind was clear and untroubled, for in a flash he had seen the way out of the trap.

When his cigar was finished, he exchanged his coat for a dressing gown, and passed into his study. He locked the door behind him, and for some time paced up and down the room in silence, but no one will ever know what he thought. At ten o'clock precisely the pacing stopped.

The constable on guard outside heard the shot; but Hugo Campard did not hear it.

7

The men serving sentences of hard labour in the prison of Santa Miranda are allowed an afternoon siesta of three hours. This is not due to the humanity and loving-kindness of the authorities, but to the fact that nothing will induce the warders to forgo the afternoon nap which is the custom of the country, and no one has yet discovered a way of making the prisoners work without a wide-awake warder to watch them and pounce on the shirkers.

The fetters are struck off the prisoners' ankles, and they are herded into their cells, a dozen in each, and there locked up to rest as well as they can in the stifling heat of a room ventilated only by one small barred window and thickly populated with flies. The warders retire to their quarters above the prison, and one jailer is left on guard, nodding in the passage outside the cells, with a rifle across his knees.

It was so on the third day of the Saint's incarceration, and this was the second hour of the siesta, but the Saint had not slept.

His cell mates were sprawled on the bunks or on the floor, snoring heavily. They were hardened to the flies. Outside, the jailer dozed, his sombrero on the back of his head and his coat unbuttoned. Through the window of the cell a shaft of burning sunlight cut across the moist gloom and splashed a square of light on the opposite wall.

The Saint sat by the gates of the cell, watching that creeping square of light. Each afternoon he had .watched it, learning its habits, so that now he could tell the time by it. When the edge of the square touched a certain scar in the stone it was four o'clock. . . . That was the time he had decided upon. ...

He scrambled softly to his feet.

The jailer's head nodded lower and lower. Every afternoon, the Saint had noted, he set his chair at a certain point in the passage where a cool draught from a cross-corridor would fan him. Therefore, on that afternoon, the Saint had taken pains to get into the nearest cell to that point.

He tore a button off his clothes, and threw it. It hit the jailer on the cheek, and the man stirred and grunted. The Saint threw another button. The man shook his head, snorted, and roused, stretching his arms with a prodigious yawn.

"Senor!" hissed the Saint.

The man turned his head.

"Loathsome disease," he growled, "why dost thou disturb my meditations? Lie down and be silent, lest I come and beat thee."

"I only wished to ask your honour if I might give your honour a present of fifty pesos," said the Saint humbly.

He squatted down again by the bars of the gate and played with a piece of straw. Minutes passed. . . .

He heard the jailer get to his feet, but did not look up. The man's footsteps grated on the floor and stopped by the cell door. In the cell the other convicts snored peacefully.

"Eater of filth and decomposing fish," said the jailer's voice gruffly, "did I hear thy coarse lips speak to me of fifty pesos? How hast thou come by that money?"

"Gifts break rocks," replied the peón, quoting the Spanish proverb. "I had rather my gifts broke them than I were compelled to break any more of them. I have fifty pesos, and I want to escape."

"It is impossible. I searched thee--"

"It was hidden. I will give it to your honour as a pledge. I know where to find much more money, if your honour would deign to release me and let me lead you to where it is hidden. Have you not heard how, when I was arrested, it was testified that in the town I spent, in one evening, enough to keep you for a year? That was nothing to me. I am rich."

The jailer stroked his stubbly chin.

"Verminous mongrel," he said, more amiably, "show me this fifty pesos and I will believe thee."

The Saint ran his fingers through his tangled hair, and there fell out a note. The jailer recognized it, and his avaricious eyes gleamed.

He reached a claw-like hand through the bars, but the Saint jerked the note out of his reach. The jailer's face darkened.

"Abominable insect," he said, "thou hast no right to that. Thou art a convict, and thy goods are forfeit to the State. As the servant of the State I will confiscate that paper, that thy low-born hands may defile it no longer."

He reached for his keys, but the Saint held up a warning hand.

"If you try to do that, amigo," he said, "I shall cry out so loudly that the other warders will come down to see what has happened. Then I shall tell them, and they will make you divide the fifty pesos with them. And I shall refuse to tell you where I have hidden the rest of my money. Why not release me, and have it all for yourself?"

"But how shall I know that thou dost not lie?"

The Saint's hands went again to his hair, and a rain of fifty-peso notes fell to the floor. He picked them up and counted them before the jailer. There were thirty of them altogether.

"See, I have them here!" he said. "Fifteen hundred pesos is a lot of money. Now open this door and I will give them to you."

The jailer's eyes narrowed cunningly. Did this fool of a peón really believe that he would be given his liberty in exchange for such a paltry sum? Apparently.

Not that the sum was so paltry, being equal to about two hundred pounds in English money; but if any prisoner escaped, the jailer would be blamed for it, and probably imprisoned himself. Yet this simpleton seemed to imagine that he had only to hand over his bribe and the jailer would risk punishment to earn it.

Very well, let him have his childish belief. It would be easily settled. The door opened, the money paid over, a shot. . . . And then there would be no one to bear witness against him. The prisoner was known to be violent. He had attempted to escape, and was shot. It would be easy to invent a story to account for the opening of the cell door. . . .

"Senor peón," said the jailer, "I see now that your honour should not be herded in with these cattle. I will set your honour free and your honour will give me the money, and I shall remember your honour in my prayers."

He tiptoed back to his chair and picked up his rifle. Then, with elaborate precautions against noise, he unlocked the cell door, and the peón came out into the passage.

The other prisoners still snored, and there was no sound but the droning of the flies to arouse them. The whole colloquy had been conducted in whispers, for it was imperative for the jailer as for the peón that there should be no premature alarm.

"Now give me the money," said the jailer huskily.

The Saint held out the handful of notes, and one broke loose and fluttered to the floor. As the jailer bent to pick it up, the Saint reached over him and slid the man's knife gently out of his belt. As the man straightened up the Saint's arm whipped round his neck, strangling his cry of fear before it could pass his throat. And the man felt the point of the knife prick his chest.

"Put thy rifle down against the wall," breathed the Saint in his ear. "If it makes a sound thou wilt not speak again."

No rifle could ever have been grounded more silently.

The Saint withdrew the knife and picked the man off his feet. In an instant, and without a sound, he had him on the floor, holding him with his legs in a jiu-jitsu lock so that he could not move.

"Be very quiet," urged the Saint, and let him feel the knife again.

The man lay like one dead. The Saint, his hands now free, twisted the man's arms behind his back and tied them with the sling of his rifle. Then he rolled the man over.

"When you searched me," he said, "I had a knife. Where is it?"

"I am wearing it."

The Saint rolled up the man's sleeve and unstrapped the sheath from his forearm. With loving care he transferred it to his own arm, for he had had Anna for years, and she was the darling of his heart. That little throwing-knife, which he could wield so expertly, had accompanied him through countless adventures, and had saved his life many times. He loved it like a child, and the loss of it would have left him inconsolable.

With Anna back in her place, the Saint felt more like him self-though it is doubtful if anyone could have been found to agree with him, for he could never in his life have looked so dirty and disreputable as he was then. He, Simon Templar, the Saint, the man who was known for his invariable elegance and his almost supernatural power of remaining immaculate and faultlessly groomed even in the most hectic rough-house and the most uncivilized parts of the world, had neither washed nor shaved for nearly four days. There was no provision for these luxuries in the prison of Santa Miranda. And his clothes had been dreadful enough when Kelly had borrowed them off his under-gardener for the purpose; now, after having been lived in day and night on the stone pile and in the filthy cell which they had just left, their condition may be imagined. . . .

His greatest wish at that moment was to get near some soap and water; and already the time of grace for such a diversion was getting short. The square of light on the cell wall told him that he had barely half an hour at his disposal before Santa Miranda would be rousing itself for the second installment of its day's work; and the other warders would soon be lurching down, yawning and cursing, to drive the prisoners back to their toil. It was time for the Saint to be moving.

He unfastened the jailer's belt and used it to-secure the man's legs; then he rolled him over and stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth for a gag. He straightened up, hands on hips; and the helpless man glared up at him with bulging eyes.

"But I had forgotten!" cried the Saint, under his breath, and stooped again to take his money from the jailer's pocket. The man squirmed, and the Saint swept him a mocking bow.

"Remain with God, my little ape," he murmured. "There will now be nothing to disturb thy meditations."

Then he was gone.

He ran lightly down the corridor and out at the end into the blazing sunlight of the prison courtyard. This he crossed swiftly, slowing up and moving a little more cautiously as he neared the gates. Within the courtyard beside the gates was a little sentry box where the gatekeeper might take shelter from the sun.

The Saint stole up the last few yards on tiptoe, and sidled one eye round the doorway of the box.

The gatekeeper sat inside on a packing case, his back propped against the wall. His rifle was leaning against the wall in one corner. He was awake, but his eyes were intent on a pattern which he was tracing in the dust with the tow of his boot.

The bare prison walls were too high to scale, and the only way out was by way of the gates.

The Saint's shadow suddenly blocked the light from the sentry box, and the gatekeeper half rose to his feet with a shout rising to his lips. It was rather like shooting a sitting rabbit, but the issues involved were too great to allow of making a more sporting fight of it. As the warder's head came up the Saint hit him on the point of the jaw scientifically and with vim, and the shout died stillborn.

The Saint huddled the man back against the wall and tipped his sombrero over his eyes as if he were asleep-which, in fact, he was. Then he scrambled over the gates, and dropped cat-footed into the dust of the cart track of a road outside.

The prison of Santa Miranda lies to the east of the town, near the sea, among the slums which closely beset the bright main streets; and the Saint set himself to pass quickly through the town by way of these dirty, narrow streets where his disreputable condition would be most unnoticed, avoiding the Calle del Palacio and the chance of encountering a guardia who might remember him.

Santa Miranda had not yet awoken. In the grass-grown lanes between the rude huts of the labourers a child in rags played here and there, but paid no attention to his passing. In the doorway of one hut an old and wizened Indian slept in the sun, like a lizard. The Saint saw no one else.

He threaded the maze quietly but with speed, steering a course parallel to the Calle del Palacio. And then, over the low roofs of the adobe hovels around him, he saw, quite close, a tall white tower caught by the slanting rays of the sun, and he changed his plans.

That is to say, he resolved on the spur of the moment to dispense with making plans. His original vague idea had been to make for Kelly's bungalow, get a shave, a bath, some clean clothes, and a cigarette, and sit down to deliberate the best way of capturing the town. So far, in spite of his boast, the solution of that problem had eluded him, though he had no doubts that he would be given inspiration at the appointed time.

Now, looking at that tower, which he knew to be an ornament of the Presidential Palace, only a stone's throw away, the required inspiration came; and he acted upon it at once, branching off to his left in the direction of the tower.

It was one of those gay and reckless, daredevil and fool hardy, utterly preposterous and wholly delightful impulses which the Saint could never resist. The breath-taking impudence of it was, to his way of thinking, the chief reason for taking it seriously; the suicidal odds against success were a conclusive argument for having a fling at bringing off the lone hundred-to-one chance; the monumental nerve that was plainly needed for turning the entertaining idea into a solemn fact was a challenge to his adventurousness that it was simply unthinkable to ignore. The Saint took up the gauntlet without the faintest hesitation.

For this was the full effrontery of his decision: "Eventually," whispered the Saint, to his secret soul-"why not now?"

And the Saintly smile in all its glory twitched his lips back from his white teeth. ...

His luck had been stupendous, and it augured well for the future. Decidedly it was his day. A clean get-away from the prison, with no alarm. And he reached the high wall surrounding the palace grounds unobserved. And only a dozen feet away from the walls grew a tall tree.

The Saint went up the tree like a monkey, to a big straight branch that stuck out horizontally fifteen feet from the ground. Measuring the distance, he jumped.

The leap took him onto the top of the wall. He steadied himself for a moment, and then jumped again, twelve feet down into the palace gardens.

He landed on his toes, as lightly as a panther, and went zigzagging over the lawn between the flower beds like a Red Indian. The gardens were empty. There was no sound but the murmuring of bees in the sun and the soft rustle of the Saint's feet over the grass.

He ran across the deserted gardens and up some steps to a flagged terrace in the very shadow of the palace walls. Eight feet above the terrace hung a low balcony. The Saint took two steps and a jump, hung by his fingertips for a second, and pulled himself quickly up and over the balustrade.

An open door faced him, and the room beyond was empty. The Saint walked in, and passed through to the corridor on the other side.

Here he was at a loss, for the geography of the palace was strange to him. He crept along, rather hesitantly, without a sound. In the space of a dozen yards there was another open door. Through it, as he passed, the Saint caught a glimpse of the room beyond, and what he saw brought him to a sudden standstill.

He tiptoed back to the doorway and stood there at gaze.

It was a bathroom.

Only a year ago that bathroom had been fitted up at enormous cost for the delectation of the Saturday nights of his excellency the President and the Minister of the Interior. A gang of workmen specially sent down by a New York firm of contractors had affixed those beautiful sky-blue tiles to the walls, and laid those lovely sea-green tiles on the floor, and installed that superlative pale green porcelain bath with its gleaming silver taps and showers and other gadgets. Paris had supplied the great crystal jar of bath salts which stood on the window sill, and the new cakes of expensive soap in the dishes.

The Saint's glistening eyes swept the room.

It was not Saturday, but it seemed as if someone were making a departure from the usual habits of the palace household. On a rack above the wash basin were laid out razor, shaving soap, and brush. On a chair beside the bath were snowy towels. On another chair, in a comer, were clothes-a spotless silk shirt, a sash, wide-bottomed Mexican trousers braided with gold, shoes. . . .

For a full minute the Saint stared, struck dumb with wonder at his astounding good fortune. Then, in fear and trembling, he stole into the room and turned on a tap.

The water ran hot.

He hesitated no longer. War, revolution, battle, murder, and sudden death meant nothing to him then. He closed the door, and turned the key.

Blessings, like misfortunes, never come singly. There was even a packet of Havana cigarettes and a box of matches tucked away behind the bath salts. . . .

Ten minutes later, already shaved, the Saint was stretched full length in a steaming bath into which he had emptied the best part of the Presidential jar of bath salts, innocently playing submarines with the sponge and a cake of soap.

A cigarette was canted jauntily up between his lips, and he was without a care in the world.

8

Archie Sheridan mopped his moist forehead and smacked viciously at a mosquito which was gorging itself on his bare forearm.

"Thank the Lord you're back," he said. "This blistered place gives me the creeps. Have you fixed anything?"

Kelly settled ponderously on the spread ground sheet.

"I have arranged the invadin' army," he said. "Anything come through while I've been away?"

"Nothing that matters. One or two private messages, which I duly acknowledged. I wonder what they're thinking at the Ondia end of the line."

"There'll be a breakdown gang along sometime," pronounced Kelly. "It's now the second day of the wire bein' cut. Within the week, maybe, they'll wake up and send to repair it. What's the time?"

Sheridan consulted his watch.

"A quarter-past eleven," he said.

They sat under a great tree, in a small clearing in the jungle near the borders of Maduro, some ten miles east of Esperanza. A mile away was the rough track which led from Esperanza across the frontier to Maduro, and which formed the only road link between the two countries; and there Kelly's Ford, in which they had made most of the journey, waited hidden between the trees at a little distance from the road.

But for all the evidence there was to the contrary they might have been a thousand miles from civilization. At the edge of the tiny clearing colossal trees laced together with vines and creepers hemmed them in as with a gigantic palisade; high over their heads the entangled branches of the trees shut out the sky, and allowed no light to pass but a ghostly, gray twilight, in which the glaring crimsons and oranges and purples of the tropical blooms which flowered here and there in the marshy soil stood out with a shrieking violence.

Now and again, in the stillness of the great forest, there would be a rustle of the passing of some unseen wild thing. Under some prowling beast's paw, perhaps, a rotten twig would snap with a report like a rifle shot. Sometimes the delirious chattering of a troop of monkeys would babble out with a startling shrillness that would have sent a shudder up the spine of an impressionable man. And the intervals of silence were not true silence, but rather a dim and indefinable and monotonous murmur punctuated with the sogging sound of dripping water. The air was hot and steamy and heavy with sickly perfumes.

"You get used to it," said Kelly with a comprehensive wave of the stem of his pipe.

"Thanks," said Sheridan. "I'm not keen to. I've been here two days too long already. I have nightmares in which I'm sitting in an enormous bath, but as soon as I've finished washing a shower of mud falls on me and I have to start all over again."

Now this was on the morning of the day in the afternoon of which the Saint escaped from prison.

On Sheridan's head were a pair of radio headphones. On the ground sheet beside him was a little instrument, a Morse transmitter, which he had ingeniously fashioned before they left Santa Miranda. Insulated wires trailed away from him into the woods.

The telegraph line, for most of its length, followed the roads, but at that point, for some inexplicable reason, it took a short cut across country. They had decided to attack it at that point on grounds of prudence; for, although the road between Esperanza and the Maduro frontier was not much used, there was always the risk of someone passing and commenting on their presence when he reached his destination.

The afternoon before, they had cut the line and sent through to Esperanza, to be relayed to Santa Miranda, the ultimatum purporting to come from the President of Maduro. Since then, night and day, one of them had sat with the receivers upon his ears, waiting for a reply. The arrangement was complicated, for Kelly could not read Morse, while Sheridan's Spanish was very haphazard; but they managed somehow. Several times when Archie had been resting Kelly had roused him to take down a message; but the translation had had no bearing on the threat of war, except occasionally from a purely private and commercial aspect. There had been no official answer.

Sheridan looked at his watch again.

"Their time's up in half an hour," he said. "What do you say to sending a final demand?-the 'D' being loud and explosive, as in 'Income Tax.'"

"Shure-if there's no chance of 'em surrenderin'," agreed Kelly. "But we can't let anything stop the war."

The message they sent was worded with this in view: Understand you refuse to release Quijote. Our armies will accordingly advance into Pasala at noon.

While they waited for zero hour, Kelly completed the task of breaking camp, strapping their tent and equipment into a workmanlike bundle. He finished this job just before twelve, and returned to his prostrate position on the ground sheet.

"I wonder what that blayguard Shannet is doin'?" he said. "I only hope he hasn't missed the news by takin' a thrip to the concession. It'd be unlucky for us if he had."

"I think he'll be there," said Sheridan. "He was in Santa Miranda when we left, and he's likely to stay there and supervise the hunt for the Saint."

"He's a good man, that," said Kelly. "It's a pity he's not an Irishman."

Sheridan fanned himself with a handkerchief.

"He's one of the finest men that ever stepped," he said. "If the Saint said he was going to make war on Hell, I'd pack a fire extinguisher and go with him."

Kelly sucked his pipe and spat thoughtfully at an ant.

"That's not what I call your duty," he remarked. "In fact, I'm not sure that yez should have been in this at all, with a girl like Lilla watchin' for yez to come back, and worryin' her pretty head. And with a crawlin' sarpint like Shannet about."

"He's tried to bother her once or twice. But if I thought--"

"I've been thinkin' a lot out here," said Kelly. "I'm not savin' what I've thought. But it means that as soon as we've done what we're here to do we're going' to hurry back to Santa Miranda as fast as Tin Lizzie'11 take us. There's my missus an' Lilla without a man to look afther them; an' the Saint--"

Sheridan suddenly held up a hand for silence. He wrote rapidly on his little pad, and Kelly leaned over to read.

"What's it mean?"

"The war's on!" yelled Kelly ecstatically. "Don Manuel ain't the quitter I thought he was-or maybe he didn't see how he could get out of it. But the war's on! Hooroosh! There's goin' to be fightin'! Archie, me bhoy, the war's on!"

He seized Sheridan in a bear hug of an embrace, swung him off the ground, dropped him, and went prancing round the clearing uttering wild Celtic cries. It was some minutes before he could be sobered sufficiently to give a translation of the message.

It was short and to the point: . The armies of Pasala will resist aggression to the death.

Manuel Concepcion de Villega, being a civilian official, had thought this a particularly valiant and noble sentiment. In fact, he was so pleased with it that he used it to conclude his address to the army when, with the President, he reviewed it before it rode out of Santa Miranda to meet the invaders. Of course the speech should have been made by the President, but his excellency had no views on the subject.

At lunchtime the news came through from Esperanza that the enemy were attacking the town.

Although there had been ample warning, few of the inhabitants had left. The bulk of the population preferred to stay, secure in the belief that wars were the exclusive concern of the professional soldiers and had nothing to do with the general public, except for the inconvenience they might cause.

There was a small garrison stationed in the town, and they had barricaded the streets and settled down to await the attack. It came at about one o'clock.

The "invading armies" which Kelly had prepared had been designed by Archie Sheridan, who was something of a mechanical genius.

In the woods on the east, three hundred yards from the front line of improvised fortifications, had been established a line of ten braziers of glowing charcoal, about twenty yards apart. Above each brazier was suspended a string of cartridges knotted at intervals of a few inches into a length of cord. The cord passed over the branch of a tree into which nails had been driven as guides. All these cords were gathered together in two batches of five each at a point some distance away, in such a way that one man, using both hands, could slowly lower the strings of cartridges simultaneously into all ten braziers, and so give the impression that there was firing over a front of two hundred yards. If they had had fireworks they could have saved themselves much trouble; but they had no fireworks, and Archie Sheridan was justly proud of his ingenious substitute.

Sheridan worked the "invading armies," while Kelly lay down behind a tree some distance away, sheltered from any stray bullets, and loaded his rifle. To complete the illusion it was necessary that the firing should seem to have some direction.

Sheridan, with a low whistle, signalled that he was ready, and the battle began.

The cartridges, lowered one by one into the braziers and there exploded by the heat, provided a realistic rattle up and down the line; while Kelly, firing and reloading like one possessed, sent bullets smacking into the walls of the houses and kicking up spurts of dust around the barricades. He took care not to aim anywhere where anyone might be hit.

The defense replied vigorously, though no one will ever know what they thought they were shooting at, and there were some spirited exchanges. When another whistle from Sheridan announced that the strings of cartridges were exhausted, Kelly rejoined him, and they crawled down to the road and the waiting Ford, and drove boldly towards the town, Kelly waving a nearly white flag.

The car was stopped but Kelly was well known.

"They let me through their lines," he explained to the officer of the garrison. "That is why the firing has ceased. I was in Ondia when war was declared, and I came back at once."

He told them that he was on his way to Santa Miranda.

"Then travel quickly, and urge them to not delay sending help," said the officer, "for it is clear that we are attacked by a tremendous number. I have sent telegraphs, but you can do more by telling them what you have seen."

"I will do that," promised Kelly, and they let him drive on.

As soon as the car was clear of the town he stopped and assisted Sheridan to unearth himself from under the pile of luggage; for, being now an outlaw, Sheridan had had to hide when they passed through the towns on the journey up, and it was advisable for him to do the same for most of the return.

A little farther down the road they stopped again, and Sheridan climbed a tree and cut the telegraph wires, so that the news of the fizzling out of the attack should not reach Santa Miranda in time for the troops that had been sent out to be recalled. Instead of organizing the "invasion" they might have tapped the wire there and sent on messages from the commander of the garrison describing the progress of the battle, and so saved themselves much labour and thought; but the short road between Esperanza and Las Flores (the next town) was too well frequented for that to be practicable in broad daylight.

The Minister of the Interior was informed that it was no longer possible to communicate with Esperanza, and he could see only one explanation.

"Esperanza is surrounded," he said. "The garrison is less than a hundred. The town will fall in twenty-four hours, and the advancing armies of Maduro will meet our reinforcements at Las Flores. It will be a miracle if we can hold the invaders from Santa Miranda for five days."

"You should have kept some troops here," said Shannet. "You have sent every soldier in Santa Miranda. Once that army is defeated there will be nothing for the invaders to overcome."

"Tomorrow I will recruit the peones," said Don Manuel. "There must be conscription. Pasala requires the services of every able-bodied citizen. I will draft a proclamation tonight for the President to sign."

It was then nearly five o'clock, but none of them had had a siesta that afternoon. They were holding another of many unprofitable conferences in a room in the palace, and it was significant that Shannet's right to be present was undisputed. The President himself was also there, biting his nails and stabbing the carpet nervously with the rowels of his spurs, but the other two took no notice of him. The President and De Villega were both still wearing the magnificent uniforms which they had donned for the review of the troops that morning.

Shannet paced the room, the inevitable limp unlighted cigarette drooping from his loose lower lip. His once-white ducks were as spiled and sloppy as ever. (Since they never be came filthy, it is apparent that he must nave treated himself to a clean suit occasionally, but nobody was ever allowed to notice this fact.) His unbrushed hair, as always, flopped over his right eye.

Since the day before, Shannet had had much to think about. Campard's amazing cable, attributing the war to a criminal gang, had arrived, and Shannet had replied with the required information. He had passed on the suggestion of his employer to the Minister of the Interior, pointing to the undoubtedly lawless behaviour of Sheridan and the Unknown; but that two common outlaws could organize a war was a theory which De Villega refused to swallow.

"It is absurd," he said. "They are ordinary criminals. Two men cannot be a gang. In due time they will be caught, the man Sheridan will be imprisoned, and the man Mussolini will be hanged."

Shannet, asked for the name of the man who had assaulted him, had replied indignantly: "He told me his name was Benito Mussolini!" Since then, he had been impelled to make several protests against the conviction of the officials that this ' statement was to be believed; but the idea had taken too firm a root, and Shannet had to give up the attempt.

But now he had an inspiration.

"There can be no harm in finding out," he urged. "Send for the peón that all the trouble is about, and let us question him."

"I have a better idea than that," exclaimed De Villega, jumping up. "I will send the peón to the garrote to-morrow, for an encouragement to the people. They will enjoy the spectacle, and it will make them more ready to accept the proclamation of conscription. I will make a holiday--"

But Shannet's brain had suddenly taken to itself an amazing brilliance. In a flash it had soared above the crude and elementary idea of sending for the peón and forcing him to speak. He had no interest in De Villega's sadistic elaboration of the same idea. He had seen a much better solution than that.

9

Rapidly Shannet explained his inspiration to the others. It was as simple as all great inspirations.

He was now firmly convinced in his mind that Sheridan and the Unknown were at the bottom of all the trouble, and this belief was strengthened by the fact that no trace of them had been found since their escape, although both police and military had searched for them. Some of the things that the Unknown had said-before and after the interlude in which words were dispensed with-came back to Shannet with a dazzling clarity. It all fitted in.

And ready to his hand lay the key to the trap in which he found himself. He saw that what the Unknown had started the Unknown could stop. It was Campard's own idea, but Shannet was more conveniently placed to apply it than his master had been. Also, he had the necessary lever within a few minutes' reach.

Lilla McAndrew.

She was the master card. Sheridan, he knew, was infatuated. And Sheridan was an important accomplice of the Unknown. With Lilla McAndrew for a hostage Shannet could dictate his own terms.

"I know I have reason!" Shannet said vehemently, while he inwardly cursed the limitations of his Spanish, which prevented him driving his ideas home into the thick skulls of his audience more forcibly. "I know well the Seńor Campard, for whom I have worked for years. Perhaps it sounds fantastic to you, but I know that he is not an easy man to frighten. If I had suggested this to him myself, that these two men could have plotted a war, he would have laughed me to scorn. But he has said it of his own accord. Therefore I know that he must have some information."

"I think everyone has gone mad," said De Villega helplessly. "But you may proceed with your plan. At least it can do no harm. But I warn you that it is on your own responsibility. The Senorita McAndrew is a British subject, and questions may be asked. Then I shall say that I know nothing of it; and, if the authorities demand it, you will have to be handed over to them."

It was significant of the way in which Shannet's prestige had declined since the commencement of the war, for which De Villega was inclined to blame him; but Shannet did not care.

"I will take the risk," he said, and was gone.

In the palace courtyard his horse was still being held by a patient soldier-one of the half-dozen left behind to guard the palace. Shannet clambered into the saddle and galloped out as the gates were opened for him by a sentry.

His first course took him to an unsavoury cafe at the end of the town, where he knew he would find the men he needed. He enrolled two. They were pleased to call themselves "guides," but actually they were half-caste cutthroats available for anything from murder upwards. Shannet knew them, for he had used their services before.

He explained what he wanted and produced money. There was no haggling. In ten minutes the three were riding out of the town.

Kelly, too late, had thought of that very possibility, as he had hinted to Sheridan in the jungle clearing that morning. But Kelly and Sheridan were still twenty miles away.

And the Saint, in the President's palatial bathroom, was leisurely completing the process of dressing himself in the clean clothes which he had found. They fitted him excellently.

Meanwhile, the men whom Shannet had left in conference were receiving an unpleasant surprise.

"God!" thundered De Villega. "How did this peón escape?"

"Excellency," said the abashed governor of the prison, "it was during the siesta. The man fell down moaning and writhing as if he would die. The warder went to attend him, and the man grasped him by the throat so that he could not cry out, throttled him into unconsciousness, and bound and gagged him. He also surprised the gatekeeper, and hit him in the English fashion--"

De Villega let out an exclamation.

"What meanest thou, pig-'in the English fashion'?"

The governor demonstrated the blow which the gatekeeper had described. It was, in fact, the simple left uppercut of the boxer and no Latin American who has not been infected with our methods ever hits naturally like that.

"What manner of man was this peón?" demanded Don Manuel, with understanding dawning sickeningly into his brain.

"Excellency, he was tall for a peón, and a man of the strength of a lion. If he had washed he would have been handsome, with an aristocratic nose that such a man could hardly have come by legitimately. And he had very white teeth and blue eyes--"

"Blue eyes!" muttered De Villega dazedly, for, of course, to the Latin, all Englishmen have blue eyes.

He turned to the governor with sudden ferocity.

"Tonto de capirote!" he screamed. "Imbecile, dost thou not know whom thou hast let slip through thy beastly fingers? Dost thou not even know whom thou hast had in thy charge these three days?"

He thumped upon the table with his fist, and the governor trembled.

"Couldst thou not recognize him, cross-eyed carrion?" he screeched. "Couldst thou not see that he was no true peón? Maggot, hast thou not heard of the outlaw Benito Mussolini, for whom the rurales have searched in vain while he sheltered safely in the prison under thy gangrenous eyes?"

"I am a worm, and blind, excellency," said the cringing man tactfully, for he knew that any excuse he attempted to make would only infuriate the minister further.

De Villega strode raging up and down the room. Now he believed Shannet, wild and far-fetched as the latter's theory had seemed when he had first heard it propounded. The news of the prisoner's escape, and the-to Don Manuel-sufficient revelation of his real identity, provided incontrovertible proof that the fantastic thing was true.

"He must be recaptured at once!" snapped De Villega. "Every guardia in Santa Miranda must seek him without rest day or night. The peones must be pressed into the hunt. The state will pay a reward of five thousand pesos to the man who brings him to me, alive or dead. As for thee, offal," he added, turning with renewed malevolence upon the prison governor, "if Sancho Quijote, or Benito Mussolini-whatever he calls himself-is not delivered to me in twelve hours I will cast thee into thine own prison to rot there until he is found."

"I will give the orders myself, excellency," said the governor, glad of an excuse to make his escape, and bowed his way to the door.

He went out backwards, and, as he closed the door, the Saint pinioned his arms from behind, and allowed the point of his little knife to prick his throat.

"Make no sound," said the Saint, and lifted the man bodily off his feet.

He carried the governor down the passage, the knife still at his throat, and took him into a room that he had already marked down in his explorations. It was a bedroom. The Saint deposited the man on the floor, sat on his head, and tore a sheet into strips, with which he bound and gagged him securely.

"I will release you as soon as the revolution is over," the Saint promised, with a mocking bow.

Then he walked back to the other room and entered softly, closing the door behind him. De Villega was penning the announcement of the reward, and it was the President who first noticed the intruder and uttered a strangled yap of startlement.

Don Manuel looked up, and loosed an oath. He sprang to his feet, upsetting the ink pot and his chair, as if an electric current had suddenly been applied to him.

"Who are you?" he demanded in a cracked voice, though he had guessed the answer.

"You know me best as Benito Mussolini, or Sancho Quijote," said the Saint. "My friends-and enemies-sometimes call me El Santo. And I am the father of the revolution."

He lounged lazily against the door, head back, hands rested carelessly on his hips. The Saint was himself again, clean and fresh from razor and bath, his hair combed smoothly back. The clothes he had appropriated suited him to perfection. The Saint had the priceless gift of being able to throw on any old thing and look well in it, but few things could have matched his mood and personality better than the buccaneering touch there was about the attire that had been more or less thrust upon him.

The loose, full-sleeved shirt, the flaring trousers, the scarlet sash-the Saint wore these romantic trappings with a marvelous swashbuckling air, lounging there with a reckless and piratical elegance, a smile on his lips. . . .

Seconds passed before the minister came out of his trance.

"Revolution?"

De Villega echoed the word involuntarily, and the Saint bowed.

"I am the revolution," he said, "and I have just started. For my purpose I arranged that the army should leave Santa Miranda, so that I should have nothing to deal with but a few officials, yourselves, and a handful of guardias. Wonderful as I am, I could not fight an army."

"Fool!" croaked Don Manuel, in a voice that he hardly knew as his own. "The army will return, and then you will be shot."

"Permit me to disagree," said the Saint. "The army will return, certainly. It will be to find a new government in power. The army is the servant of the state, not of one man, nor even of one government. Of course, on their return, the soldiers would be free to begin a second revolution to overthrow the new government if they disliked it. But I do not think they will do that, particularly as the new government is going to increase their pay. Observe the subtle difference. To have attempted to bribe the army to support a revolution would have been treason, and rightly resented by all patriotic citizens; but to signalize the advent of the new constitution by a bonus in cash to the army is an act of grace and generosity, and will be rightly appreciated."

"And the people?" said Don Manuel, as in a dream.

"Will they weep to see you go? I think not. You have crushed them with taxes-we shall liberate them. They could have liberated themselves, but they had not the initiative to begin. Now I give them a lead, and they will follow."

The Saint straightened up off the door. His blue eyes, with a sparkle of mischief in them, glanced from the Minister of the Interior to the President, and back to the Minister of the Interior again. His right hand came off his hip in a commanding gesture.

"Senores," he said, "I come for your resignations."

The President came to his feet, bowed, and stood to attention.

"I will write mine at once, seńor" he said hurriedly. "It is plain that Pasala no longer needs me."

It was the speech of his life, and the Saint swept him a low bow of approval.

"I thank your excellency!" he said mockingly.

"Half-wit!" snarled De Villega over his shoulder. "Let me handle this!"

He thrust the President back and came round the table.

A sword hung at his side, and on the belt of his ceremonial uniform was a revolver holster. He stood before the Saint, one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other fiddling with the little strap which secured the flap of the holster. His dark eyes met Simon Templar's bantering gaze.

"Already the revolution is accomplished?" he asked.

"I have accomplished it," said Templar.

De Villega raised his left hand to stroke his moustache.

"Seńor," he said, "all this afternoon we have sat in this room, which overlooks the front courtyard of the palace. Beyond, as you know, is the Calle del Palacio. Yet we have heard no commotion. Is a people that has been newly liberated too full of joy to speak?"

"When the people hear of their liberation," said the Saint, "you will hear their rejoicing."

De Villega's eyes glittered under his black brows.

"And your friends, seńor?" he pursued. "The other liberators? They have perhaps, surrounded the palace and over come the guards without an alarm being raised or a shot fired?"

The Saint laughed.

"Don Manuel," he said, "you do me an injustice. I said I was the father of the revolution. Can a child have two fathers? Alone, Manuel, I accomplished it-yet you persist in speaking of my private enterprise as if it were the work of a hundred. Will you not give me the full credit for what I have done?" De Villega stepped back a pace.

"So," he challenged, "the people does not know. The palace guards do not know. The army does not know. Will you tell me who does know?"

"Our three selves," said the Saint blandly. "Also two friends of mine who organized the war for me. And the governor of the prison, whom I captured on his way to mobilize the guardias against me. It is very simple. I intend this to be a bloodless revolution, for I am against unnecessary killing. You will merely resign, appointing a new government in your places, and leave Pasala at once, never to return again on pain of death."

The holster was now undone, and De Villega's fingers were sliding under the flap.

"And you-alone-demand that?"

"I do," said the Saint, and leaped at De Villega as the revolver flashed from its place.

With one arm he grasped Don Manuel around the waist, pinning his left arm to his side; with his left hand he gripped Don Manuel's right wrist, forcing it back, and twisting.

The President sprang forward, but it was all over in a couple of seconds. The revolver exploded twice, harmlessly, into the floor, and then fell with a clatter as the Saint's grip be came too agonizing to be borne.

The Saint hurled De Villega from him, into the President's very arms, and as De Villega staggered back his sword grated out of its sheath and remained in the Saint's right hand. The President's revolver was halfway out of its holster when the Saint let him feel the sword at his breast. "Drop it!" ordered Simon. The President obeyed.

Templar forced the two men back to the wall at the sword's point. Then he turned quickly, using the sword to fish up the two revolvers from the floor by their trigger guards, and turned again to halt their immediate rally with the guns impaled on his blade.

From below, through the open windows, came the shouting of the sentries, and the sound of running feet thundered in the passage outside the room.

Like lightning the Saint detached the revolvers from his sword, and held them one in each hand. They covered their owners with an equal steadiness of aim.

The two shots that De Villega had fired, though they had hit no one, had done damage enough. They hadn't entered into the Saint's plan of campaign. He had betted on being quick enough to catch De Villega before he could get his hand to his gun in its cumbersome holster-and the Saint, for once, had been a fraction of a second slow on his timing. But the error might yet be repaired.

"You, excellency, to the windows!" rapped the Saint in a low voice. "You, De Villega, to the door! Reassure the guards. Tell them that the President was unloading his revolver when it accidentally exploded. The President will repeat the same thing from the window to the sentries below."

He dodged out of sight behind the door as it burst open, but there was no mistaking the menace of the revolvers which he still focussed on the two men.

The President was already addressing the sentries below. De Villega, with one savagely impotent glance at the unfriendly muzzle that was trained upon him, followed suit, giving the Saint's suggested explanation to the guards who crowded into the doorway.

"You may go," he concluded. "No harm has been done. But remain within call-I may need you shortly."

It required some nerve to add that last remark, in the circumstances, but De Villega thought that the Saint would not betray his presence with a shot if he could possibly help it. He was right. The President came back from the window. The guards withdrew, with apologies for their excited irruption, and the door closed. The Saint slid the bolt into its socket.

"A wise precaution, Don Manuel, to warn the guards that you might need them," he said. "But I do not think it will help you."

He stuck the revolvers into his sash and picked up the sword again. It was a better weapon for controlling two men than his little knife, and much quieter than the revolvers.

"Your resignations or your lives, senores?" said the Saint briskly. "I will take whichever you prefer to give, but I must have one or the other at once."

De Villega sat down at the table, but did not write. He unbuttoned his coat, fished out a packet of cigarettes, and lighted one, blowing out a great cloud of smoke. Through it he looked at the Saint, and his lips had twisted into a sneering grin.

"I have another thing to offer, seńor," he remarked viciously, "which you might prefer to either of the things you have mentioned."

"Es decir?" prompted Simon, with a frowning lift of his eyebrows.

De Villega inhaled again with relish, and let the smoke trickle down from his nostrils in two long feathers. There was a glow of taunting triumph in his malignant stare.

"There is the Senorita McAndrew," he said, and the Saint's face suddenly went very meek.

"What of her?"

"It was the Seńor Shannet," said De Villega, enjoying his moment, "who first suggested that you were the man behind the war. We did not believe him, but now I see that he is a wise man. He left us over half an hour ago to take her as hostage. You gave me no chance to explain that when the guards entered the room just now. But I told them to remain within call for that reason-so that I could summon them as soon as you surrendered. Now it is my turn to make an offer. Stop this war, and deliver yourself and your accomplices to justice, and I will save the Senorita McAndrew. Otherwise--" Don Manuel shrugged. "Am I answerable for the affections of the Seńor Shannet?"

A throaty chuckle of devilish merriment shook him, and he bowed to the motionless Saint with a leering mock humility.

"I, in my turn, await your decision, seńor," he said.

10

The Saint leaned on his sword.

He was cursing himself for the fool he was. Never before in his career had he been guilty of such an appalling lapse. Never would he have believed that he could be capable of overlooking the probability of such an obvious counter-attack. Now his brain was whirling like the flywheel of a great dynamo, and he was considering, calculating, readjusting, summarizing every thing in the light of this new twist that De .Villega had given to the affair. Yet his face showed nothing of the storm behind it.

"And how do I know that you will keep your bargain?" he asked.

"You do not know," replied De Villega brazenly. "You only know that, if you do not agree to my terms, the seńor Shannet will certainly take reprisals. I offer you a hope."

So that was the strength of it. And, taken by and large, it didn't strike the Saint as a proposition to jump at. It offered him exactly nothing-except the opportunity to go nap on Don Manuel's honour and Shannet's generosity, two bets which no one could have called irresistibly attractive. Also, it involved Kelly and Sheridan, who hadn't been consulted. And it meant, in the end, that all three of them would most certainly be executed, whatever De Villega decided to do about Lilla McAndrew, whom Shannet would probably claim, and be allowed, as a reward for his share in suppressing the revolution. No. . . .

Where were Kelly and Sheridan? The Saint was reckoning it out rapidly, taking into consideration the age of Kelly's Ford and the reported abominable state of the roads between Esperanza and Santa Miranda. And, checking his calculation over, the Saint could only get one answer, which was that Kelly and Sheridan were due to arrive at any minute. They would learn of the abduction. . . .

"The Senora Kelly?" asked the Saint. "What of her?"

De Villega shrugged.

"She is of no importance."

Yes, Mrs. Kelly would be left behind-if she had not been shot. She was middle-aged and stout and past her attractive ness, and no one would have any interest in abducting her. So that Kelly and Sheridan, arriving at the bungalow, would hear the tale from her.

And then-there was no doubt about it-they would come storming down to the palace, guardias and sentries not withstanding, with cold murder in their hearts.

The Saint came erect, and De Villega looked up expectantly. But there was no sign of surrender in the Saint's poise, and nothing relenting about the way in which he stepped up to the minister and set the point of his sword at his breast.

"I said I came for your resignations," remarked the Saint with a deadly quietness. "That was no idle talk. Write now, De Villega, or, by the vixen that bore thee, thou diest!"

"Fool! Fool!" Don Manuel raved. "It cannot help you!"

"I take the risk," said the Saint icily. "And do not speak so loud-I might think you were trying to attract the attention of the guards. Write!"

He thrust the sword forward the half of an inch, and De Villega started back with a cry.

"You would murder me?"

"With pleasure," said the Saint. "Write!"

Then there was sudden silence, and everyone was quite still, listening. For from the courtyard below the windows came the rattle of urgent hoofs.

The Saint leaped to the windows. There were three horses held by the sentries. He saw Shannet and two other men dismounting-and saw, being lifted down from Shannet's saddle bow, Lilla McAndrew with her hands tied.

He could have shouted for joy at the justification of his bold defiance. And yet, if he had thought a little longer, he might have foreseen that the girl would be brought to the palace. She was not the victim of Shannet's privateering, but an official hostage. But even if the Saint hadn't forseen it, there it was, and he could have prayed for nothing better. He saw all the trump cards coming into his hands. . . .

Then he whipped round, in time to frustrate De Villega's stealthy attack, and the minister's raised arm dropped to his side.

The Saint speared the sword into the floor and slipped the revolvers out of his sash. For the second time he dodged be hind the opening door. He saw the girl thrust roughly into the room, and Shannet followed, closing the door again behind him.

"Fancy meeting you again, honeybunch!" drawled the Saint, and Shannet spun round with an oath.

The Saint leaned against the wall, the presidential and ministerial revolvers in his hands. On his lips was a smile so broad as to be almost a laugh, and there was a laugh in his voice.

"Take that hand away from your hip, Shannet, my pet!" went on the Saint, in that laughing voice of sheer delight. "I've got you covered-and even if I'm not very used to these toys, I could hardly miss you at this range. . . . That's better. . . . Oh, Shannet, my sweet and beautiful gargoyle, you're a bad boy, frightening that child. Take the cords off her wrists, my angel. . . . No, Seńor de Villega, you needn't edge towards that sword. I may want it again myself in a minute. Gracias! ... Is that more comfortable, Lilla, old dear?"

"Oh," cried the girl, "thank God you're here! Where's Archie?"

"On his way, old darling, on his way, as the actress said of the bishop," answered the Saint. "Are you all right?"

She shuddered a little.

"Yes, I'm all right," she said. "Except for the touch of his filthy hands. But I was very frightened. . . ."

"Archie will deal with that when he arrives," said the Saint. "It's his business-he'd never forgive me if I interfered. Come here, my dear, keeping well out of the line of fire, while I deal with the specimens. I'm not the greatest revolver shot in the world, and I want to be sure that it won't matter who I hit."

He steered her to safety in a comer, and turned to Don Manuel.

"When we were interrupted," said the Saint persuasively, "you were writing. The interruption has now been disposed of. Proceed, seńor!"

De Villega lurched back to the table, the fight gone out of him. He could never have envisaged such an accumulation and culmination of misfortunes. It was starting to seem to him all together like a dream, a nightmare rather-but there was nothing ethereal about the revolver that was levelled so steadily at him. The only fantastic part of the whole catastrophe was the man who had engineered it-the Saint himself, in his extraordinary borrowed clothes, and the hell-for-leather light of laughing recklessness in his blue eyes. That was the last bitter pill which De Villega had to swallow. He might perhaps have endured defeat by a man whom he could understand-a cloaked and sinister conspirator with a personality of impressive grimness. But this lunatic who laughed. . . . Que diablos! It was impossible. . . .

And then, from outside, drifted a grinding, screaming, metallic rattle that could only be made by one instrument in the world.

"Quick!" said the Saint. "Slither round behind Master Shannet, Lilla, darling, and slip the gat out of his hip pocket. . . . That's right. . . . Now d'you mind sticking up the gang for a sec. while I hail the troops? Blaze away if any body gets funny."

The girl handled Shannet's automatic as if she'd been born with her finger crooked round a trigger, and the Saint, with a nod of approval, crossed over to the window.

Kelly's Ford was drawn up in the courtyard, and both Kelly and Sheridan were there. Kelly was just disposing of a sentry who had ventured to question his right of way.

"Walk right in, souls!" the Saint hailed them cheerily. "You're in tune to witness the abdication of the government"

"Have you seen Lilla?" shouted a frantic Sheridan.

The Saint grinned.

"She's safe here, son."

The report of an automatic brought him round with a jerk.

With the Saint's back turned, and the Saint's victory now an accomplished fact, Shannet had chanced everything on one mad gamble against the steadiness of nerve and aim of the girl who for a moment held the situation in her small hands.

While Lilla McAndrew's attention was distracted by the irresistible impulse to try to hear what Archie Sheridan was saying he had sidled closer . . . made one wild leaping grab . . .missed. ...

The Saint stooped over the still figure and made a swift examination. He straightened up with a shrug, picking up his revolvers again as the first of the guards burst into the room.

"Quietly, amigos," he urged; and they saw sudden death in each of his hands, and checked.

The next instant the crowd stirred again before the berserk rush of Archie Sheridan, who had heard the shot as he raced up the palace steps. A yard behind him followed Kelly, breaking through like a bull, his red head flaming above the heads of the guards.

"All clear, Archie!" called the Saint. "It was Shannet who got it."

But Lilla McAndrew was already in Archie Sheridan's arms.

"Here, Kelly," rapped the Saint. "Let's get this over. Take these guns and keep the guards in order while I dispose of the government."

Kelly took over the weapons, and the Saint stepped back and wrenched the sword out of the floor. He advanced towards the President and De Villega, who stood paralyzed by the table.

"You have written?" he asked pleasantly.

De Villega passed over a piece of paper, and the Saint read it and handed it back.

"You have omitted to nominate your successors," he said. "That will be the Seńor Kelly and those whom he appoints to help him. Write again."

"Half a minute," Kelly threw back over his shoulder, with his eyes on the shuffling guards. "I don't fancy being President myself-it's too risky. I'll be Minister of the Interior, and the President can stay on, if he behaves himself."

The President bowed.

"I am honoured, seńor," he assented with alacrity.

"Write accordingly," ordered the Saint, and it was done.

The Saint took the document and addressed the guards.

"By this," he said, "you know that the President dismisses Seńor Manuel Concepcion de Villega, the Minister of the Interior, and his government, and appoints the Seńor Kelly in his place. To celebrate his appointment, the Seńor Kelly will in a few days announce the removal of a number of taxes which have hitherto oppressed you. Now take this paper and cause it to be embodied in a proclamation to the free people of Pasala. Let to-morrow be a public holiday and a day of rejoicing for this reason, and also because it is now proved that there is no war with Maduro. That was a rumour spread by certain malicious persons for their own ends. See that a radiografo is sent to Estados Unidos, explaining that, and saying that they may recall the warship they were sending. You may go, amigos."

There was a silence of a few seconds; and then, as the full meaning of the Saint's speech was grasped, the room rang and echoed again to a great crash of Vivas!

When Kelly had driven the cheering guards out into the passage and closed the door in their faces, Simon Templar thought of something and had the door opened again to send for the governor of the prison. The man was brought quickly.

"Seńor," said the Saint, "I apologize for the way I treated you just now. It happened to be necessary. But the revolution is now completed, and you are a free man. I bear you no malice-although I am going to insist that you disinfect your prison."

He explained the circumstances, and the prison governor bowed almost to the floor.

"It is nothing, ilustrisimo seńor," he said. "But if I had known I would have seen to it that your honour was given better accommodation. Another time, perhaps. . . ."

"God forbid," said the Saint piously.

Then he turned and pointed to the now terrified De Villega.

"Take this man with you," he directed. "He is to leave Pasala by the next boat, and meantime he is to be closely guarded. He will probably attempt either to fight or to bribe his escape. My answer to that is that if he is not delivered to me when I send for him, your life and the lives of all your warders will answer for it."

"It is understood, senior."

Kelly watched the departure of the governor and his prisoner open-mouthed; and when they were gone he turned to the Saint with a blank expression.

"Look here," he said, as if the thought had just struck him -"where's all this fightin' I've been told so much about?"

The Saint smiled.

"There is no fighting," he said. "This has been what I hoped it would be-a bloodless revolution. It was undertaken in the name of a justice which the law could not administer, to ruin a man more than six thousand miles away, back in London, England. He had ruined thousands, but the law could not touch him. This was my method. Your first duty as Minister of the Interior will be to revoke the original oil concession and to make out a fresh one, assigning the rights, in perpetuity, to Miss McAndrew and her heirs." He laid a hand on Kelly's shoulder. "I'm sorry to give you such a disappointment, son; and if you must have a fight, I'll have a round or two with you myself before dinner. But I had to do it this way. Any other kind of revolution would have meant the sacrifice of many lives, and I didn't really want that."

For a moment Kelly was silent and perplexed before the Saint's sudden seriousness; then he shrugged, and laughed, and took Simon Templar's hand in a huge grip.

"I don't confess to know what yez are talkin' about," he said. "And I don't care. I suppose it's been worth it-if only to see the look on De Villega's ugly face whin yez sent him to prison. And, anyway, a laughin' devil who can run a show like yez have run this one deserves to be allowed to work things his own way."

"Good scout!" smiled the Saint. "Was Mrs. Kelly all right?"

"A bit scared, but no harm done. It was Lilla she was afraid for. They just tied the missus up in a chair and left her. An' that reminds me-there was a cable waitin' for me up at the bungalow, and I can't make head or tale of it. Maybe it's something to do with you."

Kelly rumbled in his pocket and produced the form. The Saint took it over, and one glance told him that it was meant for him.

"It's from an agent of mine in London," he explained. "He wouldn't have addressed it to Archie or me in case anything had gone wrong and it was intercepted."

He knew the code almost perfectly, and he was able to write the translation in between the lines at once.

Pops down trumped twelve thousand . . . The Saint wrote: P. O. P.'s fell heavily. Cleared twelve thousand pounds. Campard committed suicide this morning.

It was signed with the name of Roger Conway.

"Archie!" called the Saint, thoughtfully; and again: "Archie!"

"They sneaked out minutes ago," said Kelly. "She's a sweet girl, that Lilla McAndrew."

And it was so, until evening.

And at even the Saint went forth and made a tour of a number of disreputable cafes, in each of which he bought much liquor for the clientele. They did not recognize him until he started to sing-a strange and barbarous song that no one could understand. But they recognized it, having heard it sung before, with many others like it, by a certain peón: "The bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, For you but not for me; For me the angels sing-a-ling-a-ling, They've got the goods for me, O death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling, Where, grave, thy victory . . ."

To this day you will hear that song sung by the peasants of Santa Miranda. And if you should ask one of them why he sings it, he will answer, with courteous surprise at your ignorance: "That, seńor, is one of the songs of freedom. . . ."